The Lion & the Deathless Dark — Chapter 37

C HA P T E R T H I R T Y- S E V E N

y head was spinning when I returned to my bedchamber. I was grateful that no one was there waiting for me, and that the guardM who escorted me left immediately after. I needed to be alone.

I went to the windows and threw them open, savoring the rush of frigid air. It smelled like ice and smoke outside. A warm glow surrounded the city, and though I was too far away to see or hear people below, the alive-ness of it all drifted up from the streets like mist over a lake. A reminder that many people still made their homes here—vampires or no. Even though the paint was chipped and the buildings crumbling.

Gods help me. Here I was, romanticizing a vampire city.

I let out a frosty puff of air and turned. Zefiah lay across the bed, where I’d placed her when I returned. Her glow now pulsed faintly from the gaps in the leather’s stitching.

I grabbed her and placed her across my lap, sliding her free of the sheath. Gold light illuminated the shadows of the room.

Zefiah.

Silence. Her light pulsed rhythmically.

Zefiah!

I was beginning to think something was actually wrong with her. Maybe Kajmar or Ix had somehow damaged her. But I inspected her blade carefully and found nothing amiss. Even her glow was steady, unlike in the wake of Shiket’s death, when it had flickered like a candle in a windstorm.

Which meant that she was fucking ignoring me.

What the ever-living hell is your— {What is my problem?}

The coldness of her voice slid down my spine like ice. {What is my problem?} she repeated. {I should ask you this question, Kyrene. What is your problem? The Tainted Mother was within our reach.

She showed her back to us! One strike and we would have pierced her heart.} I scoffed—more casually than I felt. You’re so confident, Zef. You don’t know that we— {I. Do. Know.} Each word was a stabbing accusation. {She was close enough. We had our shot at her. Perhaps the only one we will ever get. And you . . .} Zefiah did not have to breathe, and yet, she paused, the tension drawing taut, giving the effect of a person so furious that they had to take a deep breath. {You LET HER GO. You let her go because HE told you to.}

Defensiveness leaped up in my chest.

And yet, in equal measure, shame.

I dumped Zefiah onto the bed and stood.

And here I was concerned that something was wrong with you. Turned out you were just saving your energy for another lecture. {This is no lecture, Kyrene. This is a reckoning. Tell me, why did you choose not to kill Nyaxia? Tell me there is some other reason.} I turned to the window, even though there was no hiding from Zefiah.

She saw my soul itself.

It wasn’t the right time.

It was the best I could give her. I couldn’t say, We wouldn’t have made it, because I knew we would have. {Tell me why it was not the right time.} My lips parted, then closed. I wrapped my arms around my chest.

I could not lie to her, and I could not tell her the truth.

Finally, I said, You saw what I did. That he wants to kill Nyaxia as much as we do. Perhaps he’s right.

Zefiah did not appreciate this response. Her burst of displeasure sent green-tinted light bursting into the darkest corners of the room. {You have many flaws, Kyrene. But stupidity is not one of them.} How kind of— {You like him.} The accusation was pointed. It made me stop in my tracks. {You like him, and you like him more now that you know that he hates Nyaxia as much as you do. You look at his mission and you see a noble quest. You look at the future he shows you and you wish with your

deepest soul that you can be the one to bring it about. Perhaps, you tell yourself, he is right about all of it. Perhaps you can summon the power of my siblings to kill Nyaxia, as he claims. Perhaps you can create a world in which the sun is restored and the gods no longer play games with their mortal subjects. He says such beautiful words to you, shows you such a beautiful future, and you drink it all down. You have spent ten years denying that you are a hero. But a handsome vampire calls you one, and you want to believe it.} None of these were questions. They were all statements, painful in their factuality. Because she knew she was right about every one of them, and I knew it, too.

Once, when I was very small, my uncle caught me pretending to be a princess and laughed at me for it. What I now understood was harmless ribbing had seemed like crippling cruelty then, and I had been ashamed. I felt the same way now.

