Page 504 of Kingdoms of Night

That was all I could remember.

“Wait, you saw him?” Baltasar gripped my shoulder, nearly sending me spinning out with the pull to face him. “The curse was broken?”

“Yes! The lantern, its light burnt the veil of darkness of him!”

He shook me, amplifying the rising nausea. “Then how did Ashtara break the barrier and take him? Once the curse broke, he should have succeeded Mahala and become the new God of the Moon!”

“I don’t know. It makes no sense.”

“She must have built a failsafe into the curse,” Suzianna spoke up, somber. “My king, he used to boast about the contracts his vizier drew up and sealed with spells, so if someone went beyond the strict parameters, they’d suffer.”

Based on faces turning to the lantern, we shared the same thought.

“She made it so, even if he was liberated from her curse, she could still get her way,” I realized. “I didn’t free him through what it required specifically. Either way, it wouldn’t have mattered.”

“What were the specifics?” Suzianna asked.

“She had told him that ‘The Moon is not to be set alight once more until you are seen in the shadows’and‘To be seen as you are and loved for what you are not, only then will your darkness be vanquished and your claim regained’.”

“What does that even mean?” Baltasar asked. “We tried everything in between each pointless marriage, until you seemed to affect him, and even then that didn’t work!”

“Because I couldn’t show him that I ‘saw him as he was and loved him for what he’s not’. I couldn’t even begin to guess how to do that when consummating our marriage failed,” I admitted. “We agreed to try radical ideas, and this one worked, but not in the way she required.”

Suzianna somehow knew what I needed to hear. “It wasn’t your fault. This was going to happen no matter what you did.”

“The question is what do we do now?” Baltasar gestured to the destroyed room we stood in, the scattered, half-burned furniture and the clouds of yellow smoke. “If we try to raise an army against her, she will rain hell down on us.”

“And no other gods will interfere, just like they didn’t before,” Suzianna added.

Hopelessness bled me dry, leaving me weak and falling into a trance built by the rays coming through the lantern.

This had to have been a trap. I didn’t know how she’d manipulated the odds to present me with this false curse-breaker. She had to have guessed what we were attempting that night at the halo. However she’d spied me in the market, or even come close to it to bring the lantern, it didn’t matter. What did was stopping her from going further, and getting Tamuz back and in possession of the Moon.

“I have an idea. It’s risky and a little crazed,” I said.

“But it’s better than nothing,” Baltasar acknowledged. “Where do we start?”

I held my hand out for the lantern. “In the one place here that is hers.”

CHAPTERFIFTEEN

Whether it had been said in jest or not, blowing up the biggest temple to Ashtara had to attract her attention. From the helm of a passing flying ship, Baltasar dropped the lightning lantern onto the crater that housed it. The crackling explosion blew the rose quartz structure to smithereens, creating an unmissable tower of grey smoke.

Once the damage settled and the fires subsided, I rode Iltani to the rubble, armed with nothing but the wavy dagger. It wasn’t like anything could spare me from her wrath, her conniving and petty nature was a staple of legends.

My whole plan hinged on the hope that she was as hot headed as she seemed. Ironic, how seamless the overhaul of my outlook had gone since I had met Tamuz. Before, I had longed to escape the hopelessness through the reluctant sacrifice I’d been sent here to be. Now I wanted to be faced with the hated deity so I could die delivering the blow, but not to her son.

Just as I had begun this journey for the sake of my sister, I would end it for my husband’s. That was how I knew for certain that I did love Tamuz and the world he was meant to rule, not from the distance of the earthbound, but from the closeness no one but myself had ever known.

A yellow fireball blipped into the distance, advancing at the rattling rate I’d first encountered at the halo. I leaned back against Iltani to remain upright, shaking hands in the sleeves of my robe, where I hid the weapon.

In a burning arc, Ashtara descended to the ruins of her temple. She landed with an earthquaking force that rained down more of the rubble and cracked the crater floor like it were eggshell.

She was awe-inspiring in every sense of the word. An overpowering sight that would bring nations to their knees and have them raise their hands to her in surrender and worship. Embodying the dichotomy of her patronages, the unmatched effect of beauty and the unfathomable force of war.

Instead, she was no different than my father. No doubt he would gladly switch allegiances from Mahala to her, admiring her methods for acquiring supreme power. All the more reason for me to view her as I did him, no matter how dreadful the power she emanated felt.

“What have you done to my temple?” she growled, shrill like scraping metal.

---