Page 211 of The Blood Rites

Neither man moves to block me. Neither seems capable of speech.

My palms meet the doors and they open, not with a boom but a hush, as if they’ve been waiting for me all this time. The throne room is a pit of light. Columns the width of ancient trees rise and rise, holding up a vaulted ceiling painted with scenes of the Blood Rites, every panel alive with agony and violence.

The floor is polished so bright that the Blessed on either side are reflected twice, once in the flesh and a second time in the gold threaded ghosts that shimmer beneath their feet. There must be two dozen of them, all standing rigid, every head bowed, whilst their white-knuckled hands flex at their sides.

Upon a crescent of steps at the end of the hall sits the throne, a lattice of white crystal pulsing with golden veins. The man who sits there—Alistair Kore, the old Crown—is coming apart. That’s the only way to describe it. He’s gripping the arms of the throne so hard that his fingers have gone bone-white, but the rest of him is convulsing in place, gold-white fissures running up his arms and across his throat as the hollows beneath his eyes split open, the light itself turning against him. His lips peel back in a soundless snarl. For a moment, I see something living in his face—a small, frightened animal that knows the end has come, and not even his Goddess is going to save him.

I try to turn away but something in my chest forces my eyes forward—a string pulled taut, a resonance with this scene that fills every cavity in my body. My feet move without me, down the endless aisle, each step laid out like a script I’ve never read.

As I walk, some of the Blessed recoil; others drop their heads deeper, but their shoulders are hunched, waiting to see how this will play out. A few seem to watch openly, a kind of brazen calculation measuring the odds, the consequences, the prize, all while safe behind their veils.

Halfway down the aisle, Alistair shudders forward. His knees slam into the dais with the sound of a dry branch breaking. The ornate crown perched upon his head—a delicate thing, meant for show and nothing more—slides off, hits the steps, and shatters into pieces.

The real crown is a thing he carried inside, tucked behind his ribs, eating him alive for generations.

And now it lives in me. The thought should feel triumphant.

It doesn't.

He claws at his chest, as if it’s still inside him and he needs to pass it on, light spraying from his fingernails as he tears himself apart.

The first piece of him goes not with a scream but with a gasp. His skin buckles and flakes, each fragment drifting up, defying gravity. It’s all too familiar. I feel numb to it. His body follows: shoulder, then jaw, then eyes, all rising in gold-white motes that swirl through the shaft of light pouring from the stained-glass behind the throne. His bones crumble to ash and vanish before they hit the floor.

The light goes next.

The only thing left is his shadow, burned into the dais, and the faint hiss of breath from the scores of Blessed who have just watched their Crown die.

I don’t stop walking, stepping over the shards of the crown. I reach the foot of the throne, and looking down, I gaze upon the reflection in the polished marble.

It’s not me. It can’t be.

Gone is the boy who kept his head down and tried not to be seen. Gone is the corpse I was supposed to become. This version of me is thinner, sharper, eyes like molten glass, something burning just below the skin.

I think of Kael. I think of Marissa. I think of every dead Offering whose life fed this throne, and I sit.

The throne is not warm. The crystal bites through my clothes the instant my spine touches it, and the whole room snaps into focus, every atom of light searing a path through my eyes and into the back of my skull. My hands clamp on to the arms of the throne, not by choice but by necessity.

For a heartbeat, something brushes against my mind—I cannot explain it.

A sensation of falling. A hand signing a document. The taste of wine. Gone before I can grasp it.

It’s not a voice or a thought, but a memory, and it isn’t mine.

Then every vein of gold running through the throne shines. One by one. Gold spreads through the crystal beneath me like water finding old cracks.

The room goes silent. Not quiet.

Silent.

Even the Blessed stop breathing.

Light begins to gather around the throne, blazing through the stained glass, gold flooding every pane and filling the hall with impossible colour. The floor beneath my feet becomes liquid sunlight.

Everybody feels it. Everybody sees it.

A Blessed drops to their knees. Another follows.

Somewhere behind me somebody starts crying.