Now, that seemed naive of me.
Of course calling upon a god wasn’t a pretty, ceremonial act. It was a sledgehammer against a door. A ram against a gate. It was a scream so loud that no creature, mortal or god, could ignore it.
And the gods, indeed, took notice.
Maybe it was the way the light shifted, the sky turning mottled purple against the blaze of the Sightmother’s spell. Maybe it was the way sound dulled and heightened at once, my ears ringing. Maybe it was the way all the threads reoriented, as if disrupted by a much greater force, leaving me swaying. My physical body felt very far away, and my hair lifted around me, as if I was floating underwater.
Shadows, distant silhouettes, collected within the growing pool of light above us.
And just as I could sense the presences of the mortals around us, I could sense them too—the gods. A presence more powerful than I had ever experienced. It made me want to collapse in supplication, like my soul itself had been stripped from within my skin.
The Sightmother couldn’t move. She couldn’t so much as speak. But through her focus, she managed to shout through the threads, {Now!}
I had fallen to my knees, though I didn’t remember doing so. I forced myself upright—difficult, on such violently shaking limbs.
I turned to Atrius.
And somehow, his presence made all the rest of it seem tolerable. A steadiness tethering me to shore.
His hair floated around him too, tendrils of silver suspended in weightlessness. He’d somehow managed to keep himself on his feet, though the other vampires and even the Arachessen acolytes were on their knees. His face tilted to the sky, watching the shadows peer down at us.
He looked at the gods like they were a challenge.
But when I approached him, one labored step after another, his gaze fell to me.
I touched his face, my fingertips caressing the solidness of his cheekbone, the softness of his lips, the scar along his jaw.
Even with my senses obliterated like this, he smelled of snow. Fresh and cool and new.
His eyes traced my face, and I could feel that stare like he could feel my fingertips—mimicking my movements on him, forehead and lips and chin.
Here, before him, even more than the gods, I was so terrifyingly exposed.
I had managed to hide my true self from the Sightmother, a woman who could see the depths of my inner presence. And yet, I could not hide myself from Atrius. He saw all of me. Whether I liked it or not.
Good. Because I needed him to see me now. See the truth.
We had one chance.
My free hand fell down his arm—gripped his wrists, as if in comforting reassurance or heartfelt apology. The leather of his restraints was smooth against my palms.
My other hand held the dagger up between us.
“There is no greater offering to a god than the acolyte of another,” I said.
I raised the blade.
And then, so fast I prayed no one else would have time to react while so blinded by magic, I sliced Atrius’s bindings, and shoved the hilt into his hands.
“Don’t stand still,” I whispered.
Knowing he would understand.
Knowing he would know what I was telling him to do, right now, in this moment, with the gods steps away and the Sightmother consumed by her spell.
His eyes widened. The shock in his presence reverberated once, for half a breath, before it settled into resolve.
Already, the acolytes’ heads were beginning to turn to us. But Atrius and I had fought together so many times. I knew he didn’t need much time to kill.
And indeed, this strike took him only seconds:
Seconds to lunge across the altar at the Sightmother.
Seconds to draw the blade across her throat, violent and quick, not even giving her time to scream, her voice fading to a wet gargle.
Seconds for him to hold her back by her hair, letting all that blood pour over the altar, and lift his chin to the sky.
“Goddess Nyaxia,” he screamed. “I give you this gift. An acolyte of Acaeja. The blood of a tyrant queen, and the crown of a White Pantheon kingdom. I spill this blood and claim this kingdom for you, my Mother of the Ravenous Dark, Nyaxia.”
His voice cracked. Bathed in such intense light, no one else could see the single tear slide down his cheek. No one but me.
He choked out, “My pact to you has been fulfilled.”
Yes, it was difficult to get the attention of a god.
But this? This was enough.
In fact, it was enough to get the attention of two.
47
I had thought my vision of Nyaxia had been debilitating. I had been wrong. It was nothing compared to what she was in person—a force so great that you had no choice but to bow, a beauty so intense you had no choice but to avert your gaze, a presence so strong that the threads themselves couldn’t define her.
All at once, she was here, and all at once, the world rearranged to suit her.
She was as she had appeared in the vision—the tendrils of long black hair, floating like freestanding night, the pale skin, the blood-drenched mouth, the eyes of nebulas and galaxies. And yet, she still was so much more.
The terror that fell over me had me on my hands and knees against the stone.
And yet, through that fear, my attention fell to Atrius—Atrius, who now hacked off the Sightmother’s head, presenting it to his goddess.
He didn’t show it, but I could feel his fear, too. He was drowning in it.
He bowed to Nyaxia and held out the head to her.
“My lady,” he said. “A gift for you.”
Nyaxia chuckled. The sound felt like a fingernail up my spine—a promise of something either very pleasurable or very dangerous.
She reached down and took the head, examining it.
“My,” she purred, “and what a gift it is.”
“I promised you a kingdom of the White Pantheon conquered in your name,” Atrius said. “I do not make promises I don’t keep.”
“And yet I didn’t expect the head of my cousin’s devoted acolyte.” A slow smile widened over Nyaxia’s mouth, another drop of blood trickling down her ice-pale skin. “A kingdom is one thing. But this... what a delightful surprise. For too long my cousins have thought my children are free for them to hunt. How nice to see the roles reversed.”
The earth itself shivered with her pleasure. I’d never been in the presence of such wicked delight. I knew that gods, petty as they were, loved to be offered sacrifices that spat in the face of their rivals. But this... Nyaxia seemed to love the spite of it more than the gift of the kingdom she had sent Atrius on an impossible mission for.
She lowered the head and ran one blood-soaked hand over Atrius’s cheek, a mother’s caress. He stiffened beneath her touch.
“You,” she purred, “have exceeded my expectations, Atrius of the House of Blood.”
Just then, the air shifted again. All the air ripped from my body, leaving me heaving on the ground.
It wasn’t enough to say the threads shifted. They changed. suddenly they were more alive than they ever had been, every one of them bound to a new source—their only true master.