“Ignoring it never helps.”
“Says the guy who’s lived not one but two lousy, hateful lives.” Kai snickered. “The nerve of you, to think you can swoop in and, what, earn my forgiveness? Atone for your sins?” He stepped into Farran’s space, lip curling in disdain. “Here’s the thing: I don’t give a shit about you or your past. So call us even if that’s what you need. I couldn’t care less.”
Farran looked like he wanted to snap back, and part of Kai wanted him to. He wanted this anger the ghosts had touched on to be drawn up further, wanted to drown in it only to feel something, to remind himself that he was alive despite being in the pits of death itself. His hands fisted at his sides; Farran’s eyes tracked the motion. His face hardened—then slackened as his gaze caught on something behind Kai.
“We’re here,” Farran said. “Time to meet the gods.”
Their ship docked at the base of a crude obsidian hill. Pillars dark as pitch rose out of the jagged black stone, appearing to gobble all the light from the ship’s lanterns. Some kind of ancient temple ruins, from the looks of it. A hellish throne fit for the ruler of hell, if such a being existed.
The skin on the back of Kai’s neck prickled as he followed Farran up the steps carved in the hillside. He felt watched. Thought he heard something whispering in his ear, a chilling breeze brushing against his cheek. Turning to glance at Luce, he was met with an unsettled expression that mimicked his own.
“You feel it too?” she whispered.
A sharp nod was all he gave in reply, not trusting his voice in the thick quiet. There was something expectant in the air, a thrum of jubilation that grated against Kai’s nerves. Like their presence here was an anticipated thing, and any second now something or someone would pounce on them—to do what to them, that was the unnerving mystery of it all.
But when they reached the top, no one and nothing was waiting for them. They were alone in the middle of the obsidian temple, where five columns rose along a circular base, doming into a trellis overhead that seemed made of gnarled tree roots. Kai ran a tentative hand over a spindly root, feeling an odd power coming off it. The bark was not wood, he found, but obsidian. The roots ran all over the temple floor, winding around columns and pieces of jagged obsidian. When Kai tipped his head back, he could just barely make out the base of the tree trunk that rose, seemingly suspended in midair, over the trellis of gnarled roots. He couldn’t see its branches or leaves, the impenetrable dark gobbling everything up past the base of the trunk. It gave the distinct impression of this being a tree cleaved in half, leaving only a stump and fossilized roots behind.
“This is meant to be a replica of the divine fountain in the godsworld,” Farran explained in a low timbre. “This entire place, really, is a mirror to the godsworld, a nightmarish reflection. Or, well, nightmarish before the godsworld became the sea of ash that Clover made it into.” He patted a thick root, some distant memory playing behind his eyes. “This tree connects abyss and godsworld. When someone dies, their soul either climbs up to the godsworld, emerging from the tree’s flourishing branches, or it descends into the abyss through these roots.”
“A harrowing experience to have lived through, I’m sure.”
The voice made Kai spin around, heart caught in his throat. A woman stood at the top of the stairs, her bare feet soundless against the obsidian stone.
Farran bowed his head. “Goddess of the moon. You’re a vision as always.”
The goddess of the moon.
Kai couldn’t help but stare at her. Part of him hadn’t thought these gods real at all, but here she stood, in the flesh. And shetruly was a vision, a tall, willowy beauty with pale, pink-tinged skin and long hair that went from black at the roots to silver at the tips. She was clad in a dress that seemed spun of moonlight. Her cunning expression was like quicksilver, ever shifting. There was a mercurial quality to her, something cruel yet sweet hiding beneath the surface, as if she were a wolf who might tear you up in one vicious snap of teeth or adopt you as one of her pups to fiercely protect.
Her long fingers tipped Farran’s chin up. He seemed mesmerized by her, a supplicant at an altar.
“I see you’ve brought us our salvation,” the goddess said, her quicksilver eyes shifting to Kai and Luce. “The boy of nightmares and the girl of dreams.”
Kai thought of theSong of the Drowned Godsepilogue—of these same characters who had sailed to the rescue of the four heroes of the story. Only the four heroes, in this case, were four gods who’d been banished to hell by a fifth one with the power to annihilate the universe.
“Is this the part where you tell us what, exactly, you need us for?” Kai said more sharply than he’d intended, still feeling on edge, especially under the goddess’s scrutiny. Did he imagine the narrowing of her eyes as they lowered to his chest, where his tattoos, he realized, peeked out of his shirt collar?
“It is proper to bow before gods,” the goddess said, voice as cold as the deepest oceans.
Before Kai could utter a retort he might regret, he heard the sharp inhale of Luce’s breath.
He saw them too: the other three gods who appeared at the top of the stairs.
The first was a woman with a soothing, motherly aura about her, all round and soft where the moon goddess was sharp and slender. Her lips were stretched in an inviting smile. She had deepbrown skin and salt-and-pepper coils that grazed her shoulders. The fabric of her high-necked dress seemed to be made of delicate leaves a thousand shades of rust and green and gold, the same colors echoed in her irises. The goddess of the earth, no doubt.
Then, a man who could only be the god of the sun. He appeared to be strength incarnate, a living weapon, well over six feet tall—perhaps closer to seven—and wearing nothing but some type of leather war skirt, with a rich red cape draped over one shoulder, revealing a sculpted torso and powerful arms. He had long, supple black hair and a golden brown complexion like the light of a setting sun, and his dark eyes were as piercing and calculating as a hawk.
The third had an androgynous appearance. Their white hair fell in lustrous waves down to their slim waist. They wore a draping pearl-colored robe that revealed part of a leanly muscled torso, pale skin smattered with freckles, an arm adorned with delicate silver and gold bangles. They had the air of a trickster, their cornflower-blue eyes full of mischievous laughter.
“Bow before my siblings,” the goddess of the moon commanded.
And Kai, despite everything inside him rebelling for some reason he couldn’t understand, bowed. He heard one of them laugh, a crystalline, almost childlike sound, and when he lifted his head, it was to see the god of the air gleaming at him and Luce.
“How delightful it is,” they said, “to be in the presence of mortals. Such life inside you.”
The goddess of the earth breathed in deep. “It’s delectable, after spending so long in this lifeless prison.”
The four of them had magnitude, a presence that couldn’t be denied. Kai felt Luce step closer to him, and he knew she felt it too—their otherworldliness, this ancient power they possessed. And yet, despite all of this, they seemed… human. Plain. Notexactly powerless, but perhaps not as powerful as Kai would have expected of gods.
