by Scott Hale
I can’t believe… I can’t believe she’s admitting it.
“I told Samuel Turov to take you into the South at that same time, as a smokescreen; a way to justify Penance’s presence in Geharra. We lied and told our people that you’d been abducted and taken to the city. They had funded the rebellion against Eldrus. Why wouldn’t they attack us as well?”
Felix, about to explode, sputtered, “Did you… know… what Samuel Turov… w-was?”
“Yes.”
“And you fucking sent me anyway?!”
“He gave me his word, and he was the only one willing—”
Felix spat in her face. “Willing? Of course, he fucking was!”
Justine let the wad of saliva slide down her face, before her pores opened and took it in. “The Red Worm woke up. We brought you home after that. With the Red Worm roaming, it was enough to justify attacking Eldrus, but really, all it did was provoke Edgar to move faster, to work harder to wake God. Because he knew he would never defeat Penance, otherwise. And that is the purpose of the Worms. To bring about an apocalypse… a revelation. That there is a God. That It is here.”
“But the Skeleton killed the Red Worm.”
Justine shrugged. “An annoyance, but necessary at some point. We had Audra. I made her grow the Bloodless, because I wanted it, and I wanted her to indulge her powers. The Crossbreed was practice, and she never witnessed its majesty. When I let her and the Night Terrors go, I knew she would find her way home, because she was so full of anger, so desperate to prove herself, and because a Speaker always finds their way back to God.”
Felix drove his thumbs into his temples. “You let me split up Narcissus so we would look stupid and weak.”
She nodded. “Commander Millicent did everything I told her behind your back. The armor she wears is my boon. It compels her.”
“Boon?” He remembered back to Cathedra, when he’d begged her for a boon to help him cope with all the crap he’d been dealing with. “Boon?” He remembered the robe she’d gifted him; the one with the pearlescent fabric that looked just like Commander Millicent’s armor. “You did give me your boon.”
“I thought about it. I was worried that a day like today might come. I did not want to, but I thought it might be best that I control you, like Millicent. You never wore the robe but once or twice. I encouraged you to, but you never took to it.” She smiled pathetically. “I was so happy you didn’t.”
Felix wanted to punch that smile right off her face. “You still tried.”
“We all try despicable things, Felix, human or not. It’s only when we are caught that it matters.”
“Bullshit,” he cried. “I caught you. Would you have told me all of this if I hadn’t?”
Opalescent blood leaked out the corner of her mouth. That was her answer.
“We’re only here for God,” he said.
“Yes.”
“When Audra finally lets God in…”
Justine straightened up. “Lillian will shed me. She will take my lifeforce and be renewed. And God will speak through her, not Audra, because Lillian was the first and the most loyal. This was my purpose. When Lillian woke me so very long ago, my intentions have always been to ensure the religion survives.”
“It was all a lie,” Felix said, breathlessly.
“No”
“Shut up.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Shut the hell up.”
She reached out for him, but he recoiled. “I thought I was going against God. I thought I was going against my nature. I did. I really did, Felix. I swear to you, my love, I did.”
“But you just said…”
“I’m a Worm of the Earth. I am good for one thing only. One day, when God seemed as good as gone, I told myself I could be something else. What I didn’t realize was that I was what I’ve always been, even when I was telling myself I wasn’t. I cannot think of anything more human than that.”
Felix mumbled, “When did you realize? When did you know you were doing what It wanted all along?”
“I always knew, but I didn’t realize it until last night, when Valac took you.”
Air caught in Felix’s throat.
“I never tried to love the Holy Children before you. They were nothing to me. I kept their names a secret, and always lifted them from the most horrible environments. None of you had parents. None of you had a future.”
Felix’s cheek quivered. He started to cry.
