Page 90 of A Haven of Brimstone and Darkness

“Tell me.” Caedmon gently strokes the side of my face, avoiding the areas that pulse with more pain. “What did you find in them that helps you?”

What did I find in my family?That’s easy.I saw in them a sadness, a desire, that met my own.

Caedmon hums and even if I haven't spoken the words aloud, I realize that his fingers are on my face, still touching my skin and the questions are coming in time with my responses. Can he hear my thoughts?

Instead of answering that question, though, Caedmon continues. “And that is the reason you forsake everything else you know?”

This time, I speak aloud. “No.” That single word is a croak as I peel my eyes open and meet the man who has always been more of a father to me than the God of Strength. “It was everything else that made me forsake what I know.”

He nods.

Fuck the Gods. Fuck Death. Survival is all that I have. It is all that I am and I have to survive. For them.

Caedmon’s fingers reach for the bindings keeping me over the stone floor. “Then it’s time for you to fight back. It’s time for you to help her.”

Chapter 43

Kiera

Ortus Academy is a graveyard of empty bodies. Mortal Gods and false Gods alike wander these halls unaware that they are the ghosts that inhabit this place. I can see it now, after Tryphone’s announcement of the Feast, after his reveal of Ruen’s tortured state, and his subsequent dismissal, all I see are the phantoms that haunt this place.

Faces, old and new, familiar and unfamiliar, surround me as we’re herded from the assembly hall to our dorm rooms. Kalix, Theos, and I are followed closely by Nubo and Zalika. Nubo’s empty expression and Zalika’s smile, like that of a painted doll, make my body tremble with the desire for murder.

We’re marched to our dorms like prisoners to prepare for the gallows. I almost laugh when I see what lies on Ruen's bed as they lead me to it. Because they know he won’t be coming back here and they know I’m not sleeping in my own room. They know everything.

Themors palliumrests at the edge of the mattress, spread out in the way of a lady’s dressing gown. The fabric is just as transparent as the first time I wore it. This one is different in a few ways. The old one had been meant to reveal as much skin as possible, or so I’d thought. This one is worse. Large cutoutsof the see-through fabric are missing, revealing long stretches of skin as Zalika, herself, forces me into the dress.

I glare daggers at her the entire time, stopped from killing her by one thing and one thing only—and it has nothing to do with the veritable army of Terra in the hallway waiting for her to give an order. No, I don’t fear them. I can feel my own power seizing in my chest, spreading through my limbs, preparing, seeking reprisal.

I let Zalika order me about and stuff me into themors palliumbecause I know that it will lead back to Ruen. I will see him again at the Feast.

“The Gods warned me that you would be far more defiant,” Zalika says as she shoves me over to a dressing table that had been brought in by the same Terra I remembered from before—Iysa is silent and far different than she had been days ago. The mortal Terra had been alive then; Now, there’s no questioning the waxy hue of her flesh or the deadened hollow gaze that moves over nothing at all as she’s commanded by Zalika and Nubo.

“What would be the point now?” I respond as Zalika unwinds my hair and lets it fall down my back.

My daggers lie on the bed along with my old clothes. No more weapons for me, but that’s alright. Iamthe weapon.

Zalika hums in her throat, the sound off-key, but amused nonetheless. “Perhaps you’re smarter than I originally assumed,” she says. The insult is delivered with such casualness that it sounds more like a compliment. “Though I do have to admit, I expected more from the granddaughter of the God King.”

I don’t close my eyes, but instead meet hers in reflection as she lifts a gold-leafed, horse hair brush and begins to drag it through my hair.

“Why did Nubo send dead men to help the Underworld?” I ask, not sure if I’ll even be granted an answer, but if she’s no longer attempting to hide what she knows then perhaps now is the perfect time for my questions.

Zalika chuckles at my question, the sound a low almost masculine noise that contradicts her distinctly feminine looks. Her black braids slip over her shoulders and down her back, some wrapped in twine and gold ribbon as she lifts her eyes to mine in the reflection. “A distraction,” she murmurs, “and he didn’t work with your little guild—he only worked with the one human. A failure of a human at that.” She scoffs and continues her work.

“Don’t you think humans will ask what happened to all of the Mortal Gods?” I demand, biting my tongue hard enough to taste blood after the words have left my lips.

Zalika snorts, her brush strokes slowing as she shakes her head. “Of course not,” she says. “The humans will accept any reason the Gods give them. Tryphone has done this before—though not on quite such a scale. You’re all so gullible—the humans and Mortal Gods alike—to think that the Gods would let those capable of killing them live.”

I narrow my eyes on her in the mirror. “Do you think you’re safe from him? You’re a Mortal God.”

The hands in my hair become punishing as she grips a large mass of it at the back of my skull and jerks me back into the chair. She bares her teeth down at me, the dots lining her forehead and features obscured in the waning light from the window.

“I am to be a full God before the night is through,” Zalika snaps. “I will be rewarded for my assistance to the Gods, and using your powers, I will become one of them.”

“Now, who’s gullible?” I hiss the words through clenched teeth as I sink my nails into either side of the chair. I spread mylegs and settle my feet flat on the floor, ready at any moment to launch up and do battle. I flick a glance at the daggers laid out on the end of the bed. One second to stand. A second to reach them. A third to slit her open from belly to throat. The image is there in my mind and oh, how I crave to feel her hot blood rush across my blade.

“I’d remind you that you’re just like me—a Mortal god,” I tell her, “but that would be a lie. You’re far dimmer if you think that the Gods are going to turn you into one of them. They aren’t Gods at all. You cannot become what doesn’t exist.”

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