“The blood bond can only be performed if my wings are out. I’d never shifted before last night.” Last night had been an unfamiliar swirl of wine and salt and heated skin. “I don’t know that I could do it again.”
I watched him in the looking glass as he adjusted his coat and said with frigid indifference, “We’ll do what we do for executions.”
I spun, gaze locking with his. “For executions?”
“I’ll bring up seawater and use the siphon to force it into your lungs. It makes you shift.” He came to stand before me, so close that I had to tilt my head back to meet his eyes. He bent to place a kiss on my neck. Then another. His lips might as well have been a clamp around my throat.
Crushing.
Silencing.
No amount of velvet coverings or gleaming wood could hide the fact that King Nemea’s ritual room was subterranean, carved into the mountain itself. Its dank smell and webbed corners wouldn’t be done away with. Candles glowed in their iron holders, giving off a secret kind of light.
My arm was linked with Evander’s, and he slowed us just as we reached the heart of the vast, low-ceilinged space. “I’m to escort King Nemea from his quarters,” he said. “Do not leave this room.”
He left and my tight shoulders eased.
We’d arrived early to a few courtiers greeting each other, their voices pinging off the stone as they regaled one another with stories of last night’s feast. Their laughter boomed and closed in around me. I walked the room’s perimeter slowly, feeling caged. In the far corners, the statues of the Great Gods and Goddesses that had once stood in the courtyard gathered dust. Their faces had been chiseled off when I had been a girl, but I knew them from the items they held.
Milton of Della cupped silkworms in his crumbling palm and a hare was tucked beneath his arm to signify his power over beasts. Panos of Varya stood tall and strong, with a flowering vine snaking up his leg, over his shoulder, and around his open marblehand. I noted the tall, graceful lines of his body. He reminded me of his grandson, King Theodore. Panos had possessed the power of life—with just a thought he could make dying plants spring up green, mend ripped flesh. Diantan of Hera—the Great Goddess of craft—cradled a hammer and joiners. The plumb line that had hung from her other hand had long since snapped off and was likely now the grit I felt beneath my shoes. A prolific builder, she could machine what she saw in her mind’s eye. Jesop of Gos lay on his side, his bearded head a foot away from the rest of him. He possessed the power of memory, which, combined with a God’s divine, near-immortal life span, provided Leucosia with its first books of history, genealogy, and folklore.
And in the most dismal corner of the room stood the Great Goddess Ligea. I gazed up at her. Her delicate marble wings lay in pieces around her base. Her head was missing altogether, but her body was strong, swathed in a length of fabric that fluttered behind her in an unending breeze. A cresting wave kissed her bare feet. The other Gods said that she possessed the power of death—but they were wrong.
She controlled the wind and sea.
With a melodic whisper, she could kill a tempest or stir one to life. She used her power to fill nets with fish, to aid ships in battles. And when she was wronged, she would lure the guilty to a brutal, drowning end.
I stared and stared at what was left of her.
“Lady Imogen,” came a low voice beside me.
I whirled. King Theodore stood taut with anger, a ferocious look on his face. I curtsied. “Good morning, Your Majesty.”
“What is this place?” he asked, fiery gaze bouncing from one defiled God to the next. His eyes stuck to the effigy of his ancestor. “I was instructed to arrive here but was not told why.”
My mouth gaped. The Great Gods—the Gods of Leucosia, made from its land and water—did not require offerings. They were not worshipped within the stygian belly of the earth.
“It’s King Nemea’s ritual room, Your Majesty.” Shame weakened my voice. “It is where his court offers their blood to his deity.”
His gaze shot to mine. “Youdo this?” A horrific look of disgust marred his face. “You give yourbloodto—to what? To whom?”
The water deity that I was moments away from offering my blood to was no Great Goddess, nor was she their descendant. If King Nemea was to be believed, she had been born with no power at all. Just like him. She’d made her own power with twisted, illicit magic.
“I do, Your Majesty.” I couldn’t meet his eye. “The offering is made to Eusia. Refusal means death.”
The withering look he gave me was clear—the threat of death did not absolve me.
A hard hand met the small of my back. “All right, darling?” Evander said, glaring at King Theodore, who stared back with his own obliterating sneer.
The room had filled further. Nemea now sat in a wooden throne on the far side of the room, wearing the same scarlet coat he’d worn at the feast.
“Just fine,” I said, and followed where Evander led me. In the center of the room, a throw of black velvet had been laid upon the dusty floor. Two bowls made of carved bone sat atop it. Beside them lay a pair of short, wickedly sharp obsidian blades. A small pile of white bandages sat in the very middle. The ritual for the betrothed.
Absent-mindedly, my thumb bumped over the mound of scars etched into my left palm. I’d sliced my hand with that blade so many times, I’d lost count.
“Imogen.” Evander jostled me. “Did you hear me?”
I shook my head.
