“What will my punishment be?” Dalvia angled a slim hand through the bars of her cages toward Faragathe. Sparks caught portions of her skin, but she didn’t so much as flinch.
“Quiet.” The goddess took her wrist with a brief glance at Kadra. He returned it and dropped the cages around Dalvia. “For many, many centuries until the gods send you down to the mortal plane again.”
Dalvia smiled. “I think I’ll like that.” She stepped forward. Anek made an anguished sound.
Noceo screamed her name right as Faragathe faced them with a glower. All eighteen eyes pinned them with quiet fury before goddess and girl vanished.
And the screaming in the courtyard suddenly stopped.
Numb, Sarai trailed one hand along the wall, walking until she found Kadra’s solid frame and leaned against him.
“She was—” she swallowed, “she was right about a great deal.”
Kadra’s arm came around her shoulders. Grief burned in his eyes. “She was wrong about just as much.”
“The worst of it,” Anek sucked in a breath between sobbing, “is that I can’t fault her for it or forgive her for it.”
Steps bounded up the stairs. “I think it’s over! Everyone’s waking up!” Harion’s voice arrived before he did. “Gods, Ineverwant—” He and Cassandane stared at the dismal tableau in the ballroom.
The Head Tetrarch glanced each of them swiftly. “Casualties among us?”
“None,” Kadra confirmed.
“Then, why the long fucking faces?” Harion squinted at a still-crying Anek and reared back in shock.
Sometimes, you can see who someone is and who they wanted to become. And they do too. And the dissonance between the two eats at you both.
“And where is Dalvia?” Harion cracked his knuckles menacingly. “That bitch deserves a public beheading.”
“She’s free,” Sarai said quietly, glancing at the moonless sky and knowing that Dalvia had passed far beyond it. “She’s finally free.”
Twenty-fifth day of the Month of Breath
Two days after Faragathe’s descent upon Edessa, Sarai strode down the Am Semni Institute’s hallways. Most of the dead had been cleared in the morning, but she didn’t want a reason to have to come back here after today.Komis’ll be a wound for some time.
She paused at the door on the end of the first-floor hallway and went in. Dalvia’s study looked just as it had during their last visit. Everything had changed since then, so Sarai had strangely expected the study to have done so as well.
The madness-struck in Edessa had woken in droves, terrified and requiring immense healing of brain and heart damage, but otherwise whole. The psychological trauma done to them would likely take decades to heal, though.
Noceo sat in a cell in Kadra’s vigile station in Komis being readied for trial. Kadra had already recused himself to ensure impartiality. Whatever the punishment, it would pale in comparison to what the man now inflicted on himself. She had briefly visited him the day before and found a shell who had offered a firm apology and then returned to contemplating the walls.
What if?The worst of questions.
She trailed a hand along one of Dalvia’s desks. Vials and jars had been stuffed haphazardly into crates. Boxes of animal secretions, roots, leaves,and powders lay by the door. She felt the first tear slip free.This was a tragedy.
Footsteps sounded behind her before Kadra’s rough finger took the tear from her cheek. She turned into him, fighting tears. “She wasn’t wrong.”
Kadra rested his forehead against hers, and she felt his silent accord. Something fluttered on the desk, a sheaf of parchment covered in Dalvia’s writing. She stilled at the realization of what it was.
He followed her gaze and something quiet and contemplative lit his face. “Her formula for Noceo’s stimulant.”
She was already moving, drawn to it like a moth to flame. “It wasn’t entirely beetle venom.” She leafed through the pages. “No one else knows how to make it.”
“Yet,” Kadra said dryly.
She half laughed. “True. Someone will discover it again. People are too enterprising not to.”
“Immense power.” He simply watched her. “In two pages.”
