The Lion & the Deathless Dark — Chapter 45

C HA P T E R FO R T Y-F I V E

irie’s corpse looked exactly as it had the night I found her. Her eyes were open, but unseeing. Her head lolled to one side. She wore herM gold armor and her white robes, though the fabric was tattered and dirty and the breastplate scratched. Her once-radiant skin was now a sallow grey. Srana had replaced her legs with dented rods; she had welded knives to her hands. A stiff metal rod ran up her spine.

This thing was not a warrior, not a creature, not even an automaton. It certainly was not Mirie.

It was a machine, a parasite, using the flesh of my dead friend as a weapon. Not even a weapon, but the glue to hold one together.

My stomach lurched. I wanted to look away, but I could not. A skewer of pain through my left arm as one of Srana’s creations took advantage of my sudden stillness, pinning my arm to the wall. And still, I didn’t move.

I was so angry that I could not move.

Mirie had been the most noble person I had ever met. Noble even in a world in which all nobility had viciously stomped away. Still, she remained straight-backed, calm, kind, patient. Even in death. I could still picture her as I had found her, arms crossed over her chest, sword lying over her. Fallen in the service of defending innocents.

And this was what Srana had done to her. Used her. Defiled her. The melding of flesh and machine wasn’t even good. It was sloppy, torn skin puckering where metal met decaying muscle.

And at this sight, I heard the words Zefiah had hurled at me: She died slow. She died begging for you.

I had seen great atrocities these last ten years. And I was honest with myself that I had committed my fair share, too. But in this moment, I knew that none of them would be as bad as allowing this to happen to the most honorable person I had ever known.

My eyes burned. My rage clenched my heart so tight I shook with it.

Mirie’s corpse joined the other in pinning me against the wall. Fwip, as a makeshift blade flipped from what had once been her hand.

And then, behind her, another familiar face appeared.

Marko.

Marko’s body had been in pieces. That had not stopped Srana. He was more machine than corpse, his broad shoulders replaced with a dented mantle of copper, his massive arms mounted to ticking gears. His legs had been replaced with rods, like Mirie’s—the left one longer than the right, so he walked with an awkward limp. His head lolled back, his face blood covered, jaw missing, nearly unrecognizable, tilted to the sky, as if in pained frustration to the goddess who had done this to him. His flesh, after all, was merely putty upon which she could mount her collection of horrors.

Unlike her automatons, he did not even need to pretend to think.

An unworthy fate for the one person who had ever pleasantly surprised me. Who had fought to the very end to protect Valentina, just like I had told him to.

His corpse seized my other arm. Drove a rod of copper through it.

I gasped, but I barely felt it. Someone screamed my name, but I barely heard that either.

And I wasn’t stupid—I had known, of course, she would be here. I had tried to prepare myself for it. Steel myself against what I was about to see.

But when Valentina’s corpse stepped through the crowd, I could no longer breathe.

Everything went numb. The world faded away.

Valentina’s face had been mostly intact when she died. Now, her lifeless eyes, wide open, their deep brown clouded with milky grey, stared right through me. Her face was still half covered with her own blood, and that of the vampire she had killed in her last breath. But her machinery was more complex than that of Mirie and Marko—though no less sickening. Both of her arms had been fully replaced with metal, starting at the shoulder, and her legs, which were still backward and broken. Her neck had been replaced with copper rods too, bolted to the curve of her jaw and the bone behind her

ears. Swoops of silver, some kind of monstrous mimicry of a rib cage, encased her torso, keeping it upright but revealing the disintegrating flesh within. She slumped slightly against the frame.

In her mechanical hands was the spear. The very spear I had attempted to use to kill Srana. The one she had taken from me when I failed.

A terrible, wordless sound bubbled out of me. Not a sob—a groan of utter rage, too hot, too painful, to stay locked soundlessly inside.

Valentina approached, pushing aside Marko and Mirie. I could not blink. I could not take my eyes off her.