“An assembly line of orphans, that’s what they were. Cogs. Replaceable. It wasn’t until after a century or so that I began to yearn for companionship. I thought the living statues I’d turned them into would’ve helped, but they didn’t. Then I found you in the gutter… same little town I found the Demagogue in a few years later…”
“What about when Valac took me?” Felix said, stopping her. He couldn’t hear anymore about that. He didn’t have a past. He’d accepted that. He needed that. “Tell me.”
“When Valac took you, I felt nothing. I thought I had feelings for you. I thought I could think for myself. I thought I could be human, Felix.” She pressed her chin to her chest. “I tried very hard. I love you.”
“Stop.” He was shaking. “You don’t. You just said.”
“I know the meaning of the phrase,” Justine said, eyes meeting his. “Isn’t that enough? If we both tell ourselves it’s enough.”
Felix thrust the sealing stone at her. “Take it.”
“I can still try.”
“Take. It.”
“Now that we know what I have been doing, I think I can change.”
Felix laughed, rolled his eyes. “I can’t… I can’t do this. Take it. Take… Fuck. When Lillian comes out, what’ll happen to you?”
“I’ll go to sleep.”
He started to lower the stone. “Will she be like you? Have your memories?”
Justine sat there, like a doll that’d had all its stuffing removed. And that’s all she was, wasn’t she? A representation of something she could never truly be. Meant to comfort. Something to cry into. That’s all religion was. A stuffed animal humanity had never grown out of. Felix got that now.
“Take it,” he said.
Justine sighed. “I can’t. It has to be given.”
“Why me?” He wiped his eyes. “Why did you choose me? Out of all of them? You weren’t lonely. You don’t know what that means. You tried on emotions like freaking clothes. None of them fit! Just no one told you so.”
“I don’t know.”
“I swear, don’t lie to me!”
“You were sweet,” Justine said, “and naïve.”
“But if all of this had happened sooner with God—”
“And you were smart. And you understood…”
“If all of this had happened sooner with God,” he persisted, “it wouldn’t have been me, right? It would’ve been the Holy Child before me, right? Right?”
Silence.
“What was his name?”
Justine stared at him.
“What was it?”
“Felix,” she said. “Always Felix.”
He stared at her, mind blank, body off. He felt nothing but the weight of the stone in his hand. It was almost too heavy to hold. Now, there was lightning dancing across the snowy surface of the stone, nipping on his fingertips, biting at his palm. God, it was so heavy. It’d never been this heavy before. He tried to let go, but it wouldn’t go. It was stuck to him; a part of him. If he let go of this, he’d have to let go of everything. He couldn’t do that, though. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t—
His hand plunged deep into the cavity in Justine’s chest. Neither of them had realized what’d happened at first. The stone was weightless there, and so he could let it go; because now it was hers, and now it was where it should’ve always been. He took his hand out, took a step back.
The White Worm of the Earth didn’t smile or shake her head, or give any indication at all as to what she thought about what he’d done. Instead, she liquefi
ed. When her fluids hit the floor and spread throughout the room, what was left behind in the Mother Abbess’ wake was the emaciated and ancient body of Lillian. She was on her hands and knees, panting, struggling to stay alive. Around her neck was a silver necklace with a white gem within a tangle of worms.
Felix ripped the necklace off Lillian and hurried to the door.
“Wait,” Lillian croaked, pawing at the air, her old wrinkled flesh bunching up over her body like tissue paper. “I need… I can’t…” She gasped and coughed and collapsed, face down in the opalescent blood of her host. “Please…” She curled into a ball. “Please.”
Felix ignored her. He left the room, shut the door behind him, and locked it. He dropped to the ground, held his knees to his chest, and listened to Lillian die.
It took hours.
And all he had.
His first love.
His only kill.
Once was enough.
Never again.
CHAPTER LII
Despite her best efforts this morning, Audra hadn’t been able to drink, smoke, fight, or fuck God out of her head. After Death had claimed Joy, she ran out of the hall, to her room, because it felt as if someone were peeling apart her brain with their bare hands. In a pain-induced bender that put her shitfaced nights back in Nyxis to shame, she went to work on anything she could get her fingers on or in. The theory was simple: The Disciples said that everybody’s body could be a gateway to Heaven, so if she tainted that gateway as much as possible, wouldn’t that be enough to make sure God didn’t come through?