Enough with your fucking theatrics, I snapped. So what if I do want to be the person he thinks I am? Why is that such a terrible thing? You’ve spent a gods-damned decade lecturing me for being such a shameless sell sword. Now when I want to actually do something that matters, to actually believe in something, you act like I’ve committed some grave betrayal.

It wasn’t until those words left me—actually believe in something—that I realized they might in fact be true. That perhaps I did believe in Septimus’s mission, and for something more than revenge.

I’ll tell you what I think, Zefiah, since you’re being so free with your opinions, I went on. I think you’re jealous.

She let out a vicious scoff. {Jealous! I do not like the way you look at the fallen one, nor the way he looks at you. But I have already told you that it is not my business who is in your bed.} You hate vampires so much that you can’t see anything else, I shot back.

Maybe you’re not jealous over him. But you’re jealous that maybe I might be taking a path other than the one you want me to. {I wish for you to take a path that goes somewhere.} What if this one does?

The words came out more pleading than I had meant them to. Weaker.

An actual question.

I looked at Zefiah lying over the bedspread and thought of the first night I met her. I had been so young. So weak. No one at all. And I had always

known who I was in the years since, no matter what other people saw when they looked at me—no, when they looked at Zefiah. Only now did I question it.

What if I can do this? I said. What if this path does lead somewhere?

It felt so raw, so terrifying, to state that dream. Believing that I was capable of anything like this, even so tentatively, would have been impossible mere months ago.

But I thought of Marko, someone I had been so certain was incapable of anything but selfishness, dying in his attempt to save Valentina.

I thought of Mirie and her insistence of my goodness. Val and her belief

that the world could be better.

And maybe it could. Maybe I could.

A beat of silence stretched.

Zefiah said softly, {Kyrene. You know it will not.} It was perhaps the first time I had ever heard that tone in her voice. Pity.

That hurt more than any harsh word she had ever said to me. Like she was just now seeing some ugly, weak part of myself that I had managed to hide for a decade, and the very sight of it broke her heart.

For all the biting sarcasm we hurled at each other over the years, she always knew my truth. And the truth was, I was nothing without her. If there was any part of me who could fantasize about heroics, it was only because of the way her hilt fit in my hands. I would never be a hero, but it was only because of Zefiah that I was anything at all. Neither of us ever forgot it.

So when, after a long moment, she said, {I cannot help you with this task,} there was no doubt between us exactly what that meant.

My heart lurched.

You cannot be serious. {I do this to protect you,} she said. {You are destined to die by my blade one day. But death is far from the worst thing that can happen to you. My former bearer—} Yes, yes, I snapped. Ferdinan was so very noble. Nothing like me. {Ferdinan’s nobility was his downfall,} she hissed. {For nearly a year, he lay in a broken state, body decaying without ever truly dying. Everyone believed that his mind was gone. But it never was. I know this, because I heard him pleading for me that entire year. Pleading for his death.}

Through our connection, I heard the echoes of his cries. A great warrior reduced to a terrified child, last breaths stretching out in an endless torture.

And for the first time, I felt just how much this had affected Zefiah. {I will not listen to you plead that way, Kyrene,} she said. {I refuse to. If you will not heed me tonight, then let me conserve my energy, so that I might be able to guarantee you a quick death when the time comes.} You’re being so ridiculously melodramatic.

A beat of silence, and then, {Mirie did not die quickly. She died slow.

And every second that she lived, she was in agony, and she was praying you would return. Begging the gods to bring you back to save her, and save Valentina, whom she did not know had died.} I sucked in a sharp inhale through my teeth.

One day, Zefiah would slide into my heart and take my life. And I knew right now, with fleeting certainty, that it would not hurt as much as those words just did. {I spared you that knowledge,} she said. {But you are not willing to do the same for me.} Fuck you. Petulant, I knew. But sometimes, they were the only words that suited. You are such a coward. You want to abandon me just as, for the first time, I’m trying to do something real? Fine. If you were hoping I would just leave you behind, you’re wrong. You’ll still have to come along and watch, and I hope you never taste the vampire blood that spills on your blade. {I know you too well to dream of such a thing.} I was caught off-guard by the note of compassion in her words. {My steel is yours to wield. I cannot control what you do with it. My magic, however, is another matter.} Reducing Zefiah to merely a big piece of metal.

