The Lion & the Deathless Dark — Chapter 13

C HA P T E R T H I R T E E N

y back hit the ground hard. Breath slammed into my lungs. My entire body felt like it was burning. I was staring at the ceiling. MyM head throbbed, and as I slowly pushed myself up, I realized it was because I’d knocked it against the corner of the coffee table. I touched the back of my head, and my fingers came back bloody.

My eyes lifted to see Septimus and Sylina staring at me. Septimus’s gaze was locked onto my bloody fingers, the intensity of it startling.

Then he blinked and smiled at me, as if that hunger had never existed at

all.

“Welcome back,” he said.

“What the hell was that?” I croaked.

At first, embarrassingly, I thought my body wouldn’t cooperate when I sat up. I was grateful when I successfully pushed myself upright and didn’t sway even though every muscle begged to melt into a puddle.

“That was a threadwalk,” Sylina said. “A vision obtained by walking the threads of fate. Collected by me, and relayed to you.”

“A threadwalk about you,” Septimus said. “The chosen one of the Lady of Justice. The one who was gifted the Blade of Retribution.”

My eyes wandered to Zefiah, across the room. She was uncharacteristically silent.

“Me,” I repeated. “You saw a vision that I would kill all the gods.”

“Not all the gods,” Septimus said, “but enough of them.” He pulled a small box from his pocket, slid it open, withdrew a black cigarillo. “Enough

to collapse the White Pantheon.”

He said this so casually.

I was silent, careful to keep my mind quiet—even from myself.

“Then you’re telling me,” I said at last, “that you believe this to be my fate.”

Sylina’s blindfolded stare pierced me. “Fate is not a path. It’s a web.

Mortal beings, after all, have free will. There are countless factors that can influence the future. Threadwalking is simply about following those factors up all those branching points until you find the right outcome.”

“So it’s not the future at all.”

“It’s a future. If all the pieces fall just so. A future that no fewer than ten different Threadwalkers have verified.”

“We showed you this to begin with,” Septimus said, “because none of us need to waste our time debating whether it’s real or possible.”

“Oh, I know it’s possible,” I said. “I’ve already killed one god, and it was easy enough.”

Septimus chuckled softly. “I like you,” he said, as if he had just come to this conclusion.

Sylina rose, wiping the last remnants of blood from her hands with a rag. “I’ll leave you two to it.”

“But we were just getting started,” Septimus said.

“Negotiations are your drug, not mine. I have a kingdom to run.”

And with that, she was out the door, leaving Septimus and me alone.

The fire cracked, punctuating the long silence.

“You have questions,” he said at last. “Ask them.”

“What are you paying?”

His brows twitched. A smile curled at just the corner of his mouth, stronger on the right side, like he was trying very hard to suppress it.

“What am I paying?” he repeated.

“You said it was a job, yes?”

“I just told you that you were prophesized to collapse the White Pantheon. And you ask about money?”

“What else do you want me to ask you? I know why you want to do it— because Nyaxia is at war with the White Pantheon. I don’t believe in prophecies, but I’m sure the other gods won’t be much worse than Shiket.”

“Arrogant assumption. You benefitted from the fact that Shiket has been waging war for ten years, pouring more of her power into it than most other gods. Furthermore, the gods’ power is communal. Shiket’s power didn’t just disappear upon her death. It enhanced that of her siblings.”

Meaning that with every god I killed, the others would grow stronger.

Not ideal.

But I kept my face still. Bored, even.

“You already know I’m going to do it, supposedly,” I said. “Why spend time convincing me?”

He raised one slender finger. “You misunderstand. We know that you could do it. Could, if all those tangled threads line up just right.”

“They will.”

“I genuinely admire your confidence.” He took a long inhale of his cigarillo, then exhaled a plume of smoke. Its scent was unusual—sweet, almost like vanilla.

“You know,” he said thoughtfully, “I really did think I was going to have to follow you around for a few months painstakingly bringing you around to the idea that Shiket should die. That’s usually how it goes with

acolytes.”

“I’m no acolyte.”

“That’s clear. I’m not sure what you are, dove.”

“Not a dove, either.”

The corner of his mouth quirked. “That’s clear, too. I’ll have to think of something more fitting.” He put the cigarillo out on his palm, vanilla now mixed with the scent of burning flesh.

“How would you expect me to do this?” I asked. “Walk up to the gods and stab them?”

