I hesitate even to put this into words, but my heirs must know the truth and heed my warnings. We must never forget the danger—the power—that lives forever in our blood. Even now, after everything, he whispers to me. I hear him as if he were among the shadows, scraping against his prison walls.
Thaleia tells me that it won’t always be like this. My sons, at least, will never have to know this torture. Xavlin’s strongest connection to our world will die with me, but I fear he will never stop searching for the power I have stolen.
Power taken through sacrifice.
Blood given freely and knowingly. My blood to weaken the greatest god our world has ever known. It could have been anyone, but I was the only fool stupid enough to step forward.
I couldn’t let my people suffer any longer, and I didn’t understand. The truth is, I didn’t care. Or maybe I cared too much. Either way, it’s too late.
Iamthe god-eater now.
We all are.
Chapter
One
In his dream, Augustus Labienus Triarius stood on the deck of theSoris.
The ship was an empty ghost on a silent, stagnant sea. Hanging overhead like a tortured breath, the starless sky threatened to collapse. A crescent shadow slithered across the planks, a malignant stain, swallowing light. The ship wholly disappeared into the open-mouthed penumbra and didn’t return.
He should have cared about losing his ship to this ravenous void, but ships were replaceable.
His mother was not.
Scarred, treacherous, and glorious, Cassia stood near the main mast, her eyes black, chin tilted toward the gods. A twin to the version he’d seen in her final moments of life. And just as she’d been to the sellsword who’d murdered her, she was oblivious now to the approaching danger that was an insatiable shadow.
She was only a few feet away.
This time, he could save her.
Augustus lurched?—
His upper body went where his feet refused. Rooted, he jerked and yanked, and when he still couldn’t pull free, he reached for her, straining.“Mom! You have tomove!”
She couldn’t hear him. Or didn’t want to.“A return of the rightful king marks the end of the brother and the rise of daughters. When the time comes that the world becomes shrouded in shadows, a line of demarcation will be drawn.”
Augustus remembered this. Had spent more than six months trying to forget every word. He couldn’t stand here and watch this again.
Mettius’s desperate yell came from within the void, as if to yank Augustus into the past itself.“Cassia!”
Augustus winced. “No. Stop. Please.” He couldn’t go through this again.
The arc of black inched ever closer to Cassia, and the ship’s boards slipped into the nothing.
Cassia’s chin lowered, and her eyes sought his, pupils black and burning. She glanced down at the darkness, then to Augustus. Her eyes flared as her prophecy continued, the words hurried.“The separation of lovers by oceans and seas isolates a vulnerable king and will awaken the accused. They return home to wage a vicious war, find the lost who wished not to be found, and reclaim a connection to love that will strip the power of a mended crown.”
“Mom, it’s okay. I know. You already said all of this. You have tomove.”
He didn’t give afuckabout the prophecy or how it ended. He never had. Nothing mattered more than her life.
Cassia’s knees jerked up, but her boots sank into the planks, into the mud-like void that had finally reached her.
She met his eyes.“When the lands of snow and fields of thunder collide?—”
“Cassia!”Mettius called.
“Move!” Augustus screamed.
