This had to have been their plan all along. Lure me here with the bait of Okeanos or Lieve or both. Trick me into either a mortal existence, giving Vesuvius his godhood and letting Okeanos die since my immortality no longer sustains him, or as a backup, they could kill me, too, if I didn’t use the tasks as they liked.
I shudder. Even in this world of darkness and forever, I shudder. I never want Vesuvius’s gaze on me again, for I canonly imagine what other horrors he would visit on me given even half a chance. He has already broken my heart and then speared it through, and that seemed to cost him nothing at all.
But I am not sorry for what I chose, even though I will pay for it forever. Lieve’s soul is safe where none can harm him. And I did try to do right by Okeanos.
I drift. The pain fades.
It’s over now. I have crossed into the Nightwaters.
And just when I have accepted that this is the end, just when I feel as if I am spooling out like a lure on the end of a line tossed to catch a fish, flying into the unknown, pain hits me again like a blow to the chest and drags me back.
Chapter Thirty-Five
My eyes open suddenly, painfully, and I suck in a long, burning breath.
“… a very convoluted way to get what you wanted,” Aurelius is complaining. His back is to me, outlined in silver light. “I mislike that it ended this way.”
I try not to choke on the blood in my mouth. I must be silent. I must not draw their wrathful gaze.
Vesuvius’s voice drips with bitterness. “Do not scold me when you’ve benefited just as thoroughly as I. My strength is vital to your plans.”
I suck in another breath, shuddering around my broken chest. It feels like I have a gaping hole piercing right through it.
Oh.
Oh.
I do.
I’m shaking violently all over, but my lungs are working, dragging in each breath as if breathing is its own impossible task. The pain has changed. Rather than blurring everything around me, it has made my vision jagged with sharp focus. I can see every edge and sharp line in stark relief.
And that is how I am the first to see Okeanos leap over my body and lunge for them.
It is a dream, of course. I am seeing only what I wish was true.
He’s gripping the trident. It is slick with my blood. It must have been when he ripped it from my chest that my consciousness returned.
He’s shockingly adept with the weapon, but there’s something slightly off. He favors his wounded leg more than ever before and it slows him more than I remember. The wound in his chest is gone, but the ones in his wrists remain, half-healed and crusted over.
He thrusts the trident into Vesuvius’s side before that monster knows he’s under attack, and while Vesuvius shouts his fury, Okeanos is already landing two more blows in quick succession. The new sea god is flung back, stumbling over his own tentacles and falling to the ground heavily. He thrashes, leaving great crimson arcs smeared across the marble of the floor, and Okeanos lunges forward to take advantage of his triumph.
And it’s not a dream. I have lost on every other level, but I succeeded at this one thing. I brought Okeanos back. The fifth task worked.
I’m just beginning to sag with relief when Aurelius flicks a finger and Okeanos flies through the air, hits the marble, skids, and bowls into me.
I see black splotches across my vision and my hands claw in an effort to fight the spasm of agony that washes through me. I blink through it, concentrating on keeping my mind with me, on not giving way to the darkness. I do not want to make that long fall a second time.
I come back to stark reality just in time to see Vesuvius leap toward us. It’s me he’s aiming for and I can’t so much as flinch.
But Okeanos thrusts himself upward, scrabbling across the marble to rise awkwardly, his trident drawn up and angled perfectly just in time to break a second point in Vesuvius’s flesh.
Vesuvius roars, his tentacle frill expanding and rippling with the sound. He raises his arm, and in the distance I hear the roar of many waters.
Realization hits me like a punch to the chest. Vesuvius is the sea now and it is a furious, merciless sea.
That means I died. Just as I thought. But while the marriage vow tied me back to Okeanos and revived me with him by the blessing of the King of Heaven, it could not prevent the loss of my godhood or how it reverted back to Vesuvius.
I can feel the wind sweeping into the temple, and on it is the smell of the sea thick with death, and then Aurelius is there, gripping Vesuvius’s arm and dragging him backward. Okeanos springs forward after him, but Aurelius flicks upa hand, and just as his wall of air stopped me, so it stops Okeanos.
