Page 64 of A Haven of Brimstone and Darkness

Her head pops up, eyes wide with surprise. “You know—” Makeda cuts herself off and then chuckles dryly. “No, of course you do. You’ve already found Caedmon’s cell and talked to him.”

I don’t respond. Goddess of Knowledge or not, I don’t know how far her power extends, if it’s weakened, or if she’s merely hiding what she knows of me and the Darkhavens.

“Fine then,Neptis,” Makeda says. “What Hunt are you referring to?”

Ignoring the word that she continues to call me simply because I don’t have time for another lengthy discussion or explanation, I place my palms flat on the table and lean forward. “If you truly want to help me,” I tell her, hoping I’m not making a terrible mistake, “then I need you to do something for me.”

She releases her cup. “Anything.”

Though I should feel relief to have the Goddess of Knowledge—and by my own blood’s association, the God Queen—on my side, relief is the furthest thing I feel as I tell her my plan.

Nothing else matters now save for our survival, and I will use whatever means at my disposal.

Chapter 31

Theos

“Any sign of her yet?” Ruen’s quiet, demanding question sets my teeth on edge until I want to pound my fist into his face. If there was any sign of her, I’d have told him. He knows it. I know it. Kalix knows it.

Kalix, at least, hasn’t repeated the damn question a million times in the past half hour as if the answer has somehow changed. Ignoring it, I return to what I’d been doing—scanning the area for any sign of Kiera. Waking up to find her gone, her bed empty, and no sign of a note was not on my list of best ways to face yet another rite of the Gods.

The fact that we’d arrived—hoping to find her here—at the assembly hall only to be met with the Ortus Terra and those that had followed us from our own Academies handing out weapons only served to increase my dread. Though the weight of a sword on my hip is a welcome reminder that I am not useless, the fact that the Gods have deemed it necessary to give them to us can mean nothing good.

“I don’t see her,” Ruen states.

“Because she isn’t here,” I snap, losing grip of my temper for a split second.

Ruen shoots me a dark look. “She can’t be far,” he says. “The Gods wouldn’t have taken her in the night.”

“Why not?” Kalix asks, his voice as cold and even as the lack of emotion on his face. “They did the healer.”

Maeryn. Soft, fragile, frightened Maeryn. I wince at the memory of Kiera’s desperation as she’d tried to break the door to the girl’s room down and the inevitable dawn of shock and fear that had followed when we’d discovered it empty.

“Her room hadn’t been emptied,” I say, reminding them of that fact. “Everything was as it was last night. If they took her, then why wouldn’t they take everything else the same way?” As if they were attempting to erase the existence of those who had displeased them.

I’m not stupid. That was the reason for Maeryn’s disappearance. She’d refused to attend the Cleansing—or theTraiectusCeremony. The Gods had warned there would be a punishment. Still, though, complete erasure?

That action, in and of itself, is a cruelty I didn’t even consider. The brief moment as we’d stared into the empty room coated in dust and contemplated if, perhaps, we hadn’t made up her existence. A room that just the previous day had housed a fellow Mortal God. A friend … of sorts. The absence and obliteration of her personal effects had left me feeling as if I’d fallen down a tunnel.

I’m beginning to question everything. How long have we actually been here? A week? Two? It’d only been two weeks until the Equinox when we’d first arrived, but with the same food day in and day out, no classes, and no schedule to keep me grounded in some sort of reality—I can’t help but wonder if this place isn’t an eternal void where time ceases to mean anything.

Maybe disappearance is natural. Maybe none of us are even real.

“Theos.” Ruen’s bark sounds right next to my ear and I whirl, my upper lip peeling away from my teeth only to freeze at the reason for his call.

Kiera. I release a breath. She walks towards us with her head held high. She’s dressed in a pair of black trousers so perfectly tailored to her body that it appears more like a second skin around her hips and legs. Instead of a shirt with the color of aged grain, she wears a thin tunic tucked into the waist of her trousers and a matching belt from which hangs a sheath with a sword handle sticking out of it.

Leather belts are wrapped around her chest, buckled beneath her breasts and over her shoulders. Twin daggers facing downward are strapped in place and I’m not so naive as to not think that she’s hiding more weapons under her clothes. Her hair is pulled up and away from her face, braids on either side of her scalp keeping the strands from breaking free as the rest of the mass is tied with a leather band.

She doesn’t stop until she reaches us, and though her lips part, hopefully to give us a reason for her disappearance, I don’t let her. Diving forward, I grip her waist and yank her against me, slamming my mouth over hers—needing, more than anything in this moment, to confirm her existence.

She’s real.I slip my tongue into her mouth. She stiffens—in surprise, I suspect.She’s real.I grasp her harder, dragging her hips against mine in a rhythmic way we both know well, letting her feel the evidence of my arousal.

She’s real. She’s real. She’s real.I repeat the mantra over and over again in my head as I kiss her. After a brief hesitation, her arms lift and she closes them around me, kissing me back. I didn’t know how much I needed her response until I receive it.

Pulling my mouth back, I release a rough breath, gasping for air. “Fuck,” I mutter. “Don’t ever fucking disappear like that again.”

Carefully, Kiera cups her hands around my shoulders and nods, her forehead bumping mine lightly. “I promise,” she agrees. “I didn’t mean to be away for so long anyway, but I’ll leave a note next time.”

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