The bone and the heart began to shine in a brilliant light, and as Emory plucked the strings of the lyre, all three keys erupted into a maelstrom of earth and greenery, of flame and molten gold, of lightning and wind, and swirled around Emory, seeping into her.
Clover faltered, wincing in pain, as ifhewere losing that same power. Emory smiled victoriously. But it only lasted a second before Clover seemed to regain control of himself, smirking at her as if she were nothing but a small thorn in his side, and drew on the restless souls around him.
A tidal wave of translucent ghosts swept over the temple. Desperation and anger filled the air along with the cloying smell ofsulfur. Kai’s skin burned as the spirits brushed past him. He’d been through this before, he thought. In the hellfire stream down in the abyss. With these same restless souls that reminded him of the umbrae as they drew not on his fears, but on every single regret inside him, all the things he had ever hated himself for and wished he could take back, all the resentments he held for others, the anger he never quite learned to let go of.
It was torment. It was a taste of hell. It was a call to join these angry spirits thatunderstood, thatglorifiedsuch pain and anger, that wanted him to keep it inside him forever and tend to it until it consumed him whole and made him one of them. Empty and angry, eternally so.
But Kai didn’t want to be tortured like this forever. He had wasted too much of his life being weighed down by this anger and resentment he carried. He had seen what holding on to such emotions did to the souls of the dead, how it turned them to stone deep down in the abyss, cementing them there forever if they couldn’t let go. If they couldn’t choose peace for themselves.
Kai thought of all the moments in his life that had brought him joy and love and serenity, these bright lights that had filtered in through the cracks of his anger. Waking up next to Baz. Finding community with the Eclipse-born. Helping to free them from the Institute. Even finding Farran again had been a blessing in disguise, a chance for Kai to understand the weight of resentment and forgiveness and second chances. To see someone refusing to be held back by the baggage of two lifetimes, persevering on and on despite everything he’d been subjected to by gods and fate and monsters and his own inner demons.
Kai would choose the same for himself now. These restless souls could not deter him.
At his side, Baz screamed and cried, plagued by the souls’ torment. Kai reached for him, gripping his hand tight in his. “Don’t letthem win, Brysden. They feed on anger and despair and hate. I’m right here with you, and I’m not going anywhere.”
Slowly, Baz seemed to come back to himself, sagging against Kai. His breathing was labored but his eyes were clear. Around them was chaos, but the souls seemed to have moved on to other targets to feed on and torment.
Kai caught sight of the gods in Farran’s body, fending off these angry souls keeping them down, and Clover trying to draw on what was left of their power. But Clover finally turned his attention away from them, spinning toward Emory as she fought off a gaggle of souls and advanced on him now, ready to end him, fueled as she was by the three keys… no,fourkeys, because her mother had come up to her side, and Kai could see that Emory was drawing on the residual power of Atheia in Luce’s blood.
Near the empty fountain were Sidraeus and Atheia, locked in a fruitless battle, neither of them able to die by the other’s hand. But they could die by another’s. And the gods, making use of Clover’s distraction, moved against them.
“No!” Kai yelled.
The gods were supposed to let Emory kill Clover, but they’d made it clear they didn’t have faith in her ability to do so. The fountain was right there, Sidraeus and Atheia right beside it, so why not sacrifice them and regain their godhood to put an end to Clover themselves, take matters into their own hands?
Farran’s steps seemed to slow. Baz’s magic, Kai realized, trying to stop him.
Baz was gritting his teeth. “I can’t hold them—they’re too strong—”
His magic might be powerful, but they were still gods, despite the faint trickle of power they had.
Kai moved in front of them, his tattoos activating as the wards they’d always been, and shoved the gods out of Farran’s body again. It rendered them vulnerable—the gods in their true forms,not immaterial as they had been in the living realms, but as material as they had been when Kai first met them in the abyss.
Clover’s head whipped to them, as if he could sense that they were here in full now, not hiding inside a vessel. Here, at last, they could be killed. The restless souls amplified their assault on the gods, driven by Clover, who could probably taste victory at hand. Kai pulled a dazed Farran out of the way, wondering if he’d just handed Clover the win without meaning to.
There was a scream, followed by a flash of movement. Sidraeus was on his knees, doubled over in pain. And Atheia, freed from their clash, was unleashing a wave of death magic toward the four gods. The gods managed to evade it, but Atheia was still advancing on them, wrath twisting Romie’s features into something otherworldly and ugly.
Kai looked Sidraeus over but found no wound.
“It’s not me who’s hurt,” Sidraeus gritted out, his eyes fixed on a point behind Kai.
Where Baz lay in a pool of blood.
61BAZ
IT HAPPENED QUICKER THAN BAZcould stop it.
In truth, he was too shocked by Atheia running at him to eventhinkof stopping it. Because this was his sister—this face he hadn’t seen in almost a year, except in dreams and nightmares and hellish hallucinations. He knew it wasn’t actually Romie; there had been no trace of her as Atheia and Sidraeus clashed in a dance of power, two deities circling each other like predators, a thousand years of rage brewing between the two and no way to put an end to each other. And there certainly was no trace of her as she drove the knife into Baz’s middle.
He couldn’t understand it at first, why she would turn on him at all. But when he saw Sidraeus doubled in pain, he realized she’d hurt Baz to get away fromhim—a distraction she was using now to kill the gods.
Anger flashed on Clover’s face. A flicker of betrayal.Hewas supposed to kill the gods, not Atheia. Whatever truce had been between them was broken. Atheia wanted to claim power forherself, to end these gods that had been so very ready to sacrifice her.
As blood pooled out of him, as Kai reached for him, trying to stop the bleeding, desperate words and angry tears spilling from him, Baz could see with utter clarity how this would all end. Baz would die here by his sister’s hand. Clover would kill Atheia, and by extension, Romie. He would destroy what was left of the gods. He would squash Emory like a fly and get his army of restless souls to devour them all whole.
What is hope in the face of a tyrant god? What is hope against the kind of destruction there is no coming back from?
Chaos would win, just as Equilibris said. The damage was irreversible.
