The word delicious made skitters of fear rattle down her spine, but Neve clenched her teeth, her fists. The point of the god-bone dug into her palm, held flush along the line of her forearm.
She shot a quick glance back at Solmir, read the inevitable and his fear of it in the flash of his eyes—she’d be the one close enough. She’d have to stab the Oracle.
Stab it, and hope that was enough.
The Serpent had wanted to die; it didn’t fight back when Neve shoved the god-bone into its side. But she had no idea how the Oracle would react, what it would do as magic seeped out of its wound.
No time to think about that, no time for fear. Neve stepped forward, cautiously approaching the god in chains. “What kind of truth do you want?”
“Oh, Shadow Queen,” the Oracle said, those twitching fingers stretching forward to brush lightly over her forehead. “You don’t get to choose.”
The finger didn’t move. For a moment, Neve wondered if this would be easier than she’d thought, if the extraction of a truth was something simple—
Pain. Pain like a dagger slicing into her brain, paring to her heart even though the Oracle’s finger still didn’t move—so much worse than the pain she’d felt before, when she pulled magic from the Shadowlands and nearly drove her soul down into its foundations. Neve gasped, but she knew it only because she felt her mouth open. She heard nothing, nothing but an awful buzzing in her ears, like a horde of corpse-flies. Down, down that sharpness traveled, down to the knot of emotion she’d kept so tightly tangled in her chest.
Her soul. Cold and small, wrapped in anger and guilt and all the things she didn’t want to see, didn’t want to feel.
But now they flashed before her, snatches of sight and sound, narration by the voice of the Oracle that she didn’t hear in her head so much as in her very center, seething up and hissing against her bones.
You thought you loved him, but did you really? Was it more an idea of him, a clinging to who you thought you were, wished you could be? An image of Raffe, dark eyes warm, cupping her cheek in her cold bedroom. You didn’t avenge your mother, you would’ve held the knife yourself if you thought it was the only way. Isla, distant across a dining table that felt miles long. You knew Red was fine, you knew it the moment you saw her again, but you were in too deep to admit mistakes. You would’ve sacrificed her Wolf and killed whatever happiness she’d found because to do otherwise would mean admitting you were wrong, and you couldn’t do that, not then and not ever. Red, crouched in the Shrine, more wild than woman, and Neve knowing that was what she was always meant to be.
An image of Solmir leaning against the wall after Neve’s coronation, arms crossed and mouth stoic. But that had been Arick, hadn’t it? Or Solmir wearing Arick’s face? It was all too knotted together for her to untangle, who he was, who he’d been.
Does it matter? the Oracle’s voice asked, amusement twisting up the end of the question. You knew something was wrong, and you did nothing. You never let yourself think deeply on what Arick was up to, because you knew you wouldn’t stop him, no matter what it was. What kind of queen does that make you? What kind of friend? What kind of person? Not a good one, Shadow Queen. Never a good one.
The bite of stone into her knees, her hands at her chest, as if she could reel all of this in and tie it back up. But once unspooled, her packed-down emotions kept coming, heightened and sharpened by the voice of the Oracle, slicing in and knowing all, an arterial pump of truth.
You never admit when you’re wrong you’d rather die than let anyone know you made a mistake all of this is your fault if you’d just listened to Red and let her go you’d still be with Raffe even though you don’t deserve him—
Neve wanted to pass out, to fade from consciousness, but the Oracle’s onslaught kept her viciously, horrifically present, anchored in all the moments she’d done wrong, seeing the face of every person she’d let down.
It was terrible. It was deserved.
When she felt Solmir streak past her with a roar in his teeth, felt him wrench the god-bone from her hand, she barely noticed, crouched on the bone-strewn floor with her soul in tatters in her chest.
Solmir leapt at the Oracle, over the chains that bound it to the dais, and slashed the bone across the god’s throat.
Immediately, the pounding of all Neve’s failures through her head ceased, the endless parade of all the ways she’d fallen short. She looked up through swimming eyes.
The Oracle was shuddering. Though shuddering seemed like too gentle a word—the space the god occupied seemed scrambled, making its shape judder from side to side, edges unmatched as if Neve were seeing it through window slats. Shadows poured from it, writhing into the air with their chittering sound, louder and more violent than she’d ever heard before.
The bone dropped; Solmir thrust his hands out, calling the rogue magic to him as it drained from the gaping wound in the Oracle’s throat. The shadows wound around his arms, filling him with darkness, and Neve saw the moment when his clenched jaw unhinged, when the pained scream became something he couldn’t hold in anymore.
The ground rumbled, dust raining from the ceiling. The pile behind them shook, loose bones rattling, sliding down to the bloodstained stone floor.
The Oracle fell to its knees, knocking the rotting rose crown askew. Its mouth opened, letting loose a high laugh, chased by more gibbering shadows, a cacophony of madness and unraveling. It reverberated in the air and in Neve’s skull; she clapped her hands over her ears.
Foolish of me, the Oracle whispered in her head. Foolish to think he offered freedom instead of death, but I’ve grown so tired of shackles that one is nearly as welcome as the other. Though not quite as foolish as you are, Shadow Queen. Thinking there’s something worth saving in him. Thinking there’s something good.
Pieces of rock fell from above now, chasing the dust. The bones behind them bucked and slid. Another quake, collapsing the cave, maybe collapsing the whole mountain. And still magic seeped from the dying god and poured into Solmir. Still he screamed, blue eyes flickering into black.
“You deserve each other,” the Oracle said, aloud this time. “Two fools, damning themselves over and over again.”
The Oracle’s body twisted, jerked in painful angles, winnowing away into smoke and shadow. The drain of its magic ate it away to muscle, to bone, the skeleton oddly shaped. Then, in another plume of dark smoke, it was gone.