“Shut up,” Larkin cut me off. “We’re not doing this for you. Elysia is a mess, and we’d rather have you onside than not. No offence to Erik, but your skills are more useful in warfare.”
Erik’s lips drew into a thin line, and Andreas snorted.
“I can feel the love pouring from you in waves, Larkin,” Erik mumbled.
“You have such a way with words,” I muttered.
“So,” Flynn said. “Who’s going first?”
The room fell silent as eyes shifted from God to Goddess. To worship another was to swallow your pride. Even war wasn’t enough to make them fall to their knees. In theory, of course, they all showed up, but the reality weighed too heavily on egos. So it surprised me when Bexley stepped forward.
“What are you doing?” Larkin hissed.
Her younger sister looked over her shoulder. “We all agree we don’t have the time, but we’re happy to waste it standing around and doing nothing. Doing nothing got us all into this mess in the first place. We’re all complicit in what happened the first time. None of us spoke up soon enough. I’m not having that lay on my conscience for a second time.”
She turned back around to face me properly and nodded. With only the bars separating us, Bexley folded herself to her knees and closed her eyes. “Grayson, God of chaos. I ask you to unleash your power. I call to you in a time of need where only you will be able to help. I seek your vengeance and destruction.I ask for your chaos to pave a path of clarity in these uncertain times.”
Bexley continued to talk, but I was distracted by the nausea that rolled. My hands gripped the bars as Erik joined her on the ground.
“Grayson, brother of mine,” Erik started. “I call on your chaos to lead us through this darkness. May your vengeance be swift and just. I ask you to destroy what no longer serves us and allow us to build from the ashes.”
Two voices became three, and soon there was the hum of prayers. Words lapping over each other until nothing made sense, and it all became nothing more than a low buzz.
A sweat broke out over my brow, and goosebumps appeared on my skin. My vision grew blurry as a beast attempted to claw its way out of my chest. The room tilted and there was a heavy thud as I fell to my knees. I registered Erik vaguely calling my name, and I looked up to see his blurry form before me.
“Keep going,” he told the others. And then in a whisper directed to me, “Stay with us, Gray.”
Everything was on fire. My insides were molten. I’d never felt like this in my life. What if the oleander had somehow penetrated the cuffs and seeped through my skin? Was this how it felt to die? The pain was blinding and white-hot. It robbed me of my voice, or else I would have screamed. I needed a release. Something had to give because I couldn’t carry on like this. Couldn’t bear to carry it any longer.
And then it happened.
Something broke, snapped with aggressive violence, to give way for all the power and pain inside of me. It was like my body was being broken apart to make room for everything that I held. The heaviness around my wrists faded away as the ground became solid beneath my knees. My eyes, which had been squeezed shut in anguish, opened slowly to be greeted bynothing more than darkness. Not the kind of darkness when you turn off the light and wait for your eyes to adjust. This darkness was a void. Nothing belonged to it… But it belonged to me.
I sat within the cocoon of my aura, panting as I allowed the pain to ebb away with each thump of my heart.
It had worked. Beyond all doubt, this crazy plan had broken me out of the cuffs and the bars before me were bent out of shape. There was enough space that I could squeeze myself out of them.
“Gray?” Sloan’s voice this time. “Are you okay?”
I tried to recall my aura towards me, but it refused to budge. The shield it formed remained firmly in place.
“I know I got caught off guard, but it won’t happen again. You need to trust me,” I coaxed, still trying to pull it back to me. It remained steadfast, and I fell to the only thing that mattered. “We’ll get her back. I promise. And once she’s with us again, we’ll take the throne and rule for an eternity with her by our side. Nothing is going to stop us, but we need to work together on this.”
Slowly but surely, my aura receded. There was a mutual trust that needed to exist in order for us to have control. My words were not so much for the aura, but for myself. I spoke my intentions out aloud to remind myself what my goal was. That I could trust myself to achieve it.
Pushing myself up from the ground, I got to my feet to be met with swathes of different auras. On a good day, it could be difficult to trust me now… well, I was at my worst. The room remained dark as my aura continued to pulse, encouraged by their words and the prayers of mortals who remained blind to what happened in the heavens above them.
“Gray,” Erik said, taking a tentative step towards me.
“It worked.” I moved towards him, and Erik took a step back.
“You’re looking quite lethal, so I think it’s best…” He trailed off, gesturing around me.
“Then I guess we shouldn’t keep our brother waiting.”
I made my way towards the stairs, the other deities in the room giving me a wide berth as my aura snaked around my feet. I let the thrum of chaos in my veins lead me out of the cellars and into the chambers where twelve empty chairs stood. It would never occupy the same twelve again. Who knew what the future of Elysia would look like after this?
The last time we went to war, there was an obvious goal and a division that held strong. I wasn’t sure how certain the minds of the Gods were this time.
