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I turned my head, feeling as if I had been encased in gelatin, and saw the pieces of the high seat flying out in a cloud. There was a ragged hole in the stone wall behind the seat about half the size of a coffin.
And the Queen of Air and Darkness was nowhere to be seen.
A stunned silence settled over the room.
The cloaked figure raised her hands in a very slow, deliberately dramatic gesture and slowly peeled back her hood.
The woman beneath the hood was made of bronze and crystal, and she was beautiful beyond mortal reckoning. Her hair, long and slick and close, as if she’d just emerged from water, looked like silk spun from silver.
It was her eyes that bothered me. Or rather, her eye. One of her eyes was a crystalline emerald green.
The other …
On that perfect bronze face, the mutilation of her eye stood out like a gallows in a public park. The orbital ridges around the socket were covered in white, granite-like scars, as if the biggest, ugliest cat you’d ever seen had scratched it out. It wasn’t sunken, though the lid was closed. That mangled eye bulged ever so slightly, as if it had been meant for a being considerably larger than she was.
There was, around her, a humming throb of energy unlike anything I had ever sensed before, a power so ancient and terrible that the world had forgotten its like. That power demanded my respect, my obedience, my adoration, my abject terror, and suddenly I knew what was happening.
I was standing in the presence of a goddess.
I could barely breathe.
I couldn’t have moved if I’d wanted to.
A moan went through the room, and I realized with a bit of alarm that one of the voices moaning was mine.
Some part of me noted that Vadderung and Ferrovax had both come to their feet, fists clenched—and they were not looking at each other any longer. Both stared hard at the woman.
The goddess swept her single-eyed gaze around the room, tracking from face to face. She gave the Winter Lady a look of pure contempt and delivered exactly the same expression to the rest of the gathered Accorded nations.
Her voice …
Oh God.
Her voice was sex and chocolate and hot soup and a bath on a cold, rainy night. It was a voice that promised things, that you could find yourself listening to with absolute intensity. It filled the room as if she’d been using a PA system, even though she wasn’t.
“Children, children, children,” she murmured, shaking her head in disapproval. “The world has gone to the children.” Her gaze reached Ferrovax and paused. One of her cheeks ticked. She looked from the dragon to Vadderung, and when she saw him her teeth showed white and perfect. “One-Eye. Are you that involved in the Game, still? Are you still that arrogant? Look how far you’ve fallen. Consorting with insects, as if you’re barely more than mortal yourself.”
No one moved.
No one spoke.
And then footsteps sounded on the stone floor.
Gentleman John Marcone stepped out from behind the unmoving Gard, impeccable in his suit. He didn’t look frightened, though he had to be. He simply stepped forward, clear of his guards, and said, “Good evening, madam. I am Baron John Marcone. This is my home. Might I have the pleasure of knowing how you wish to be addressed?”
The goddess narrowed her eyes, watching Marcone with the kind of revulsion that one normally sees reserved for a swarm of maggots. She shook her head, dismissing Marcone from her attention as she fixed her gaze on Vadderung again.
“This is your host?” she demanded. “You permit a mortal among you? Where is your dignity? Where is your pride?” She shook her head. “This world has gone astray. We have failed it. And I will no longer huddle fearfully in the seas and watch the mortals turn it into their filthy hive.”
The goddess walked forward, staring down at Marcone. She circled him, shaking her head in judgment—and still no one moved. She pointed a finger at Ferrovax without looking at him and said, “Introduce me to this ephemeral.”
For a few seconds there was silence. Then Ferrovax spoke in a ragged voice that sounded like it was being dragged out through his teeth. “This is Ethniu. Daughter of Balor. The Last Titan.”
Ethniu lowered her pointing finger. Ferrovax gasped and staggered, putting a hand on the back of his chair to balance himself as he breathed heavily.
“This world has manifestly failed,” she continued, now addressing the room. “You thought yourselves wise to band together. To live quietly. To embrace”—her lip lifted in a sneer—“civility. With the mortals that used to tremble at the sound of our footsteps.”
I was trembling pretty damned hard right about then. And I still couldn’t make a voluntary motion.
“I have stood by doing nothing for too much of my life,” Ethniu said, pacing slowly. “I have watched holy place after holy place fall to the mortals. Forest after forest. Sea after sea. They dare to walk where they were never meant to walk. And as they do, the divine retreats, withers, dies.” She paused for a moment, and that emerald eye landed on me like a truckload of lead, regarded me, and dismissed me all within half of a heartbeat. “They grow more numerous, more petty, more vicious, while they foul the world we helped to create with their filth, their noise, their buildings, and their machines.”
She came to a stop beside King Corb and laid a hand on his shoulder almost fondly. “This ends. Tonight.”
She turned and strode to Vadderung. She dropped to one knee in order to speak to him eye to eye. “I remember what you were. Because I respect you, I assume you have seen some redeeming value among these …” She waved a hand at the room. “Children. And because of that respect, I offer you something I was never given: a choice.”
She looked around the room. “I offer it to all of the divine here. At the witching hour tonight, we who you thought fallen, defeated, banished, and humbled march upon the mortal world—starting with this fetid hive around us.” She smiled, very slowly. “Finally.”
Vadderung spoke, as if someone had superglued his tongue to the back of his teeth. “Ethniu. Do not do this.”
She stared down at him for a moment with something almost like pity. “I remember that once you were great,” she said quietly. “For the sake of the being I remember, I offer you this one chance: Do not interfere. My quarrel is with the mortals. Stand aside and there need be no conflict.” She gestured at the hole in the wall behind the high seat. “That creature cannot protect you. Cannot enforce her justice. Each of the divine here must choose: abandon the mortal world—or burn with it.”
Her closed eye quivered, and suddenly there was a light behind the scarred eyelid, red and pulsing through the thin skin. She leaned back her head, took a breath, and opened that eye, the Eye, screaming.
The scream itself threatened to deafen me by sheer volume, but it was far, far more painful than that. I could feel it press against the vaults of my mind, emotion so violent and intense that it would tear my sanity to pieces if I let even a portion of it into my head.
Light erupted from Ethniu, lashing out furiously at the ceiling. Where it touched the hanging swaths of fabric, they rotted and flaked away, scorching at the edges and bursting into flame. When it touched the ceiling, there was an enormous concussion, and the dark grey stone of the castle suddenly erupted with cold blue glowing light emanating from previously unseen runes and sigils written on every surface. I could feel a surge of pressure, which might have put out my ears had it been physical, as the castle’s magical defenses pitted themselves against the power of a goddess.
