Page 91 of The Scarlet Star

“She’s here!”the gods whispered to each other.

Ryn raised her sword, holding it with both hands like Heva taught her. “I’m not alone,” she warned them.

Black limbs and tails began to drop, swooping in from all sides and coming together to form a body of rippling gloom in the shape of a woman with long, shadowy hair. Something like stars subtly twinkled within her, but otherwise, she was hollow and featureless.

“What are you? And where’s my cousin?” Ryn asked as her heel drifted back a step. Other shadows crept along the walls, surrounding her and painting the walls in darkness. A curtain rod snapped nearby, and Ryn jumped as the velvet fabric toppled into a heap on the floor.

“We’re Nyx,”the shadows said in an ugly voice.“Goddess of night.”

Ryn stifled a shudder as the temple filled with a cool breeze that slid along the back of her neck and legs.

Nyx, the ‘daughter of chaos’ in her true form; horrid and hollow. So, this was the creature all Ryn’s neighbours had been growing their pink Damask roses for, had been revering as a great and beautiful deity, had been worshipping and offering tributes to all their lives. If only they could see what their god really looked like—not a god at all. Just a shadow of one. An imitation.

“And who are you?”the shadows asked.“Are you not just a little girl with weak flesh and breakable bones? Did your god really say he would protect you from us? Did he really tell you you’d be safe?”

Ryn kept quiet, waiting for El to contradict them.

After a moment, she looked around. The wind grew freezing; not a breath of warmth appeared in the empty, dark temple. Her teeth chattered as the cold slipped down the back of her clothes, leaving prickles along her spine.

The shadows of Nyx tilted their head, darkness curling off in smoky tendrils from her hair.

“Why is your god quiet?”the shadows asked.“Are you sure he’s with you right now?”

“Of course!” Ryn finally replied. “Tell them, El,” she whispered.

Silence.

Ryn looked behind her, not sure what she expected to see, but sure she’d seesomething. Bits of torn pages floated through the room, picked up by the wind and carried into the far hall. A wax candle rolled over the floor.

Her mind wandered back to her conversations with El. All her morning meditations, all the time spent in his presence. El promised to be with her if she followed him, but he hadn’t actually promised her she would always be safe, had he?

“We see a girl who’s all alone here. A girl who trusted the wrong god. A girl destined to fail, destined to hurt, destined to lose everyone. Do you really think this is the end? This is just the beginning.”The shadows’ words crawled over Ryn, hiding inside her ears, tucking themselves into the corners of her thoughts.

“I didn’t trust the wrong god. You’re not even a real god,” Ryn said back, her voice weak.

Dark laughter erupted through the temple.

“Are you certain? We shall ascend to the heavens and raise our throne above the stars. We shall sit in the utmost heights and make ourselves like the God Original. If you bow to us now, you shall gain our power, and you can have everything you’ve ever wanted, even the Weylins if you wish. Did your god ever offer you that? And are you sure he said Nyx is not a real god?”

Ryn’s gaze fired up to the hollow form of Nyx. Her mind went blank, and for the first time, she couldn’t recall anything El had said. Her chilly hand shivered around her sword, and the handle slid down an inch, almost falling from her grip.

“I don’t trust your power,” Ryn whispered. “You’re a god of the Weylins—my enemies. You’ve worked hard to crush people like me.”

Nyx lowered from her hovering state, coming face-to-face with Ryn. Shadows spread out from her back like wings, creeping through the air in slow movements.

“Did your god really say you could not use our power? El knows that if you use our power, if you eat of our fruit, your eyes will be opened to even greater possibilities.”

Suddenly, Nyx’s wings latched onto Ryn’s wrists like fingers, wrapping her ankles and her midsection, and Ryn was pulled out a smashed window, up the side of the temple, and all the way to the gold-domed roof. She yelped when she was dropped on a narrow ledge—she grabbed a spire and held it for dear life, her sword sailing down the side of the dome and falling to where she couldn’t see. The people on the Navy Road were like ants below.

“All this we will give you,”Nyx said,“if you will bow down and worship us.”A limb of shadow swept out from the gloomy figure, presenting everything like a handsweeping across the horizon as evening sunlight glimmered off the buildings, towers, and villages across Per-Siana.

Ryn lifted her eyes to the Mother City. From this height, she could see most of the kingdom, stretching from the deserts all the way across the provinces and to the mighty shelf of mountains in the distance. She imagined tens of thousands of homes all filled with people, streets and markets and temples and gardens and valleys and everything else that had belonged to the Weylin royal family for the last century.

“Don’t you want to save your people from the Weylins? With our power, we can make you Queen over all this land.”

Queen?

Ryn once had the thought that if she were Queen, she could save her people. Kai told her that if she could take the Queen’s throne, it would change everything. In that moment, Ryn had considered doing whatever it took to get it. She would have been a hero to the Adriels pinned beneath the mighty Weylin thumb—the one who finally rescued them from decades of oppression. She could have avenged her mother from the throne, she could have made the childhood neighbours who brought the charge against her mother pay, and she could have arrested the guards who hadn’t given her mother a fair trial and had thrown her in a dark cave to die. She could have been someone the Weylins looked upon with awe and fear and trembling. Ryn could have turned this entire kingdom upside down. With the snap of her fingers, she could have set everything right.

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