Page 32 of Kissed By the Gods
Paid for? By who? The Altor?
“Wh-wh-wh-wh-wh.” Who? Who paid for the gift? But I can’t get a single word to form in my mangled throat. My vision is getting blurrier.
“Many,” she answers. “Many paid in blood for this gift.”
Sweat pours from my forehead, and the rivulets burn as they slide over my face. She swipes her other palm across my cheek, wiping away moisture. Her palm comes away from my face red. I have so many questions for her. So. Many. Questions. But I cannot get out even a full syllable, much less a full question, and blood is pooling in my eyes. She’s now covered in a red haze. My body is collapsing in on itself. I close my eyes, desperate to escape the pain.
She shakes me by the grip she still has on my hair. My bones rattle, and I’m fully present for the pain once more. “Don’t fall asleep, daughter of Selencia. We’re not finished here.
“We gods have our own interests. Like your race, we can be jealous and petty. We often lust after power. Above all, we don’t like change. We abhor the risk of something new. Just as I have a vested interest in your success, others want you to fail. Need youto fail. Be warned: you’ll have new enemies that will be far more dangerous than little men and their precious swords.”
Well, that’s … comforting.
“Nonetheless, you have a job to do. Failure is not an option you want to consider,” she says. “Because all the blood that bought this gift will be nothing compared to the rivers that will run should you falter.”
I frantically try to press her words into my memory, but they’re already scattering, my thoughts fraying. My body finally collapses under my own weight and the agony of godsbane, but her hand tightens in my hair to hold me up. Then, the goddess leans down to kiss me on the temple.
The heat around me vanishes. Cold crashes over me, and my heartbeat stutters, skips, then slams back into rhythm as if it's no longer entirely mine.
A voice I recognize—but know is not mine—echoes through me.Strider.
Conscious thought shatters into a million pieces, and I disappear into nothingness.
Not sleep. Not unconscious.
Just … not.
“The gods do not curse mortals. They do not bless them. The gods act, and humans are either blessed or cursed by it.”
The Vestal Teachings, compiled by the Priests of Elandors Veil
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
My mind is curiouslyblank when I wake, awash in pain and fog. The first thing I register is the taste of copper. It floods my mouth, thick and cloying; yet, there’s no blood when I dry heave over the side of the bed.
I reach for the glass of water on the side table, but the tremor in my hand suggests I won’t be able to hold it. Instead, I lean forward and lap water out of the wash basin like a dog, desperate to ease the burning in my throat.
The air reeks of something sharp, like ozone after lightning strikes too close. Perhaps that’s not too far off, given there’s a hot, searing welt on my back, as if I’ve been whipped. I drag my tongue across my aching molars to find my back teeth have cracked and mended in uneven ridges. Everything aches—my teeth, my bones, my skin, my head, my eyes, even my toes.
What in the Veil?
I reach up to hold my head, battling back another wave of nausea. When my fingers ghost around my temple, I freeze. There’s a ridge there—it pulses heat, and it’s hard with something that’s not quite flesh.
Pain rips up my spine like a clawed hand as I stumble from the bed, and the immensity of it forces me to pause and brace my hands on my knees. The worst passes after several minutes, leaving behind a dull ache and a vague, terrifying memory of meeting a goddess last night.
I take a cautious step forward and then start ripping open the drawers of the side table, then every little dresser in the infirmary room, until I finally find a mirror. Its surface is smooth and unbroken—unlike me.
My bloodshot eyes stare back at me, the whites laced with ruptured vessels. Is it fanciful if I think they’re also too wide? As if I saw something I wasn’t meant to? The dark circles beneath them are deep, shadowed hollows that make my face look too sharp.
But it’s the scar on my right temple that really catches my attention.
Where the goddess—goddess!!—touched her lips to my head, it looks like someone took a nail to a mirror and tapped it ever so gently. My skin cracks outward from the center, almost like a web. It’s inflamed and red, but I can already see a hint of gold along the edges of the cracks. The same color as Thayana’s lips.
I touch tentative fingers to the scar to find it’s hard as a rock. Harder, even. It reminds me of the unbreakable metal, adamas.