She’d chosen Deimos’ room to debase herself in—a form of grieving he wouldn’t respect, but one he’d enjoy sternly talking to her about—and went to work. While Ghostgrave was in an uproar over what’d happened during the celebration, she drank her weight in wine, smoked some mindbreakers Deimos had been hiding in his pack (“Naughty, naughty.”), and when neither had been good enough to dull the pain, she picked fights with guards in the hall, cussing them out at first, before full-on flattening one with a punch that must’ve been shadow-infused, because she’d broken half his teeth, dislocated his jaw, and had him crying for his mommy. Being the King’s sister, there wasn’t much they could do except what she asked, which at the time was for them to send over the twenty-something female servant who’d been creeping around the hall in the distance, more interested in sopping up gossip than anything else with that sponge of hers.
Audra had kept the servant awhile, and that seemed to help, but not in the way she imagined. The servant’s touch set her on edge, only made the pain worse; serving Audra’s wants so selflessly only highlighted the hurt of Audra’s need. It wasn’t about power, though she was craving that, too. It was about distraction, and so for an hour or two, the servant was treated like a Queen, and not one part of her body went untouched.
“Thank you,” the servant had said.
But the best Audra had been able to manage at the time was a groan, because she’d fallen asleep between the woman’s thighs.
She came to at sunrise, alone in her dead friend’s bedroom. It still smelled like him—warm, musky—and she teared up when she thought about him. The servant had left a note, but Audra didn’t read it, because the pain was back, worse than ever, and words might as well have been barbs hooked into the back of her eyelids. She grabbed a part of the blanket she hadn’t vomited on in the night, bit into it, held the rest between her legs, and screamed.
God’s word had come through her mind like shafts of light. Hot and blinding, it sliced through her synapses and seared the inside of her skull. She could’ve just given up, but she was too stubborn to give up, too proud. Audra of Eldrus did not give up. She was a shadow-weaver, a witch killer. She’d summoned every mythological plant. Even managed to annihilate an entire plane. God would have her, when she wanted God to have her. Her mind was her own.
Then a strange thing happened. She’d been listening to the execution through her window, to the thunder and shouting about a bat; the one Deimos had called Camazotz, she figured. She watched it swoop down, watched it fly away—James, that big guy, and Gemma hitched to its back. Sometime after the business with the bat, the pain stopped. It just stopped. It didn’t fade away, nor did it dampen. It stopped completely. No cuts or bruises or scars. Like it’d never happened at all.
Audra hadn’t wasted any time. She got out of bed, got her shit together; got a bath, got dressed; and got on with the day. Whether the reprieve from the pain was permanent or temporary, she had no choice but to act. Today was the day they were going to change the world. She wasn’t about to be left behind, left out. For once, she’d reap what she’d sown, and everyone would see her for who she was and what she was capable of. She was God’s Speaker. They’d speak when spoken to.
Now, she was sitting in the throne room, at the round table Edgar had installed earlier, with him, Felix, Isla, and Lotus. There was an empty chair for Commander Millicent, but she was missing, and another for Justine, but Felix had told the rest of them she would not be joining them.
“A lot has happened since last night,” Edgar said, staring at her.
Audra waved him off. “Let’s get to the business of today.”
Lotus nodded, rubbed her hands together maniacally.
Felix, who sat so closely to Isla she feared for his safety, went first. “God wants to launch an initiative to expose and prevent sexual abuse across the continent.” He slid a piece of parchment over to Audra. “God spoke through me this morning.”
She took it, read it, smiled, and said, “Yes.”
Edgar said, “Our suffer centers are in every established location in the world. We will train the workers using Old World texts on how to identify and treat sexual abuse.”
