Adara’s grim smile remained as another being dropped dead, a male gargoyle that looked as if his throat had been slashed by the sharpest blade.
“Adara, stop.” I took another step up the stairs.
“My spell should work with or without the necessary sacrifice,” she murmured, mere feet in front of me. Her dim eyes fixated on the chaos below, though I saw the kernel of uncertainty flicker in the depths of her expression. Three steps and I could take her out. But with Keerian so close… If she tried to harm him…
She cocked her head, as if she could hear my thoughts, coolly looking me over before turning her head ever so slowly to take in Sparrow, still healing Merrick.
“Does she know the god that blessed her?” Adara asked me, completely catching me off guard.
“I–No. She doesn’t know. Why,” I deadpanned, slowly creeping up the next step as Adara continued watching Sparrow’s attempts to heal Merrick with blatant curiosity. I prayed he was alive. My gut knew from the silence through our mind connection that it was grim.
“The spells…work in wondrous ways,” Adara said simply, tearing her gaze away from Sparrow as a silver dagger appeared in her pale hands. She rolled her shoulders back. “They showed me how to mirror your illusion magic by telling me exactly which god blessed you with youracat. Fromthere…I could buildanything. Createanything–even a soul tie.” The dagger was plain but deadly, with a long blade wrapped in a white marble handle. I flicked my eyes from it to Keerian. He was still bound to the throne, my magic frantically beating against Adara’s own. His green eyes widened as he looked from Adara, to the blade, to me.
My heart cracked.
Adara gently wrapped her fingers around the hilt of the dagger, inspecting it as if she was nothing more than a customer at a sword shop. “Mother and Father… They never told anyone which god blessed you. I inherited Father’s water magic. Decidedly from Beyos, himself. But it’s a pathetic skill, really. I’m not even that good with it. My power was always a disappointment. Father could command the tides, and I could barely conjure enough water to fill a bath.” The dagger gleamed in the light from the hundreds of candles nestled in the chandelier overhead. “But you…you came out different than me. I always knew when we were children… And when we both received ouracatis…your entire arm was tattooed while I only got small, easily unnoticed tattoos on my shoulder. It hurt.”
“You sound like us as children now, Adara,” I snapped, pushing Goldriel into my pocket of space where I could keep it close. At this distance, my nails could attack more effectively than the long staff. “Do you know how upset I was when only you got our father’s water magic? The magic that we used to whisper about when we were young? How we planned to build waterfalls around every side of the castle? How we wanted to create a giant pool for a kraken in the gardens when webothinherited his power? I used to try and try forhoursto conjure up water like you could.”
“But then you did. With your illusions,” Adara hissed. “Don’t leave out that part. How thrilled Father was when he saw you conjure up more water than I ever could. When you created a waterfall down the very stairs you now stand upon.” Adara took a sidestep. It was small, I would have missed it if I hadn’t been carefully watching her. A step closer to Keerian. “But then he realized it was an illusion–it wasn’t his gift. And he was angry. But more than that–he was afraid. Do you know which goddess can create illusions? There have only been whispers of your brand of magic through the telling of time. And I bet you didn’t know that your lineage god has theexactsame horns as you.”
“No one knows what the gods and goddesses truly looked like, Adara. How can you know what goddess I got my fucking horns from?”
Adara merely gave me a smug smile.
I became aware of a thudding in my ears, as if my breaking heart already knew what Adara would say. The goddess whose stories of bloody conquest were turned into an old wives’ tale to scare misbehaving children. Which goddess was so reverently feared and spoken of only in whispers.
Which goddess had gone down in history revealing that death itself was the grandest illusion of all.
“The goddess that blessed you, dear sister, is the Goddess of Death. Phades.”
Chapter fifty-four
Esmeray
“That’simpossible,”Iwhispered,“Phades has never blessed anacat.”
Phades was the monster in the shadows. Not a single being spoke her name louder than a reverent whisper as an acknowledgement of her immense prowess. Both her twin, the Goddess of Life, Faune, and herself had been cast from the god realm, Aurramere, together at the beginning of Terramere’s creation. Legend said Phades and Faune did everything together, intertwined in all their decisions–until a disagreement between life and death. Phades had stated that even death itself was an illusion–that it was only a ripple between this world and the next. Faune disagreed, stating that death was a finite end, since beings in the afterlife could not come back to the living realm. My mother had always tamed down our bedtime stories and the final argument that had separated Phades and Faune, but once I was old enough to read, I found a very different ending to their story–one with way more peril and bloodshed.
Faune and Phades had fought, but ultimately never came to an agreement. There was never a reconciliation, never a moral to the story of compromise outside of the stories told to me as a bedtime tale. Faune stayed in the lands of the living,creating and coaxing the life of all beings into a gentle existence. Phades disappeared between the veils of the world to live in endless death in Minmere, where she ruled over the souls that passed on.
Finally, Faune had returned to Aurramere, and Phades…disappeared from history, rumored to be in Minmere to this day. No one had ever been favored by Phades. Until apparently…
Me.
Adara turned, a dismissive gesture in itself, and took a seat on the throne next to Keerian, balancing the dagger on its tip against the marble armrest. She twirled it with her fingers, the blade dancing to a song of bloodshed to come. “Did you know, Esmeray, that our parentsknewyou were blessed by Phades–but didn’t tell you?” She laughed, the sound hollow and false. “After that, I think Father realized my gifts were decent after all.”
I snapped and lashed out at Adara, catching her off guard. My nails sank into the soft flesh of her cheek before a blast of silver threw me back down the stairs.
“You stole from me,” Adara hissed, that quicksilver leaping into her eyes. She touched her cheek, pulling away fingers covered in blood.
“I didn’t stealanythingfrom you.” I flew up towards the ceiling before clasping my wings behind me, freefalling to land on the dais between Adara and Keerian. “Keerian is my mate. Our soul tie was blessed by Carra. I love him, Adara.” Adara was delusional. It was time to get her into a nice, completely-not-cozy cell and see if the effects of the spells faded.
Faintly, in the back of my mind, Sparrow’s voice whispered wearily,“Alive–he’s alive. Merrick is alright.”
“You don’t deserve the crown.” Adara began shaking, her whiplash of emotion so unlike the proper and sensible sisterI thought I knew. We’d bickered in the past, but I never truly believed we’d fight to the death over a throne. She had been cool and detached moments ago, and now she was frenzied, out of control. She gripped the dagger in one hand, pointing it at my face. My hand twitched, magic beginning to crackle between my fingertips. I refused to back down. “Keerian wasmine,until he sawyouin the garden. The soul tie was supposed to bemine,the title of Queen on High was mydestiny!” Adara screeched in rage, “You never evenwantedto rule.”
“This isenough, Adara,” I snarled, conjuring up the manacles and chains from the Obsidian Palace that nullified magic. A shadow of doubt flitted across my mind that they may not work against spells since the barriers had not–but if we could wane Adara quickly to the holding cell we chose in the Obsidian Palace… She wouldn’t have time to fight back.
