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“No!” Paesha yelled. “I’ll do it. You threatened her with me. Let it be me.”
I had suffered too much blood loss, suspended in the air by shadows. I could no longer feel my hands or my legs. Even my back had grown numb between whippings. I could still feel my heart, though. The way it beat for all of them. The icy spirit within me that still would not give him what he truly wanted.
But when Death circled me again, the scarlet blood dripping from his weapon of choice up his dark stage, I raced through every crevice of my mind, searching for a way out of this. If not for me, then for them.
He knelt outside of Orin’s cage, reaching through the bars to take his chin, letting the darkness radiate until all emotion swept from Orin’s face, the final tears that fell, meaningless. “I can see we just haven’t given her enough motivation, son. And I grow bored. Go back to your realm, find the little girl, find the blacksmith. Find your mother and send their souls to me.”
“No!” I screamed, the very pitch of desperation racing through the night. “I want to make a bargain.”
His head snapped sideways. “Will you tell me how you came to have that tattoo?”
“I’ll do more than that. If you agree to my terms, I will tell you where to find your missing goddess.”
Chapter 66
Racing through my mind for tendrils of a plan, my back completely shredded and everyone who cared about me at their breaking points, I rose against the desire to slump and beg. Death liked bargains. I could do this. I just needed to think. Quickly.
“Release me and I will speak the terms.”
I hated the delight on his face when his power flowed away and I slipped in the pool of my own blood, falling to a knee. The jarring pain nearly caused a scream, but I remembered where I was. Who I would be feeding if I let myself falter. So, I rose, limping across the stage to stand before the first man I’d ever killed.
“I am sorry. If you can trust me for even a moment, and you have a desire to leave this place, I will prove it to you.”
The man narrowed his eyes as the crowd that had become restless and uncomfortable with Death’s gruesome show stilled. He took my hand, and I walked him to the front of the stage. He said nothing when I held too tight, using him to keep my balance as the world swayed below me.
Cold steel wrapped through my veins as I turned to Death.
“Your bargain?” he asked, so intrigued he’d let his magic recede, the cage around Orin flickering as if it were only an illusion.
“The only thing stronger than fear is hope,” I yelled, loud enough the crowd could hear every bit of diction in my words as I planted a palm into Garrit Faden’s chest and let my power ripple. Just as my mother had, his body turned to ash, and his soul was released.
I couldn’t hear the crowd’s collective gasp over Death’s absolute roar.
Still, I shouted. “You replace your fear with hope and take away his power. Find me and I will release you,” I shouted, just as the world was enveloped in inky black shadows.
The banks of the Lake of Lost souls had crumbled, expanding the body of water as if Death’s anger had rattled the world. But I was too foolish to be scared, too reckless to be careful. Too desperate to listen to the warnings that had been Ezra’s mantra since the moment we met.
That man had stood for me, had offered to take my suffering, and I’d thought he didn’t care for me at all. When in reality, as I peered over the lake and watched Orin dangling above it, gripping Death’s shadows wrapped around his neck, I realized Ezra cared beyond rage. Beyond reason. He cared enough to try to keep us all safe, no matter the cost to him. Because they were his family. His weakness, just as Orin was mine.
And Death knew it. My heart plummeted. All resolve melted away as sheer panic rose until my fingers went numb. Until my breaths were shallow and all I could do was look out over those dangerous waters and pray to any of the gods to help us. Because I was only a single soul drowning in an eternity of Death’s wrath.
Still, I dared to stare him in the eyes. To appear more than what I was. Because the only other option was to fall to my knees and beg. Death’s eyes, once cold and calculating, now wild and frenzied, like an unhinged predator on the brink of madness. He began to pace, steps uneven and disjointed. The shadows billowing beneath him flickered, and he jerked.
“If you want to know where Cythronia is, you will release him.”
“Are those the terms?” he asked wildly. “You have no power here. Not really. Do you think your little parlor trick was enough to change the minds of thousands? You’re already mine, and you damn well know it. You’re desperate now. I can see it. I can feel your fear like a vibration. I can fucking taste it.”
Each step I took was poised and deliberate, a mirror to the quiet assurance that settled over me like a cloak. “You’re wrong. I’m not dead, and you have no power over me. I’ll never be yours because I already belong to him.”
I didn’t need to point for Death to know who I meant, and he flinched as if I’d struck him. The very existence of his son was a threat to him, just as my mother had warned while standing in this very spot.
“You would’ve never gotten past my hounds if you weren’t dead, Deyanira. Don’t tell lies.”
I smiled, matching one I’d seen him share for over a decade. “You’re the one who told them I wasn’t a threat, don’t you remember?”
He swept a hand toward Orin, and the shadows mimicked his gesture, until they became an extension of him, their tendrils matching his shape, no longer ribbons of murky shadows but fingers wrapped around his son’s throat. He lowered his arm, watching only me. Waiting for me to cry out.
But instead, I played the final card I had in the game. The one I’d saved. The wild card that might’ve gotten me nowhere. “If you do this, Reverius, the Supreme Sovereign and Keeper of All Realms will ban you from every world, not only Requiem and that of the gods. Everywhere, across all time and all realms. You will become obsolete.” It was a lie, one pulled from desperation and yearning. Ro had given me the name of the highest god. She planted the weapon and trusted me to wield it wisely.