It occurred to me that Valentina’s machinery was so much more advanced than the others because in life, she had been a machinist. A follower of Srana. She had whispered prayers to her every night, blessed every one of her creations with magic from her copper goddess.

And look at what that goddess had done to her. Abandoned her. Ignored her. And then carved her up for parts.

She looked so fucking young. Little more than a child.

Every regret I’d ever had in the years I had spent with her burst free at once, like blood from a fresh wound. And somehow I could see all of them right now—every careless word, every time she reached for me and I pulled away, every callous response. I had pushed her away, and chased her away, and I was not there when she needed me, and now here she was, twisted and broken and denied even a dignified afterlife, used by the same goddess she had given her life to.

I felt myself at the edge of that cliff, just like when I’d woken up in Glaea, before the job and the deal and the gods and Septimus—when I had stared into the churning waters below and felt myself slipping.

I had turned away that night. But I could sense the cliff crumbling beneath me now, threatening to take me forever.

But stronger than my despair was my rage.

Srana let out a low titter of delight.

“Do you recognize it?” she said.

It took me a moment to realize that she was not referring to Valentina at all. Because after all this, Valentina was nothing but a useful pile of flesh, in the right place at the right time, and Srana didn’t even know or care who

she was.

She was referring to the spear.

It pulsed faintly in Valentina’s grip. Agony shot through my arm as Marko began sawing at it. Across the courtyard, through the blinding flames, I saw Septimus raging against the corpses that held him to the wall.

He was screaming something, but I couldn’t hear what.

Clickclick clickclick click, as Srana lowered, as close as she could get to this blessed ground, her smile growing.

“You have given me such inspiration,” she cooed. “It has been ten years since I have had such vision. It turned out you brought me the perfect addition to what you could become.”

I hated her, and hated her, and hated her.

I let that hatred flood through my veins. I let it spill out through every wound she had opened in my skin. I let it pool in my heart until it swallowed every shred of my own self-loathing.

Valentina’s corpse pushed against me. It occurred to me that it was the closest I’d given her to a goodbye embrace.

She had deserved that. She had deserved so much better.

BOOM, as a thrum of thunder shook the ground. A flash of lightning lit up the sky, brighter than the others—bright enough to cut through even the

flames. Something was strange about it.

I looked up. Even Srana paused.

The sky glistened with streaks of rainbow light.

A god. Another god.

“Kyrene!” Septimus’s distant voice bellowed across the courtyard. I brought my gaze to him.

There was no doubting what the look in his eyes meant. He didn’t need to say anything else.

The sky parted. Srana fully turned. As her attention shifted, the monstrous reanimations went slack. Valentina’s lifeless head slumped forward. Her body leaned against mine. Her metal hands fell limp, pushing the spear against my torso, as if in offering.

I closed my eyes for a moment—just a moment—relishing this. Her ear was right near my lips. And maybe another version of myself would have had some poignant words for her. Maybe some version of myself could have told her that I was sorry, that she was a gift I had never deserved, that I loved her more than life and I should have told her so every day, every hour, and of all my sins in this pathetic life, that was the greatest.

But not this version of me.

Because I knew this was a fucking corpse. A desecrated corpse, used one last time by a goddess who didn’t give a single fuck about Valentina or anyone else, and she couldn’t hear a single thing I had to say about it.

But I could kill the one who did this to her. Just like I’d set out to.

I seized the spear from her and, with a roar of rage and pain and grief, I ripped myself free from the stakes through my arms.

I looked up at Srana, who watched the sky, distracted. She was so far. It was a wild shot. But I’d taken worse.

Septimus’s eyes met mine, and he inclined his chin, as if to say, now.

When Nyaxia appeared in the sky, distracting Srana, I hurled the spear with every ounce of my remaining strength. It arced through the night like a copper comet hurtling into the atmosphere.

And right when I was certain that it was going to fall, that it wasn’t going to make it, ropes of black-red surged around its staff, pushing it through that final leap.