Fine, I snapped. Do what you want. Perhaps I’ll prefer wielding your siblings, anyway.

I went to the door, leaving her there on the bed. And the last thing I heard as I slammed the door behind me was her sad voice, saying, {We both know that will not be true.}

IT WAS dangerous to go to Septimus’s chambers.

I knew this. My logical mind reminded me of it with every step down the hallway. But I was too desperate to escape Zefiah’s words, too angry to listen to my rational self. If she wanted to call me reckless, then I would be fucking reckless.

I wasn’t sure what I expected to find there, nor what I expected to do.

Maybe some part of myself hoped I would lose myself in skin and wine, in bad decisions, like I always had—eager to ignite the spark that Septimus and I had played with in Bosqua, in the cottage before Ix arrived. But even that little shard of simplicity didn’t seem quite so straightforward anymore.

I knocked at the door, and a low voice called, “Come in.”

I pushed the door open and stopped short.

Septimus sat on the couch. Alric was asleep beside him. The child was sprawled out in a way that reminded me of how dogs slept—one leg up against the back of the couch, another dangling over the armrest. A book lay open against his chest. I glimpsed illustrations of animals on the pages, fluttering under his snoring breath.

At the sight of me, a barely there smile crinkled the corners of Septimus’s eyes. A subtle, quick expression—but maybe that was why it took root in my chest and burned there. Because I knew it was a reflex. No part of it practiced.

“He sleeps like the dead,” he said, waving me in.

I hesitated for a reason I couldn’t describe. If I’d found Septimus alone, if he’d invited me to his bed for a distraction, I would have seized on it.

And even that, I knew, would have been dangerous.

And yet, this—Septimus here, unguarded, his truest self—seemed so much worse.

Still, I silently closed the door behind me and crossed the room, perching on the armchair beside the sofa.

“He wore himself out,” he said, and there was such a familiar warmth in those words.

I watched Alric’s sleeping face. I had never seen a living vampire child before—at least not up close.

“You’ve never mentioned him,” I said. An understatement, we both knew. Septimus had very deliberately left out Alric when talking about his family.

“Most people don’t know about Alric at all,” he said quietly. His fingers toyed absentmindedly with a strand of the boy’s hair. Up close, I noticed that silver was mixed in with the blond. “My parents are . . . It was a small miracle that someone in my mother’s condition, even ten years ago, could carry a child to term. I tried to tell them that they could not, should not, have another child. But they were desperate. Just wanted to keep on making sons, even though they were practically corpses themselves. You can imagine what kind of state they’re in now.”

I thought of what I had seen of Erekkus, pinned to the wall in chains of

his own blood, and shuddered.

“How much time do they have left?”

He let out a bitter laugh. “That is the cruelty of our curse, Kyrene. They will go on living until someone decides to put them out of their misery.

They have been dead in every way that matters for nearly Alric’s entire life.

But I make sure they remain alive, because the moment I bear the title of king, it gets much harder for me to move unencumbered around the world.”

“Because of the Heir Mark,” I said, thinking of the red swirls that adorned the Nightborn queen’s wings and throat—markers of vampire royalty.

Septimus smiled grimly and shook his head. “We don’t even get that.

The House of Blood has no Heir Mark. One more punishment by Nyaxia.

But even without a crown and a Mark, you can’t shake the stench of royalty.

I’m too public at this point to escape that. My parents offer protection, both literal and symbolic, as they are now. So, for my own selfish reasons, I keep them alive. I have always been a terrible son.”

His fingers twisted that silver lock of Alric’s hair, tender as stroking the wings of a butterfly. “But I have made it my goal,” he murmured, “to be a better brother.”

