…”
“IS NOW PART OF YOU. IN SLAYING HIM WITH YOUR OWN HAND, YOU’VE CLAIMED IT AS YOURS. MERGING TWO INTO A LARGER WHOLE. THE MANY WERE ONE. AND WILL BE AGAIN.”
“But Lord Cassius died right in front of me. I didn’t feel any stronger.”
“CASSIUS WASN’T SLAIN BY A DARKIN. THE FRAGMENT IN HIM WAS LOST FOREVER. EVENTUALLY, EVEN GODS CAN DIE.”
Mia’s pulse was thumping in her veins, her belly a roiling slick of ice. She could feel the malice emanating from that blackened pool, the fury in the air around her. She understood it now, at last. It was the same fury she’d reached out and touched during the truedark massacre, the night she’d first truly wielded the power within her. Tearing the Philosopher’s Stone to pieces. Storming the Basilica Grande and destroying the grand statue of Aa outside it. Embracing the black and bitter rage in this city’s bones.
It was the rage of a child, betrayed by the one who should have loved it most.
The rage of a son, by his father slain.
The deadboy’s bottomless eyes bored into her own.
“Cleo’s journal … she spoke of a child inside her,” Mia said.
“… SHE WAS A LUNATIC, MIA …,” Eclipse growled.
“This whole tale sounds like lunacy,” she breathed.
“No,” Tric replied. “IT’s—”
“… destiny …?” Mister Kindly scoffed.
Tric turned bottomless eyes on the shadowcat.
“IF SHE HAS COURAGE ENOUGH TO SEIZE IT.”
“… this is the darkest shade of nonsense …”
Eclipse concurred with a sneer.
“… YOU HONESTLY WISH ME TO BELIEVE THIS IDIOT MOGGY IS A GOD …?”
“ANAIS’S SOUL SHATTERED INTO HUNDREDS OF FRAGMENTS. YOU’RE NO MORE GODLIKE THAN A DROP OF WATER IS THE OCEAN. BUT YOU MUST FEEL YOU’RE ALL BOUND TO EACH OTHER? DON’T YOU SENSE YOU ARE … INCOMPLETE?”
Mia knew what the Hearthless boy was talking about. The sickness and hunger she’d always felt around Cassius, Furian, now Jonnen. She never felt as whole as when Mister Kindly and Eclipse walked in her shadow. And she felt stronger than ever since Furian had died at her hands.
But still, it seemed sheer madness—this talk of fragmented gods and shattered souls, of restoring the balance between light and dark.
“YOU MUST MAKE WHOLE WHAT WAS BROKEN, MIA. YOU MUST RETURN MAGIK TO THE WORLD. RESTORE THE BALANCE BETWEEN NIGHT AND DAY, LIKE IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING. LIKE IT WAS ALWAYS MEANT TO BE. ONE SUN. ONE NIGHT. ONE MOON.”
She motioned to the blackened pool. “If it’s pieces of him I’m supposed to seek, that seems a good place to start.”
“No,” Tric said. “THIS IS ANAIS’S FURY. THIS IS HIS RAGE. THE PART OF HIM THAT HAS LAIN IN THE DARK AND FESTERED, THAT WANTS ONLY TO DESTROY. YOU MUST REMAKE THE WORLD, MIA. NOT UNDO IT. THIS IS YOUR PURPOSE.”
Mia’s eyes narrowed. “My purpose was avenging my familia. It was killing Remus, Duomo, and Scaeva. And I’ve done that, after living neck-deep in blood and shit for eight fucking years. No thanks to your precious Mother.”
“Mia …,” Ashlinn murmured.
“The Red Church captured Mercurio, Tric. Maw knows what they want with him, but he’s in their hands. They probably know he helped me murder Scaeva. I have to—”
“Mia,” Ashlinn said.
She turned to her lover, saw fear swimming in that beautiful blue.
“What is it?” Mia asked.
“I have to tell you something,” Ash said. “About Scaeva.”
“So tell me?”
“… You should sit down.”
“Are you jesting?” Mia scoffed. “Spit it out, Ashlinn.”
The Vaanian girl chewed her lip. Drew a deep and shivering breath.
“He lives.”
Jonnen’s eyes grew wide, his little mouth hanging open. Mia felt her heart skip a beat, an awful dread turning her gut colder than the deadboy behind her.
“What are you talking about?” Mia hissed. “I put a gravebone blade right through his ribs. I cut his fucking heart in two!”
Ash shook her head. “He was a double, Mia. An actor, fleshcrafted by Weaver Marielle to look like Scaeva. The consul was in league with the Red Church, and they knew our plan to win the magni all along. They wanted you to kill Duomo. Scaeva’s going to use the cardinal’s public murder as an excuse to exercise permanent emergency powers, claim the title of imperator, become king of Itreya in all but name.”
Mia’s head was swimming. Heart racing. Skin filmed with icy sweat.
Could it be true?
Could he have seen her coming?
Could she have been so blind?
Her legs felt weak. Dizzy from exhaustion, loss of blood, Solis’s toxin still lingering in her veins. She glanced to Jonnen, saw the boy looking at her with triumph in his black eyes. She’d been so careful. So certain. She could remember the elation as her blade parted Scaeva’s chest, the maddening joy as his blood splashed across her chin and lips, warm and thick and lovely red.
“O, Goddess …”
She blinked at Ashlinn, searching desperately for the lie, the ruse.
“How do you know this?”
“Scaeva told me. When they ambushed me in the chapel. And Mia … he told me something else besides.” Ash swallowed thickly, her voice shaking. “But I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to give it voice, knowing what it will do to you.”
“I thought it was finished …” Mia could feel bitter tears brimming in her eyes. Too tired and hurt to push them back anymore. “Eight f-fucking years, and I … I actually let myself believe it was done.”
She sank to her knees on a sea of screaming faces, tempted to just start screaming along with them.
“What could be worse than that?”
“O, Goddess, forgive me …”
Ashlinn sank down on the stone beside her. Taking Mia’s hands in her own, she took a deep, trembling breath.
“Mia …”
Ash shook her head, tears spilling down her cheeks.
“Mia … he’s your father.”
Mia sat on a black shoreline, a war of three colors in her head.
The first was the red of blood. The red of rage. She felt it curl her hands to fists. Fill her to brimming, toe to crown. Spitting curses and fire and stomping about on those anguished stone faces. It was bliss to give in to it for a while, embracing the temper she was so notorious for. At least she knew where it came from now. Swimming in the air about her, the city above her, changing the architecture beneath her skin.
All her life.
The rage of a god laid low.
The second was cool steel gray. Suspicion, slipping