The Lion & the Deathless Dark — Chapter 55

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

irst, the pain.

And then the thought:F That was a huge mistake. I broke myself. {Only partially,} Zefiah said. {And I expect profuse thanks for that. But later, because you must get up, Kyrene. You must get up right now.} My eyes opened.

Something hard wedged against my lower back. My left arm—thank the gods it was my left—hurt fiercely. My right ankle was twisted in what seemed like not at all the right direction, and I prayed Zefiah had enough power left to help me use it again.

I could no longer see the sky. The opening in the earth was a tiny little white speck above, largely obscured by fallen beams and jagged slabs of broken stone. I felt like I was miles under the surface of the earth, much farther than the ground had seemed from above. I couldn’t even hear the shouts of our group or the soulless’s screams unless I strained for it, and even then, they sounded a world away.

I forced myself to sit up, though my head spun. I kept seeing movement out of the corner of my eye. But in the darkness, I couldn’t see Thastias.

Not Septimus, either. My heart twisted with worry.

“Septimus?” I called out.

“I thought I already witnessed you die.”

The voice made my heart stop. I thought I must be hallucinating. I prayed I was hallucinating.

But then again, what good had praying ever done me?

Nyaxia’s voice came again, venomously amused. “Mortals. Stubborn like cockroaches. Your bones and flesh are so fragile, and yet, you can be so deceptively difficult to kill.”

I forced myself to my feet, swaying. The floor tilted sharply beneath me. Shapes and movements in the darkness smeared together. There was so little light down here, and my eyes were so frustratingly human. My heart beat faster, faster, without my permission. I thrust Zefiah out in front of me.

Her divine light provided a little illumination, casting gold over the rubble.

It reflected off the mirrored mosaic moon on the ground, sending little flecks of light bouncing over the ruins like taunting, ghostly fireflies.

I could see now that the carvings on the floor were intricate, far more detailed than we could see from above. And yet, for all their painstaking detail, they also struck me as viscerally ugly. Like the scar tissue left behind after a drawn-out torture. Like the bones pulverized into dirt after Vostis. {Many suffered for this indeed,} Zefiah whispered. And right then, I saw it. Sorcerers bleeding over this floor. Humans tethered to the walls to be used as food and energy sources. Vampires, too, dismembered and buried

beneath the stone.

I let out a shuddering breath.

“Does it disgust you, Vindica Ultis?” Nyaxia’s voice slithered through the shadows. I spun around, looking for her. Nothing but darkness. “Pain begets pain. Look at how many souls he tortured, all just for the chance of torturing me.”

I lifted Zefiah, her light dancing over the walls. The carvings continued up them, too—tightening into smaller patterns, great swoops running up the wall, crafted of interlinked circles. Chillingly reminiscent of chains.

My stomach turned. I had expected to come to this place and find some great immortal magic. Something so ancient and powerful that it was wholly alien.

But the mundanity of the truth was so much more horrifying.

This place was nothing but a fancy cage. Its makers could dress it up as much as they wanted with divine magic and mosaics and scriptures; they could hide it behind gold and marble. But it was every bit as ugly as a rusty cage in a cannibal’s basement. A cycle that went on and on and on. In this world, you were either the one with the open throat or the one with the full stomach. But all those full stomachs once had teeth at their throat, too.

“Septimus!” I called again.

Septimus-mus-mus . . .

My voice echoed. Nyaxia’s laugh dripped down the walls.

And with that sound came another one. A low, agonized hiss, like water rising to steam.

I whirled around, Zefiah raised, unwelcome fear spiking.

Thastias crawled down the ruins, those glowing red eyes fixed directly upon me. He descended like nightfall, inevitable and inescapable. He scaled the broken walls with spiderlike grace, limbs moving independently the way only a being with no functional skeleton could. And his blood—his blood was everywhere. Slithering down from the ceiling and up from the floor. Countless fingers reached for me, infested into every corner of this wretched place, like a fungus.

