Chapter Twenty-Nine
I held perfectly still, smile frozen on my face, as my vision went fuzzy around the edges.
There were layers to being caught red-handed.
The first and most obvious was physical.
I was ten, nabbed with a book I wasn’t allowed to read, stomach plummeting into my toes as I awaited the raw welts of the leather belt against my backside. But I could take the pain. I’d learned how to outlast every punishment, biting my lip through the tears, choking down the urge to sob as I repeated to myself:Soon this will be a memory.
But there was more to breaking the rules than a red, swollen bottom and the inability to sit for several days. The second layer, the condemnation that accompanied it, was so much worse.
“You break God’s heart when you disobey your parents,” my mom would say. “I don’t want you to go to Hell, Marlow. Why are you trying to spend eternity away from your parents? Why are you hurting God?”
I’d tried to be perfect. I had no intention of leaving with raw wounds and a broken heart. But their expectations had been moving pieces, and I’d never quite understood what would set them off. One TV show would be fine, and the next would get me in trouble. One joke would be okay, and the one after that would lead to my discipline. They’d created a maze so complex that it was impossible to developan internal compass. My sense of morality, my understanding of the world, my best intentions, they could all be wrong.
The only way to know if I was walking in God’s plan was to get verification of each and every action, every thought, every choice, from my parents.
The only thing they’d truly achieved was teaching me that the surefire way to escape abuse was to lie. If I could talk my way out of it, if I could win them over, or flip the narrative and make them see my side, then I could circumvent the horrors that came with their displeasure.
Calming myself down was a fool’s errand. My gut had known this for what it was. My skin hummed with prickly, painful terror as my thundering pulse forced sweat to bead above my brow.
I was ten years old all over again as I stared at the serpent. There had to be something I could say. There had to be an excuse, a way to talk my way out of this.
Lie,the voice inside me begged.Do something!
I was still caught in frozen speechlessness when I heard a commotion come from the kitchen. I looked down the darkened corridor the way we’d come.
Ten seconds later, one of the NPCs emerged with Estrid in tow.
You have to say something,I screamed internally.Estrid has no social graces. She’ll try brute force. She’ll ruin everything. She’ll—
“And why,” Apep said, looking past me at Estrid, “did you remain in hiding while this human approached?”
She grunted, struggling and failing to shake herself loose.
Just like that, I knew we had no hope of remaining in his good graces.
Estrid bared her teeth. She jerked her arm, but the NPC did not release her. “I had no idea she was going to approach. I’d planned to break in without you ever knowing we were here.”
For fuck’s sake.
I winced as the bridge I’d built between myself and Apepcrumbled.
Potential ally, pacified serial killer, sun-eater. It didn’t matter.
The dizzying wave of dread made it difficult to breathe, but if I didn’t do something, I was certain we’d both pay the price.
“We didn’t know it was your house when we arrived,” I said. I couldn’t think of a sufficient lie. But maybe a distortion of the truth could save us. “Estrid was just looking for her partner. Once we realized who we were visiting, I knew there was no one I’d rather have on our side for the final battle.”
It was barely a lie. Wedidneed him on our side. We neededallof the apocalypse deities to fight with us, not against us, if this was going to work. Tackling the King of Heaven was impossible enough without fighting a war on multiple fronts. If I could convince gods like Apep to work with me, then we could fight to invert power structures and bring change to the pantheons. We could circumvent the senseless violence that came with countless world-ending prophecies.
This had to work. We had no other choice.
“Your side,” he repeated slowly. He took a thoughtful swig of his beer. He jerked his head toward the door and led the way. I was going to be sick. I floated in a cocktail of fight or flight, and I landed on the third and least helpful of the survival responses. I was too frozen to do anything aside from comply. I followed, my legs becoming jelly once more as I put one foot in front of the other. Estrid grunted against her captor behind me as we filed into the next room.
What we saw stole my breath. My lungs were left in painful, burning agony as they screamed for me to inhale, but I couldn’t move.
Estrid’s reaction was less subtle. “How dare you,” she seethed.