A smile unfurled over Nyaxia’s lovely mouth.

Just as the spear struck Srana’s back, shattering her metal body, piercing straight through to her chest.

Srana whirled around, metal legs buckling. The plates that made up her face shuddered through countless expressions. Copper rained like sleet from the sky. Ti-ti-ti-ti-ti-k-k-k-k-k, as hundreds of automatons flailed, gears jamming and cracking.

Srana’s steel spider’s legs tangled, collapsed, sending her crashing to the earth. Her eyes landed on me. The apertures of her gearwork contracted, expanded, contracted, expanded, faster and faster.

I staggered out to the center of the courtyard. My body was broken. But

I wanted the best possible view.

I gave her a vicious smile.

“You have—You have—” she managed.

It turned out I had no pretty words for her, either. Nothing but a savage, “Fuck you, you copper cunt.”

In the sky, Nyaxia purred, “Unwise to underestimate a fallen one, cousin. Or their hunters, for that matter.”

Srana was beautiful when she died. Her form simply fell apart, collapsing into countless shards of copper and silver and gold, gears and rods, plates and bolts. They transformed into fiery streaks of light as they fell.

I stood there, swaying, and watched it. The sky was dark. The rain pounded down in fresh sheets. Now, four different bolts of lightning cracked the heavens at once, all while Srana’s remains plummeted down.

I had seen no falling stars since the sun fell. But when I was a small child, my father once woke me up in the middle of the night to show me the sky lit up by them—hundreds of them, arcing from horizon to horizon. I hadn’t thought of this memory in a long time. Not until now.

A force yanked me backward, and I realized it was Septimus. He pulled me under the cover of what remained of a canopy, just before Srana’s flaming remnants pelted the ground like burning arrows, leaving little craters in their wake.

He was behind me, face tucked into the space between my neck and shoulder. I found myself leaning into his embrace. And it did, indeed, feel like an embrace. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had one that wasn’t merely a logistical precursor to sex. Now, tears unexpectedly prickled my eyes. The complicated emotions that I had drowned in my rage made a brief, uncomfortable reappearance.

“A lion indeed,” he murmured. “Excellent work.”

My arms tightened around his. I couldn’t make myself speak. But I didn’t have time to, anyway. Because then he said, “This is our chance. We do it your way this time, lyri. Are you prepared for your final mark?”

My eyes lifted to the sky, where Nyaxia hovered, preparing to approach us. I let out a shaky breath. “I always am. Are you?”

He laughed softly. “I don’t know if prepared is the word I’d use.” But his fingers slid down my arm until his hand was over mine, fingers intertwining, and he clutched me, tight tight tight. And my eyes squeezed shut and for one terrible moment, I was more afraid than I ever had been in my entire life—and I wanted everything to freeze, right here, before we knew what could or would happen.

Strange how for weeks I had been marching steadfastly to my own death, and now that it was here, I had found something in life to cling to.

Nyaxia smiled over the wreckage. The storm raged behind her, wind and rain and light swirling around her silver-dipped body. It somehow seemed angrier than before, more dramatic above the reaching fingers of the flames from the temple. The lightning twisted halfway in the sky, as if drawn to her by magnetic force. As if already preparing to split the world in half.

“How sad,” she crooned. “Two of my cousins slain here in the ashes of their own hubris.”

She lowered, lowered. Shiket’s godlight had dulled in the aftermath’s of Srana’s death. If anything now prevented Nyaxia from approaching, she didn’t show it. Her star-scattered eyes sparkled with cruel delight as they fell to us.

“You were wise to tell me to save her, my child,” she said. “She has been useful after all.”

Everything moved in slow motion, second by second.

Septimus gave my hand one final squeeze. I felt his fear, tentative and vulnerable, shiver through us both. I felt it because it was a mirror to my own.

And then, just as quickly, it disappeared. He straightened and released me. He bowed his head as he approached Nyaxia, hand over his heart, a familiar smirk over his lips.

