“Alec! Oliver!” I shouted.
“They’re already on it,” Jo murmured just loud enough to be heard in this chaos.
“Alexandra, I need a perimeter,” I called, closing in on Lily.
Black fire split the earth as a circle formed around us. The winds blew harder and the flames went higher, the swirling vortex locking us in it. Lily took one look and dove to the side, but the flames wouldn’t let her through.
She stilled, a shudder running up her spine.
“I didn’t want it to be this way,” I said. “In the beginning I didn’t know if you were dead or alive, and by the time I knew, it was too late.” She turned, her eyes bleeding from brown to black.
“You left me,” she said in a cold voice. “You abandoned us. You both did.” I pressed my lips together. Was it her talking now? Or was it Cirian? It was clear they both blamed us. Perhaps my guilt was what made Valda and I most well-suited, just as he and Lily had betrayal.
“It wasn’t intentional,” I told her, though I didn’t know why. I already knew there was only one way to end this. Maybe I hoped that when it was all over she would understand. I doubted it. Not this way. Not now.
“It doesn’t matter,” the apathetic voice of a demon answered. “You made your choice and I’ve made mine.”
She lifted her hands and began walking toward me.
Ten yards. The circle of fire shrank. I wonder if she noticed it, or if her sole focus on killing me was all that existed now.
Five yards. I held onto my bond with Ash and my beating heart that gave me the strength to do what I needed to.
Four yards. I thought of Alexandra. I thought of Blair. I thought of Keyla.
Three yards. I thought of Lily. Of who she had been and who she was now.
Two yards. I tried not to think anymore, but my mind raced. There were only a handful of moments in my life where I could see them so clearly as they happened, almost as if I were outside of myself.
One yard. This was one of those moments.
I let her close the distance, all the while that circle of fire encroaching on us. She lifted her hands.
I stared into her eyes, searching for anything left to hold onto as she touched my skin.
Then I gave the signal.
Chapter 28
In between one second and the next the circle of fire dropped.
Black tendrils dove beneath my skin. Alexandra had asked me what it felt like to die. The truth was that once it set in that you were going to, the panic receded. Your brain can’t cope with the implications of death and how painful it truly is. In many ways, it’s like coming home.
Only in being saved from death do you realize that home is with the living.
Then the pain returns.
It’s living that’s truly hard, and that’s what I did here. I held onto that, onto myself, as she tried to pull my life from me. A whirl sounded only a second later, followed by feet landing on the crumbled street.
Another second went by.
Then another.
Hope started to fail me. The bleakness began to close in.
Come on, Keyla . . .
Golden light burst from behind my eyelids. Lily’s dark tendrils faded into nothing, and my body began to regenerate itself. The beautiful thing about Keyla’s ability was that it stripped powers away, but not my being. I was still part demon and healed all the same. My power drained away into nothing and blissful silence filled me for a brief moment.
I opened my eyes.
“What is this?” Lily asked in confusion, not stepping away. I held my last dagger. The one I’d saved for this moment.
“Me ending it,” I said. Johanna appeared behind her. Our eyes met. She gave me a nod.
I rammed the dagger through her ribs. Bones cracked under the impact, but I couldn’t miss, as much as it pained me to strike true.
The first time I killed my sister it was an accident.
This time it was intentional.
There was no fracture of pain that she often saw on people’s faces. No relief. No happiness. Only confusion and betrayal.
“I am . . .” She struggled for words. Coughing twice, golden blood splattered her lips.
“Mortal,” I said, dislodging the dagger from her chest as I wrapped an arm around her waist. Her knees buckled first as she started to slump and then fall. I went to my knees with her. Holding her tight in her last minutes because that was all I could give her now.
A gamble. This entire thing was a massive fucking gamble, and I had to hope that I made the right choice.
That I’d finally come to understand what Milla and the Crone and Valda had all been telling me.
I sat with her as the fight raged around us. A roar unlike anything else sounded from not so far away. Like an animal in pain—or a signasti losing their other half.
Lily clung to life, though she saw herself as death, and in those final seconds she whispered, “Why?”
Why? Such a small word for a big question.
There were so many things I could say to it. But I gave her the only answer I could.
“Because I love you and this was the only way.”
Her eyebrows twitched as she tried to frown.
Then she faded.
Her eyes closed.
“Tell them I love them,” I said on a shaky breath. Johanna knelt across from me. Holding pressure on Lily’s wound. I didn’t see it, but I felt it—that ancient voice my sister spoke of. An essence of evil. Cirian’s soul as it slithered from one Fortescue to the next.
Only once I sensed Keyla’s retreat, her power ebbing and mine beginning to return, did I lift the dagger again. In truth, I didn’t need for her to be gone for this to work. I just didn’t want her to see. I didn’t want any of them to see.
“Selena . . .” His voice whispered in my mind. Barely there. I ignored him. I had to.
“I promise,” Johanna vowed. “Goodbye, my friend.”
Her eyes were watering as I positioned the dagger at my own heart. I swallowed once. My breathing ragged.
“What are you doing—”
I stalled, waiting for something.
“Selena, stop. Stop!”
Seconds ticked by and my palms sweat.
