Page 80 of Seized to Sacrifice
Nyx looked back at the others. She was dismissing them and the look in her eyes was one he knew well, the hurt of betrayal.
Thorne and Rye looked as shocked as he felt. Each in a daze, they all left Elle alone, standing outside in silence.
None of them had ever considered that Gaila had done this to protect them.
‘She never really let us in,’ Thorne muttered. ‘She never showed us the danger. We never even knew his name. Ceres,’ he spat. ‘She went through everything alone.’
Rye stared at the ground. ‘If what she says is true—’
Nyx pushed him hard. ‘If what she says is true?’ he burst out. ‘Do you think she's fucking lying? You saw her in there! Her heart is broken.’
He looked away, his jaw tight. ‘Fuck!’ he yelled. ‘We thought the worst of her all this time, and she was as much a prisoner as we were. We had this whole realm, one another, and our bond after we stopped trying to kill each other and she had what? A few rooms. Whatever gods were on the Mount.’
‘We're all to blame for this,’ Rye said. ‘If our love for her been true, we’d never have assumed that she’d done this to us for any other reason than to save us. We spent lifetimes thinking she betrayed us when we betrayed her every day we wallowed in self-pity and didn’t find a way to get back to her. We should have protected her from him.’
‘He’s a god!’ Thorne spat. ‘How the fuck can we protect her or ourselves from that?’
He threw down the book he’d been carrying. ‘We led him straight to her,’ he growled. ‘We sent him a fucking message telling him exactly where to find us all. Everything she did was for nothing because of us.’
‘Clearly she was hiding from him.’ Nyx looked up at them both. ‘This was your doing,’ he accused his Brothers, furious. ‘We should have spoken about this before you did it. We should have waited. Now, a god … THE god comes for us and she’s but a human girl with nothing but whatever old knowledge was in that fucking lamp. And, what’s worse is how you … howwe alltreated her after you brought her to the keep, how the servants treated her. I don’t know if I can forgive us, so I doubt she can.’
‘Where are you going?’ Rye said as Nyx turned away.
‘To comfort our Fourth,’ he snarled low. ‘I suggest you both go back to the archives and find a way out of this so that we can begin making amends.’
‘There’s little there,’ Thorne muttered. He looked up. ‘The pact she made explains why he didn't come himself, why he sent the Liathmor. He still can't set foot in the Light Realm. We can use that.’
Nyx whirled on him. ‘Do you really expect that to help us? How much longer do you think there will be a Light Realm? Don’t you see? It’s breaking apart. She's already said she didn’t have enough power to thwart him when she put us here. How much less does she have now all these years later being cut off from her realm? We need her power to return.’
He turned away. ‘Our Fourth needs us and I aim to be there for her the way we should have been all those year ago.’
* * *
Elle
Elle layon the bed trying to make sense of the snippets of memories, feeling the crushing loneliness that Gaila had felt for all those years living in her fold alone. Her lip trembled. Though she didn’t grasp much of what was now floating around in her mind,thatshe understood.
Nyx reentered the tent. ‘Are you feeling alright? Do you want me to get you something for the megrim?’
She didn’t look at him. ‘No, thank you. It’s easing now.’
She sighed heavily, rubbing her temples. ‘I don’t understand some of what I know. Most of it actually.’
‘You're human,’ he said. ‘Much of it will be as beyond your comprehension as it is ours. Do you know … did it tell you how we can get the rest of your memories back?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Elle said, ‘but she put the lamp in this realm. She must have foreseen that something like this was going to happen, but what was in it … it's like looking at something from the outside. It's not me. It's just information, knowledge about the past through her eyes. It's like reading a book with drawings,’ she closed her eyes, ‘and feelings.’
She looked at Nyx with tears in her eyes. ‘She was so lonely. She had no one. She was in darkness for so long before other gods began appearing on the Mount … to take her place, she thought, because she couldn’t come here, couldn’t protect her realm anymore.’
‘Other gods?’ Nyx asked.
She gave him a rueful smile. ‘None of them are anywhere near as strong as she was, even now. They’ll be of no help to us if that’s what you’re thinking.’
He nodded, turning away, and moving around the tent aimlessly.
‘She used to watch the Light Realm from a window, you know. She wasn’t allowed to see you from afar either. She would stare into it for days at a time, hoping to catch a glimpse of you.’
She was suddenly scooped up, and she thought it was Nyx but then she realized with a start that it was Thorne.
