The Lion & the Deathless Dark — Chapter 49

C HA P T E R FO R T Y-N I N E

t turned out, even broken, Zefiah could, indeed, summon a god.

Or perhaps this one was already watching, already waiting. BecauseI when Zefiah’s divine light burst in a blazing trail into the night, the heavens answered: Acaeja, goddess of fate and sorcery, lowered from the sky.

I had met many gods now, and still, the sight of Acaeja nearly brought me to my knees. Acaeja was fate incarnate. She was tall, wearing dark robes that billowed out behind her as if in a gust of wind that only she could feel.

Her eyes were large and white, seeing all. Her wings, all six of them, extended across the night sky. Each offered a window into a different fate.

Now, all of them depicted death and destruction, painted in the red blood of humans and the black of vampires.

She was the goddess who had the most to gain from my alliance. The goddess, I suspected, who held the most interest in me. The remaining gods of the White Pantheon would prioritize turning against each other, like Ix and Kajmar had. But Acaeja stood alone, holding the territory of both human nations and the vampire Houses of Death and Night, at war with both the White Pantheon and Nyaxia.

Perhaps I was not the hero fate had chosen. But I might have something to offer her, anyway. A mutual interest in a mutual enemy.

I bowed before her. “Thank you for heeding our call, great goddess. I am so grateful—”

“Rise.” Acaeja’s voice was ageless, formless—young and old, male and female, powerful as the echo of thunder across the mountains. “I see your truth. There is no need to put on a performance.”

I huffed a laugh, then rose. I preferred to face the gods standing, anyway. Still, I swayed slightly, and I wondered if it was because of my ever-growing collection of injuries or because my knees were buckling under the sheer weight of Acaeja’s presence. I had never felt more naked than I did now, as that white gaze stripped me bare.

“I am glad that fate has brought us together tonight,” she said. “I have been hoping to meet you. You are the subject of much talk in our realm.

This mortal who has slain four gods now. Already, cracks radiate through the White Pantheon. It is on the precipice of collapse due to your actions.”

Her wings depicted the deaths of Shiket, Ix, Kajmar, Srana, all rendered in smoky shadow. Then, she showed me Ysria cracking, falling to pieces.

Showed me the silhouettes of the remaining gods, locked in battle with each other.

I tried—really tried—to stop the smirk from spreading across my lips.

Acaeja’s stare bored into my heart. “This pleases you.”

“Yes,” I admitted. “I’ve seen nothing but suffering at the hands of the gods. Seems fitting that they should taste some of it.” {Perhaps one might even describe it as justice,} Zefiah remarked, and fondness warmed my chest.

“Suffering is a part of existence,” Acaeja said. “I have seen empires rise and fall. I have seen gods born and killed. And the suffering continues. It always shall.” The images in her wings shifted once more, this time to familiar marble buildings with red accents and gold peaks; rolling swells of ice and snow; rivers and rivers of blood; and an eye that I now knew so well, silver and amber intertwined, with a ring of red. “Tell me, child. Why have you called upon me tonight?”

There was no point in dancing around it. I suspected Acaeja appreciated directness.

I said, “I want to kill Nyaxia. And I think you can help me do that.”

Her head cocked in feigned curiosity. I got the eerie impression that she already knew each turn this conversation would take, and we were simply acting it out for my benefit.

“Nyaxia,” she repeated. Unlike the other gods I’d met, Acaeja was unemotional. It was unnerving. It gave me nothing to read, nothing to manipulate. “The Tainted Goddess inflicts great punishment upon your lover’s land. She intends to use him and his people as weapons. Great suffering, indeed. Yet my own followers have already fought hers for ten

years now, and still, our wars rage on. What makes you think I have any help to offer you?”

Her wings depicted the House of Blood, stained red. Battlefields of vicious violence. Warriors clashing over blood-soaked sands. My stomach clenched at the sight of it, complicated emotions tangling. Relief, because Septimus was alive. Horror, because I’d brought him so much suffering.

Fear, because I might not be able to stop it.

I tried not to let my uncertainty show. Tried to look at nothing but her eyes.

“I should be asking you that question,” I said. “You see everything. Far more than I do. And so, I know you would not have answered my call unless you had a card to play.”

Acaeja’s mouth twisted into a fierce, brief smile. Her teeth were sharp, like those of vampires.

“There is always another card, child. Such is the nature of fate. It is forged. Crafted with intention. And perhaps there is one I have been holding for a very long time. Perhaps it is one that could be of use to you. But you cannot expect me to simply hand it to you.”

“Of course not, goddess,” I said, with a touch—just a touch—of sarcasm.

“You have slain four of my siblings,” she said. “If I help you, I will need assurances that it is not my heart you intend to pierce next. Any weapon capable of ending Nyaxia is a dangerous one to put in mortal hands indeed. I would not be the first of my siblings to fall by betrayal.”