Then I heard it.
“Don’t do this,” he begged.
The sound of a heartbeat starting again.
It was the single loophole in my curse and the only way I could leave and be at peace.
“I love you so much. I’m sorry.” It was all I could say as I thrust my chest forward and pulled my hands inward.
The metal pierced true, and just like my sister I began to fade, taking the souls of Valda and Cirian with me.
I barely registered it as I fell backward. My head banging against the uneven gravel. The other end of the dagger met resistance and twisted painfully as it partially dislodged.
Unlike Lily, there would be no coming back from this. Whereas she could heal herself from even death, I would not let myself. Johanna knew to keep the dagger there until I was dead and truly gone.
A sacrifice is not payment without a choice.
Lily never made the choice to pay it. Her death wouldn’t suffice.
But mine would.
I chose to go to the grave so that the curse ended.
So that Alexandra, and even Lily, could live another day.
This time when the other side appeared, I didn’t fight it.
I felt the faint pull of my signasti bond being stretched too thin. Ash was reaching for me. Pleading. Begging. Fighting. I wished I could have said a real goodbye. I wished I could have been able to tell him the truth.
This was the end. Our end.
Me and my demon walked to it hand in hand, ready for whatever came next.
Hoping our sacrifice was enough.
Chapter 29
I assumed that the other side of death would be like before life.
I had no conscious memory. No sense of being. No anything.
&nbs
p; I thought death would be like that. Like my demon and I would simply fade into nothingness. That we would cease to exist and that was that.
As it turns out, death was nothing like that.
I crossed over into the next plane of existence and my body instantly materialized. I blinked, staring at my own hands and the twin pentagrams that adorned them still. My skin had been cleaned but my clothes were the same as before. Tight black jeans and a long-sleeved black shirt. Leather jacket, tattered, but whole. I pulled at the collar and lowered my nose to it, taking a whiff.
It still smelled like him.
He was the smoke to my fire.
The ash to my flame.
I inhaled deeply, searching inside of me—wondering if somehow, someway—I’d survived. But the only presence inside was me and my demon. For once, not even Valda was present.
A pointed cough drew my attention.
I released the jacket from stiff fingers and looked up.
My breath halted in my chest as the muscle squeezed. I wasn’t sure how I was breathing, but I knew in that I moment I certainly wasn’t alive.
Not when I stood before a raised platform. The steps were made of black stone. Opaque in color. Reflective enough to show every contour. My gaze continued to rise to the four thrones that sat atop it.
The first was a chair ornately carved from a stone so brightly blue I wondered if it came from my world or another. In it sat a man with white linen robes. His skin was tan, his hair dark, the topknot cinched and adored with a golden circlet. A sheen of golden scales traveled up his neck and over the smooth planes of his face. Dark slanting eyes with a slit pupil stared down at me in silence.
I swallowed and turned to the next.
This chair was built almost crudely. Made of obsidian stone but forged into sharp points and jagged edges. In it sat a woman with her head held high. She wore a gown of black mulberry silk that clung to every curve, making her body blend with the shadowed corners of the chair. Her skin was pale as moonlight on a dark ocean. Her hair a wave of lush curls. It was her eyes that told me the most.
They glowed violet as she watched me in silent judgment.
My heart began to hammer as I followed the length of her arm to the hand she clasped in her own. The man beside her sat on a simple chair made of pure gold. He wore leather and steel across his form, but they were merely another skin for him. He was tan and had a face more beautiful than all the statues in Rome. His thick wild mane told me exactly who he was, as he too looked upon me as if measuring something I could not see.
The last chair was almost underwhelming compared to the greatness of the others. Its simple wood frame was modest. The woman on it even more so. She wore brightly colored fabrics with intricate beading. The sheer mass of cloth swaddled her stomach and breasts entirely, twining around her body in more layered methods than I wanted to count. The colors were a stark contrast to her dark skin, so black it was almost blue. Her hair was a mass of tiny braids that cascaded down her form. But her face . . . it was young and old. Wrinkled and not. She had laugh lines around her eyes and age spots. She glowed vibrantly from the inside out with youth. She was ageless.
Her pale milky eyes blinked, and she stood.
“Do you know where you are?” she asked me.
I licked my cracked lips and said in dry croak, “No.”
“Do you know who we are?” she asked, lifting her right eyebrow a touch—as if daring me to lie.
“I have suspicions.”
The other Goddess, the one dressed in night, pressed her lips together as if amused. “And who are we, daughter of mine?”
“Nyx,” I said, answering with her given name. She smiled, pleased that I knew her. I looked to her partner who’d yet to speak. “Consort.” He nodded once. “Three-Faced Goddess,” I continued. The one who had spoken first only blinked, watching me intently. I turned to the final of the four deities. The one the world had largely forgotten. Though it seemed that perhaps he hadn’t forgotten the world. “The Dragon.” He tapped one clawed finger against the bottomless blue stone arm of his throne. “You’re the ancients.”
“Very good, child,” the Three-Faced Goddess said. “Do you know why you’re here?”
“I died,” I stated matter-of-factly. The Consort snorted once.
