She lay against the ice, gasping, blood pumping in her ears and with every beat of her heart. Recalling Linn’s bright black eyes, solemn as she spoke the words that would save Ana’s life.
To restore your Affinity, you must destroy the siphon that holds it. You must remain close so that it may return to you, otherwise your Affinity will be lost to the greater alchemical currents of this world.
In attempting to rid Ana of the powers in her siphon, Morganya had inadvertently returned the single Affinity that Ana needed.
Ana tipped her head. Across the ice, Morganya threw her head back and inhaled deeply. The glow beneath her skin writhed as the unclaimed Affinities from Ana’s siphon were absorbed inside her. She straightened and faced Ana again, her face rapturous.
“I told you once,” the woman who had once been her mamika said, her voice ringing like bells across the Silent Sea. “We werechosen by the Deities to fight the battles that they cannot in this world.”
Between the madness clouding those eyes, Ana recalled flickers of memories. Herself, as a child, crouched over her mother’s marbled coffin, weeping. Looking up to see those tea-green eyes watching her from the darkness. There had been something like sympathy, there.
The Deities have long sent me a message through their silence,Morganya had whispered.It is nottheirduty to grant us goodness in this world, Kolst Pryntsessa. No, Little Tigress—it is up tousto fight our battles.
“That might be.” Ana’s voice came out as a rasp. It hurt to speak—Deities,it hurt to even breathe, and she could feel blood pooling from the ice shard that pierced her body. Yet a surge of anger, aknowingmore certain than anything she’d felt in her life, pushed her to press on. “But you commit crimes in the name of the gods, and you call it justice. Innocents from our empire lie dead from the so-called justice you serve. You may have once held good intentions, but those have been compromised by your hatred and your desire for power. We are only human, mamika. We were never meant to play at being Deities.”
Morganya’s laughter was like dissonant wind chimes. “After all this time, you would still preach to me?” she screamed, her voice sweeping up a gale around them, stirring up ocean waves and rumbling through the sky. “You and I are the same. We both seek to reshape this world. Yet you do not see that what I am doing is all a means to an end.”
“We are not the same.” The pain was excruciating, yet as Ana lay there dying on the ice, in half delirium, she found the wordsthat had guided her through it all. The ones she had clung to since the very beginning of this journey. “Someone I loved very dearly once told me, ‘Your Affinity does not define you. What defines you is how you choose to wield it.’ ”
Morganya’s smile was lovely. A crimson rose in a world of ice. “Ah. Yes. I had the pleasure of sending the speaker of those very words to his death—where he belonged. And now, I will have the pleasure of doing the same to you. Good-bye, Anastacya.”
She lifted a hand.
Ana struck out with her Affinity.
The world flared to life with shades of blood. This time it came easily, for her Affinity was once again apartof her—more so than any of the stolen Affinities Morganya wielded from her siphon were a part of her aunt.
Ana’s Affinity wrapped around the blood coursing bright and hot in Morganya’s veins.
With every last ounce of her strength, Ana tore.
Morganya’s lips parted in surprise. The lights inside her flickered. Dimmed.
Having the Deities’ Heart granted one limitless power to control and command all alchemical powers around, yet it did not make one a Deity.
It did not make one immortal.
Through Ana’s Affinity, she felt every beat of Morganya’s heart like her own, thudding across her consciousness like the beat of a drum.
Thud…thud-thud…thud…thud-thud…
Thud…
…thud…
By the time Morganya’s body hit the ice she was dead.
The world grew still, and Ana’s vision blurred. The only movement came from the blood seeping across the ice. Ribbons of iridescent light were rising from it, swirling away into the wind, into the ice, into the water around them.
Ana pushed herself onto her knees and began to crawl across the ice. She was not yet finished; there was one last thing she had to do.
The Heart lay several paces from the hole Morganya had cut into the ice, glowing gently. Wisps of light from Morganya’s body settled over the nebulous core, shimmering softly as, bit by bit, they began to mend the crack rent by Morganya.
Ana picked up the Heart. It was strange to touch, like ice and fire enshrouded in light too bright to look at. Its glow flared, andfor a moment, she heard ancient whispers, echoes of wind and water and song, cries of snow spirits and howls of icewolves, the hubbub of human voices rising and falling like ocean tides. Afeeling of euphoria, of invincibility, bloomed within her. Here it was, the source of all alchemical power in this world, held between her palms.
Ana leaned over the opening in the ice and let go.
She lay down on the ice, watching the glow of the Heart fade until it was swallowed by the deep blue sea. With her Affinity back, she was aware of the blood around her, staining her own clothes and dripping warm from the wound in her side. She exhaled and let herself slip into a space between unconsciousness and wakefulness. As though in a dream, the snow around her began to swirl a phantom wind, coalescing into shapes that wove in and out of her focus.
