I can’t break into the hysterics or moaning sobs that so many of the mourners indulge in. Moru has voiced his permission for my tears, but yet I must maintain some measure of dignity as a goddess amid humankind.
The wake lasts well into the night. Those closest to Tora linger the longest, finding solace in one another’s company. The Helenai funeral tradition requires the family to remain with the body through the darkest hours, followed by a burial at dawn. There is no embalming, no preservation. They will wrap her in a shroud and commend her to the earth before a full day has passed.
I can’t bear this. And, as I am not her family, I have no right to remain. When the crowds finally dissipate, I rise from my position and cross around to pay my last respects to a woman whose memory I have loved since I was a small child.
Etricos looks up with hollow eyes as I bow low before him.
“I am so sorry.” The words feel cheap upon my tongue, but I don’t know what else to say. He makes no reply. His fingers tighten around the cold hand in his grip.
“Goddess, you honor us,” says Huna, her voice laden with emotions.
“No,” I say, and tears brim anew in my eyes. “Huna, no. Tora honored everyone she encountered. Generations will sing of her goodness.” She nods through her grief. We are crying together, and it will only get worse the longer I remain. I rub the back of my wrist across my eyes and straighten. “I will return to my tent.”
Demetrios moves as though to accompany me, but I forestall him with one tense hand. Concern flashes across his face. I shake my head. In this moment, he belongs here with his brother, not trailing after the fickle, inept goddess who failed to prevent this tragedy.
He settles back upon the ground, and I withdraw.
Of one thing I am sure: this is my fault. Had I acted a split-second sooner, had I been more alert—
“Goddess, we will accompany you,” says Moru. Four of them, tribal leaders, fall in step beside me. They carry a wide strip of heavy cloth upon four poles, shelter from the falling rain. “Do you sleep in your students’ dormitory tonight?”
Word of my sleeping arrangements circulates through the tribal council, it seems. I wonder how much further the rumors travel.
But it doesn’t matter, especially not tonight. “No. I go to my own tent.”
My purpose in sleeping elsewhere, in having Huna sleep elsewhere, was to deprive Agoros of a ready, isolated target. If he shows up tonight, I will do everything in my power to shred him limb from limb.
Moru does not question the destination. We climb the hill in the dark and wet, a solemn procession headed for the two beacon braziers at the top. My ever-present guards bow their heads in deference as we pass. I speak quiet thanks to my escorts and slip inside the confines of my tent.
The place has a feel of abandonment to it. The fire pit at the center is cold, and only the patter of rain against the tent fabric meets my ears.
I deserve nothing better than this. A real goddess could have healed a knife wound on the spot instead of sending the victim to her hopeless and painful death. What use is magic, except to destroy?
In fury, I cast a third intermediate upon the coals. The fireball spatters and catches half-burned wood, splashing orange light through the tent.
“The goddess yet lives.”
I whirl, my rage spiking dangerously. Agoros stands just within the entrance, shadows thick around him. The tension in his shoulders warns me against a rash attack: he is on his guard, ready to strike.
As am I.
“With the great mourning in the city, I assumed my agents had struck their proper target,” he says. In our previous encounters he has been mocking, superior, arrogant. This time, he exercises caution. “Who did they strike instead? Etricos himself?”
“Etricos lives,” I say.
Agoros shifts his gaze to my hand. I don’t need to look to see what has drawn his attention. My beast of magic vents its frustration in a collection of flames that extend almost to my elbow.
“You can’t attack me with that.”
The thread of magic that projects him here extends to a place closer than ever before, though still afar. “Not yet. But I will.”
He dismisses the threat. “If my men did not strike down Etricos or his lover, who did they kill? Or do I flatter myself that they succeeded in creating this great lamentation through the Helenai and her sister tribes?”
My eyes narrow as his words thrum through my head. Did he assume that Etricos and I were lovers? Is that why his agent honed in upon Tora? A case of mistaken identity? My guilt multiplies tenfold, but I will not give him the satisfaction of success.
“You flatter yourself,” I say through gritted teeth. “Your agents are dead, to the last man. Come to me in person and I will provide you with the same service.”
Something akin to admiration crosses his face. His gaze sweeps from my head to my toes and back again. “I think I have underestimated you too many times, goddess of the Helenai. Perhaps I should tame you instead of killing you after all.”
My beast of magic snarls. I lunge, seeking that connecting thread to strike back along its path, but he vanishes before my eyes. The hint of a smile on his lips as he goes elicits a cry of wrath from my throat. I fling the magic from my arm into the fire pit. The flames erupt as high as my waist and spew embers into the air with a crackle.
In the aftermath, despair crashes down upon me. My knees buckle and hit the ground. I double over and pull at my hair, my carefully suppressed grief boiling over its confines.
Back in the council hall, with its crowds of onlookers, I could not give in to base emotions. Here, in the solitude of my own tent, I can wail and carry on until my heartbreak ebbs.
Though I’m not sure it ever will.
The dawning sun sees Tora consigned to her final resting place. She is not buried among the other dead on the far outskirts of the city. Instead, they give her a place of honor atop one of the solitary hills that roll softly toward the ocean. I can see the Eternity Gate in profile from her graveside, its solid arch swathed in gray mist. I search my mind for what stands upon this plot of ground in the modern world.
