Kavians still used the term undead gods, but to Bellians it remained true.
Kavians said it scoffingly. Bellians said it reverently.
It was difficult to extricate the jaded ideas she carried about the gods. In Bellia, the gods were the ones who placed each and every magical gift like a benevolent seed into mortal souls. In Kava, that connection was long gone, and they were left with not only soot-ridden skies, but bodies.
Bitterness twisted her mouth as she stared at the hopeful petitions around her feet. Undead or not, she wanted nothing to do with them. Aidan with his broken powers and useless deal. Not to mention every other god who must have watched as her people fell from their curse.
It was obvious that mortals and their small magics and lives did not matter to such beings.
Her attention turned to a bronze bell hanging from a rope of spines near the throne. Dangling from the clapper was a skeletal arm with its hand reaching out, waiting, and beckoning her to ring the bell.
The bastard could’ve warned her that she’d have to shake hands with death.
She supposed she already had.
Disgust curling her lips, she placed ice-cold fingers into the skeletal ones above her and pulled. The bell tolled and tolled until the temple hummed. Vibrations rose from beneath her feet. Movement stirred down below as if the temple had only been in slumber.
Gods, what had she done?
She backed away from the bell, her boot crunching on a teacup filled with frozen coffee. She staggered backward, unsteady, as she hastily made it to the door only to find it sealed and locked. Pulling to no avail on the handle, she swiveled, pulling out her dagger. Then the lights went out.
Without the flood of candles, it was utter blackness.
A womb of death, and her within it.
Elysia blinked wildly, bidding her eyes to adjust, and as they did, the shadowy outlines of people took shape. People who had formed a circle around her and the throne.
As one, they began to sing.
The haunting melody had never failed to draw a tear to her eye all those nights she had fallen from her bed to the Deathlands. Now, encircled by priestesses within death’s temple, the familiar voices enraptured her just the same as they had the very first time all those months ago.
She could see now that the priestesses’ robes were simple, dark, yet elegant. One part of their faces were painted like carved bones and the other half sensual and lush. They were beautiful, but haunting.
One of the priestesses floated forward, stopping within a breath’s reach of Elysia, and smeared white paste along her cheekbone, jaw, and lips. A second priestess took her place, painting her left side with wine-stained lips and smoldering eyes. Shocked, a natural sense of alarm grew within her as strangers invaded her space. Still, she fought to hold still as they finished their work.
Together with efficient, nimble hands, they removedElysia’s clothes. She shivered, her skin peppering with goosebumps as they placed a heavy robe over her and clipped bones into her hair.
The priestesses returned to their places and spoke in unison.
Not one, but two.
A mortal, a god.
One to revere and one to dread.
Fate’s true challenge.
And life’s last quest.
The sudden silence that followed was jarring. The priestesses broke apart and with their movement, the door and windows slid open, allowing in the yellow light of the moon and sharp evening wind. A murmur of excitement zipped through the women and people around her, but Elysia was still reeling over the realization she had been hearingthemevery time she fell asleep, only to wake in the Deathlands.
Their chant played back in her mind, her stomach plummeting with a sickening swoop.
She tried to slam down her walls, to push the words away. But the chant persisted in banging around inside her skull. The god of the dead never worked alone. She gripped her dagger tighter, refusing to consider the final line.
The sick feeling lurched from her stomach to her throat.
She shouldn’t be here. She was just a gossip-ridden, cursed woman who hid in libraries and pantries to steal people’s secrets. Anything involving alife’s last questwas not for her.
