After Shivani had stabbed him, she handed him over to the executioner, and it fed for what felt like hours.
He looked down. Pieces of his pink, sausage-shaped intestines hung from the hole in his gut. Parts of exposed bone shone through the mutilated meat of his thigh. The feel of its claws rummaging through his intestines and tugging was still fresh, and a shudder wracked through him.
There was an absence of sensations and feelings within his body, a failure of functioning: struggling organs, withering arteries, a stinging anguish. It was the same feeling he got the day Mira stole the hearing from his right ear. A feeling he despised more than any form of pain could bring. The absence of something essential.
He lifted his chin off his chest and surveyed the room. Deprived of his hearing, he was forced to rely on sight alone. Silhouettes didn’t linger in the shadow-filled corners, nor was there a discomforting presence of power hanging in the air. The room was bare, dreary. A snarling blaze filled the pit of a large circle cut into the floor. The flames surged at a consistent tempo, the way a vortex constantly swirled.
With that knowledge, Finnian let his head roll back down, allowing his exhaustion to show.
He closed his eyes and curled his fingers around the chains. His folded legs shook underneath him. The throes of his torment crested in aggressive waves, wearing down his mental fortitude with a harrowing persuasion that the agony trapped in his bones would never cease.
By what means had his father lasted so long? After centuries in Moros, what state would Finnian find him in? The horrors in his imagination stabbed through his chest like one of Shivani’s blades—his father, once immaculate, beaming with blossoms decorating his dark hair and a gaze as soft as a petal, broken, barely a husk of what he remembered.
Finnianneededto find him.
Father, guide me towards you.
He concentrated the small dose of his preserved energy into regenerating his injuries. Ruptured intestines gradually retracted back inside his body, and his skin slithered and stitched itself back together.
High Deities healed rapidly, and over the centuries, Finnian had excelled in regenerating. But because of the power-blocking manacles around his wrists, it was taking much longer than usual.
They were made from the Chains of Confinement. It was what the executioners used the day they escorted Father from Kaimana. A relic to bind a god’s divine power—and in this case, Finnian’s magic.
Fatigued by blood loss, he leaned the side of his head on the shackle’s chain. The handle of the blade lodged in his ear bumped against it, and a painful ache lanced through his skull.
He winced. “Fuck.”
The high-pitched ringing in his ear against the silence was louder than the cries trapped in Moros. Loud enough to serve as a blatant reminder of his weakness, coiling an unease in his mending gut.
Finnian lifted his head and did another sweep of the room, searching, thinking. His first priority for escaping and finding Father was to eliminate the shackles binding his power.
His eyes caught on the fuzzy, lush green moss trailing between the creases of the stone wall. It was odd for life to grow beneath the earth in such a sinister place, and those nonsensical patches of nature were not there earlier. Finnian had scoped out the room many times. The walls were nothing but dull gray slates of packed stone.
The vein of greenery stopped at the wall-floor junction, as if coming from beneath.
A smile curled his lips.
Thank you, Father.
A daunting sensation nipped up Finnian’s spine. A foreboding warning.
He stiffened.
Across the room, threadlike, golden tendrils snaked around an onyx cloud, and Cassian stepped out of its billowing form.
Amidst the white noise in his ear, Finnian could feel the vibration of his frazzled heartbeat.
Cassian waded through the pool of blood on the floor, the viscous liquid sticking to the soles of his suede shoes. He stowed one hand away in the pocket of his tailored suit. The light from the steady flames cast an otherworldly glow to his face—striking features, all angles and chiseled cuts, and pale skin, as smooth as an opal gem.
He stopped in front of Finnian and looked down at him.
Finnian met Cassian’s lethal, topaz gaze head on with tenacity, his ego consuming all common sense to keep his head down.
You will not break me.
Cassian undid the button to his suit jacket and crouched down, eye-level. “Why hello, Little Nightmare.” He enunciated the words for Finnian to read on his lips.
The nickname pinched at Finnian’s nerves unexpectedly. The first time Cassian ever called him that, it brought a sense of pride knowing he had disheveled the High God’s pristine little world. Now, though, it felt stale in his stomach.
