The Lion & the Deathless Dark — Chapter 30

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

sucked up a lungful of clean air as we stepped out of the fortress, but the stench of blood and burning flesh still seared every inhale. Sometimes,I it felt like that smell was just a part of my body, now. Like I’d been exposed to so much of it in Vostis, when I was seventeen years old, that it had trailed me ever since.

We walked out the back of the fortress into the gardens. They were expansive and well-maintained. The whinnies of distant horses echoed, crying out for a long overdue dinner. One lone corpse lay at the other side of the yard, a silver bolt jutting from its chest. Otherwise, it was empty.

Septimus’s hands were tucked into his pockets, his shoulders square, his jaw set. He remained several strides ahead of me and did not look back. The blood of his friend arced elegantly across his pristine white shirt, leaving no expanse untouched.

I looked down at the harp in my grasp. It played a sickeningly saccharine melody at the back of my head. Its beauty was undeniable, and yet, every perfect note seemed a little off—a threatening, beckoning hand.

Zefiah railed against its presence, ever possessive.

Septimus stopped short and withdrew his cigarillo box.

“Apparently Kajmar already knows that we’re on our way to him,” he said. “Good.”

The word was a drawn knife. He flicked open the box at the same time, extracting a cigarillo.

“You were right from the start,” he said. Fwip, as he struck a match. The scent of vanilla smoke rolled over me. Not strong enough to mask the death.

“The gods know we’re coming for them. Their followers know it, too. They

were instructed to be slow. So, we will be too. No soft touches. Only blades.”

There was a time I would have found it satisfying to hear those words from Septimus—you were right. Now, I barely registered them. I parted my lips, not sure what would come out. Some might have offered condolences.

Kind words. Platitudes.

Soft touches.

But I only had blades to offer, and so I said, “I will make sure it hurts.”

Septimus’s shoulders lowered as he let out a long exhale.

At last, he turned.

My heart stilled at the expression on his face. I wondered if I had looked like that, when he had found me in Shiket’s ashes, among the bodies of the closest thing I’d ever had to family.

“We have been careless,” he hissed. “Slow.” A brief hesitation, then, as he ripped his gaze away from mine, “Distracted. No more.”

An odd pang of hurt in my chest. Even though he was right.

“A reminder of why we’re doing this,” I said.

His eyes snapped to mine, ablaze, lip twisted in disgust. “I thought you were doing this for riches. Whores recognize whores, right?”

The words came before I could stop them. “Don’t act like I’m the enemy, Septimus.”

“Your blood runs red. Just as theirs did.”

For the first time, it occurred to me that Septimus might see my humanity that way. As a marker of an enemy, not just food. I felt another strange pang in my chest, an ache in a wound too raw to understand yet.

“What color did the blood of the ones who killed my family run?” I said. My knuckles tightened around Zefiah’s hilt of their own accord.

But he ignored me. “Aren’t you going to ask me what you just witnessed?”

The past was too close to the surface of my skin for this. Too easily prodded.

“I know what I saw,” I said. “I’d seen it before.”

“In Vostis, you mean. In Hegaella.”

“Yes.”

He drew in a deep inhale and let it out.

“You’ve seen slaughters,” he said. “But there are some things you saw in that fortress that were not in Vostis or Hegaella.”

He meant what we had seen of the man who had guarded the harp. All that blood, consuming the stone like fungus.

I was silent. I knew I was being challenged.

He huffed a laugh. “Now you choose to have restraint. Say it. You’ve never coddled me before. Don’t start now.” {He does not know you as you thought he did,} Zefiah remarked, and to shut her up, I bit out, “The curse. That was the curse.”

Septimus whirled around, tossing the folded parchment toward me. The letter fluttered to the ground. I leaned down and picked it up.

It was so bloodstained that the paper was disintegrating with the moisture. Blots of black-red bled into the ink. My ability to read Obitraen was limited. But the message was short:

A century ago, I vowed to follow Gaius to any end. That end comes tonight.

Make our deaths worth something. Make the world my child should have

had. —Erekkus

My brow furrowed. Every muscle wanted to drop the letter, but I couldn’t bring myself to. The very thing that made it so uncomfortable to hold—the way the desperation and determination of someone’s final moments sank into the paper—was the same thing that made it too precious to release. It reminded me of people I had chosen not to save.

