Page 505 of Kingdoms of Night

“What have you done with my husband?” I snapped.

The cold-tone of her yellow burn made her features clear, pale outlines pulling together in rage then parting in amusement. “He was never yours, just as the Moon was never going to be his.”

“I think he’d beg to differ, but what would you know? No one has ever wanted to be with you under any circumstance apart from fear,” I spat, recalling what she’d done to Tamuz’s father. “On what grounds do you bind a curse with love when you can’t even grasp what that is?”

Ashtara took one step closer, meant to intimidate. “What affliction does an idiot like you need to suffer from to behave as you are?”

I gripped the handle in my sleeve, blade cold against my heated skin. “Delusions of grandeur, you ought to be quite familiar with them.”

Surprisingly, she didn’t lunge for me. Instead, she cocked her head at me with incomprehension, like I had grown a second head. “What are you hoping to achieve here, hmm? You think I’m going to reward you for the role you’ve played in securing my spot?”

“That would be the least you owe me.”

Ashtara laughed at me, her cackle the clanging of brass bells. “You’d warrant a reward had you worked for me, as the seller that duped you had, but you’re nothing but a useful idiot.” She took another step, and Iltani growled, curling around me. “Which is why I’m going to give you the chance to explain yourself.”

“It was the only way to get your attention,” I said, sickeningly-sweet. “Tell me, how do you expect to be a goddess that several species worship when you can’t even answer a prayer in your own temple?”

She shot across the remaining distance and Iltani attempted to stop her. Ashtara caught her by the fangs and flung thebashmuover her shoulder like she weighed nothing.

Resuming her attack, she caught me by the throat, her touch burning. “Spending a few weeks with my treasonous sonreallyhad you thinking you had any power through him? Did he claim you were now queen, and were you crazy enough to believe him?”

It was a warning hold, as tight as the threatening moments my father had used to demand respect, not when he enacted his rage. Not with the lethal pressure that had robbed me of my mother.

I’d dreamed of surviving long enough to return and gloat as Eleil got what he deserved. It was a shame I couldn’t do that for him, or Ashtara, but I would gladly go knowing she wasn’t robbing the existence of Tamuz.

“Well?” Her grip tightened, lifting me off my feet. “You brought me all the way here to mouth off to me, you vile little worm?”

“No,” I rasped, raising the dagger. “I brought you here to die.”

Recognition intertwined with distress widened her eyes and slackened her jaw, but she couldn’t drop me fast enough. My blade met her heart as the shout left her mouth, plunging into her chest with all my strength.

Piercing rays of yellow-green light tore out of her cracking chest, burning my skin like white-hot brands. A fast-spreading fissure stemmed from the blade and to her extremities, like the bolts of the lightning she’d used against us, and the fingers around my neck faded into scalding flames.

All motion slowed to the pace of dripping molasses, but the searing pain of her destruction burned with greater immediacy, creating an agony so intense I grew numb.

Ashtara imploded, fracturing into a billion pieces that tore through me as the blinding brightness unmade my skin and bones.

I never hit the ground.

CHAPTERSIXTEEN

The underworld was far brighter than I thought it would be, and a far softer place to land.

I blinked away the bleariness, allowing my eyes to adjust so I could get the next horrible experience out of the way. Only the gate never showed. What emerged from the whiteness was an open balcony door, overlooking a green sea and starry sky.

A bit closer to me was the wide end of a bed, its posts spires of iridescent silver like the sky-scraping tips of the city below.

No. This couldn’t be possible, not unless I had been somehow deemed worthy of a hero’s afterlife. How was that possible when I had destroyed a deity?

Could this have been a dying dream, that I had somehow held on long enough to fade slowly from my desecrated body? But the feeling was returning to my body, I could wiggle my toes and my fingers—my fingers twitched against someone else’s!

I managed to turn my head along the silk-bound pillow and met the saffron eyes I’d longed to see again.

Kneeling by the bed, Tamuz had his hair pulled back, fully unveiling his face to me in surrounding light for the first time. Even with the worried gaze and disbelief etched along its angles, he was breathtaking.

“Meissa,” he whispered, as if breathing were painful.

My thoughts lagged, unable to piece together a decent explanation for the wishful scene I had awoken to. All I could rasp once I managed to move my jaw was a dismissal. “Can’t decide if this is cruel or kind.” I tried to swallow, throat and tongue parchment-dry. “You can show me the truth. I know what happened.”

---