The Lion & the Deathless Dark — Chapter 53

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

ime, despite my best wishes, forged on. Septimus and I dozed briefly in each other’s arms, right there on the floor. Then finally, we rose,T dressed, prepared. Sylina’s knock at the door would come at any time, and we would need to be ready.

I could feel Septimus’s eyes on my bare body as I tucked away all that skin beneath layers of clothing and armor. And I felt them even more acutely as I retrieved what remained of Zefiah, laying her out on the bed in those three jagged pieces so I could stow them—imperfectly—in three short sheaths at my side.

The minute I returned to her, of course, she knew. {Lady’s sake, Kyrene. Do not touch me with those filthy hands.} Her tone was so disgusted that I smiled despite the raspy weakness of her voice.

I’m probably going to die. Don’t deny me a final pleasure . . . or three. {I wish I could say I was surprised. But this is, sadly, the most predictable plot turn. Indeed, perhaps I even wish that you had spared us the drawn-out dramatics.} You don’t really wish that. Think of what you’d have witnessed on the

road.

She considered this. {No,} she conceded. {Likely not.} I laughed softly to myself, swallowing a surge of warmth in my chest. It faded as Septimus approached. His jaw was set, mouth thin and serious, as he looked at what remained of Zefiah, and I knew exactly what he was thinking.

“Blessed sword, blessed dagger,” I said lightly. “What’s the difference?” {Dagger?} Zefiah repeated in disgust, as if I’d just levied a grave insult.

But Septimus was serious. “We are no longer following prophecies, Kyrene. It occurs to me that there’s no reason for you to—”

“Oh, my fancy sword is broken, so I’m useless now. Is that what you’re saying?”

He stopped me before I could turn away. “You know it’s not.”

I swallowed thickly.

I did know.

And honestly, even if it was, he wouldn’t have been wrong for it. I was no chosen one. The only thing that ever had made me useful was now reduced to a few shards of broken steel. I was a human among vampire warriors, preparing to go up against a goddess herself. Wiser minds than mine might have even called me a liability. {Do not be so pathetic,} Zefiah spat, offended by the thought. {If you

deny me Nyaxia’s blood—} Oh, shush. You know me better.

And aloud, I said the same to Septimus. “You know me better than that by now. If you try to deny me my chance to end this, I’ll just sneak up behind you and come along anyway.”

The corner of his mouth curled. “Jump out and attempt to behead Nyaxia at the worst possible time, I’m sure.”

He said it with such sincere affection. A strange sensation fluttered in my chest.

“It would be terrible,” I said. “Your duty as a king is to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“Of course.” His thumb traced the curve of my lip. “Just had to say it.”

I hesitated. My eyes returned to Zefiah. My friend. Perhaps, in some

ways, the greatest love I’d ever had.

I swallowed thickly.

“I have a favor to ask of you,” I said. “I can’t die unless Zefiah kills me.

No matter how broken my body may be.”

I sensed Zefiah stiffen at the mention of this—the edge of her old memories about Ferdinan, begging for death.

I lifted my gaze to meet Septimus’s, as he watched me seriously, steadily.

“I expect,” I said, “that I’ll likely be pretty damned broken by the end of this.”

His face softened. And there was such tender understanding in it that I ached to witness it. A kindness that hurt more than so many harsh words.

“I’ll give you a lion’s end,” he said. His hand folded around mine, tight.

I swallowed a lump in my throat. I squeezed his hand back. “And I’ll give you one befitting a king.”

I would not allow Septimus to become a monster. Would not allow him to live a deathless life devoid of the dignity he so treasured. His curse, I vowed, did not deserve his heart.

No one had ever looked at me quite like he did then. His eyes gleamed.

He began to lean forward, but before our lips touched, a knock rang out at the door.

We startled. I looked down at myself. I was still obviously half dressed.

Septimus looked amusingly disheveled. He waved me off and I ducked behind the doorframe of the bedchamber as he opened the door.

“Ah, Sylina. You’re back,” Septimus’s voice said, in a tone that made my nose scrunch. You’d never guess this was a man who had been dealing in secrets for decades. One good fuck and all that finesse just fell apart,

apparently.

A beat of silence.

“What?” Septimus said.

“I don’t see with my eyes,” Sylina’s voice replied. “You are aware of that, right, Kyrene?”

My face heated. I begrudgingly stepped out from around the corner.

Septimus looked actually bashful. Gods, I wished I could capture that image.

Sylina stepped into the chamber as he closed the door behind her.

“Glad you two were getting some rest,” she said drily. Yet, while I might have expected judgment, or even anger, there was none. Only a note of bittersweet amusement. As if whatever we faced was so serious that she couldn’t fault either of us for seeking a little pleasure in the meantime, even if she disapproved of it.