“Of course not. I’ve been preparing for this for more than ten years. It has been a long, convoluted road that has led us to this moment, Vindica Ultis. Longer than you know. And you have no idea the things that have gone into ensuring that those threads fell in the right way.”

“More than ten years. Since before the sun fell.”

Another smug quirk of his lips. “And why do you think that happened?”

My eyes narrowed at him. “You surely cannot be taking credit for the sun falling.”

Everyone knew how the sun fell. That Mische Illiae, who would soon after become the vampire queen of the House of Death, stabbed Atroxus in the throat with his own blessed arrow.

Again, that twitch of Septimus’s mouth. Like he was trying to keep a straight face and failing.

“I told you that usually I have other people pull the trigger for me.

Whether they realize it or not.”

I leaned back in my chair, ignoring the shock of pain that even that tiny movement sent jolting through me. I leveled my stare at Septimus, who casually stared back at me. As if I didn’t see right through him—doing the exact same thing I was. Shrouding himself in that disaffected arrogance, pretending he didn’t put all his effort into maintaining it.

“Quite a claim,” I said.

“There are lots of ways to kill someone. Only the least sophisticated

involve using your own two hands.”

“Thus you’re using mine. I understand.”

Those eyes flicked to my hands. The blood on my fingers. “But they’re so skilled. Can you blame me?”

I watched his smile sparking in his eyes like the embers of funeral pyres.

“It’s better to know you’re the whore, I suppose,” I said. “Speaking of which. You never answered my first question. Payment.”

He laughed softly. “If the White Pantheon collapses, I will be in a position to offer you whatever you want.”

“So we’re talking about a lot of money.”

“Money? Why such a limited imagination, darling? You could have kingdoms in your name.”

Look at him, already quartering the corpse of the world he intended to conquer. “I’d be a shit queen.”

“Fine. Money, then. Enough gold to support you for the rest of your life.

Protection to make sure that life is long. Whatever you wish. You will want for nothing ever again.” He let out a long plume of smoke. “What else could humans want? Riches. Power. Respect. Beauty. Comfort.”

What else could humans want.

The image of Valentina, Mirie, and Marko, laughing and content in the pub the last night we were together, drifted through my mind.

“What else, indeed.” I clapped my hands on my thighs. “A mind- numbing amount of money. I suppose I’d consider that appropriate payment.”

“You know,” Septimus said, “it’s actually a bit refreshing to have such a straightforward business relationship.”

I looked at the coffee table, now holding an assortment of empty cups that once held the seer queen’s various potions and powders. Red liquid dribbled down the rim of one cup and black down another, the two forming an intermingling pool in the dented metal tray.

“I’d offer a toast, but would you look at that. There’s no wine here.”

He chuckled. “Noted. I’ll have some sent to you.”

“See, that’s the sort of payment I need after a long hard day of throwing the divine world into disarray.”

He shot me an odd look, and I realized too late that my voice had cracked ever so slightly. I looked down and saw my fingers were trembling.

I folded them in my lap, hiding the shudder.

“So,” he said, “do we formally have a deal?”

He extended his hand. I stared at it. It was an objectively beautiful hand —smooth, pale skin, long elegant fingers, tendons and muscles that looked like they should belong to a polished statue in some church somewhere. It was certainly the hand of someone who was, indeed, not accustomed to doing dirty work themselves. Unlike mine, muddy and scarred, fingernails perpetually caked with blood.

“Just because I have to ask,” I said. “This is why you were following me to begin with, then? Back when we first met. Because you knew about all of this, and you knew I would end up here, making this deal with you.”

“Fate is more complicated than that. But in a sense. Yes.”

“Gods. That is impressive.”

I said it so sweetly.

But I looked at this man and I hated him.

Here he was, sitting so elegantly across from me, flirting with me, offering me a job and riches and kingdoms, as if he hadn’t just casually told me that he had orchestrated the deaths of millions—had orchestrated the unbelievable suffering of the entire human race, of me personally, and of the only important people who had still fucking mattered in this shit pile of a world.

It would feel good, to make him pay for it.

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll take the job.”

I took his hand. His skin was smooth and uncalloused. Every bit as silken as his voice and his appearance.

He smiled, beautiful and deadly as a rising moon. “Delightful. Rest, and we’ll—”

I withdrew my hand. My skin tingled where it had touched his. “I don’t need to rest.”

“You barely survived the wrath of a goddess,” he said. “It’s a miracle the healers were able to save you at all.”