And I couldn’t even deny it to myself anymore. I was so terrified.

This was the monster, I was certain, in every child’s mind when they awoke from their nightmares. It seemed like such an inevitability that I would end up here, facing this thing. Like this was always the darkness that I was catching out of the corner of my eye my entire life, only now revealing itself.

“You are such an arrogant fool,” Nyaxia’s voice hissed. “Death would have been such a mercy. There are so many worse fates. Which of my cousins intervened to save you? Which of them sent you here? It does not matter. I will leave your soul here forever as a reminder to them.”

I stepped backward, moving Zefiah over the walls, desperately attempting to take in our surroundings while also keeping one eye firmly fixed on Thastias, who continued his slow prowl down to me. Something wet trickled down the back of my neck, and I prayed it was sweat, but it was almost certainly blood.

Where are you, Septimus? Godlight flickered over fallen statues and cracked mosaics and enraged painted faces peering through broken marble.

But the light was only more disorienting, with each reflection off the mirrored glass floor making every shadow leap.

Do you sense him? I asked Zefiah. Septimus? {I cannot. There are too many sensations.} She sounded as if this was painful for her to admit. Perhaps Zefiah, too, was having a hard time adjusting to her diminished abilities.

I shrank into the darkness, wedging myself beneath the crumbling plaster and stone, moving swiftly from shadow to shadow. But even I knew

that this was a shit strategy. I couldn’t exactly hide in the darkness from a creature who had been trapped in it for two thousand years.

Thastias let out a low growl. With a graceful leap, he lowered himself to the ledge above me. His eyes were two glowing circles, throbbing slightly, like a heartbeat.

“A fitting punishment for him,” Nyaxia’s voice echoed. “Do you know what he intended to do to me here? Cage me for his own purposes. Carve away pieces of me for power or keepsakes. Rape me, so that I might bear him demigod heirs. Spare me your disgust, false savior. I swore once that the next time someone attempted to do such things to me, I would punish them for it. And even now, I believe his punishment has been too light.”

I looked at this twisted beast before me, this thing that had been suffering for two thousand years, and I thought: I agree.

But I wasn’t here to debate who was supposed to suffer the most. We were all fucking monsters.

I held my breath, shrinking backward until my back touched the wall.

His eyes slowly scanned the ruin, and—

Drip.

I looked down.

A single drop of red—my blood—splashed to the floor.

Shit.

I braced myself.

You think you can stab that thing to death, Zef? I asked.

Pointed silence. I wished she could lie. It might have been nice to have a little reassurance in my final breaths.

Thastias’s red eyes snapped to me. He coiled. I let out a roar through my teeth and drove from my hiding place, Zefiah drawn, my gaze fixed to his chest. It was only a mess of blood and a few glimpses of white bone, but there had to be—had to be—a heart in there somewhere.

A wave of black-red crashed over me.

Our clash was brutal and breathless and frantic. There was no strategy to this. Whatever pieces of one I might have started with disintegrated as those tendrils of blood wrapped around me, and the terror, icy and paralyzing, plunged through my veins. I felt Thastias’s exhaustion, and his pain, and gods, his hunger—fervid, desperate. My own blood burned inside me. Everything hurt, so I could not tell whether he struck me, or where.

I plunged Zefiah into something. Some flesh—something soft and hard

at once.

A blast of godlight shook me.

Thastias let out a feral shriek. Pain tore through me.

My back hit the ground. I rolled, recovering, only to learn the hard way that my left arm was nearly useless.

I lifted Zefiah to see a tangled mass of red-black and silver bouncing from wall to wall—a cataclysm of blood and snarls and shrieks. Not one figure, I realized, but two. They were moving so fast, obscured by the darkness, that it took me a moment to recognize him: Septimus.

