Beneath the stars, Triche shakes and glows. His eyes burn bright silver, and he flies away, far from the reach of Claudia’s sword. Again, she charges him, but all he has to do is lazilyhold up his hand, and a powerful force explodes from his palm, knocking Claudia all the way across the room. Her back smashes into a bookshelf. Heavy tomes come crashing down on her, their sharp corners arrowing against her skull. The sword flashes in her hand, readying to fade. Her mouth tastes of blood. With her cheek pressed to the floor, Claudia feels the vibration of Triche’s heavy steps while he storms toward her. He places one foot on either side of her hips and grins down at her.
“You can’t kill me, Claudia. I’ve lived for over one hundred years, and I will live for an eternity more. Your death will bring me to my ascension.”
Through labored breaths, she says, “I thought you were good.”
“If goodness was my aim, I never would have gotten where I am or where I intend to go. Gods do not play by the mortal order of good and evil.”
“You’re a monster. Not a god.”
“My dear, you’re too foolish to understand the difference.”
The High Sage pierces his thumb with a sharp tooth and smears blood on her forehead. “Aries, Crux.”
The room blurs and fades to black.
Claudia, flat to the ground, opens her eyes. Wherever she is, there is no light. Only a damp stone floor below her and cold darkness everywhere else. Her scholar robes are gone, and her white dress has been roughly sliced down the spine, all the way to the small of her back. As she stands, it hangs loosely around her frame as though she’s lost all the weight she’s worked to gain. She stretches out her arms, feeling for anything firm, anything to indicate where she is right now. The movement tugs at wounds on her back—injuries she doesn’t remember having. Reaching back, she runs her fingers along a series of jagged cuts. She counts the ones she can reach—at least ten. There are more inthe center of her back that she can’t quite touch with her fingers. Straining to reach them, she stumbles into a craggy stone wall. It’s as damp as the floor. Where is this water coming from? She feels along the wall, which curves quickly. She stretches her arms out to either side, realizing she can touch both sides of this cramped place at the same time. When she turns slowly, her fingers meet cold iron bars. She pulls herself close to them, peering out into the dark. In the distance, there is a bead of orange light.
“Hello?”
The bead of light grows as someone approaches, carrying a torch. The orange glow washes over the entire room. It’s a small, curved cell that stretches up impossibly high so that the light cannot reach. All around her are sticky red handprints. Her fingers, curled around the iron bars, are covered in blood.
The room isn’t damp. What she felt in the dark—it was blood.
Blood on her hands. Again.
High Sage Triche steps out of the darkness. He’s wearing black robes, undone so she can see his white chest covered in scarred constellations. “Hello,Starling.”
She inhales sharply. “How do you know that name?”
He scowls. A groan bubbles at the back of his throat. “Don’t ask questions to which you already know the answer. It’s foolish. I despise foolishness.”
After a hard swallow, Claudia says, “You spoke to Sidarphion.”
His gray eyes reflect the flames of the torch while he looks her up and down. “He spoke to me”—he reaches through the bars and curls his hand around her throat—“when I sank my teeth into you.”
Claudia leaps back out of his grasp. Back pressed to the stone wall, her hand snaps up to her neck. There are two new teeth marks next to the bite marks Sidarphion left. She swallows a gag.
“Did you—” She shivers, fingers tightening around her own neck. His mouth has been here. His tongue has licked here. Histeeth have marked her here. “Did you bite my soul, too?” She pushes down the bile burning in her throat.
“I have no use for that. I only needed to be sure that your soul was truly bound to Sidarphion.” The torch’s glow hangs on to his bared teeth. “And what a big bite of you he took. Far more than he took from Odette.” He inhales deeply through his nose. “I could taste him in you.”
“You did this with Odette, too?”
“Of course I did. I once thought she was my only hope for killing the god, but her soul had left her body by the time I found her.”
Claudia’s heart sinks, landing like a rock in the pit of her stomach. Odette really is dead. Nothing more than a ghost. So, who else brought the diary into Claudia’s room? Who locked her in the detention room with Cassius? Who slid that note under the door?
“You’re better, though,” Triche murmurs. “So much of your soul lives inside him. If you die, part of him dies as well. And when your soul is poisoned, he will be poisoned, too.”
“Poison,” she whispers, remembering how Triche called her that when he caught her with Cassius in the observatory. She was so naive. Why was Triche there that night? Why did he even come to the Astrologia wing? It’s so obvious now. He’s the strongest celestial witch of them all. The one who killed all the others.
The one who caged a god.
“I think you’re the poison, Triche. You could’ve approached ascension honorably, but you knew you were too weak to earn godhood. Your only chance is to steal it.”
He holds his hand over his heart. “You think I did not try other ways? I was once a young student here, same as you. I know just as well as you do how hard it is to survive this place. Here, scholarship is akin to suffering. It is merciless and it is cruel. Back then, it nearly killed me, but I refused to give up. I was determined to become the sixth god of Cygnus. Relentless in mywork ethic, I read constantly. I coined new theories. I published award-winning papers, and I worked my way to becoming valedictorian. So don’t you dare accuse my desires of being unearned. I am owed, Claudia. I won a blessing that Sidarphion refused to grant, and it is finally time to collect the debt that he has wrought.”
“You cannot ask for ascension as your blessing. That is law. You’re not entitled to godhood just because you surpassed your classmates.”
