She didn’t look like a monster anymore. Her face wasn’t lost in shadow. Her mouth didn’t twist in anger. But the dark streaks across hercheeks were sharper now, etched deeper than I remembered. She blinked, and fresh onyx tears slipped down her face.
I remembered her sorrow from before, so hollow it nearly destroyed me.
But these tears were different.
They didn’t carry grief. They carried power. There was strength in them now. Fury. Wrath. She was steady, grounded, and stronger for all she had faced. I couldn’t look away. This was who I had always been meant to become. She was the truth I’d been circling my entire life. The last time I’d seen her, she had slipped from my reach, lost to the other side of the reflection, always close, never mine.
Not this time. This time, I didn’t let go.
She was me. And I was her. At last, we were whole.
40
Odessa,demigoddess of wrath.
When I finally opened my eyes, I was back in the Ossarith, standing before Raithe’s ossiraen. His tree towered above the others, a wooden behemoth in a sea of god-trees.
But I wasn’t focused on that. My attention was on the small bundle in my hands. Resting in my palms was a seed, no bigger than a silver coin. Oval, with a pointed tip, it caught the light in a deep, crimson red. My seedling. My ossiraen. Pride rose in my chest, and with it, a quiet joy. The darkness inside me no longer felt like something other, something to fear or fight. It wasn’t a force pushing back. It was part of me now, woven through every piece of who I was. Not a curse. Not a flaw. My divinity.
“Odessa,” Raithe’s voice reached me in a low whisper.
I didn’t turn to face him, though I felt his presence behind me. I didn’t know what to feel when it came to him. The Ossirae’s test had revealed every moment my divinity had surfaced, every time Wrath had taken hold. I saw it all clearly now. My memories were no longer clouded or broken apart. I remembered what I’d done, the lives I’dtaken, the harm I’d caused, the men I’d left maimed or dead. But there was no shame. No regret that clung to me.
I was a demigoddess of Wrath. What I did wasn’t monstrous, it was divine. I hadn’t committed those acts out of mindless rage, but through the raw, unbridled essence of who I am. There was a strange irony in being a god born of emotion and yet feeling nothing like I once did as a mortal. There was no nuance, no shades or gradients to my divinity. There was Wrath, or there was nothing. And when it rose, it consumed everything else. I didn’t feel remorse. I felt clarity. Purpose.
I remembered calling on it the night I nearly killed my father. I was only trying to protect my mother, to stop the pain he dealt so recklessly. I would have let him die if I had the power to, but I was young then, still unformed. Raithe’s Vengeance was just as new, just as unruly.
In Rustwood Mill, that changed. Wrath surged through me, and I welcomed it. I didn’t hold back. I killed a dozen men. Fathers, sons, brothers. They died under the weight of my fury, and not one of them deserved to live after what they’d done. Their deaths were not quick, and they were not clean. They were laced with savagery, with blood and consequence, with the judgment Wrath demands. And I did not mourn a single one.
When the Ossirae showed me what I did in Falhurst, I couldn’t look away. I watched the carnage unfold. Heard the screams, saw the skies flood with ravens like a baleful shadow. My Wrath had become a storm. I was stunned by it, overwhelmed by the depth of what I was capable of. And I wanted more. I needed to know just how far that power could reach.
I’d spent so long resisting this part of myself, fearing what it meant. But that fear was gone. Wrath was not my burden, it was my birthright. Now, I had nothing ahead of me but time. I vowed to carry both until the world gave out beneath my feet.
“Odessa,” Raithe repeated, now just a breath behind me.
Still, I didn’t turn. All that mattered was my ossiraen. My lifeforce,my god-tree. I scanned the Ossarith, searching for the place where I would root my soul for eternity. Open fields stretched before me, some already dotted with ossiraen, including Raithe’s, still forming, still stretching outward. But then my eyes found the crest of a hill, bathed in sunlight. Few trees had taken root there, and I hoped it would remain untouched for at least a few more decades.
I began to walk, Raithe trailing behind in silence. After fifty paces, I paused and looked down at the soil, fresh and untouched, ready to be shaped. I knelt, setting the seedling beside me. With bare hands, I began to dig. Handful after handful, dirt clung beneath my nails and coated my skin. Still, I kept digging.
Raithe stood nearby, saying nothing. He knew this moment was mine. It was something sacred, something I had to do alone.
I dug until the earth turned soft and rich, full of strength and life. Then I reached for my crimson seedling. I cradled the pod as if it were the most precious thing in existence. Sunlight danced across its surface in colors of red, claret, and crimson. It was beautiful. I lowered it into the soil, deep enough to root, shallow enough to feel the sun’s warmth. Carefully, I replaced the earth, covering the jewel I’d just planted. When the ground was whole again, I rose and brushed the dirt from my hands.
Raithe drew in a sharp breath beside me, and then I saw it too. The soil where I’d planted the seedling began to glow, a silver light rising from the ground. The air shimmered with magic. Wisps of light curled upward, first gently, then with rising force. The coils of silver threads wove together, twisting and braiding into the shape of a sapling.
But this was no ordinary sapling. Its form was delicate, its bark glimmering like scarlet ribbons in the light. My ossiraen stood no taller than my knee, yet it rose proudly. It bore no leaves, no sign of age, but I felt an overwhelming sense of self-identity rise within me.
All my life, I had waited for this. For a sign that there was purpose in my existence, a meaning beyond the outskirts where I’d been born. I had always felt misplaced, a girl adrift in a world too vast and unkind. A girlshattered, taken, and used. And in time, a girl who clawed her way to freedom.
Tears slipped down my cheeks, dark, thick, and black. They spilled raw and free. I wished there were words to contain what I felt. It was joy and grief and a bone-deep sense of completeness. I had lived only a wisp of my immortality, yet it had already been steeped in pain.
Apathy had become my default. I believed the humanity in me was gone, burned away by everything I had endured. I had moved through the world with fury and sorrow as my companions, believing myself to be something wicked. Something monstrous.
But that wasn’t the truth.
Now, I understood. The rage I clung to, I had wielded it like a weapon, directing it toward what I thought I loved, what I thought needed protecting. But it was always leading me here. To this moment. To be acknowledged.
My shoulders shook with silent sobs, but Raithe came to me. Gently, he turned me to face him, his golden eyes alight with emotion. Pride, concern, and adoration.