My free hand involuntarily slipped into my pocket and folded around Shiket’s well-worn metal profile.

When my gaze lifted to Septimus, I saw a familiar weight over his shoulders.

The question that sat on the tip of my tongue was dangerous. Dangerous because it threatened to reframe everything that I knew of Septimus.

Dangerous because it would force me to challenge what I did not want to.

But words slipped out, anyway. “Why are you doing this?”

I meant: why are you making such sacrifices for this?

He let out an exhale of smoke.

“The same reason you are, Vindica Ultis. Riches and power.”

His voice was so bitter, the words ate into my skin.

“You can’t bullshit me after that.” Not with someone’s desperate blood- soaked final words in my hands. Not with all that death still burning behind

every blink. “I want the truth.”

Another long exhale. He didn’t turn.

“Fine. I’ll tell you another story, and perhaps it will answer your question. It’s such a nice story. Full of kings and queens and handsome princes and magic. A story told to a generation of Bloodborn babies.”

Every word burned like a brand upon flesh, and his voice grew tighter and tighter, as if they hurt like one, too.

“Once upon a time, there lived a beautiful queen and a handsome king.

Their kingdom was imperfect and cursed—cruel punishment from their goddess, and even they didn’t know what their kingdom had done to deserve it. Still, they loved their people and each other very much. When they were expecting their first child, they went to a seer, as Bloodborn royalty often does, to learn what sort of ruler their unborn heir might be.

The seer gave them shocking news. Their unborn prince was destined to be the one to save the Bloodborn people from their millennia of plight. They were overjoyed. They raised their son to be everything that a chosen one should be. Intelligent, skilled, measured, kind.”

He let out another long exhale, smoke pluming.

“What they did not pay attention to, and perhaps should have,” he said, “was the specifics of the seer’s wording. That their son would not only be a chance at their kingdom’s salvation, but the chance. No one considered

that.”

Another vicious inhale.

“My brother,” he hissed, “never thought of that. Not when he took a few hundred of the Bloodborn’s greatest warriors, Atrius included, and went off to serve Nyaxia across realms, in the hopes of earning her forgiveness.

And he did incredible things. Every impossible feat. Every task that she asked of him. He bested them all.” He turned, just enough to show me the sliver of his profile. “But you and I know how these sorts of tales go, don’t we, Vindica Ultis? The chosen one is groomed to be everything a chosen one should be. They play by all the rules, win every game. And then—”

Somehow I already knew before he said it.

“She killed him,” he spat. “She laughed at him, and she killed him, like he was a toy she’d grown bored of. A dog that had the audacity to wish to be a wolf.”

I thought of Nyaxia’s face, cruel and disaffected, as I had seen it over both of the worst nights of my life. I thought of Shiket’s, right before I

killed her, bitter and cold. The gods loved us when it suited them. Resented us when it didn’t. And it was so very easy to wipe us away once we stopped being useful.

Septimus’s gaze fell to the paper in my hands. “Erekkus was one of the soldiers who accompanied my brother on that mission. One of Atrius’s men, who had followed them across realms. He was banished from the House of Blood for decades. Then lost a child to his mission in Glaea. And this is how he ends, after all of that. Succumbing to a curse that took his dignity, all to protect this harp.”

The curse. I had suspected it. But seeing it in person, witnessing the brutality of what that man had become, made nausea roil in my stomach.

I said, because it was the only thing I could think to, “He gave his life to his kingdom. Right up until the end.”

Septimus dropped the cigarillo, grinding it into the dirt with his heel.

His eyes were brighter than I’d ever seen them, the ring of red in them stark and bloody.

“Spare me that saccharine bullshit. You’re too smart to believe it. I am sick of lionizing the selfless sacrifices of my people. They were noble. My brother was noble. Erekkus was noble. Anjelika was noble. What a kind thing to say at their graves. What a nice story to tell their grieving families, if there’s even anyone left. All my other brothers, all five of them, fell chasing that. But I’ve never been like them. I’m the last resort.”

A chill ran up my spine at the look in his eye. The anger. The hunger.

Something nagged at me, something that didn’t piece together quite right.

“Then why serve her, after everything she did?” I asked. “Don’t you hate her?”