“But they did, and I don’t like to waste time.”

“I’m learning this about you.” His fangs glinted in the firelight. “Very well. We can begin tomorrow. The healers will want my head for it, but who

am I to argue with such hunger?”

Hunger.

Oh, I was hungry. I was fucking starving. I felt a sudden wave of something akin to sympathy for vampires. Because now I understood what it was to be so desperate for blood that the starvation pain sank into every nerve.

I had served Shiket for nearly a decade, and yet, it was only as Zefiah pierced her heart that I truly understood the euphoria of doling out justice.

The gods of the White Pantheon had brought us here. They had gleefully thrown themselves and their followers into this war. They had made countless innocents suffer in an eternal quest to soothe their egos and spite their fellow gods.

I would think about that when I killed them, one by one.

And then, I’d take everything I had learned from this vampire, every god-slaying weapon he’d hand me, and I would kill him and everyone like him. Then, finally, I would kill the goddess who deserved it most of all: The goddess of vampires, Nyaxia.

And atop that mountain of corpses, I would drive Zefiah into my heart, and I would rest.

This path spread out before me, clear and unshakable. A path that would keep me away from that churning pit of self-hatred. A path that would keep me from drowning.

I smiled at Septimus. “It’s a pleasure to be working with you.”

Maybe Mirie had been onto something after all. Divine purpose, it turned out, was better than any drug I’d ever taken.

WHEN SEPTIMUS WAS GONE, I immediately collapsed onto the bed. I noticed that folded up at the foot of it were my clothes, or what remained of them— they were in tatters, clearly unsalvageable, though perhaps my “rescuers” hoped to make the point that they hadn’t taken anything from me. My dagger, sheathed, lay neatly on top of the rags. And beside it, another glint of gold. At the sight, my throat tightened.

A pendant of Shiket. Seemingly untouched by the murder of its mistress.

I swallowed thickly, then sat up and strapped the dagger’s sheath to my hips. After a moment of hesitation, for reasons even I didn’t fully understand, I snatched the necklace from the pile of ruined clothes, too, and shoved it into my pocket. Then I sagged against the edge of the bed. My muscles shook with the effort of holding myself up. My body was in shambles. I looked down to see that my feet were almost entirely purple. I pulled up my loose linen pants to reveal the welts traveled all the way up my calves, too.

Burns or bruises? I wasn’t sure which. Septimus, I’d begrudgingly admit, was right—it was a miracle I was alive. The death of a god was a cataclysmic event, like an exploding star. Zefiah had done well protecting me.

As if summoned by the thought of her name, her voice whispered through my mind: {What have we done?} I dragged myself up and across the room to her. When I touched her, I jolted—even sheathed, the chaotic force of her presence was overwhelming.

What is wrong with you? I said.

But she ignored me. {What have we done?} she moaned.

A bolt of animal fear speared me—because Zefiah was all I had left in the world.

I pulled her from the sheath, wincing slightly at the barrage of chaotic, panicked thoughts that jolted through me, threatening to sweep me away. I ran my hand over her blade, opening a shallow cut and smearing my blood

along metal.

Zefiah! Snap the fuck out of it!

Sudden silence.

Then, {Kyrene.} Like she was just remembering who I was.

Finally. I was beginning to think that I’d never get to hear you insult me

again. {Shiket is—} A jolt through us both—an avalanche of images. Everything Zefiah had witnessed that had been lost under the haze of my imperfect mortal semi- consciousness. Shiket before us, glorious and terrible in her rage, a golden supernova sunrise in a sunless world. Zefiah plunging through her heart. I’d been so overcome I had not seen the way the carvings in her breastplate had turned to run, their simplified swords raised, as the gold shattered. The cuts on my face, I knew now, were from where those shards of metal sliced my skin. I saw Shiket’s mouth open, her helmet masking her shock. Saw the light consume her from the inside out, burning her up like paper. Funny, how gods died so similarly to vampires in the sunrise.

I saw myself in a heap on the ground. I had fallen right beside Valentina, curled up around her. Saw Septimus kneel beside me, his face covered save for his eyes, as if to shield himself from some invisible toxicity. Two armored women were at his side. I saw them take me away, leaving the other dead among the ashes of a fallen god.

Countless images, rushing through me in a split second, and then gone. {She is dead,} Zefiah gasped. {We killed her. We killed her.} My hands curled around Zefiah’s hilt, so firm my knuckles whitened.

