She set her jaw, ignoring him. Her mother was still speaking down the pathway, but the sound was muffled to Nya. She would face that reality in a moment.
“You—” Her breath caught, eyes on Morgen. “You are dead to me if my father doesn’t live.”
Morgen tried to speak again but only coughed up more blood. Carus shook his head and snapped, “Relax, sweetheart, and direct your death threats my way.Iwent for Heles, and I would’ve had a straight shot, but Morgen stopped me. Demi-god or not, your father would have been dead on impact if Morgen hadn’t interrupted.”
Nya blinked a few times, shaking her head. “I don’t… I?—”
“Go,” Morgen choked out, a trembling hand pointing behind her.
She glanced back to where her mother knelt next to her father, who was still unconscious. The battle had halted too, she realized, half of Morgen’s army nowhere to be seen and the other half holding a line of defense around them.
She didn’t move right away, torn. Morgen was still bleeding and drawing in those horrible, rattling breaths. If what Carus said was true, Morgen had just saved her father’s life. But…why?Why, when, mere moments earlier, the battle had been raging, and Morgen had been aiming for Heles too?
“N-Nya, g—” Morgen tried, his expression twisting with pain as his lungs rattled and the wound on his chest bled freely.
Go. You don’t need to pretend you care.
That was the problem, though, wasn’t it? She did care, more than she wanted to. She wished she could tell herself it was just the blood bond, but she couldn’t deny this was more than that. Still, in a last-ditch effort to prove herself wrong, she turned and hurried over to where her mother had both hands pressed to her father’s chest, her eyes shut and her entire body trembling.
When Nya stopped short just behind them, her mother said in a strained voice, “Nya, love, come here.”
Nya took a shallow breath, kneeling with her. There was a large gash across her father’s torso, and his eyes were still closed.Something else was lingering with him too, somefeeling…A shadow reaching for him, one she sensed her mother was trying to keep at bay.
“You feel it, yes?” her mother whispered in a hoarse voice, looking at Nya with silver-bright eyes.
Nya bit her lip. “What is it?”
A dark shadow passed over her mother’s face. “Death.” She took Nya’s hand, a silent tear slipping down her cheek. “Fate is unhappy with me. I’ve tricked it too many times on your father’s behalf.”
Nya glanced at him, unmoving, and with that cloud of darkness looming closer, she suddenly understood what her mother was asking of her.
“There is a place somewhere inside you, Nya,” her mother whispered. “A dark place, where the very essence of Death lives. Perhaps, like I did once, you have hidden it, locked it away. I need you to reach for that place—welcome it. And then, I want you to take that shadow lingering over your father and shove it as far into that place as you can, drown it in darkness as you lock it away.”
Nya nodded, not wasting time to argue or ask further questions. The shadow was close.
She shut her eyes, hovering a hand over her father’s chest as she looked inside herself. She was no stranger to the place her mother described. It had always beckoned to her with cold seduction, biding its time and waiting for the moment she finally gave in. Now, she reached freely for those dark stars, guttering with lifeless, midnight fire. For a moment, she lingered, breathing in the void, ignoring the call to exhale, because if she did?—
It didn’t matter. That wasn’t what she was here for.
She snatched Death’s shadow before he even realized she was there, and instead of hiding him as her mother had, she let thefrigid fire within her chest rise to the surface, engulfing the cloak of darkness until it crumbled to ash, the echo of a far-off scream lost to the swirling wind of the void as it was swept away forever.
Just before she left that place, ignoring the aching need to follow into that chasm of nothingness, she sensed Death—not his cloak nor his hands, but the full force of his presence, and when she turned, she saw his true form before her. The small drop of her blood that was mortal shied away at the sight of the utter nothingness taken form, only broken by the blinking of two, silver-laced eyes.
Be careful,he whispered, his voice hardly more than an echo.This is a place few have been. It holds great temptation and danger.
She smiled. The stars flickered with a single thought from her, the void roaring in her ears as she held one in her hand.Do not worry. I have been here many times before.
For a brief flash, fear crossed Death’s faint features. It was the last thing she saw before he reached for her, and she was pulled away from the void, the stars and the fire in her hands.
Chapter 13
One Year and One Week Prior
There are ‘new’ gods born often. Even I am considered one of them. But few of us are whispered about with such feared reverence as this usurper who is stirring trouble across the border. They even say he is responsible for the storms. Cion has urged me to travel to Arcadia and investigate. While the stories are troublesome, I do not think the storms are a result of a god. Even Kronos could not send such destruction across the border.
—Lady Anabeth, Consort to Her Majesty Cion Livii, Queen of Aren, D’anna
It was raining,the downpour torrential thundering against the stone alcove behind the waterfall they were huddled in. Four years ago, she had stupidly jumped off the rock outcropping just above them, and Morgen had pulled her out of the water. She was older now, much less naive about many things.
