Page 87 of A Haven of Brimstone and Darkness

As if she senses my attention, Ariadne lifts her hands and turns her wrist back and forth. “My father is a cruel man, as well as a cautious one,” she says thoughtfully. “I suspect had he placed these on you, I’d have tried to kill him long before now. The bolts through the wrists were harder to bear until about a year into captivity—now it’s easy. I’ve forgotten what it feels like to walk where I like, much less what it is to feel my full power.”

All at once, several things become clear. One, Ariadne and Caedmon truly hadn’t been able to escape. Bolts of brimstone through their wrists? No wonder they hadn't had the strength to free themselves from their cells when someone like Theos or Kalix—weaker Mortal Gods—had found it so easy. Combined with that is the reminder that she hadn’t said she’d kill Tryphone, merely that she would try.

It seems I can't escape the possibility of failure no matter what I do.

Ariadne gestures to Caedmon. “Worry not about this, we will figure it out. Now, let’s go.”

Chapter 41

Kiera

Kalix and Theos flank me as we enter the assembly hall. The sounds of our boots on the stone floor are drowned out by the noise of conversation as we draw nearer to the others dwelling within Ortus Academy. It appears that everyone has been gathered, and whether they realize it or not, for the end of the Gods’ reign.

They took from me and I have no intention of letting them keep it.Keep him.

Nothing in me questions the need for violence that resides within our mutual souls at the loss of one of our own. We had ascended the staircase leading out of the claustrophobic pressure of the underground prison minutes earlier and Caedmon and Ariadne are gone now. They had turned away from the sound of people and as they promised to return had disappeared.

“It will be okay.” Theos steps up along my left side and slides his hand down my arm until our fingers intertwine.

Unable to stop myself, I allow my own hand to turn over and take his offer of comfort. There has been so little of it at this point that every crumb of affection from the Darkhavenshas become like a drug to an addict. I close my eyes and inhale deeply through my nose.

Instead of responding, I simply march forward into the fray. The three of us merge with a stream of students making their way into the massive hall that the Gods have used to announce their expectations and ceremonial rites for the last two weeks. It feels as if a lifetime has been lived since we came here and yet at the same time, it’s a blink in their eyes. A mere second in the centuries that they live.

Kalix comes up along my opposite side and leans down. “Ruen is here,” he murmurs.

I jerk, my whole body rising onto tiptoe as I scan the room, searching for the lost member of our family—because that’s what we are. A broken, damaged, cobbled-together family that no one else wanted.

“Where?” I pant the word as my heart bleeds, leaking all over the inside of my chest. “I don’t see him.”

“I can smell him,” Kalix replies. His words are only marginally easing. The fact that I cannot set my eyes upon Ruen’s form, damaged or whole, remains.

The fingers of my right hand inch down to his and to my surprise, Kalix allows me to take hold of his hand and grip it tightly. My heart thuds a rapid pace as my eyes cast above the room, roving over the tops of the heads in the nearby vicinity and then further.

Azai and Gygaea stand upon the dais at the head of the room, but both Makeda and Danai are absent. The lack of their presence makes everything inside me clench. My hands tighten against Theos’ and Kalix’s.

They hover close, their bodies spreading heat into my own. It’s not enough to defrost the ice that’s formed inside me. Their cautious anger is barely restrained. I’m not quite sure if it’s theirhands on mine or mine on theirs that’s keeping the lot of us from unleashing the storm that is building within all of us.

Swaying on my feet, I consider the words that Caedmon had whispered to me before we’d parted ways.

Whatever Ariadne has promised you,he’d said,know one thing—the reason I didn’t go to her was because she cannot be the one to succeed, Kiera. You are the only one who can stop Tryphone.

Why?I’d wanted to scream at him.Why does it have to be me? What do I have that others don’t?

And, as if he knew exactly what I’d been thinking as I’d stared back into the pitch black of his gaze, he’d lifted a hand to my cheek and touched me lightly. Just the barest touch of a fingertip. That was all he’d needed and visions had cascaded through my head.

Old worlds. New. Mountains and oceans that rose and fell. Cities burning. Rumble and ruins and then … at the end of it all, rebirth.

“It’s you, Kiera,” Caedmon had repeated. “It’s always been you.”

I close my eyes as I sway on my feet. In my mind, the present and past and future collide. The truth that Caedmon shared swelling within me. After meeting her—Ariadne, my mother—I assumed that the bulk of my abilities came from her. I look like her after all.

But as much as I am half of her, I am also half of him—my father.

In my mind’s eye, I redraw my father’s facial structure. Thick lips. Strong, square-cut jaw. Eyes slightly slanted. A burnished darkness in his skin that was never like my own ivory flesh. When I was a child, I’d wanted so badly to look like him. Wanted to be just like the man I admired and loved. Then he’d looked at me with eyes of soft brown and he’d stroked my hair and calledme his ‘little one’ and I didn’t care anymore what I looked like so long as he never stopped.

Now, I realize he was looking at her—at my mother—and he loved her still through me.

My eyes reopen as the air in the room shifts. I release Kalix and Theos' hands as a figure appears at the center of the stage, dragged forward by two large bulky dead-faced Terra. Their features are waxen and even, not a hint of emotion revealed as they work to cart the man between them—bloodied and beaten until his damaged form is dropped in the center and a collective hush falls over the crowd.

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