Now Caledon’s going to take my life too.
I try to reach out to Leon across the mooring, summoning some final words for him as my feet dangle helplessly above the ground.
There’s a whistling noise, fast enough that I almost miss it, even with my immortal hearing. Caledon’s eyes widen, and then his head jerks back so violently I think his neck might have snapped.
Caledon releases me, and I drop to the ground, looking up to see an arrow sticking straight out of his temple. I look wildly around and spot Tira across the clearing, bow lifted, her eyes narrowed in fierce concentration.
Not just any bow, I realize. Ethira’s.
“That’s for my family, you bastard!” she screeches.
Etusca’s words come back to me as I choke through the darkness spreading across my neck. Some people have a natural affinity for the gods’ weapons. Some people don’t need to be a god to wield them against an immortal. Only a god can kill a god. But a pissed off mortal can sure as hell do some damage.
I snatch the scythe up from where I dropped it. Caledon’s leaning against the tree, body bent, more dark blood bubblingfrom his head wound. His eyelids flutter as I move closer, his arms reaching down to try to push himself up.
“And this is for mine,” I say, and I swing the scythe, bringing it slashing down across Caledon’s torso. It slices straight through flesh and bone, cleaving him open. I step back to avoid the flood of black tar that spills forth, letting the body fall face down against the earth. I watch as he spasms, shudders…and then stills.
I stare down at Caledon’s corpse, not quite believing it.
“Ana!” Tira sobs. She crawls slowly toward me across the ground, trying to navigate the still shining pools of blackness Caledon left in his wake. I fall to my knees, inhaling deep, heaving breaths as I blast the last of his darkness away from my neck with sunlight.
When she reaches me, we grab hold of each other. I know she must be squeezing me tightly, but I don’t feel it as anything more than a gust of air on my skin. I hug her back, but I’m aware of how fragile she feels in my arms, thinking she might crumble away like chalk if I hold her too hard.
“We did it,” I say, but my own voice sounds far away to me. I feel footsteps vibrating across the ground; the others are surrounding us. I search for Leon, finding his gray gaze.
“You did it!” Alastor crows.
There’s movement behind me as Drisha bends to check the body. “He’s really dead.”
But I ignore them both, eyes locked on Leon.
“Something’s wrong.”
I’m not sure which of us thinks it first, the thought ringing across the mooring at the same time.
“Something’s wrong,” Leon repeats aloud, looking around at the others. Tira releases me from her hug, pulling back to search my face.
Now that I don’t have a clear goal and purpose to channel it into, now there’s no one to fight, I can feel the immortality gripping hold of me. The unending, limitless sense of myself, the way magic pours into me from the infinite river. There’s nowhere for any of it to go, and it’s filling me up. It’sdrowningme.
“It’s the immortality, it’s overwhelming her,” Leon barks to the others, throwing himself to the ground to kneel beside me. He grabs my shoulders.
“Listen, Ana,” he says, repeating himself through the mooring, so I hear everything in an echo. “You can handle this. You can control it. It doesn’t have to control you.”
“I can’t,” I groan through gritted teeth. My temples are throbbing, the veins in them feeling like they’re about to burst. In fact, my whole head feels like it’s going to split in two. Eternal power has crawled inside me, and now it’s trying to claw its wayout.
“Why didn’t this happen to Caledon?” Etusca demands, her shrill voice like nails across my flesh.
“Caledon had a void inside of him. A black hole that absorbed all the power it could…”
I don’t hear the rest of Leon’s explanation, the pressure becoming too intense. My mind is like a glass box with a hugeweight on top of it—the burden of my immortality is making the edges of my psyche fracture, hairline cracks spidering across it.
I dig my fingers into my scalp, screaming.
Soon it will shatter. Soon I will explode into a thousand pieces. I almost want that. At least it would stop this pain. I could exist as fragments floating in eternity, as long as I don’t have to hold this endless energy in any longer. But then I wouldn’t be me anymore. I wouldn’t be with my friends, or with Leon. I’d be alone again—forever. As isolated as a little girl locked away from the rest of the world.
“Ana, you don’t have to hold onto this. You can let go.”
But my hands are glued in place, trying to hold my mind together so it doesn’t splinter apart. I can’t let go; if I do, everything will break. Leon knows that. He can feel what’s happening to me. Why doesn’t he understand?
