There’s a caw from the window, and an enormous raven lands on the sill. Fuck. That’s the bird Catarina sent to warn Malek that Brahm was a traitor, that he was poisoning everyone in the castle.
“This is the day my father was killed,” Damien says. “Maybe I’m supposed to stop it.” He approaches the bed and shakes his father gently by the shoulder. “Father? It’s Damien. We have to get you out of here.”
“I don’t think you’re supposed to save him, Damien. In every other challenge we’ve faced like this, we haven’t been able to change what happens, only our response to it.” My voice cracks with sadness at the pain in Damien’s eyes.
The king wakes, but no pupils or irises look back at us. His eyes are entirely white. Damien takes a full step backward, his hands shaking. I don’t blame him. The thing in the bed is a wraith in the same way my grandmother was played by a harpy. It may resemble Malek, but that isn’t the father Damien knows.
As we bear witness, shadows spill into the room and form into Brahm. Damien draws his sword and swings, but the blade bounces off his brother like it bounced off the window in the parlor. Brahm approaches the bed.
“You should have named me your successor the moment you knew Damien was gone,” Brahm says to Malek. “None of this would have been necessary if you would have simply treated me the way you did him. But naming Karyl in my place? That is unforgivable. That will not happen.”
Damien turns to look at me. “He named Karyl as his successor?”
“Neither your mom nor your sister mentioned anything about that. I’m not sure it’s true.”
Brahm slithers forward like a snake and slices the king’s throat. The blood begins to spill, and then everything freezes, everything but the clock on the wall whose moon is about to rise.
“We’re running out of time, Damien. What do you think this trial wants from us?” I ask.
But Damien is staring at his father, pale and mute. I rub his back. “It’s true,” he says softly.
“What’s true?” We knew Brahm killed his father. His mother wouldn’t have made something like that up.
“When Karyl came to talk to me on the mountain, when she was trying to convince me to let you walk the road, she said that no one could rule in my place. She said if I gave up the throne to Brahm, our family line would never sit on it again. And when I asked her, what about her? What about Mother? She said, ‘Sometimes no matter how much the river longs to flow, it can’t do so without the rain.’ I didn’t know what she meant at the time, but I do now. She was my father’s named successor in my absence, but she didn’t have enough support to reclaim Stygarde from Brahm. She isn’t a warrior. She couldn’t fight or lead the umbrae. She couldn’t stand up to Brahm and Nevina, even with the queen’s help.”
The king’s head pivots on his bloody neck, those solid white eyes falling on Damien and me by his side. The corpse’s gray lips slowly enunciate. “It…must…be…you.”
“It will be me,” Damien promises. “I’ll make Brahm pay for what he’s done to you.”
I look over my shoulder at where the door should be, but it’s still gone, still missing.
“There’s something else. Something else we’re supposed to do.” I look at the clock, at the raven in the window, at the likeness of Brahm, still frozen with a dagger in his hand. The castle shakes, and I hear stone cracking. “We’re almost out of time, and I’m afraid when the buzzer sounds, this castle is coming apart.”
“I don’t know what else to try,” Damien says. In a desperate move, he rushes the window, but he can’t penetrate the force that holds us in, the same as Harcourt Manor.
With Damien on the other side of the room, I notice that the king is still staring at me. “It…must…be…you…” he rasps again.
I stare at King Malek as the castle shakes around us again. “I promise you. I will give my life if I have to. I will put Damien on the throne.”
Damien whirls to face me. “Why did you—” His eyes catch on the wall behind me. The door is open. We both run for the stairs, the castle crumbling around us. Pieces of the floor fall away. I leap over a massive hole and race for the exit. The walls implode around us, chunks of stone crashing and shattering, sharp pieces cutting into my ankles and shins. We barely dodge the deadly strikes. Damien breaks apart into his shadow form and sweeps me over the dead bodies and out the rear exit of the castle. Our feet hit the black bricks of the shadowpath but we continue to run, only slowing when we are at a safe distance.
“We made it,” I say breathlessly. Damien takes my hand in his. Behind us, what remains of the castle collapses in on itself, spires diving into the imploding center. The entire thing heaves and groans, stone cracking. It drops out of the sky and disappears in a shower of sparks and fire that lick the heavens. In seconds, it’s all gone, vanished within the cavernous depths.
“Eloise—” The way Damien says my name, I know there is something else, something grave. I turn around to see a set of sandaled feet the size of my entire body. I tip my head back to see a knee and then the edge of leather armor. More, and I see a woman’s chest, and finally, I take in the looming presence of a giant of a goddess who sits on a throne before us, her three monstrous dogs flanking her, curled near her feet. Her bow and quiver wait within her reach.
Behind her, two doors the height of skyscrapers rise into the starry night.
The goddess looks at us with her radiant gaze, white and blinding. A nuclear gaze. A laser-beam gaze. I can feel it pass through me like an X-ray of my soul. I drop to my knees next to Damien, who has already dropped to his, bow my head, and pray.
44
What We Came For
DAMIEN
“The warrior lovers,” Thanesia booms.
The volume of her voice is enough to hurt my ears, but it’s the way my bones rattle that scares me. If she sang the right note, I’m sure she could shatter them like glass. That voice is a reminder that I am an insect in her world, easily smashed under her sandal. Her presence is far bigger and more powerful than I ever expected.
