And I can tell by the look in Lieve’s eyes that he understands. But what I can’t tell is whether or not he forgives me.
I don’t look away. I don’t dare. Not even when I clench my jaw as hard as I can and turn my heart.
The fifth task.
And as I repent of killing the God of the Sea and make my choice, I also do the one thing that has never come naturally to me at all—I pray. It’s a prayer of desperation to a King of Heaven I hardly believe exists. It’s a wild entreaty: desperate but doubting, vulnerable but firm. I offer him up the five tasks—complete now—to take and use. And I bid him use them as I ask.
It’s so simple—too simple. And I hope that I haven’t been misled in this as I have in so many things. I hope that I haven’t been made a fool again. I hope these five tasks and all the suffering that went into their completion will culminate in this one vital thing—bringing one man back from death.
Nothing has ever wrenched me as this does. I am lightheaded, as if I am watching someone else commit this act. And I steal one last, longing look into the eyes of my Lieve and choke on my sob as he looks beyond me to the Nightwaters. His face is lit with something not unlike the aura of divinity that fell on the gods during the Resurgence—and then he’s gone.
The tentacles collapse to the ground as his spirit fades away and I swear he’s taken my heart with him.
For it is not Lieve I have chosen to restore to life. He’s slipped free and I’ve lost the last sight I’ll ever have of him. Again.
Vesuvius lets out a sudden, sharp curse.
By the time I twist toward the noise, my vision is so warped by the welling tears that I don’t immediately see that Vesuvius has snatched up my trident from where I dropped it to try to catch Lieve, or that he is rushing toward me with it lifted high in his hands, his many tentacles dragging across the marble.
I fling my hands up, but I’m too late.
The pain hits hard and sudden, overwhelming me before I know what has happened. I’m choking on it, gagging, seeing only black. I can’t quite seem to drag in a breath and my heart… my betrayer’s heart… it’s not quite… my vision finally clears and everything is bursting in sharp violent color.
Vesuvius’s face twists as he holds me down with his grip on the trident. I’m choking on my own blood. It’s hot and iron-flavored between my lips.
Behind him, the moon is coming up. The garish red sky has bled out into black.
He’s stabbed the trident through me by the handle, the weapon reversed, I stare at it as if this tiny detail is of enormous importance. Is he afraid that killing me the normal way will bring him bad luck? There’s a story about that, I think, but when I reach for it, my memories are tattered and inaccessible.
I claw weakly at the shaft of the trident. It gleams in the first glow of moonlight. I’d laugh at the irony, but I feel so very weak. There’s blood on my chin. I can taste it with every sucking half breath. Vesuvius’s tentacles wrap coldly and far too intimately around me, pinning me down in case the trident isn’t enough to hold me, as if I would be as strong as Okeanos to climb back up the shaft stuck through me and strangle him with my bare hands.
I am certainly dying.
Just like Lieve did. Just like my mother and my father did and all those I have failed as both queen and god. My thoughts spiral down that track for a moment before I force them to focus again. Death is a fitting end for me, though I do not desire it and it has a very bitter flavor.
Vesuvius twists the trident and I scream as visceral pain twists through me, clogging all thought so that my whole world is red agony and his shadowed face is swimming before my eyes.
I’m so glad I freed Lieve from this.
So glad.
He can never be touched by these monsters again. If I still had a god, I’d pray I could join him.
“Just finish it. I grow weary of the display.” Aurelius’s voice is so distant that I barely can make out the disdain in it.
Everything is black. Everything is pain. I drag in one more burning half breath and then even that is gone and my brain panics, screaming as my mouth no longer can, and the scream seems to go on and on and on and on forever.
Forever is a terrible, lingering thing.
There is no relief in forever.
There is no forgiveness in eternity.
I do not know how long I persist through that black fall, but I can count every star, feel each individual nerve of my body and mind as they go out one by one like fires lit and snuffed over the breadth of history.
I do not plead for help. I do not pray at all. I deserve this, I try to remind myself, but it isn’t working. I chose this, I try to explain, but in my panic, no explanation sticks. I am small and pitiable, so very insignificant, and yet all my fear and pain and loneliness is of utmost significance tomeand I am drowned in it. The Drowned Queen.
And now Vesuvius will be God of the Sea again. For, just as in the story Markanos told me, he has come back to life by virtue of the trident barb and he has slain Coralys, who had inherited her godhood from Okeanos, and thus it will revert back to him. My tasks must not have been applied. For if they had worked, Okeanos would have taken his godhood back from me. But they have not worked.
