The voice granted Aristea a new vision. A realm under Aristea’s command, no man in her shadow. Just her and the power she carved out for herself. She didn’t need Jonathan or Duke Mattison.
“Goodbye, Jonathan.” She strode away, not waiting for his reply.
33
Liane curled inward and brought her knees up to her chest. It wasn’t enough; she wanted to collapse in on herself. Lying on her bed, she stared out her window at the waning moon, a mere sliver of light against the inky-black sky. Seeing the changing phases of the moon made her feel closer to Erich. A part of her was still in denial. She kept waiting for Luzie to come barging in with a smile and a bit of gossip. Or Ludwig to be standing silently in the corner. She wished she’d told Erich how she really felt and hadn’t let their argument tinge her memories of him.
She felt empty, hollowed out like an old dried-up husk.
No matter what she wished, she couldn’t change anything. The Midnight Guard had brought her back, hollow and sunken eyed, to the temple. She’d been locked in her room and there she’d remained, lying in her bed in a strange, suspended state, awake but not fully alive for days on end. They’d taken the Golden Blade away, but she couldn’t find it in her to care.
Fighting was useless. Her friends had fought and died to protect her, and for what? Luzie would be alive if she hadn’t followed Liane to Basilia. Ludwig would be safe, had he not given that vow to Elias. The oracle had foreseen her own death and embraced it, but that didn’t absolve Liane of guilt. Fritz, they’d likely caught and killed him, and Erich... The thought of his body lying there with all those arrows piercing him made a lump rise in her throat. She wanted to scream, to retch, anything, but her body was too weak to move. She’d never felt more helpless in her entire life.
She thought the goddess had a destiny planned for her. But what was there left to save when everyone she cared about had been taken from her?
Priestesses brought her trays of food at regular intervals, but she’d refused to touch them. It would have been better if they’d let her die.
But they wouldn’t even give her that. The priestesses had begged, wheedled, and then threatened her, trying to get her to eat or drink. But she’d merely rolled over to look out her window.
Then the Avatheos came.
She felt his power as it rolled into the room, like a slime sliding over her skin, as he pulled up a chair next to her bed.
“Liane, look at me,” he said.
There was a command in his voice, one that turned her head despite her resistance. And she was shocked to see he’d pulled back his hood to reveal his face to her. She’d wondered more times than she could count what he looked like beneath his hood, and she was disappointed to see he was average. No villainous dark eyebrows or twisted malevolent features. He was just a man.
“I am coming to you not as the Avatheos, but as a citizen of this continent begging you to not give up.”
She rolled away from him to face the wall. She didn’t care what he wanted. He’d orchestrated it all, executed her friends, and wanted her as a tool for his own grasp at power.
But he kept on anyway. “I should have been honest with you from the start. I should have better explained what was at stake. Maybe then you wouldn’t have made the choices you did.”
“You mean I should have allowed you to seal my power, to take control of all magic?”
“I was trying to subvert the prophecy I saw. Sealing magic would have kept the darkness locked away. But now it is spilling out, and by the fall equinox, it will have taken control of your sister. Unless you work with me to stop it.”
Perfect, beautiful Aristea. It was impossible to imagine her being swayed by dark magic. But the oracle had warned her of the same prophecy. Could it be true, and would she be destined to slay her own sister? That seemed an even crueler twist of fate. She laughed bitterly.
“This isn’t a jest, Liane. This is real. I saw the face of the dark vessel clearly for the first time in a vision last night. I thought it was your mother, but now I see the true vision. You have unsheathed the Golden Blade, freeing the Nameless to consume Aristea and use her to wield the Dark Blade and raise an army of the undead to bring an end to all life on earth.” His voice had a distant hollow sound, as if it weren’t him speaking at all but something speaking through him. It sent a chill down her spine to hear it.
Liane didn’t want this power or this terrible choice. Doom the continent or kill her sister? Why would the goddess do this to her? Hadn’t she lost enough?
“You cannot make me kill her,” Liane said, her throat raw and aching.
“It is not I who thrusts this decision upon you, but Cyra who chose you.”
“You cannot sway me with your rhetoric. I’m not your puppet,” she said, sitting up to face him.
“Then seal your power. The equinox is days away. It is not too late to bind your power to the church and subvert the prophecy.”
There was no choice, not really, and perhaps there never was one. But there was freedom in letting go, in giving in to the currents that threatened to drown her.
“I’ll do it. I’ll let you seal my power.”
When she thought of the sacrifices that her friends had made to get her here, she knew there was only one answer. She couldn’t kill Aristea. She was no hero.
34