Fury, frigid as the mountain wind, crossed over that perfect face like shattering ice. “I serve her,” he breathed, “because I will be the last Bloodborn to suffer this curse. I think of that, every time I bow to her, every time I jump to her call. My brothers failed. I will not. And I will make any sacrifice to that end. Even, divine hero, terrible ones that were never mine to make.”

He stepped closer, his eyes fiery, lips drawn back into a sneer. “Does it make you feel better to know why your friends died? They died because my parents heard a nice tale from a seer and they were fucking stupid enough to believe it. Your friends died because my brother, kind and noble and just, ended up with his head in a box, and all my other brothers failed, and my

kingdom ended up with me. Your friends died because I made sure the sun fell, and I made sure the gods went to war, and I made a thousand little decisions that pushed everything to this moment. You were right, the night you accused me of being the reason they were dead. You were right.”

He was now inches away from me, so close I could feel his breath over my face. My muscles were tense. Zefiah burned in my hand, pushing all my awareness to the space between me and Septimus. Easy enough to close with a blade.

Zefiah was made for retribution. And here Septimus was, right in front of me, daring me to take it.

“And I would do all of it again,” he snarled. “I don’t regret it. Do you hate me for that?”

I watched the strands of red around his irises reach for the center. The blood in my veins tugged toward him with every pulse.

I said, honestly, “Yes.”

It was the truth. In this moment, I looked at that beautiful face masking a hideous pain, and I hated him more than I had ever hated Shiket. I hated him for the reasons he threw at me—because he had, however indirectly, killed Valentina, Mirie, Marko, and thousands, millions, of others. Because he had pushed all the pieces on the board into place for Vostis, and the darkness, and war.

But here, in this pained, messy version of Septimus, I saw myself. I saw more of myself than I had ever seen in another person.

And I hated that most of all.

His gaze snapped to Zefiah at my side. My grip on her hilt. “You haven’t put that away.” He was challenging me, like he always had, teeth glinting in the moonlight. “Do I look that unhinged? Do I look hungry to you?”

He lurched toward me, and I lifted Zefiah, just slightly. {His blood will taste like justice,} she hummed. {His blood will taste like retribution. His blood will taste like peace.} But I knew this was a lie, too. Because I still had bigger game to slay.

“I’m hungry, too, Septimus,” I said. “We share a propensity for making the right beings bleed. So let’s make them fucking bleed.”

Pleasure flashed in his eyes. Then something else—something darker, there and gone again before I could name it. His lips twisted, but the expression was closer to a snarl than a smile.

“I always wonder, did Shiket know what you were when she chose you?” He reached out, and for some reason, I didn’t pull away. I let him trace the angle of my chin. “I knew, when I did.” {That is a dangerous thought,} Zefiah mused. {Perhaps he even believes it is true.} He did believe it. I could see that in his eyes, reflected right there in all

his hunger.

I said, “Monsters recognize monsters.”

But his brow furrowed. Like he was seeing something in me right now that he hadn’t expected. His thumb traced the curve of my lower lip

thoughtfully.

“A lion indeed,” he murmured.

And then he pulled away. All those messy emotions receded all at once, leaving behind Septimus, prince of the House of Blood, pristine and elegant in marble.

“Be ready, bounty hunter,” he said, turning away. “I want it to hurt when Kajmar dies.”

SEPTIMUS BARELY SPOKE AGAIN. We retrieved another abandoned horse from the stables, then set the rest free to gallop into the mountains. A few still lingered in the pastures, confused, nudging their grain buckets. They didn’t know what to do with freedom.

As we tacked up our second horse, I turned to look one final time at the fortress. From the outside, save for the broken windows, one would never

know the carnage within.

“Do you want to burn it?” I said.

Septimus didn’t hesitate. “No,” he said, and hoisted himself onto his horse.

Zefiah recoiled at that. {He would leave his own kin without a burial.

What kind of prince is he?} Only now did I wonder what had happened to Valentina’s body. If perhaps she was still there, legs broken, throat bloodied, having her eyes

picked out by the carrion birds.

We began to ride away. We were halfway down the path when he said, without looking back, “I want whoever finds them next to know exactly what happened.”