But that faded quickly. Her face was serious. I could sense her exhaustion radiating from every muscle in her body.

“You’re done?” Septimus said.

“I’m done.” She held up a map, ink marks tracked across it—every line converging in a single spot, just beyond Vaktrana.

The temple.

Zefiah let out a hiss in the back of my mind, as if already preparing for battle.

Septimus took the map and examined it. I watched the final remnants of the vulnerability I’d witnessed over the last two hours fall away. A cool smirk curled the corner of his mouth.

“Well then,” he said. “I suppose the fun begins.”

THE HARSH WIND stung my cheeks, but on the bright side, I was most of the way to losing all feeling in my face. I squinted to see through snow swirling with each blistering gust. Perhaps we were miserably unlucky, or perhaps Nyaxia’s rage had manifested in the heavens, because the blizzard was waiting for us the moment we left the shelter of the city walls. Now, it rendered every step fraught, even the large horses struggling against the wind and the rapidly growing snowbanks.

Sylina took up the front of the group, ahead of Septimus and me.

Behind me was Ilia, and nine Bloodborn soldiers. It had been a careful calculation to decide how many to bring—too few, and we left ourselves exposed; too many, and we risked attracting Nyaxia’s attention. There was also the unsettling fact that any Bloodborn, right now, was a liability. Two were pulled off the mission before we even reached the castle walls because they nearly attacked Sylina and me. Now, I remained constantly alert.

Everyone had seemed to have control of their faculties when we left, but I had witnessed firsthand how quickly that could change.

I touched my hip—where Zefiah’s pieces sat in three short sheaths, and beside her, another weapon hung, too. A stringless crossbow, created by the best machinist I’d ever known.

“How close?” Septimus called to Sylina. A gust of wind whipped his hair back from his forehead. Little flecks of white caught in his eyelashes, making the red of his irises especially stark.

“Very,” she said, and he cast me a knowing glance, as if to say, Ready?

I inclined my chin, even though I wasn’t, really.

The image that Acaeja had shown me so quickly had already partially faded in my memory, the way a dream becomes fuzzy after waking. I didn’t know how I could possibly recognize it with the landscape covered in snow.

But my fears were unfounded, because when we arrived, I just knew.

I blurted out, “Stop!”

Septimus halted, holding up his hand. Sylina turned in her saddle.

Two tall, crooked trees, caked in ice and snow, stood before us. They leaned at sharp angles, twisting around each other to create a black X in the sheet of white. They sat atop a pile of jagged rocks. Ice dripped over the edge of the highest stone, a waterfall frozen in motion.

I recognized this. My entire body reacted to it.

“It’s here,” I said. “This is it.”

We dismounted, because the terrain was impassable for the horses, who instead sought shelter under an overhanging cliff. Sylina went up ahead, climbing to the twisted trees and looking down. When I joined her, I could see that the trees stood just before a deep ravine, stark and steep, a hole gauged into the earth. At its lip stood a stone formation that hadn’t been visible from the road. A formation that almost looked as if, perhaps, it had once been a door.

“Oh yes, this is something,” Sylina muttered to herself, running her hands over the snow-covered structure. Then, to us, “Step back. This will be difficult.”

We dutifully obeyed, and as Sylina’s hands trailed again over the frosty stone, now, bright gold light pooled beneath them. Carvings that had been invisible before now shimmered to life with her touch—thousands of tiny shapes that I did not recognize, but looked to be some sort of language.

“Ancient Obitraen,” Septimus said.

And then, all at once, what we were seeing had simply . . . changed.

The intertwined trees were now two marble beams, fallen across each other, each inscribed with countless circles of old Obitraen. The formations of stone were now crumbling walls. And the shape before Sylina was now a door, standing open, inviting us within.

I blinked hazily, dizzy. I looked down to see that snow had collected on the tops of my boots. Sylina leaned heavily against the door. Snow dusted

her black hair, too, even though I could have sworn her hood was up when she began. How long had we been standing here?

Septimus shook away his own unease and approached the door. It was dark inside, and hazy in a way that reminded me of the fog that clung to the surface of a pond in summertime. It was impossible to see much of what was within. The next sheet of snow was so thick it encased the entire world in white. From behind me, someone shouted, “Get in!” just as a flash of lightning, tinted eerie green lit up the sky.

Septimus ushered us through the door.

In the span of a single step, everything was dark and silent and warm.

Like stepping from one world into another. I couldn’t hold back a whispered curse of amazement.