The National Cathedral, where heads of state are buried. My heart squeezes tight in my chest.
The salt-heavy wind ripples through the mourning party as the shrouded body lowers into the earth. Warriors cast dirt atop it. Huna leans upon Etricos’s arm and sobs.
No one has slept. Remnants of grief—swollen eyelids and mouths pressed into thin lines—mark all of us. Aitana hangs upon Demetrios, her shoulders shuddering as she fights a wave of misery.
I’m so numb right now that I don’t even care. At least she’s not hanging on Etricos in his hour of bereavement.
As the dirt piles higher in the pit, I move away, my footsteps oriented toward my own tent. This signals others that they can leave, apparently, because the tribal leaders cluster around me like a protective guard. I glance back and make eye contact with Demetrios. He looks torn between accompanying me and remaining with his brother. I offer him a wan smile and continue on my path.
I can’t face him right now anyway. Throughout the night, my remorse has blossomed like a rancorous weed in my heart. Agoros told his agents to kill the goddess of the Helenai, and he assumed that Etricos and the goddess were lovers. If Tora had been anywhere else, if I had approached Etricos to help with his cluster of refugees instead…
Hindsight has given me a thousand alternate ways to prevent her death. My insides gnaw upon themselves with guilt and worry. If the legend got Tora’s death wrong, what else did it mistake? Or worse, have I triggered an alternate future? I have no certainty of success anymore. Everything I know is a lie.
The tribal leaders see me to my tent. I step inside and wait long enough for them to descend to the city before I slip back out again. I cross around to the back of my hill and settle in the dewy grass. Already the rising sun burns off the morning mist. The Eternity Gate stands across the basin from me, emblem of my journey
here.
In times past, I drew comfort from its presence. No such comfort meets me now. It’s too far removed from where I am.
I push off the hillside and trek down into the basin. The night’s rainstorm flooded the area, but the water has mostly moved on. The season has created a thick layer of sludge. I remove my sandals and slog right through it, mud spattering my feet and ankles and squishing through my toes. Sick at heart, I climb the hill to the looming relic.
Its stones, cold to the touch, offer no consolation.
“What am I doing here?” I whisper the question, the words half-strangled. I’m little better than a child. Did the universe really entrust the founding of a nation into my hands?
A cry of frustration wrenches from my throat and I strike the arch. Pain lances from my fist up my arm.
It’s nice to feel something. I strike again, and again, and finally bow my head against the stone monument.
There is no solace here. Even so, I settle between the two pillars as I did so often in my native time. I rest my head to one side, my eyes closed against the brightness of the morning sun.
Urgent footsteps draw them open again. Demetrios scales the hillside, his breath short in his lungs and panic on his face.
Dread strikes me like a lightning bolt. I sit up. “What’s happened?”
He grasps my forearm and tugs me up from within the Gate, crushing me to him, burying his face against my neck. “You can’t—you can’t leave us, Anjeni.”
I stand rigid with shock, unsure how to respond, taking comfort from his embrace and knowing all the while that I don’t deserve it.
“I’m not leaving yet. The Gate is closed.”
Had it been open, would I have passed through?
No. I owe this people my very life. I cannot go while they remain in peril.
Demetrios draws back and regards me. The raw concern in his eyes triggers my tears anew.
“I’ve ruined everything.” My voice catches on a sob, but I’m going to burst if I don’t confess to someone. “I’m sorry. I ruined everything. If someone else had come, someone wiser, someone who knew more than I did— It’s all my fault. It should have been me, not Tora—”
He enfolds me in his arms again, pressing my head to his shoulder with a strong hand. “Hush, Anjeni.”
But I don’t deserve this comfort. I push away. “You don’t understand. I can’t do anything right. I’ve never done anything right in my life. Tora wasn’t supposed to die!”
Stillness settles between us on that statement. Demetrios’s hands close around mine, his face intent. “Death might come to any of us. It is the nature of this fight.”
I rip away from him, up the hill through the Gate. Etricos said much the same thing in the conversation I overheard, and I don’t like the remark any better when it’s about Tora instead of me.
“You don’t understand,” I say.
He regards me with quiet patience. “Then explain it to me.”
I toss my head, my gaze flitting across the scenery—the green, rain-soaked hills, the water-worn basins, the glittering ocean, and the tree line afar that marks the banks of the river. Tora’s grave is a brown smudge atop a nearby hillside. The mourners have all returned to the city.
How will he react? If he knows the truth about me, how will he react?
But I can’t have a lasting relationship with a man who believes I’m more than I really am.
A scoff cuts from my throat as this thought flits across my mind. Lasting relationship? I’m not supposed to have a lasting relationship with him. Why should I care if he knows the truth?
“I’m a fraud,” I say. I chance a look at him. He takes one step up the hill toward me but catches himself. The intensity of his stare prods me to continue. “You already know I’m not a goddess, but it’s much worse than that. Demetrios, I don’t come from another world. I come from another time.”
Confusion flashes across his face. He tilts his head to the right, his eyes in a contemplative squint.
