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“You made me a promise!” she screamed at him in the plaza of the fountain, one generations of penitents had built into a palace with driftwood and the trunks of trees they could fell before the rot attacked them. The seasons were off balance—it was autumn, but rain lashed at the roof like it was the pits of spring. Once, she’d thought the longer all of them held power, the better at it they would be, but the opposite was proving true. The reins had long slipped from their hands; the world was a runaway.
“I am the god of life and the day,” Apollius said, holding her wrists so she couldn’t strike at him. “I am beholden to no one.”
She left the plaza. She threw the ring off the cliff. It glinted golden as it fell.
gone
The day they decided to escape seemed like any other in their long string of uncountable days.
Hestraon gathered the others down at the northern beach. Nyxara had told him to wait until the moon was high. She’d distract him, then. That was when they could go without Apollius stopping them.
“What about you?” he’d asked, and she hadn’t answered.
Now, watching the moon fade into the sky as it went from cornflower to indigo, she felt something like peace. As close as a being like her could get, at least.
In her hand she gripped a torch, one Hestraon had lit for her, the flame tall and unwavering. They stayed that way even as they ate her grove, consuming the trees in a wave of fire-glow. She stood in the center and breathed deep of the smoke, watched it twist through the slowly darkening sky.
Shouts from below. The penitents had seen; they’d hurry to save the sacred grove. Nyxara stepped out of the ring of burning trees and started to the Fount.
“What’s happening?” Apollius asked as she approached. He’d just sent off another boat that morning, a group of men with a bound manuscript he’d helped to edit. He looked tired.
“One of the cathedrals caught fire.” She said it flippantly, sauntering toward him, slipping her robe off her shoulders. “I thought we could take advantage of your followers being distracted. You’re hard to find alone these days.”
And though there was still a flinty light in his eyes, he let her come to him. Let her kiss him, let her lay him down beside the Fount.
As Nyxara rocked above him, she watched the moon, heat coiling in her middle as he gripped her hips, as he gasped her name.
She did love him. Still. Even after everything.
“Why do you need us?” She hadn’t meant to ask, hadn’t meant for the words in her mind to trip off her tongue. But being with him like this had always brought out truth, even when she didn’t want it to.
He tucked her hair back from her face. “I only need you.”
It wasn’t the comfort she thought it would be.
“Why do you ask?” he asked, rolling his hips, making her bite her lip.
She didn’t answer.
Apollius stopped. “Why, Nyxara?”
And they’d never been very good at lying to each other, had they?
With a curse, he shoved her off him and leapt up, running out of their driftwood palace, down the ruined hills in that strange, quick way they all had. The grove burned against the sky, the distant shouts echoing ghostly as penitents tried to put it out.
All her friends were gone when she got to the shore. Even the sea had fallen back into its rhythm. They’d rushed off through the things they held dominion over, using them to escape—Lereal on the wind, Caeliar through the water, Hestraon through the crackling heat in the air just waiting to become fire, Braxtos through the earth. They were gone, safe, away, no longer imprisoned.
Nyxara laughed. Her mouth unhinged, and she cackled, filling the air with her joy, and it didn’t stop until Apollius’s hand cracked across her face.
He glowered down at her with an unsound smile. “You think they escaped?” he murmured. “You think any of you can escape from me, the god of life? I own you, Nyxara. I own you all. They won’t last a week away from me. They’ll fade, die their first death, and all that power will be mine until they find a vessel for their second life, to die their second death.” He leaned close. “And I’ll find them when that happens, beloved. I will find them quickly.”
She slapped him back, but that wasn’t good enough. Her dark-clawed hands raked for his face, wanting to draw divine blood. “Then why did you say you’d let them go?” she screamed.
“You knew it wasn’t true.” He caught her hands, gentle again. “I didn’t lie to you, beloved, I just let you think what you wanted to. But you knew we couldn’t separate. We aren’t things that can live apart, now. We’re all pieces of the same source, and as long as we contain it, we have to stay together.” He cupped her face. “You’re the key, Nyxara. You drank with me, you drank twice just like I did, and took a greater portion of power. We are tied for eternity, you and I.”
“So you’ll never let me go.” She’d known that, but to hear it felt like a dagger.
“Never.” He said it like an endearment.