We had stepped onto a smooth marble floor, perfectly preserved, as if it had been sealed away. But several feet ahead, it was cracked, falling off into nothingness. I peered over the ledge to see a deep pit, rock and earth melded with remnants of the temple—sheets of mosaic floor sticking out like balconies, several levels deep, all fractured and broken. Gold pillars protruded from clifflike walls, as if they had been consumed by nature itself. I looked up to see an ancient statue of Nyaxia, rendered in real silver to mimic the metallic shade of her body, looming over us, crookedly emerging from the edge of an overhang. And above us, was an open tear in the earth, and the swirling blizzard—the blizzard we had just escaped from —beyond.

It was as if someone had destroyed the temple by pulverizing it into the earth itself, and then sealing over whatever was visible from the mortal realm.

And gods, the smell. At my first inhale, my nose wrinkled in disgust, stomach turning. A thick, sweetly putrid scent permeated the air.

“This was quite something, once,” Sylina murmured, blindfolded gaze running over the ruins. I wondered how she saw this place—did the Threads reveal it to her as it had been two thousand years ago? I had no doubt that she was right. After all, it was a special kind of temple that had once literally housed the goddess it honored.

But now, something terrible had seeped into this place. As if the pain of the betrayals that had happened here, and the pain of all the innocent people who suffered for it afterward, had all pooled like infected runoff from a shallow grave.

I drew Zefiah from my belt. Her glow was weak, and her blade a literal fraction of what it had been, but it still felt good to have her in my grasp. I heard feet scuffling behind me, and I glanced over my shoulder to see Ilia taking a step toward me, only to blink and look away when I met her gaze.

“Look down there,” Sylina said. She gestured over the edge of the hole in the floor, down into the deep gouge. My human eyesight, near useless in this much darkness, had to squint for a few long seconds before I could make it out: The ground, perhaps six levels down. The floor was miraculously preserved, as if it had been pushed straight down into the earth by a massive palm. The intricate mosaics were still intact, albeit marked with some brutal cracks, like bloody roots. They depicted a full moon made of mirrored glass, representing Nyaxia. It was framed by a red rim, countless crimson circles spiraling away from it, which appeared to be, from what I could tell, cut directly into the floor. Two different designs superimposed over each other. A great piece of artwork once meant to honor Nyaxia, later leveraged to become a weapon to destroy her.

“The spell to render the shackles,” Sylina said. “We’ll need to get down there.”

“How conveniently placed,” Septimus said wryly. “Can’t we just jump?”

“I’m sure you’ll be very intimidating to Nyaxia as a squashed bug, with your brains smeared across the floor,” I said, and his mouth quirked in a grimace.

I looked around, searching for a way down. There were no stairs in this literal hole, and sadly, we all lacked Nightborn wings. {There are paths along the walls,} Zefiah said. {Imperfect ones, but perhaps passable.} I squinted into the darkness. She was right—there were some doors and halls still standing, pushed up against the wall, narrow paths before the floor fell out to the sheer drop. I cursed inwardly at the sight. We’d have to climb down like mountain goats. Slower than any of us wanted to be when we had so little time.

When I pointed this out to Septimus, he winced, visibly frustrated by the same thought. But he said to the soldiers behind us, “We use what remains of the halls. Quietly. Quickly. And absolutely no magic. We cannot risk attracting Nyaxia’s—”

A mournful wail rang out in the distance, echoing through the ruins.

Septimus stopped mid-sentence. We all turned, weapons drawn.

Silence.

And then, it came again: pained, feral screams, faint, but moving closer.

I looked up, to the swirling snow visible at the mouth of the pit. The outside world, simultaneously so close and yet an entire realm away from us.

I knew those sounds. I’d ground them into my bones.

“Soulless,” I whispered. “Those are soulless.”

“They’re far away,” Sylina said. “Out there, not in the temple.”

But her voice was grave. This was no comfort. Because soulless meant Shadowborn. It meant that Nyaxia had sent her loyal children to go corral her disloyal ones.

And if she had done that, then that meant perhaps she wasn’t all that distracted by Acaeja’s attacks, after all.

“Could those things follow us in here?” one of the soldiers said, looking at the open door, and the flecks of sky visible through the open, broken ceiling. The question was heavy. Could someone else leverage the passage Sylina had opened?

We all looked at Sylina, who was silent. Even she didn’t know.

Another wave of screams rang out. A muscle feathered in Septimus’s jaw, and then he turned back to the ruins.

“It won’t matter,” he said. “We’ll finish this before they have time to catch us. Go.”

I FELT death coating my hair, my skin. The air was thick and increasingly hot. Our steps were quick and frantic and clumsy over broken stone and cracked stairs and slabs of destroyed tile. Soon, we were leaving a trail of discarded hoods and cloaks. Behind us, the soulless screamed, and screamed, and screamed.