“You’re worrying about me betraying you? I’m a bounty hunter, goddess. I am doing you a favor by killing your rival. People pay me for this service. Perhaps it’s you I should be asking for assurances from.” {Kyrene, do not be foolish,} Zefiah hissed.

Acaeja’s face remained still. Yet I sensed the melodic hint of a laugh in her words. “How arrogant you are. I must admire your boldness, even if it is fruitless. I must be assured that the weapon I am about to reveal to you will never be used to end me, you see.”

I cursed silently to myself. I had hoped to avoid getting myself wrapped up in this kind of deal, especially since I knew that all the gods, even the ones that were useful in the moment, were so fickle.

But nothing ventured, nothing gained, I suppose.

“Very well, goddess,” I said. “I swear that to you. As long as my pathetic, mortal heart beats, I will not act against you.”

Acaeja extended her hand, and as I made my vow, threads of white light looped around my own, then back to hers. She closed her hand, tucking it against her chest, and I felt a brief, powerful tug that reminded me uncomfortably of the yank of a leash.

“Very well,” she said. “Then let us talk business. My proposal begins with a story.” Her wings clouded over, and then the mist thinned to reveal the House of Blood once again—but it looked different, newer, than it had when I was there. It was shockingly beautiful. The white stone was clean and smooth, newly carved. The gold peaks of the palaces gleamed, lined with little gemstones that had been long gone by the time I would come to see them.

“Do you know, child, the origin of the curse that Nyaxia placed upon

her Bloodborn children?”

“No,” I said. “I thought no one did.”

“No one left alive. The curse has done well ensuring so. The Bloodborn vampires live short lives. It is easy to forget what has happened two millennia before. And that is where this tale takes us today. Two thousand years ago.”

The images in her wings faded like milk stirred into black tea.

“I do not need to tell you the part of this tale that every living soul now knows,” Acaeja said. “How Alarus, god of death, fell in forbidden love with Nyaxia, a lesser goddess. How he paid for his marriage to her with his life, when his siblings betrayed and executed him for it. How Nyaxia broke free from the imprisonment of the White Pantheon, only to find her husband already dead. How in her grief and rage, she returned to her husband’s mortal followers and turned them into what we now know as vampires. A kingdom that must always be separate from those of her divine enemies, because they feast upon the literal blood of humanity.”

I saw it play out across those wings—Alarus falling, Nyaxia weeping over his severed head, her rage as she tore her way back from the deadlands into the mortal realm.

“Nyaxia had three kingdoms that she ruled over in what was once her husband’s territory,” Acaeja went on. “The first was a kingdom of warriors, split between two perpetually warring clans. This became the House of

Night. To these followers, Nyaxia gave the gift of flight and the power of the stars.”

Figures with outstretched wings, feathered and membranous, took flight in Acaeja’s dreamlike visions.

“The second was a kingdom of scholars, skilled in the art of spy craft.

This kingdom had been her husband’s favorite, and the most closely aligned with death. To these followers, Nyaxia gave the gift of mind manipulation and illusion. This became the House of Shadow, and later too, the House of Death—guardians of the underworld.”

A mask burned in Acaeja’s wings, eyes closing, before fading back into the myth.

“Nyaxia took her time deliberating on the gift for the third kingdom. It was her favorite of the three. It lay closest to the lands of the gods. When Nyaxia had ripped through the veil between the deadlands and the mortal realm, blind with grief and rage, it had been into this kingdom that she stumbled.”

Mists clouded Acaeja’s wings, this time parting to reveal Nyaxia, on her hands and knees. Her mouth and chin dripped with blood. Figures surrounded her, falling to the ground in prostration.

“This is the part of the tale that few remember, now,” Acaeja said.

“Nyaxia was merely a minor god before she married Alarus. She ascended to major divinity by consuming the heart he left behind. But this was no easy transition. Nyaxia had been tortured by her cousins while in captivity.

Her arrival in the land of mortals was a violent one, and she did not know if she could return to the divine realm without being captured by the White Pantheon. In this weakened state, she was given shelter and protection by what is now the House of Blood. The king, Thastias, was kind to Nyaxia when she needed it most. He ordered a temple to be built for her right alongside his castle, upon which his people would lavish in gifts and prayers. This sanctuary became, for a time, Nyaxia’s home.”

These images played out across the wings—a great gold building rising beside the Bloodborn palace, then Nyaxia upon a throne within it, surrounded by offerings. I saw the face of a handsome king, fair-haired, with an elegant face that looked so very familiar.

“Nyaxia regained her strength and solidified her power over the infant world she had created. She gave her gifts to the Houses of Shadow and

Night, and still, the House of Blood waited for a power that month after month, year after year, did not materialize, despite Nyaxia’s promises.

