He nodded almost absently and strode away, his gait shaky and slow, his broken wing folded against his back.
I will heal him. I’ll fix everything that is broken.
Accora’s hand clutching her wrist brought her around. “She must be stopped.”
“She,” Selena repeated. “Skye. I saw you, Accora. I saw you with her. Bacchus showed me. What does it mean? Why did you lie to me?”
Accora shook her head. “You know what you must do. That is the only way to make you see.”
Selena shook her head. Tears coursed down her cheeks, pain and weariness conspired to drive her mad, and her wound…that icy black hole that was bored into the very core of her being was still there, and the promise of its closure was growing fainter with every passing moment. “Make me see what?” she asked, her voice hardly a whisper.
“No time!” The old woman cried. “I am nearly gone. If you do not kill me with your own hands, you will never know. You will believe that your wound remains because you didn’t kill me yourself. That Skye was just and wise,” her lips curled in derision, “to set you on this task. Kill Bacchus and Accora. That will close your wound.”
“It will,” Selena said. Begged. “You promised. You swore on the gods…” Tears were coursing down her cheeks but she wiped them away. “No. Skye told me. She told the Moon Temple, Celestine, the Justarch of Parish…She would not lie…”
The anger and ire seeped out of Accora as surely as her blood did. “Bacchus is dead, girl, and I am waiting. Do it, and you will see that Skye has betrayed you. That I betrayed you…”
“Why?” Selena cried. Her voice was raspy and raw. “No! It is you who are lying now though I can’t fathom why.”
“Can you not see?” Accora said. “It’s all a game to Skye. You. Me. The Aluren, the Bazira. She plays games, moving us around like the pawns that we are, on the board that is Lunos.”
Selena shook her head. “No. I don’t understand. That’s not true. She led us in victory. She was my commander… She was my friend.”
Accora laughed and the laugh turned into a spasm of pain. More blood colored her lips and she moaned.
Selena clutched at Accora’s arms. “Tell me, please. Tell me the truth, for the god’s sake. If you…if I kill you…my wound…?”
“It will remain,” Accora said. “Skye sent you here to die…or be turned to the Shadow face. It’s as Bacchus showed you. Kill me, and know the truth of it.”
Selena sat back on her heels in the sand. “No,” she sobbed. “It can’t be true.”
The lines of Accora’s face softened. She took Selena’s young, strong hand in her own gnarled one. “Child, I am suffering. I am old woman whose life was stolen and corrupted by the Bazira. Bacchus is dead. I’d like to think I had a hand in ridding Lunos of such evil. In light of my sins, that is perhaps too selfish, but still.” She smiled wanly. “My death will show you the truth and then you can seek out and rid Lunos of the other evil. Skye. Kill me and then find her. End her, so that you too, may know peace.” She slipped down into the sand, Selena easing her gently. “Hurry, child. It has to be you. It has to be now.”
Selena’s tears blurred her vision.
It’s not true. Skye is not the enemy. She didn’t lie to me. But Accora did…she used me to kill Bacchus for her own vengeance. She is the enemy. I kill her and the wound will close, just as Skye promised.
The words sounded right in her mind but the beast of truth within stirred again, nearly awake.
“Do it.” Accora’s breath was rasping now and her words only a whisper. “End me…and you will see. Your eyes will be open…”
The old woman’s own eyes were starting to close and with a strangled cry, Selena drew her dagger across Accora’s throat.
A line was drawn. Before and after. Accora’s skin split like dried paper and blood washed over Selena’s hand. Accora’s eyes flared open again and she smiled. A gurgling sound emitted from her torn throat. Before and after.
Before she had the wound, and after…and after…
Selena sat for long moments, waiting. She scarcely dared to breathe, but sat beside the old woman whose blood soaked into the sand in a wide swath around Selena’s knees.
She waited. Storm clouds were beginning to gather above, and Selena felt the first patter of rain kiss her cheek as she knelt. And waited.
The wound breathed its icy breath, a draft that never wavered, never ceased. As with Bacchus before, it took no note of Accora’s passing. It persisted. It lived.
Selena let the bloody dagger drop out of her bloodied hand and she screamed, just as An-Lan had seen. The Sacrifice. The truth. And oh how it burned, though much worse than the scalding water of Accora’s imagining. Far worse.
Selena screamed to the sky, to the crescent moon that grinned down on her, until the storm clouds gathered and even that meager light was snuffed out.
Escape
Sebastian turned his head as a chunk of the ceiling fell, streaking his cheek with cold grime. The battle waged above was like to bring the temple down around them. He fought against the ropes that bound his wrists and only succeeded in making them tighter. The three Bazira left in the room to guard them, however, glanced nervously at the ceiling and one spit a curse when Bacchus could be heard to roar in pain.
Good, Sebastian thought. I hope she burns him to ash.
He’d heard the battle first joined, and the fear for Selena had frozen the blood in his veins. She had come, as they all knew she would, to stop Accora’s pain.
No, she came to close her wound. She is strong. Strong enough to lift my ship from a maelstrom. That bastard Bacchus doesn’t know who he’s up against.
But Sebastian was no fool. It was true, Selena was strong, and braver than even she knew. But he kept up the silent litany of Selena’s strength in his mind because the alternative was too horrible to contemplate. He had seen the mountain that was Bacchus, and his heart shivered in fear for Selena.
A frightening sound came from above followed by another shriek, this from Accora. Great clumps of dirt fell from the ceiling now as the temple trembled with some impact from above. The Bazira guards exchanged glances with each other.
“Ori!” Sebastian hissed. “Ori, wake up!” But the woman was still and it was impossible to tell if she were conscious as her empty eye sockets gave no hint.
There came an eerie silence. Sebastian froze as the chilled air seemed to tighten. And then came the scream.
He sucked in a ragged breath as the sound reverberated throughout the temple. A scream so full of pain—something beyond pain; a desperate, despairing agony that begged for mercy, that said death would be preferable to life after suffering such as this. Sebastian’s stomach clenched and his vision became blurred. His sister had made that sound ten years ago. Selena made it now.