I thought of all the different people that “she” could refer to. Mirie. Val.

It might as well be true.

Too many are, I said to her. Shiket deserved to pay for letting them die.

That is Retribution, Zefiah. Your purpose.

A violent shudder through us both. {My purpose was not to slay the one who held me for thousands of years.} She let her followers die. She let Mirie and Valentina and Marko die.

Together, Zefiah and I relived those memories. Burned ourselves over the raw, open flame of their mutilated corpses.

They deserved vengeance, I hissed. Don’t ask me to regret what we did.

Zefiah was silent. I sensed her struggle. She could not lie. And the truth was shameful—the truth that she didn’t regret it, either. {It is no small thing to slay a god,} she said. {The consequences of our actions will run deep.} Funny how only now did I consider this. The call of my bloodlust was so loud. When Atroxus was killed, the sun shattered. But Shiket was a

warrior goddess. She didn’t make the sun rise or the rain fall or crops sprout. Her death would mean that any acolytes using her magic or leveraging the gifts she offered—most of them soldiers, judges, or enforcers of what little law remained—would feel the effects. Though clearly, some of her magic still persisted, because Zefiah was still here, with me.

We are already living in a world without justice, I said.

Zefiah considered this. She sipped my rage like a vampire sipped blood. {I am the Blade of Retribution. Older than the being that bore me for so many millennia. I do not regret—} I choked a laugh that sounded a little like a sob. That’s my girl. {—I do not regret. But I fear for the future. Be wary of the vampire’s visions. He speaks of a world of great darkness. A world of lawlessness.} Her revulsion was clear. She was a blade of justice and as such, she hated nothing more than the prospect of a world with no moral code. {And yet,} she said, {you sell yourself to him.} He is a means to an end. {He is telling his people the same about you.} I don’t give a shit what he’s saying. He’s used to thinking he’s holding all the strings in the puppet show. He doesn’t know that you and I cut ours long ago. {And what does that mean for us, Kyrene? For you? It means there is nothing to catch you when you jump.} I thought of myself, standing at the edge of the balcony, looking down into that swirling dark water.

I have never had that safety, Zefiah. I’ve carved my own path from the beginning. We have. You and me. You are a weapon forged for the purpose of justice. What greater justice is there than slaying the gods who allowed this suffering to happen? Than slaying the goddess of vampires herself?

Imagine that.

She did imagine it—I could feel the rush of pleasure, thick and sweet as a mortal orgasm. Just as much a biological pleasure for her as sex was to us mortals.

I expected her agreement at that. Yet, instead, I felt a wave of sadness. {You are not a weapon, Kyrene.} There was a surprising tenderness in those words. It occurred to me, perhaps for the first time, that Zefiah might actually care about me—care

about me even more than she cared about doling out justice to the greatest game a mortal had ever hunted.

“Yes, I am.” The hoarse scratch of my own voice startled me. I hadn’t intended to speak aloud. “I have been from the moment I picked you up.

You know that as well as I do.”

I readjusted my grip around her hilt, squeezing tight—squeezing like the hands of old friends I’d never get to hold again, hard enough to keep me from thinking about the first night I’d met Zefiah.

How many times have you told me to be something more? You have told me to fight for justice. So fight with me. Help me skewer the hearts that deserve it. Imagine how good the blood of the vampire goddess will taste.

She wanted it. I knew she did. It was her nature.

Yet she said nothing.

Fear bolted through my heart—because it never had occurred to me that Zefiah, for reasons I did not understand, might refuse to help me on this quest. In her silence, childish words sat on the tip of my tongue: Please. I need you. I’m nothing without you.

I swallowed them, but Zefiah heard them anyway.

I said instead, You made me a vow the night we first met. Do you remember that? Don’t break it now. {I do not break vows.} The words were strong, immediate. Then, softer, after some thought, {Yet it occurs to me only now, after millennia of life, that there are so many contrasting ways to fulfill them.} Well, don’t back out on me now, Zef. You still have the most important one to fulfill.

Zefiah, of course, could not smile. But sometimes, I could feel the warmth of her amusement. It reminded me of the way the sun used to feel peeking through the clouds.

And now, too, I could feel it in my heart when her decision was made. {Be calm, Vindica Ultis,} she said, the title doused in sarcasm. {I will follow you on your quest. After all, no one will get to end you but me.}