Brother, he said, but one look at the two of them told me that his role was closer to that of a father.

“That’s the real joke of it,” he said. “When you are surrounded by suffering, it’s easy to endure. You know nothing else. There is no other possible future or past. Everyone you know or knew or ever will know suffers as you do. But then. Then, there’s a little spark of hope.” He twirled that strand of silver around in his fingers. “One little piece of good, and suddenly, it all just becomes unacceptable.”

His eyes flicked up to meet mine.

“You asked me before, ‘why?’ Well. Perhaps now you understand.”

I did. I understood more than I wished I did.

“It’s easier, I think,” I said, “to want a better world for someone else, than it is to want it for yourself. Sometimes I think I would have been different if—”

I closed my mouth. Swallowed the words. But I could feel that Septimus heard the rest of what I didn’t say. Because he’d stood right beside me as Ix and Kajmar had dangled my other potential future right in front of my face—the child that had died, who would have been nearly the same age as the one who slept here. And when he said, quietly, “I’m sorry”—said it in a way that sounded like he really meant it—I knew exactly what he was talking about.

I looked into the fire. The flames taunted me with memories I preferred not to revisit. I had never talked about this with anyone—not even Mirie. So why now was the past pressing up against the underside of my skin?

“I was seventeen when the sun fell,” I said. “I was already pregnant.

And I was so—I was so fucking angry when I found out. I had sex one gods-damned time, and it wasn’t even good. If I’d been even a little less destitute, I would have found a healer to solve the problem for me. But then, the sun fell out of the sky.”

I still remembered that day so vividly. The way it had shattered like someone in the heavens had dropped a vase. All the pieces had streaked across the freshly blackened sky like little trails of fire. We had all ooh-ed and aah-ed over it, like we were witnessing some incredible natural phenomenon and not the end of the fucking world. And then the vampires came.

“That was why I went to Vostis,” I said. “I wasn’t religious. But I didn’t care who I prayed to so long as it meant that I could give birth to that child somewhere safe.” Childbirth had terrified me. There was so much blood, and blood had become such a terrible liability. “I was so angry,” I said. “I prayed every night that I would wake up bleeding. And even now I can’t say why it changed, after the sun fell.” I paused, then answered my own question. “I think it felt like she had defied the odds. Because I was still pregnant after Vostis fell. After I survived that attack.”

Killing vampires and falling from balconies and being thrown around by explosions. All of that, and my body still hung onto that would-be life.

“And then, after all that,” I said drily, staring into the flames, “I lose her afterward.”

I flicked my eyes back to him, and the way he was looking at me actually startled me—with such compassion. I viscerally lurched away from it, like a hand shying from a flame. With Zefiah’s disappointment still fresh, it seemed just as painful.

“There’s no need for that,” I muttered, looking away. “I’d be a shit mother. Some might say it was for the best.”

The words slipped free before I could stop them, bitter and raw. I thought of a voice saying those words ten years ago.

“It wasn’t.” Septimus’s face hardened. “And anyone who tells you otherwise is wrong.”

Ix. He was talking about Ix’s final words. You would have destroyed your daughter, just like you destroyed the other one.

My face heated, embarrassed that he’d heard them, and ashamed of the way the words themselves still ached. I wanted to shrink beneath the conviction in his voice. I still burned with Zefiah’s condemnations. Now, I didn’t know what to do with this—someone looking at me, speaking to me, as if they actually believed in my goodness.

I said, too casually, “I don’t think so.”

“I have watched you tear down gods for the ones you lost. Those are not the actions of a person who doesn’t care.”

I said nothing. I couldn’t. My gaze slipped away, but he said firmly, “Kyrene. Look at me.”

Why did I obey? I didn’t want to. Yet my gaze crawled back to his like a flower to the sun, like an instinct—no, a need.

His stare was steadfast. So sharp it seized my heart and didn’t let go.