“That is one way of putting it,” he said. I didn’t know what he wanted me to respond with.
“What he’s trying to say is can you be more specific?” the Three-Faced Goddess said.
I bit the inside of my cheek as I considered it.
Why was I here? That was a great question.
“I fulfilled the prophecy. I did what you asked.”
“Did you?” the Consort asked. My blood chilled. I was too hot. I was too cold. There was no heat or lack thereof and yet my body still acted as if I were alive as a flare of anxiety and anger ran through me. Did you?
“Three deaths by the Mother’s hand from Valda and Cirian’s line,” I said in a hard voice. “I completed the task you demanded of my family for the mistake your vessel made.” I looked at the Three-Faced Goddess who seemed to be regarding me with no small amount of amusement.
“While she carried the soul of the Mother and her signasti is the Consort’s heir, this one is most definitely yours, sister,” the Goddess said, ignoring my prior statements entirely. Nyx let out a dark, lovely laugh. It was a sultry chuckle that whispered sweet nothings and terrible delights in the middle of the night when the moon was full. It was a laugh I’d heard before. When I declared myself a Fortescue. When I declared war.
“She is the daughter of my heart,” Nyx said in a breathless sigh. “The bearer of my power.”
“But did she truly sacrifice?” the Dragon asked.
“That remains to be seen,” the Three-Faced Goddess remarked. My pulse sped up, and despite being dead, my heart hammered.
“A sacrifice is not payment without a choice,” I argued. “That’s what you told me.”
“What my vessel told you,” the Goddess corrected.
“Given none of you would tell me yourself, it’s the same thing,” I replied, clenching my fists tightly. “Your vessel is what originally brought this upon the world. Livina is who severed Valda and Cirian’s signasti bond and then turned them into demons. Livina brought them back. Regardless of that, it was me and my family you asked to pay your price. Three deaths. You never said anything about whether they needed to stay dead.”
“And your own death?” the Goddess asked. “Why not simply kill Lily a third time if you truly believed that?”
I swallowed hard. “Someone had to take Valda and Cirian to the grave. One of us had to die, truly die, for the last part to be fulfilled.”
“And you choose yourself?”
“Yes.” Blood rushed in my ears, and my head pounded. “I waited for Lily to die long enough for Cirian’s soul to truly pass. I cannot control that she returned. I suspected as much, given she came back from a true death, but either way, I completed the prophecy and broke the curse—no matter how you try to swing this.”
“But how are you so certain when you did exactly as Livina did in trying to circumvent it?” the Goddess prompted. She strode forward and down the stairs with bare feet. The loose swaths of her colorful skirts skimming the steps behind her.
“Because I didn’t do exactly as Livina did,” I answered. “She was too scared to die or kill them. I made a choice. I chose to kill myself so that they could live. I followed the rules and I found another way, even if it wasn’t what you originally intended.”
The gods grew silent as the Three-Faced Goddess walked around me, examining me from every angle.
“You admit you knew it was not intended that way.” It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t answer it like one. “Curious,” she murmured after a few moments. She came to a stop in front of me.
“What is?”
“You.” In her eyes was knowledge. Pure and powerful. “You did sacrifice, though you did it selfishly.”
“Do not interrupt me,” she said. My jaw snapped shut, and I pressed my teeth together to keep from defending myself. “You did sacrifice. You chose to give your life. You also chose not to end your sister’s instead—the one that can die. Lily is something that has never been. Something that never will be again. We had not predicted that when we set the terms.”
“What is she?” I asked. The corner of her mouth curled ruefully as if she knew.
“That’s not important for the moment. What is, is that you sacrificed yourself so that your sisters would live. It was a selfish sacrifice in itself. However . . .” Her voice trailed off, and I sensed that what she said next was going to decide something, though for the life—or should I say death—of me, I didn’t know what. “In doing so, you did it with balance. You didn’t swing the scales to the side of good—as we’d intended.”
I lifted both eyebrows, not sure what she was getting at. “What’s that mean for me? For the prophecy?”
A ghost of a smirk crossed her features and then she lifted her head indifferently and started back for her throne. “That remains to be seen.”
I blinked, anger starting to build, though I let them keep talking. “She is a neutral entity,” Nyx said. “The only true one, aside from ourselves. She is neither good nor evil. Perfect and imperfect.”
“She holds honor but does not seek glory,” the Dragon noted. “A curious combination.”
“She has might,” the Consort asserted. “Though she hides it, instead preferring to use cunning until the time is right.” His savage eyes slid sideways to the dark beauty on his right. “Much like another I know.”
“Somehow, a child of the two most destructive families that we’ve unleashed upon the world grew up to be a completely balanced entity,” the Three-Faced Goddess mused. “She completed the prophecy, but the wrongs have not been righted. There is still work in the world to be done. Red to be wiped from the ledger. Death to bring so that the dawn may come—a match to the thousand years of darkness.” She tapped her nails against the wooden arms of her chair, similar to the Dragon. “In allowing Valda to be your spirit guide and Livina to shape the events of your life, they somehow managed to mold you into something that has not been for a very long time.”
Vessel of Destruction (Daizlei Academy Book 4) Page 22