“It is only what you deserve, Dark Mother,” he said, striding purposefully across the wreckage. “And it is the purpose of my life to give it to you.”

Nyaxia let out a cruel chuckle. But she did not have time to speak.

Because Septimus lifted his hands and blood surrounded them, surging around her. She roared back. The rage overtook her instantaneously, as if it had already been there, lurking just beneath the surface.

I had no time to waste. I seized this distraction, and dove for the swords, sheathing Zefiah across my back.

The swords still burned in Shiket’s remains, standing in broken final watch. I wasn’t sure which one to take. They all looked so different than they had suspended at Shiket’s back. I grabbed the one that was closest. It was long, like Zefiah, but its shape was more elegant, the blade slightly curved, the hand guard smaller and more intricate. It was an awkward shape for me after ten years bearing only Zefiah. Her weight was now heavy across my back. I felt as if I was betraying her.

When I touched the blade, a shiver bolted through me, like a needle jabbing too deep and hitting a nerve.

Had it felt that way the first time I’d wielded Zefiah? I couldn’t remember. She had spoken to me immediately. But now, though I expected to hear a voice in my mind, a garbled mess of layered words immediately roared in my ears. Voices that were completely indistinguishable.

The other blades trembled, as if awakened by my touch. I thought they might surround me, as they had in Septimus’s vision. But they merely quivered in the ruin. The blade’s hilt burned in my hands, enough to sting.

Was that a bad sign?

I had never been an uncertain person. Stopping to question yourself was often more dangerous than taking the wrong action. But right now, I missed Zefiah so desperately that it hurt. {Zefiah,} a distant, unfamiliar voice said in the back of my head. {We know that name.} A different voice now. {But we do not know yours.} There was no time. I whipped around. Septimus’s distraction had done virtually nothing to hurt Nyaxia. The sky now roiled with her displeasure.

She seized Septimus, ropes of star-scattered darkness looping around his throat, his limbs, his torso.

“Betrayed by your kind twice,” she hissed. “I should not be surprised by your traitorousness. But I am surprised by your stupidity.”

You don’t need to know me, I said, as I dragged the blade from the wreckage. Light sputtered at its edge. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the other swords sputter with the same golden light.

A good sign. It had to be. It had to be.

Ready to kill the Tainted Goddess? I told the sword, as I pushed my body into a run.

This was a question that would have earned a purr of pleasure from Zefiah. Instead, I felt an uncomfortable jolt down my spine.

{Who are you?}

{are you?}

{Who are—?} {you-you-you?} I’m the one who is going to use you to kill the fucking vampire goddess,

I said. You’re welcome.

“Hey!”

My voice cut across the courtyard.

Nyaxia’s head turned. The icy hatred on her face was powerful enough to send the world into an eternal winter, and every shred of it was directed at me.

She tossed Septimus aside. He fell in a heap of bloody flesh, burns covering his skin. His breath was heaving. And yet, he managed to lift his

head, and he looked at me with such pride, such delight.

Such utter confidence.

It made me feel it, too.

“I was at Vostis, you vampire bitch,” I snarled. “And I’m doing this for them. For the ones who died here when you sent your followers to slaughter them. For everyone you killed when the sun fell. And for the Bloodborn you’ve tortured for two thousand years.”

I lifted the blade over my head. It was difficult to steady it, as if it was being yanked in a dozen different directions. Its godlight burst from it in

erratic flickers.

{—are you?}

{Who—} {—you?} I shut out the voices and drowned myself in my own hatred. In every injustice. Every innocent life lost. Every undeserved pain. And my own pain, too.

And as Nyaxia turned to me, mouth twisted in disgust, I lunged for her, aiming straight for her heart.

I heard the echo of a voice that had taught me to kill once, long ago: Push right here. Really, really hard.

I threw myself into the strike. I pushed really, really hard.

And the blade shattered.