Faster, we urged ourselves. Move faster.

It was impossible to tell how close the soulless were. We couldn’t even tell whether they’d breached the opening of the temple. The pit bent reality in a way that made little sense; sometimes they sounded as if they were right behind us, and other times, like they were miles away.

We descended into what felt like a living nightmare. As we moved deeper, dark vines crawled over the ceiling, the walls, weaving through the cracks between mosaic shards and winding around marble columns.

Moisture dripped somewhere in the darkness.

This place felt bad. There was no other way to describe it. A deep rot of wrongness in every way, from the way it looked to the way it smelled to the animal way my body reacted to it, like a fox being coaxed into a trap. The hallways that remained still held remnants of the temple’s former greatness —detailed gold craftsmanship wedged into the cliff face, beautiful doorways etched with intricate prayers. Mosaics depicting Nyaxia’s rise to power still adorned the walls, warped by the bulges of stone buckling beneath them. Nyaxia, standing in a poppy field with Alarus, whose face had been lost to a giant crack; Nyaxia, desperately running to his rescue; Nyaxia, chained up by the White Pantheon, a growth from the rock bursting from her chest, giving the eerie impression of a stake through her heart. She glared at us, haughty, hateful, as we rushed by.

Never fast enough.

Somewhere after the second level, a whine rang out in the darkness.

Immediately, we froze. The sound was unmistakably here, in the temple, unlike the cries of the soulless above. Septimus’s chin snapped up as he stared into the ruins. Sweat glistened on his cheekbones, plastering his hair to his temple. He held up a fist in a silent command.

Another sound, this one a low whimper. A groaning exhale.

Much closer. Right on top of us.

I whirled around to see Ilia leaning over, her hands on her knees. She gritted out something between her teeth, something I couldn’t understand.

“Ilia,” Septimus said, the concern palpable in his voice.

Her head snapped up. But it was not to Septimus that she looked. Her eyes instead tracked to me. And I saw that they were now entirely red, the blood consuming her irises, her pupils, and all white.

She made the sound again, and I understood it now: “Stop me.”

And then her palm shot up, blood springing from it, and she lunged for me.

Ilia was only a few feet away. She moved so swiftly that before I could react, I was slamming against a broken column. Her face was inches from mine, teeth snarling and bared. Something hurt, but I wasn’t sure where, or from what. My muscles shook with the effort of fighting against her magic, which called to my blood itself. Delicate tendrils of red-black rose behind her, sliding from every wound on her body, from her mouth, from the tear ducts of her eyes.

Septimus lurched forward, his hands raised, blood surging, rules discarded. But I was the one who got her, driving Zefiah into her heart.

Black spattered over me as her magic collapsed. She let out a strangled cry as Septimus yanked her off me and drove his blade through her chest again, for good measure.

A pained lucidity crashed back over her face, for just a moment, before he pulled his sword free. She slumped to the ground.

Silence, as it all slowly dawned on us what had just happened.

The soulless wails echoed. Closer now, certainly.

Shit.

Shit.

Ilia had used magic. Septimus had, too. Would it be enough to catch Nyaxia’s attention? {It could be,} Zefiah said. {Even if she is distracted, we will never be far from her mind.} My knuckles were white around her hilt. Blessed sword or no, she suddenly felt woefully inadequate against a goddess.

But then another low whine came from the darkness, a slithering echo that bounced from the walls.

We whirled around. No one spoke, but no one had to. We were all thinking the same thing: We had thought the sound we’d heard minutes ago had come from Ilia.

But Ilia’s corpse was now at our feet. So what the hell was— “Kyrene!” Sylina gasped.

Septimus’s face snapped toward me. I glimpsed a split second of horror.

Zefiah let out a sudden flare of warning. {You are bleeding!} My neck. Where Ilia had broken skin. Fuck.

I clapped my hand to my throat, just as something wet moved behind

me.

I whirled around, Zefiah raised.

The vines on the walls slithered through the cracks like snakes. So many of them that it looked as if the entire wall was alive, moving, reaching for

me.

And then I realized: The vines were not vines at all.

They were blood. Blood so old, so vampiric, it was now black as ink.

Blood wielded by some—some creatures so powerful, so inhuman, that they were barely alive at all. At first, I thought that they had to be cursed Bloodborn. But this looked so different than what I’d seen of them before, devoid of any humanoid form at all, and so many more. A morass of movement slinked from every corner. Stalked from the hallway. Slid down from the broken floor above. Reached up from the staircase below. Twisted limbs and tentacles of dripping black blood. So many I couldn’t count them.

And with a guttural scream, they were charging straight for me.