“I will be born roughly seven hundred years from now, a citizen of the nation of Helenia. The Helenai are my ancestors.”
The bald statement gives me pause. Oh, how I hope he’s not my ancestor. I’ve kissed him. If we’re directly related, that’s just about the grossest thing I can think of. Why did that never occur to me before this moment?
He takes two more steps up the hill, though cautiously. I can practically see his brain turning over my statement, extracting its full import piece by piece. “And this is how you know things that only a goddess should know?”
I nod, backing up a pace to maintain a buffer between us.
“That doesn’t make you a fraud. That makes you a miracle.”
“I’m not—”
“The gods chose to send us living proof that we would triumph, that our people would survive. And we have survived because of you.”
I shake my head. “No, Demetrios. You have survived in spite of me. That day I tumbled through the Eternity Gate, when I faced the demon champion on my own…” Uncertainty lances through me. I have acted brash and confident since my arrival here, and it was completely unfounded.
He takes that last step between us and closes his hand around mine, his fingers rough against my palm. “What is it?”
Tora lies cold in her grave. I meet his gaze, ready to receive punishment for my overconfidence. “That day was the first time in my life that I had ever used magic.”
He guards his expression, but not enough to hide the surprise that flickers there. The hand that grasps mine is still, like a predator that watches its potential prey, taut with coiled energy that might spring at any moment.
“I was never a magician,” I say, making the confession in full. “My parents forced me to learn the theories, but I had no spark—or not one that would respond. My sister was the magical genius; I couldn’t even light a flame on a candlewick. The only reason my magic woke up that day is because I was that desperate not to die. You, Etricos, everyone—you have entrusted your future to a girl who knows nothing.”
He blinks, and his grip on my hand tightens. “But you do know things, Anjeni.”
I try to pull away, but he won’t release his hold. “Don’t you see? I’m barely eighteen. I have no experience. I’ve been figuring this out as I go.”
“Then you’re no different than we are,” he says.
Shock squeezes my voice into a croak. “What?”
The corners of his eyes crinkle with a sardonic look. “You think Cosi knows what he’s doing? The Bulokai slaughtered our tribal elders—our father included. We fled to this place as a last resort with only remnants of a once great people. You think he knows what he’s doing, or that any of us do? You think I know?”
My chest tightens. “Yes,” I manage to say, but my voice holds no certainty.
Demetrios leans in close, pinning me with his stare. “Survival was our only goal, Anjeni. We never thought we could conquer the Bulokai. We only wanted to survive, and we have done everything in our power—we were that desperate not to die.”
He throws my own words back at me. I can’t handle the tumult of emotions that they bring: fear, relief, gratitude, remorse, despair.
“But Tora—” I start, my tears welling anew.
Demetrios tugs me into another tight embrace, my head against his chest. He whispers comfort in my ear. “We all grieve for Tora. But if we give up hope, we dishonor her.”
I relax in his arms, for the moment allowing the solace his presence brings. If we could remain like this forever, if there were no Bulokai, no Agoros, no impending death and destruction…
He withdraws far enough to cradle my face with one hand, running his callused thumb across my cheekbone. His gaze flits down to my mouth and back up again.
A blush floods over me, but when I try to push away, the hand on my back doesn’t budge. “Demetrios,” I say self-consciously, “you might be my great-great-something grandfather.”
“I’m not,” he says
, with all the surety of someone who speaks only the absolute truth.
And he’s probably correct. Nevertheless, I squirm. “You can’t possibly know that, and neither do I.”
He remains unmoved. “It’s easy enough to know. I won’t have children with anyone but you, and you can’t be your own ancestor. Or, if you are, that’s not my fault, is it?”
He’s serious. What’s more, he’s going to kiss me on that magnificent pretzel of logic. My blush redoubles. “But what if—”
“Anjeni,” he says, so close that our breaths mingle, “I don’t want to repeat Cosi’s mistakes.”
The delays, the excuses, the need for everything to be perfect—Etricos had a scant few days with Tora when they might have married months or even years ago.
My heart is stronger than my head right now. I don’t want to repeat Etricos’s mistakes either. I wrap both arms around Demetrios and meet his mouth with mine.
Chapter Thirty-One
“I will raid the Bulokai holdings.”
Etricos announces this to the tribal elders assembled in the council hall, his face a mask of solid indifference. A chill races down my spine. He only buried Tora this morning, and he makes this declaration before the sun has set. I look to his audience for their reaction and discover them equally unnerved.
“You must give yourself time to grieve,” Moru says.
Etricos barely acknowledges the remark. “I will grieve in my own way. But I am done waiting here while the enemy encroaches upon our doorstep. I will take a party of warriors and raid the nearest Bulokai holdings. We will liberate the captive tribes and destroy the demons in their midst.”
Moru only shakes his head. “The Helenai need their leader.”
“This tribal council can fulfill that role,” says Etricos without even a breath of hesitation. “The Helenai need not live separate from our allies. And more than a leader right now, they need a general who can protect them from tragedy and death. I will depart at daybreak with any warriors willing to take up the fight alongside me.”
Someone further down the line of councilmen starts to protest. “But—”
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