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Gabe turned down the hall with all the windows depicting the pantheon. The glow through Nyxara’s window made the floor in front of it look bruised. Stepping into that purple-black-blue light was soothing on Lore’s skin, like shade after sun.
Find another way. A pause, Her next words barely perceptible at all, disintegrating into nothing as night fully gave way to day. Find Me. Catacombs, Lore.
Then Nyxara was gone.
Lore and Gabe didn’t see anyone as they wound through the uncharacteristically deserted Church. It apparently made Gabe feel like it was safe to talk. “I assume the rest of the prophecy didn’t tell you how to stop this.” He didn’t try to hide his defeat. His shoulders were a crooked line, his hair disheveled in the colored light of the windows.
“Not really.” But it had told her something—that bit at the end, about power being made and unmade. About how the one who wanted immortality would try to kill the other gods as they rose.
“It told me you have to leave,” Lore said, suddenly sure of herself. “All of you who are showing any sign of… of new power. That prophecy said that if all the gods rose again, whoever wanted true immortality had to kill Them. That has to be Apollius, right?”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“None of this does! We know godhood isn’t synonymous with immortality; why else would He return? He’s been living in the Shining Realm all these years, or at least living somewhere, and now He decides to come back? Why, if not because there was something here He wants?”
“He’d always promised to return.” But Gabe looked doubtful. “He’s always said He would make His kingdom anew.”
“But what does that mean, Gabe?” Lore threw up her hands. “What if it’s always been about His bid for immortality, and not about the faithful at all? What if it’s only ever been about what He wants, and damn everyone else?”
She could feel the truth of it, burning beneath her heart, a seed set there by Nyxara’s words and watered by her own certainty. Once, as a child, she’d seen a crocodile down on the beach, sitting with its mouth open in the shallows, still as death. She was smart enough not to get too close, but she sat down on the sand and watched it. Watched as a bird picked its way through the surf in its direction, not noticing the danger because it never moved, because it was part of the landscape, something the bird could write off as normal. Eventually, that bird had hopped in the crocodile’s mouth.
And the crocodile had snapped its teeth shut.
It was remarkably, horribly easy to make people accept terrible things if you made them part of the normal landscape. If you designed the world around them so they didn’t stick out. People were easy to dupe into thinking that powerful meant benevolent, especially when they had no way out, no recourse but to live beneath something unfair. Reduce their sense of choice—make it seem like they could accept what was, or have nothing—and they’d fall in line.
Because sometimes, finding another way felt impossible.
“Apollius is not good.” Why did her lip wobble as she said it? Lore had never thought of herself as religious, never thought of herself as someone who could be deluded into thinking the gods were good. But now, saying it plainly still felt like pulling a bandage off a wound that might not ever heal. “So why keep talking around it? Maybe we should be looking for a way to end Him before He can end us.” She took a deep breath. “End Him, before He can make the world in His image. Because if we’ve learned anything, it’s that His image isn’t all that great.”
Gabe stared at her, shock in his one visible eye. “You can’t mean that.”
“I can,” she murmured. “I do. The gods were human once, Gabe. They have human faults. I won’t let one end the people I love. I won’t let Him end me.”
He turned away from her, fisting a hand in his hair, leaning against the nearest window. It was Hestraon’s, Lore noticed, but she didn’t bring that up.
A full minute, at least, filled with Gabe’s long breaths, ragged and hovering at the edge of sobs. When he spoke, he didn’t change position, still leaning against the window. “Did the prophecy say anything else?” he asked, apparently choosing to ignore the fact that Lore had just declared war on his god. “Anything about how we might… might lessen the hold?”
Lore sighed. “It said, Power is made and unmade in the same way. I’m too tired to think hard on it right now. We both need sleep, then we’ll meet with Alie and Malcolm.”
She didn’t tell him the very last part. Choices made, help from a place fled, mending the broken. She kept that to herself.
Gabe nodded, his forehead still against the window. Then he started down the hall, not looking at the glass depiction of Hestraon, not looking at her.
They emerged from the doors of the Church and into chaos.
All the Presque Mort they hadn’t seen in the halls were here instead, rushing back and forth from the double doors of the Citadel, escorting still-sleepy courtiers from within to wait on the green. All of them looked as confused as Lore felt, murmuring to each other in worried voices.
Gabe grabbed a passing Presque Mort’s arm. Alexis. “What happened?”
“Dead body,” they answered, face drawn into concerned lines. Their eyes darted to Lore. “Found inside the royal apartments. She was mangled up pretty badly, but they think they can get a positive identification from her husband, if he’ll ever stop screaming.”
A mangled body, in her and Bastian’s rooms. “Do they have a guess who it was, then?”
“Amelia Demonde,” Alexis said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I am the only authority. All powers will be held by Me alone, and eternity will give up its secrets.