“What Ix said to you was a lie,” he said. “Any soul would be lucky to have a lion like you fighting for them. Anyone. A warrior, a priestess, a machinist, or a child.” The corner of his mouth slanted. “Even a vampire prince.”

My heart clenched sharply. My eyes tore away, because his stare—his blatant admiration—was unbearable for reasons I couldn’t understand.

Instead, I watched the sleeping child. His face was so young. No one told you that vampire children looked just like humans. Valentina was around his age, when I first met her. She used to sleep just like that, in all kinds of bizarre positions, face smooshed up against railings or walls. I wondered if

perhaps my daughter would have, too, if she had lived. Or if I would have lost her by now.

“Make sure you tell him,” I said, voice tight. “Tell him all the time, that you love him. Because it’s the worst kind of regret to have, and once someone is gone, it doesn’t matter what you do afterward.”

“It matters,” he said. There was no hesitation—no question in it. His gaze was strong and piercing. “And if I could see that, I know they could, too. You aren’t as cold as you think you are, lyri. They felt it then. And wherever they may be in the underworld, they’ll feel it now, when you build a new world in their name.”

I watched him, a lump in my throat that I couldn’t quite understand.

Because right now, he was talking about a mission that had led to the deaths of millions—to the worst days of my life.

And yet— “Careful, Septimus,” I said. “You’re talking like a hero.”

A soft smile bloomed across his lips. “Monsters recognize monsters, I suppose.”

My heart stuttered in an odd, unwelcome way. And the words were coming before I could stop them, when I murmured, “He’s lucky, too.

Lucky to have you to fight for him.”

I was not prepared for the expression on Septimus’s face at that. The briefest flash of something so startled and tender, as if I’d soothed an open wound he hadn’t even known existed. Only now did it occur to me that perhaps it meant just as much to Septimus to hear those words as it did to me. If he went to bed every day questioning them, just as I did.

The rawness of it was viscerally uncomfortable. I cleared my throat and said, “How long do we have until the gods are after us?”

He seemed grateful for the opening. His fingers resumed twirling Alric’s hair. “Not long. Three more gods are dead now, and I’m sure the others are rallying over it. The sooner we leave here, the better.”

Crack, as the fire consumed another log.

His gaze held mine, steady.

“So, Vindica Ultis, it seems we’re at a crossroads,” he said. “I’m no hero. And maybe the riches that I once offered you are a smaller piece of the story, now. But I would still very much enjoy it if you would help me save the world, anyway.”

I was silent. My eyes dragged over his form, lit by the flickering firelight.

I had witnessed so many different versions of him by now. I had seen the different masks he wore, all of them befitting a calculated vampire prince. And yet, I had also seen him bloody and injured. I had seen him grieving and raw. I had seen him hungry and undone—hungry and undone because of me, because of my touch, my body. All this from a man who had, at first, seemed as smooth and empty as a clean sheet of parchment, ready to embody whatever story needed to be written.

But this version of Septimus, quiet in the firelight, with one hand on his brother’s hair and the other reaching across the armrest to me—this version of him, a little tired, a little sad, a little hopeful, and a little angry . . .

Of its own volition, my hand slipped into my pocket, thumb pressing hard against the metal profile of the goddess I had slain. For some reason, I couldn’t let it go.

My chest was tight and my heart sore. Because the way Septimus was now looking at me was the way that I had seen so many others look at me.

Like I was a savior.

I wanted to be the person he saw when he looked at me that way. I wanted it badly enough to try.

I thought of Zefiah’s words. Her insistence that I could not follow this path. I hated her for it, but I also understood it. Perhaps a part of me even thought she was right.

But some tender version of me thought she wasn’t, too. And the call of that little piece of my heart, vulnerable and frightened and yet braver than I had ever been, was so strong I couldn’t turn away from it.

I said, “I suppose I can do that. But only so I can hear how the romance book ends.”

“I suppose I can do that, too,” he murmured. “Just for you.”

And the smile that spread over his mouth made me think of a dawn I had not seen in a decade.