50
It was the last of his strength. Kasik fell to the ground next to Nina, his tayta’s achilla wrapped in a fist. He watched through sideways eyes and a fog of near death as Nina slowly rose, her eyes alight with the fire of a thousand suns. Her hair had come free from its pins and plaits and it billowed on a phantom breeze.
She was a vengeful god. Retribution and rage.
Kasik shivered with cold and fear. No more than an arm’s length away, Atik sat on his knees, his arms spread wide and his mouth open in a silent scream. The tendons in his neck protruded grotesquely, the blood close enough to the skin that he looked like he might burst. Blood leaked from his eyes and ears and mouth, and Kasik knew that there would be nothing left of his tayta very soon.
Time seemed to slow. He turned to Nina so that her face would be the last thing he saw. A measure of comfort in the cold.
But she was unrecognizable. She towered over them both, a god among mere mortals, and she bared her teeth in a nightmarish grin.
51
Nina became pure retribution. Vengeance coursed through her as Atik’s threads thrummed in her hands, his body skewered on the end of her control.
Attay flooded her once again, and she gasped with the strength of it, fueled by Atik’s life so that every will within range glowed like an exploding star.
Nina used all her strength to lean forward and place her cheek against Atik’s. “You have failed,” she breathed into his ear. “And you will suffer the gods’ wrath for it. I hope you burn in their displeasure, that the faces of those you’ve murdered are all you can see. I hope you never forget that you were defeated by me, that my name rolls off your tongue with every breath you take in eternal misery.”
She placed her hands on his shoulders, felt them tremble beneath her touch. At last, she was able to feel his will buried deeply beneath the darkness of his soul. “The gods have used you, and now they forsake you.” Then she grasped his will, and she twisted. His eyes opened wide in terror. Streaks of red joined the black, and then he crumpled backward, legs folded unnaturally, unseeing eyes staring up at a sky full of betrayal.
Nina pulled free from Atik and surveyed the mountaintop. Her attay began reaching, grasping at the golden threads surrounding her that had scattered to the wind, men running for their lives, scrabbling down the mountainside like ants fleeing from their predator. She began pulling indiscriminately, uncaring who died and who lived, felt their lives drain from their bodies as they burst like overripe fruit, bloodleaking from their eyes and mouths and ears and nose, feeding the earth her revenge that, in turn, fed her attay twenty times over.
And yet, it wasn’t sated. It hungered for more.
These people had turned her into this, had forced her to become their worst nightmare. Was she to blame for taking pleasure in their demise? For accepting the role they had forced onto her?
Nina found Maicu on his side just past the ring of the achilla altar. Somehow, he was still alive, and his fingers twitched as she approached. She imagined how she looked, bloody and half broken but filled with power. Withpurpose.
What a treat the gods had given her that it would be her hand to take his life.
She fell to her knees before him, the blade held between two fists.
“Can you hear me?” she asked calmly.
Maicu took a shallow breath, and then whispered, “Yes.”
“The rest of my family. Are they alive?”
An almost imperceptible shake of his head. His lips parted, and Nina had to put her ear to his lips to hear him over the screaming wind. “Ask... Kasik.”
The blood beneath her skin froze with those two small words, but her will exulted in the weakness of this once-great emperor. She was blind to the faces of those she had killed, blind to the destruction she was wreaking on behalf of the gods. She was playing into their hands, and she was enjoying every moment of it.
Slowly, she reached out to grab Maicu’s golden circlet lying discarded above his head. He watched with unblinking eyes as she wrenched the achilla from the center and held it up to the light. It swirled with life, with knowing. The gods’ will beat at the center of it, and she squeezed it in her fist and turned it to dust. It shimmered on the breeze as it floated free. And then she reached for his threads, fully pliant in her hands.
Pleasure thrummed through her at his wide, panicked eyes. It was tempting to hold him there forever, to revel in his vulnerability and pain until the end of time. Perhaps she could keep him alive and control his every move, his every thought.
Nina reached for the emperor slowly, gently, as she had once in his rooms when she was weak and afraid. She delicately ran her hand across his head, combed her fingers through his thick hair, then grabbed it into a fist and pulled. His head sprang upward, eyes to the sky, and Nina moved closer. “You made the wrong choices, Maicu. You will pay for the gods’ greed. It’s a shame that you won’t be here to witness as I destroy them.”
The emperor shook his head. His eyes were different now, lighter. Less burdened without the crown on his head. “The gods fear nothing, not even you.”
“We’ll find out soon enough,” she whispered gently as she slid her hand over his chest.
Nina was finally completely attuned with the strength of her attay. She saw how easy it would be to destroy Maicu’s body from the inside out until he was a puddle of gore and grit. How the pain would drive him into madness. How the blood would feed her appetite.
She saw it all, and yet she fought against that pull.
This is not who you are, she heard her sister whisper.