WE RODE in silence for hours through the deserted mountain roads. They grew narrower and rockier as we went. Neither of us spoke of our plan. We were several days from reaching the heart of Kajmar’s territory. The versions of ourselves who had been joking about seduction now seemed like strangers.

Eventually, we came to a deserted house. By the looks of it, it had been unused for quite some time. We dismounted, and upon examining it, Septimus said simply, “A good a time to rest as any.”

He seemed as reluctant as I was. Neither of us was eager to visit those we’d see in our dreams. But the horses were exhausted, and now we had been traveling for nearly a full day and night with no rest, attempting to outrun the gods and our ghosts.

The washroom worked, barely. A dirty trickle of water came from the faucet. Not quite enough to fully scrub the blood from my hands.

Afterward, I went to the tiny bedchamber and chewed on my stale bread. Zefiah lay across the bed beside me. I looked down at my hands to see that they were still trembling.

I found myself listening for footsteps beyond the door. I wasn’t sure exactly when I’d come to recognize the way Septimus walked—delicately, almost silently. Not until now, when I realized I could sense his movements like the subtle directions of the wind.

My eyes slipped to Zefiah. Her glow was dim, pooling faintly in the

ancient carvings up her length.

You’re terribly quiet, I said.

By which I really meant, Please distract me.

Zefiah said thoughtfully, {You could have killed him today.} The words came with a rumble of hunger.

I let out a scoff. Maybe I could have pierced his heart, sure. Like I could have done a dozen other times since I met him. But you know why I

couldn’t. {Why is that, Kyrene?} My brow furrowed. I shot her a confused look.

As satisfying as that would have been, there’s blood that tastes better than that of one vampire, Zef. We’re after Nyaxia’s. You know that. {So you are telling me that you did not kill Septimus today solely because you need him to get to Nyaxia.} Yes. Obviously. I ripped off another chunk of bread. You know this. Why are we going over this again? {Humans are such peculiar creatures. So many conflicting truths and lies at once. But it is not as easy to lie to me as it is to lie to yourself.} My hand paused halfway to my mouth. For fuck’s sake, Zef. It has been a terrible day. I’m too tired for this. {You tell me you hate Septimus for what he has done. This is true. You tell me that you did not kill him because you still need him. This is true. You tell me you wish to kill Nyaxia. This is true. But you also tell me you wanted to kill Septimus today. And this, I see, is not true.} It was true and wasn’t true at the same time. I didn’t want to look at it too hard.

I said, The man was already having a shit day. Seemed a bit cruel to pile on. {Because you have always balked at cruelty.} Her sarcasm cut too close to the quick. I stood. Enough with the lectures. {It is not a lecture. Merely a warning.} You’ve been giving me a lot of those, lately. {Humans, as I said, are peculiar creatures. It is so easy for them to

believe their own invented truths.} Enough!

I sheathed her roughly and laid her in the closet. Then I went back to the

bed. Sat.

The silence was deafening.

I closed my eyes and saw all the blood. All the decimated bodies.

Soldiers, civilians, children. Vampire children, yes. But a mind never gets

used to seeing little bodies broken that way. Under all the blood, it was hard to tell the difference.

I stood and went to the window. The silhouette of Estrys was still visible in the distance, cradled between mountain peaks. And there, perched at the edge of a rock, was Septimus. His back was straight. A cigarillo was tucked between his fingers. The bloodstains still adorned his white shirt, even though he’d by now had the opportunity to change.

I slid my hand into my pocket. Pressed my thumb to the warm metal of the pendant, and felt another unwelcome pang of kinship. Funny how we all hold on to things that hurt us. Markers of those who saw us as a savior.

It was something that no one had ever understood about me. A wall between myself and the rest of the world. Not even Zefiah, the only one who knew my truest self, could scale it.

And yet. Here, a crack.

I turned and scanned the room. A few books still sat on a dusty shelf, the spines cracked and pages yellowed. I flipped through them. One was written in Oketian.

I tucked one under my arm and went outside.

Septimus did not so much as acknowledge me as I sat cross-legged beside him. I left a few feet of space between us. The view here really was lovely—the elevation offering an expansive view of a blanket of deep green pine trees leading up to the fortress and the mountains beyond it.

The book’s spine protested as I opened it.