Both Felix and Isla nodded at him.
“Purge known sex offenders,” Audra said, sharply.
Both Felix and Isla gasped.
“That is God’s will.”
Edgar nodded, “Very well. Isla, you will take full responsibility for this campaign, as you are well-versed in the Old World. Our libraries are open to you. You will report directly to Felix.”
“Of course, my Lord,” Isla said. She looked so happy she might cry.
Felix let out a laugh. “Just like that?”
“Just like that,” Edgar said. “I am a humanitarian at heart.”
Lotus cocked her eyebrow.
“I have sacrificed and will continue to sacrifice everything I have and am for the good of humanity.”
A sharp pain tore across Audra’s brow. She jumped, started sweating immediately. Don’t, don’t, don’t, she pleaded. But seconds later, it was gone.
“We will establish women’s and men’s shelters, and overhaul our court systems. Nyxis’ female population is far more liberated than it used to be and have made great strides. I will call them to Ghostgrave to share with us what they’ve found has worked and not worked.” Edgar was grinning; he looked giddy. “I had a considerable amount of capital frozen in the event the war continued. Those funds will be unfrozen and made available for your… God’s… campaign. This will take a lot of coin, and even more time, but if we are diligent, the world will be made safer for it.”
“Thank you,” Isla said, actually sounding grateful for once in her life.
Felix, red in the cheeks, nodded and announced, “God is pleased.”
Heh, Audra thought. It’s like putting on a hat for you, Felix. Except you never took it off. Damn, you’re good.
King Edgar scribbled something down on the parchment in front of him and said, “For the next order of business: The Nameless Forest. Lotus, if you would?”
Lotus cracked her knuckles and got right to it. “The influence of the Black Hour is waning. There is still residual chaos here and there, but nothing like it was before. We’ve been expanding the Binding Road to make travel easier, and the new paths are holding. Your Great Hunt, though…” She glared at him, clearly not a fan of his decision to wholesale slaughter the beasts o
f the world. “It’s caused the monsters that left the Nameless Forest to return. It was a safe haven before, so I think they think it’ll be a safe haven again for them.”
Something was brewing inside Audra’s skull. A gnawing horde of sensations. “The Great Hunt is over,” she said, annoyed. “God wills it to be called off. It is satisfied.”
Edgar tapped his quill against the table before stating, “Fine. It was a good distraction while it lasted.”
Lotus said, “I have one more suggestion.”
“Please.”
“For the longest time, the Nameless Forest was a no-man’s land. If we leave it like that, it’s going go that way again. Strategically, it’s an important—”
Felix interrupted. “Make it a mecca.”
No one else knew what the word meant, except for Isla. Audra’s gut told her it was Isla who’d taught it to him. What else was the snake teaching the rabbit?
“A holy site,” Felix explained, “that people can make pilgrimages to.”
“God’s influence would get stronger there,” Lotus said. “It would give us a closer foothold to Penance’s peninsula.”
“We’re allies…”
“In this room, we are.” Lotus tongued her lip. “Your city isn’t going to be so accepting of the change.”
“Regardless,” Edgar said, “Felix is on the right track. The northeastern side of the continent, especially in the areas of Bedlam and Gallows, are poverty-stricken. Increased movement would bring increased commerce. It would give us another method by which to spread education on awareness and prevention of abuse.”
Audra leaned back in her chair. At this moment, she was nothing more than a glorified stamp to press her seal of approval to all their lofty goals. Ignoring the buzzing in her ears, she tried to think of what changes she wanted to pass through this ragtag committee of dreamers, but nothing came to mind. In fact, she was perfectly pleased with having the final say of things. Evil as it sounded, she couldn’t wait to see their faces when she finally told them no. See how they liked it.
“We will need to locate Commander Millicent before we can discuss Narcissus, as well as our army,” Edgar said, jotting down a few more notes. “Have the Arachne responded to Ikto’s death, Lotus?”