His sword was out, but he was barely using it. Ropes of black-red instead surged from his every strike. They were tangled together in a writhing mass of it—and it would have been beautiful, in a morbid sort of way, if it hadn’t also been so terrifying. It was so fluid, so graceful, like ribbons dancing in gusts of an ocean wind. Only with the two of them together could I see how starkly different Septimus’s blood was from that of his ancestor. Isolated, a vampire’s blood looked to be nearly black. But in comparison to Thastias’s, which was deep as ink, Septimus’s held countless ruby shades that glinted beneath Zefiah’s light. If I looked hard enough, I could glimpse silver light, too, beneath the fabric of his shirt—the magic he’d hoarded, welded into his body, no doubt the only reason why he’d even made it this far.

He was remarkable. And yet, as I watched them careen from one wall to another, a terrifying certainty clicked into place: He wouldn’t win.

Not by strength alone. Not even enhanced as he was.

The distant echo of Nyaxia’s amused laugh hummed in the walls, as if she knew this, too.

I looked down at myself, frantic. Then at Septimus. His body now slammed against the wall. Thastias hurled him like he was a rag doll. After all, a mortal body was a weakness, and Thastias barely had one at all.

Think, Kyrene.

I looked down at Zefiah in my hand. Stabbing Thastias had hurt him, temporarily. But the moment the blessed blade had left his flesh, it was like

nothing had ever— An idea hit me.

A mortal body is a weakness.

I sheathed Zefiah, careful to leave her easily accessible, and then reached into my second sheath and drew another shard of her blade. This one was perhaps as long as my forearm, with jagged broken steel on both ends. I flexed my left arm and winced at the shock of pain. Zefiah’s healing was slow and weak, leaving me only barely able to use the arm.

But I didn’t need it for much, anyway.

Septimus landed a strike to Thastias’s face that seemed to barely do anything at all and paid for it with a vicious slice across his chest. {What are you doing with that?} Zefiah said uneasily as I gripped her shard.

Do you really want to know? You’re not going to like it.

I let out a sharp whistle and drew Zefiah’s broken blade over my forearm, opening a fresh river of blood.

Both Thastias and Septimus froze, faces snapping toward me—pulled by the scent of fresh human blood. Thastias’s hanging jaw slipped a little farther down as his teeth grew—actually grew—another few inches.

But I swallowed my fear and looked past him, at Septimus. Blood smeared his face. His eyes were bright red, reflective in the darkness. I prayed he would know what to do.

Dripdrip, as more of my blood hit the floor.

Thastias’s nostrils flared. He surged for me, and it took every single shred of recklessness that Zefiah had ever accused me of to hold my ground —not only hold my ground, but run forward.

And Septimus, bless him, understood what I needed him to do. Thastias lurched to a stop, as if he ran into a glass wall, and I knew that if I’d looked up, I would see Septimus behind him, ropes of blood clawing back his ancestor, trying to buy me just a few seconds of time. Just one opening.

It wasn’t a lot, but it was enough.

I rammed Zefiah’s shard into his exposed chest as hard as I could, right over his heart.

A burst of godlight exploded between us. Thastias let out an enraged wail and broke free from Septimus’s grip. I rolled out of the way just in time to avoid his claws, though they grazed my arm, opening another fresh wound.

I pushed myself up to see Thastias lurching erratically from one wall to the other in fits and starts. Godlight burned at his chest, the broken piece of

Zefiah’s blade wedged into his flesh, illuminating him from the inside out.

It wasn’t enough to kill him. Not yet. But it was a splinter of divine light that he couldn’t escape. A shard that would just keep driving deeper.

A darkness encroached at the corner of my eye as I grabbed Zefiah’s hilt and drew her. Septimus was beside me, a cloud of black-red surrounding him. Beads of blood streaked his face. He didn’t turn, didn’t look at me. But his hand slid up my back, squeezing my shoulder. A reminder that we started this together, and we would finish it together, too. With Thastias, and with Nyaxia.

Thastias collected himself, limbs reaching, contracting, reaching, contracting. He growled as he turned to face us. Zefiah’s shard burned, illuminating the stark white of what remained of his rib cage in sparks of gold. His blood popped and burst like water under the pelt of hail. {Get—me—out—of—him!} Zefiah ground out.