“ ‘There are many varieties of arbors in the northern Fathrena Mountains,’” I read, “ ‘but what they all share is a great value to the wildlife of the region. When identifying them, one must do so in the context of the system of nature around the tree.’”

I paused, then said, without looking up, “It’s no romance, unfortunately.

But who knows. If we keep reading, there might be some exciting twists.”

Septimus said nothing, but I felt his stare like a caress against my cheek, leaving a shiver in its wake. I chanced a sidelong glance at him.

Even from this distance, I could see the threads of red in his eyes. And I realized that I’d come to memorize the way he looked at me when those threads were at their starkest. With a certain hunger.

Beneath it, now, I saw something softer, too. And yet, so much more dangerous.

For a moment, we teetered on an edge together, an unspoken, deadly weight between us. It stretched a breath into an eternity.

He faced the horizon again. I looked back to the book and continued reading.

I READ until my voice was hoarse, and when I finished the last chapter, Septimus rose wordlessly. The air was thick and heavy between us, the distance delicate as glass. I thought he might break it. I thought, maybe, I’d let him.

Instead, we both returned to our respective rooms without another word.

I found some old wine in the cupboard and drank it greedily. It tasted like shit, but it sanded down the sharpest edges of the thoughts I wanted to ignore and dragged me heavily into sleep.

I dreamed of the night I tried most not to think about. I dreamed of terrible pain and blood on my fingertips. I dreamed of fear and the powerlessness that came with it. I dreamed of fury and the strength that came with that. I dreamed of Shiket’s face, and a broken body beneath me, and— —And now-familiar footsteps crossing the room, silent as a ghost’s.

I dreamed of a body beside mine. My own rolled over to meet him immediately, arms outstretched. Lips pressed to my cheek, my jaw, my throat. My hands slid over a smooth, muscled back. Fingernails dug into mine, drawing me closer. Blazing need, a sudden fire of it, burned at the apex of my thighs.

Septimus’s breath was ragged as he dragged his teeth along the sensitive skin of my neck. A hitched moan caught in my throat, and he let out a rough, wordless noise in response. It was a beautiful sound. I wanted to draw it out of him again, and again, and again.

My teeth closed around his throat and bit. When my tongue flattened

over the wound, I tasted iron.

That taste awakened something in me.

My eyes opened. Blinked blearily. Everything was soft and fuzzy. I became dimly aware that this was not a dream.

How was this not a dream?

I knew, somewhere, that something wasn’t right. But gods, I didn’t care.

The need was unbearable. His body was over mine. Shirt unbuttoned, maybe because I had done it even though, in the haze, I didn’t remember it.

I clawed at his skin, urging him closer. His hands ran up my body, exploring every dip and curve. The hard length of him lay against my core, and my hips involuntarily ground against him. He growled with my gasp of pleasure, hands rising to my wrists, pinning me.

He breathed a word against my skin, so low that I couldn’t hear it. His movements slowed. Mouth lowered to my breast, tongue softly caressing the peak.

He said it again, this time, just loud enough to hear: “Finally.”

And then his mouth moved higher, and my fingers threaded through his hair, and he kissed my throat—passionately, fully, tongue sliding against my skin as if longing to taste the blood beneath, as my thighs opened around his hips, as he angled them so that his cock was so close, so close, as everything disappeared but this wild, desperate, nonsensical, overwhelming

need— He stopped.

His body tensed. He pulled away just enough to look into my face. I let out a pathetic, needy sound.

Everything had been fuzzy, blurry, pleasantly soft. But his eyes were sharp. His body still flexed ever so slightly, as if he had to fight to stop

himself from pushing further.

I found myself hesitating, too.

He said, “Something is . . .”

Strange.

His voice trailed off. But I had my own questions now. How had this happened? Where were we? This wasn’t a dream. But it wasn’t real, either.

Only then, as I attempted to force my mind to clear, did I hear Zefiah’s distant warning screaming at the back of my head: {Kyrene, the White Pantheon is here! The White Pantheon has come for you!} And then I felt it: the unmistakable sensation of a god’s presence.

No, not one god. Two.

Septimus had the realization as I did. We shot upright. And there she was: Ix, goddess of sex and fertility, gave us a sly grin of amusement.

And with her was Kajmar.