I give him a look that speaks volumes. “You really think that will work?”
He shrugs. “Anything is worth a try once.”
“True,” I say with a nod. “That, however, just annoyed her. She is trying to claw your eyes out. Listen up, Aethel. You know the Devourer is up there, waiting. How do we kill it?”
“Does she know?” Nyssa asks, lowering her blade and moving closer.
Aethel laughs. It’s a jagged, scraping sound that vibrates in the ether but fails to disturb the air in the room. She floats there, translucent and hideous in her malice, looking between me and her son with pure disdain.
“You think you can killhim?” she sneers, drifting closer to Dreven, though he doesn’t flinch. “He is the end. He is the hunger that eats gods. You cannot kill entropy, boy.”
“Him. Interesting. We boxedhimonce,” I point out, tightening my metaphysical grip on her essence until she winces. “We can do it again. Or we can erase him.”
“And yet he is up there, floating around waiting for the opportunity to strike.”
“She isn’t being helpful,” I tell the room.
Nyssa looks frustrated, swinging her blade through the empty air again just to vent. “Tell her if she doesn’t start talking, I’ll find a way to make her afterlife miserable.”
“I think she is already doing a fine job of that herself,” I drawl.
“Make her talk,” Dreven demands. His shadows are agitated, sensing the hostility of his mother even if he can’t see her clearly.
“I am trying,” I snap. “She is stubborn. It runs in the family.” I turn my focus back to the dead queen. “Listen to me. If he eats the realm, he eats the afterlife too. That means you cease to exist. Gone.”
That wipes the smirk off her face. Self-preservation was always Aethel’s strongest trait.
“He wants his crown back.”
“He wants his crown back,” I say to Nyssa before turning back to Aethel.
“He can’t have it,” Nyssa and I say in unison.
Nyssa clears her throat. “But what is the relevance of changing his pronoun?”
“Its can’t usually be killed. Hes can,” I say.
“But we assumed we would destroyit, so what has changed?”
“Destroy is different to kill. You said yourself this thing is getting more sentient, more intelligent. It is,heis, possessing people. Not one or two, but thousands, learning. Gleaning.”
Nyssa locks gazes with me as the knowledge that had just come to me, arrives with her as well. “We kill him when he possesses someone.”
“Precisely.”
“Not quite,” Aethel snaps. “Fragments mean nothing.”
I narrow my eyes at her.
“What did she say?” Nyssa asks.
“She says fragments mean nothing.”
“So, we need the entire thing to possess a creature so we can kill it. Well, fuck. Like this wasn’t already impossible!” She growls and throws her blade at the place where, I assume, she thinks Aethel is floating. It was a good aim. It sails throughAethel’s face and straight into Dreven’s clapped hands before it buries in his chest.
Dreven flips the blade hilt-first, offering it back to her with a look that sits somewhere between amusement and a warning. “Careful, slayer. Someone could get hurt.”
Nyssa snatches the steel back, glaring at the empty space where Aethel floats. “If she had a face I could actually hit, we wouldn’t have this problem.”