You’re going deeper first, I’m afraid, I told her.

Dripdrip, as more of my blood hit the floor.

Enraged, Thastias let out a wail and charged at us.

Septimus and I, perfectly aligned, were ready for him.

I looked into the mouth of that monster and I ran at him head on, Zefiah’s jagged tip aimed straight at that shard of her. Septimus was beside me, blood flying out behind us like terrible, majestic wings—as if sheltering me.

With a roar of exertion, I made my shot.

I aimed right at that shard of light, jamming the piece of Zefiah deeper into Thastias’s chest—deep enough, I prayed, to hit whatever remained of his heart.

His scream shook the bones of the temple. Zefiah was ripped from my hands. He grabbed me by my broken arm, twisted. CRACK. Pain tore

through me.

I was flying— And then I slammed against something hard, sliding down. Everything went numb and blurry. Consciousness flickered. {Stay!} Zefiah demanded, suddenly reinvigorated—suddenly hungry. {Stay awake, Kyrene. He is almost finished.} Oh, I wasn’t going anywhere.

I dragged myself forward, fingernails biting into the mosaic floor. With great effort, I lifted my head, blinking hard, trying to clear my vision with

limited success.

Septimus and Thastias were locked together, the divine light burning within Thastias’s chest. He was screaming, snarling, flailing, all while Septimus held him, more and more tendrils of black-red reaching for him.

And Septimus—he looked every bit a god himself. His face was stone still, and yet, every muscle radiated seething fury.

He dragged Thastias close, hand rising to his ancestor’s face in a spiteful caress. He brought his mouth close to his ear. And he snarled, “I hope you never rest in the underworld.”

All at once, all those countless vines of blood surged, driving Zefiah’s shards straight into Thastias’s heart.

A scream of two thousand years of rage shook the world. Hot blood rained over my face. I plunged into a burst of bright light, then inky darkness. Zefiah let out a scream and then went suddenly silent. A terrible feeling fell over me, something that went beyond logical thought, like the instinct that sent birds fleeing when a hurricane is near.

Thastias’s corpse splattered the floor. And splattered, really, was the only term for it. His body was more liquid than solid, pieces of fragmented bones and rotten muscle held together solely by the magic that had consumed him for two thousand years. Without it, there was little left.

Septimus was on his knees in the middle of it. His head sagged. The puddle of blood around him rose like flowers blooming in wet soil, slow and elegant, curling around him in an embrace. His hair hung in front of his eyes. His clothing was shredded, especially his shirt, which looked to have been victim of Thastias’s final strike.

That terrible dread rose and rose and rose, clutching my throat, even though I couldn’t identify why.

“Septimus.” I crawled closer to him. Up close, I could see glimpses of his flesh beneath his tattered shirt. The metallic white of the tiny shards of divinity he had embedded into himself, the swirling arcs of silver glowing

slightly in the darkness.

And . . . red, too. Bright red.

An Heir Mark.

It adorned his right shoulder, vine-like twists of red moving over his pectoral and then down over his bicep, reaching his elbow. Even beneath the blood and the remaining fabric, I could see that it was remarkable. More

complexity than any mortal hands could create with ink—every swirl of color constructed in hundreds of tiny, sharp lines. Beauty masking brutality.

I glanced at Thastias’s remains and realized why the House of Blood did not have Heir Marks. Because all this time, their original heir had been alive, trapped in a cage of his own making.

But if Septimus noticed the Mark, he did not react to it at all. His shoulders rose and fell heavily. His fingernails scratched against the floor, as if trying to get a grip that eternally slipped away.

“Septimus,” I said again, more urgently.

He did not respond. Didn’t even seem to hear me.

But someone else did, instead. A cool, ethereal voice floating from the darkness. So much closer than before.

“Such a tragedy. Another doomed love story.”

I lifted my gaze.

Nyaxia hovered above us.

“Seems there are so many lately,” she cooed, and gave me a devastating smile.