The artifact was cold and heavy in her palm, skin to stone.
“On the contrary,” said Lady Bellenet, and Taryel winced as the blade cut deeper. “You would do anything for him. I’ve seen it. Loving him makes you weak. I always knew you might fail me in the end, and that your love for him might be the one thing that would force you to obey me.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Taryel said, his gaze never leaving Ru’s. His hair was a mess, his chest heaving. He swallowed, and Ru could see the pain in his eyes as he bled steadily from the shallow wound at his throat. His expression began to crumble. “It’s all right, Ru. It will be all right. She won’t harm you. You don’t need me.”
His words made Ru sick. Let him die? As if that were a choice at all, as if it would accomplish anything. She would have fallen on Lady Bellenet’s blade herself if it meant saving Taryel. He was more important to her than anything, than breathing, than the world itself.
“Let him go,” said Ru, despite knowing she’d lost her leverage. She stood, the artifact still cupped in her hand.
“I’m not afraid to kill,” said Lady Bellenet, pulling Taryel’s head back, his neck exposed like an animal at the slaughterhouse. The blade pressed into his flesh, a dark line of crimson rippling down his throat. “There’s no point in defying me. Where will you go? What can you do? We are at an impasse, and you have one choice left. Festra’s Great Cleansing. Save us. Send us through the gates of paradise and reunite with your lover there.”
Ru imagined herself doing it. She imagined an explosion of blackness, bursting outward from her body. She imagined waking up naked in a plain of death, knowing she had done it. If she were a different woman, she might have. If only to avoid thevisceral sight of Taryel’s neck opening up, of his blood spattering the floor, of his body going limp.
“You could change your mind,” Ru said, stepping forward to the edge of the dais. And as she did, she reached a delicate thought toward the artifact and found it waiting, a vibration of energy against her mind.
“You could let him go,” said Ru, “turn away from here and leave, go back to Mekya. Return to your family. Marry someone else, have another child. Live a happy life, free of Festra, of your past, of whatever this is. You could move on.”
“Moveon,” sneered Lady Bellenet, her gaze growing wild. “You think I’d abandon my faith so easily?”
“No,” Ru said. “Only alter what you’re willing to do for your god. Did he truly give you this power, imbue you with this incredible gift, only for you to use it for death and destruction?”
“You see only death,” said Lady Bellenet, “where I see rebirth. I might have tried harder to convince you of how wrong you are, but it is your despair that feeds the artifact. Your pain makes its darkness flow. It is the nature of the thing. Agony is all I’ve ever needed from you, agony to bring about our salvation.”
A horrible, choked sensation caught in Ru’s throat. No matter what she did, Lady Bellenet was going to kill Taryel. It would be the thing that pushed her over the edge, down into the black mire of anguish, until the artifact engulfed her. Just as Lady Bellenet had said it would.
But instead of ending things right there and then, the lady continued talking as if caught in a reverie, her voice taking on a bizarre, detached quality. Her grip on Taryel, on the blade, did not falter. “I remember when I first saw the heart,” she said. “When Festra showed it to me. It was spring, and I was praying. He bestowed a vision upon me. A wide black crater on the edge of the southern sea, dotted with spires of stone, and at its center… a beating heart.Hisheart. And then he gave mea name: Ruellian Delara. We connected the dots from there, Hugon and I. We discovered that you were an archaeologist, a believer in magic. So we traveled to Navenie and settled ourselves comfortably in the court of Mirith. My powers helped us ensconce ourselves in places where we might affect real change. Hugon as the regent’s advisor, myself as a powerful aristocrat.”
“But why?” Ru asked, gripping the stone with white-knuckled fingers. “Why unearth the artifact? Why doanyof this?”
“The vision, child.”
“You dreamed of a crater and extrapolated the rest?” Ru spat, her face growing hot with anger. “What about Dulcie?” Taryel looked as if he might speak, but any movement would drive the blade deeper.
Wait, Ru thought, catching his eye.
Lady Bellenet frowned, her delicate brows drawing together. “My daughter is irrelevant.”
“Is she?” Ru said, her words dripping with contempt. “Or did you pledge yourself to Festra to save her from torment in the underworld? Isn’t that what all of this is really about? Dulcie?”
For an instant, the other woman’s eyes fell away as if caught by a memory long past. Then her gaze returned to Ru, and pain darkened her eyes once more. “I asked for my daughter’s happiness, that she would be sent to paradise, to be loved in the after.”
Then Lady Bellenet began to speak in a singsong voice, as if chanting a child’s rhyme. “At the heart of me lies resurrection. Keep me and absolve me. I give it to you. Absolve me. Festra gave me this power to pave the way to absolution. The absolution that was attempted a thousand years ago and failed.”
“The Destruction?” Ru said, not expecting this.
Lady Bellenet nodded, and Taryel hissed in pain as the knife slipped down his neck, leaving raw skin in its wake. “Yes. Taryel Aharis was to cleanse the world, just as you are today. But he failed. And as his punishment, he walks the earth undying, faced with the lost souls that Festra could not reap. This is his opportunity to absolve himself, and, by extension, Festra. To do what should have been done long ago.”
Ru was silent for a moment, realizing that one of them had fundamentally misinterpreted Festra’s poem and hoping it wasn’t her. “You’re wrong about the heart, you know. And Taryel isn’t the one who needs absolving. It’s Festra.”
Lady Bellenet’s lips pursed, her face pinching in impatience. “Why should Festra seek redemption? He is a god. You understand nothing, girl.”
“I understand enough,” said Ru, and a sudden memory came to her. She and Taryel, in the dungeon of the Cornelian Tower. The artifact before them, their hands entwined. And as they touched, a golden light that leapt forth from the stone in gleaming ropes. “The artifact isn’t meant for this Great Cleansing. It’s not a punishment; it’s a gift. You’re misusing it.”
“You speak nonsense,” said Lady Bellenet, her lips turning white as bright red splotches of color began to stand out on her cheeks.
“Do I?” Ru said, a hesitant excitement taking hold of her. “Taryel and I were called to the artifact. I heard it, felt it, long before I ever saw it. And we canfeelone another; we can communicate through the artifact. Through Festra’s heart. He gave it tous, not to you. He brought us together to break this cycle of destruction. You are the one we’re meant to stop. You, because you’ve misused Festra’s gifts.”
Lady Bellenet’s eyes were wild, red-rimmed. “You know nothing of Festra,” she breathed. “The heart is forme. I waschosen.Iwill cleanse the world, and I will do it for the love of my Dulcie.”