“King Thastias eventually grew bitter and angry. Nyaxia had now largely fled to the divine realm, confident in her own strength. And the House of Blood’s rivals, arrogant with their own new powers, were making threats to his kingdom. But while caring for Nyaxia in her weakest state, King Thastias had seen the blood upon her face. He learned that her power had come from consuming the flesh of her husband. He became the first mortal to understand a very dangerous secret: the power that lay within the body of a god. If Nyaxia would not give his people a gift—a gift, he believed, they deserved far more than his vampiric brethren—he knew how he could take it.”

I saw that handsome king fall back into the shadows, on his knees in a dark temple, speaking to a figure that remained shrouded in fog.

“And so, King Thastias decided he would betray Nyaxia. He would turn her temple into a cage, stocked with mystical shackles that would hold even a goddess at the height of her power. And when Nyaxia was expecting it least, returning to a place she had always considered safe, he would imprison her and use her body as a source of his own divine strength.”

The dreamlike images across Acaeja’s wings grew darker now. I saw Nyaxia, beaten in the great temple; saw her dragged across the floor and shackled to the wall with cuffs of glowing silver. An image of her, screaming in rage and pain, as faceless Bloodborn sliced her body, holding cups to catch the blood, flitted through the mists. The cruel end that Thastias had planned for Nyaxia—to be harvested like a resource, and nothing more. {An abomination,} Zefiah whispered. And I couldn’t disagree. For all that I hated Nyaxia, it was such a torturous fate. A fate no better than the prisoners I had seen locked up for meat or the people the Shadowborn had imprisoned as weapons.

“But that’s impossible,” I said. “No mortal can do that to a god.”

“It would have been very difficult,” Acaeja said. “But not impossible.

King Thastias had a collaborator in the White Pantheon. A god who was giving their own power to make this a reality. The gods could not directly act against each other, especially not in the immediate aftermath of their betrayal of Alarus. Thus, a smarter path to use her own followers against her.”

“Which god?”

“The traitor kept their secret carefully. Even the White Pantheon never

knew.”

“But you do,” I said pointedly.

Her eyes were steady. “I see only what fate does. If you ask me if I have my suspicions, there are many gods who would be interested in killing Nyaxia. Atroxus was enraged by her actions, and he had already attempted to have her killed once. Srana hungered for power and would have been able to create the technology to build the shackles. Shiket saw Nyaxia’s betrayal as a great injustice and the existence of vampires a disgrace. Any of them could have moved to destroy her.

“King Thastias continued his work in secret. He outfitted the very temple that he had once used to help Nyaxia at her weakest to become her cage. He did it all with great discretion. But he was not secretive enough. In a moment of uncertainty, one of his closest advisors told Nyaxia of these plans.”

Silhouettes danced across Acaeja’s wings. Silver chains in a fiery forge.

Workers moving under the quiet light of near dawn. Then, at last, a small figure bowing before Nyaxia, and her rage exploding across the heavens like the collision of stars.

“Nyaxia was furious,” Acaeja said. “Worse, she was hurt. She had genuinely trusted Thastias, and the Bloodborn were her favorite followers.

The depths of this betrayal only made her pain sharper.”

In Acaeja’s wings, I saw the Bloodborn king bleeding against the wall, chained there as he had once planned to do to Nyaxia.

“Nyaxia told Thastias that if he was so desperate for a gift, then she would at last give his people one. They would be given the gift of blood that betrayed them over time, leaching away their sanity, offering them power only at the expense of their own lives. A curse that would kill them slowly, and with no dignity, so that they might experience a fraction of what he had planned to do to her. And only then, after inflicting this curse upon the House of Blood, did she kill him.”

Blood bloomed over Acaeja’s wings, blotting out the shadows of the past, as the wings faded to misty darkness.

“Thus, this is how the Bloodborn curse came to be,” she said. “Many gods are proud of their vengeance. But Nyaxia wiped this incident from history and never spoke of it again.”

“She was ashamed,” I murmured. I didn’t quite mean to speak aloud— but I felt it in my own heart. The shame Nyaxia must have felt at allowing herself to be deceived, and worse, for allowing herself to trust at all.

I thought of Septimus, and wondered if he felt this way, too.

Acaeja blinked, bright eyes bearing into my heart.

“Perhaps,” she said thoughtfully. “But there is another reason. Nyaxia destroyed what she could of the cage intended for her. But she could not eliminate it completely, and she knew that it would always be a danger. So she killed every soul that ever worked on the project, then thrust the rest of Bloodborn society into a curse so cruel and suffering so great that they could focus on nothing but survival for the next two thousand years.”

“Until now,” I said. “When you finally decide to leverage this information.”

I couldn’t quite keep the accusation from my voice.

Acaeja laughed softly. “You are a distrustful soul. But perhaps that makes you an intelligent one. Even I did not see the full tale of this schism as it was happening two millennia ago. But you are correct. I have waited until the right time to share it. Fate is a web. There are many threads that must line up to bring us to where we stand tonight.”

Septimus had said so, too. But even he hadn’t expected the twists this one would take.

“So you are telling me that if I want to kill Nyaxia, I need to use this . . . cage,” I said.

“You will never be able to kill her. Perhaps in another thread of fate, a different soul would have been able to slay her using Shiket’s remains. But that soul is not you, and that thread is not the one we follow tonight.”

My face heated. I felt suddenly exposed, with Acaeja staring into all my failures.

“Fine. I can’t kill her,” I said, “but I can do the next best thing.”

“Imprison her. Strip her of her power. She will be no more than a mortal, and she will never be able to escape.”

“How? Surely Nyaxia didn’t just leave the building standing, even if she couldn’t destroy the cage completely.”

“The temple has been destroyed, but one who can peer between the threads of fate could find where it once stood.” Acaeja showed me an image in her wings—a snow covered, rocky hill, and trees, and an arched door.

“There, you will find the shackles created for her, and the spells carved into

the earth intended to cage her. There is a seer among the Bloodborn vampires. I met her once, some decade ago. That night, I allowed her to keep her connection to the Threads. Remind her of that night and tell her that this is why.”

A shiver darted up my spine. The image of a woman dressed in red ghosted across Acaeja’s wings. I recognized her immediately: Sylina.

I felt a powerful kinship to the flies caught in a spider’s silk. Right now, I was certain that I too was powerless to someone else’s net.

“Your lover, Thastias’s descendent, will be capable of utilizing the chains,” she went on. “Spill even a drop of Nyaxia’s blood, and he will be able to close the cage around her.”

“How are we supposed to do any of this while she’s watching?” I said.

“She’s going to notice if we start poking around.”

“I have my own armies at my disposal. The Houses of Death and Night will move against the House of Shadow. It will create a distraction so significant that Nyaxia will be forced to shift her attention.”

Acaeja blinked at me, her wings now revealing me—me, in Nyaxia’s grip, flying back in an explosion of blue-white light. Gods, was that what I’d looked like? I found myself looking down at my body, amazed that I was in one piece.

“She believes you to be dead,” she said. “No mortal could have survived her rage without intervention. Nevertheless, I grant you temporary protection from her eyes.”

One of Acaeja’s twenty tattooed fingers reached out and touched my forehead, right between my eyebrows. Her touch was firm and shockingly

cold, jolting through my entire body.

“How temporary?” I asked.

She let out a sound that somewhat resembled a chuckle. “Sometimes, it takes thousands of years for fate to move, and sometimes, it takes but a few hours. This is not a time for careful planning and considered movements.” {It truly is a task made for you,} Zefiah said.

I squeezed her hilt hard, a bittersweet swell in my chest. She sounded so far away, and yet, there was such a familiar comfort to her insults. I sank into it.

Acaeja lifted her hand, and light glowed from behind me. I looked over my shoulder to see a door floating in the rubble, open to reveal purple, shimmering mist.

“Passage to the House of Blood,” she said.

My heart went cold.

Only now did it sink in that not only did I have to kill Nyaxia, I would need to go to the House of Blood to do it. Which would mean seeing Septimus again, and somehow explaining all of this to him in a way that would make him believe me.

And this challenge, more than any of the others, more than killing a goddess, seemed insurmountable. Honesty.

I turned back to Acaeja. “Will he listen to me? After . . .”

The words died in my throat.

After I lied to him. After I failed him.

He won’t. The answer seemed certain. He won’t listen. And he shouldn’t, after everything.

“It would be foolish for him to trust you now,” Acaeja said. “But love makes one do foolish things. True of gods and mortals alike.”

My heart twisted at that word. Love.

Was that what Septimus felt for me? What I felt for him? I didn’t even know what it felt like anymore, because I’d spent my entire life fleeing it. I had been so afraid of failing Valentina, so afraid of facing my own shame, that I had run from her. It was all I knew how to do. {You are not running now,} Zefiah murmured.

Acaeja tucked her wings in tight, raising her hands. “Move quickly. He

does not have much time.”

And in my next blink, I was alone.

I stood before the door she had opened for me. The mist gleamed with fragments of light, like little pieces of lightning. I looked down to see that my hands were trembling.

I brought them to my side. Touched Valentina’s weapon, hanging at my belt on one side, and then the fragments of Zefiah on the other. My hand slid into my pocket and pressed to the imprint of Shiket’s face.

I thought of all the lives that had been lost to this clash between mortals and gods. All the needless suffering.

I thought of Septimus’s voice, the first time he had brought me to the House of Blood. The conviction of it when he said, This will end with me.

“It ends with me,” I whispered to myself.

I stepped through the door.