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“You won’t make it, Adassah.”
Her knee trailed through the grass, coming to a stop beneath her as she lost the will to move in the dirt. She inhaled and exhaled a few times as that sank in. “Is this the end for me?” she dared to ask. “Even though…” She stole a moment’s breath, dizziness making her forget where she was, what she was doing. “Even though I escaped my prison cell?”
“You’ve done well, good and faithful one. You’ve fought hard. I have only one last task for you before you sleep for a very long time.”
It shouldn’t have been possible for a tear to form in Ryn’s eye. She’d been forbidden water for two days; her skin was drying out, peeling in spots. Her body was losing its desire to hang on, but she lifted her gaze up to where stars twinkled across a dark canvas of B’rei Mira night sky.
“What do you mean, one last task?” The soft question came with cracked words lost to a cool breeze.
“You’re tired, Adassah. Soon you can sleep, and I’ll be waiting to catch you when you drift away.”
She sniffed, the bead of moisture drying on her cheek. Her eyes felt too heavy for her sunken face, and she nodded slowly as she looked around at the walls closing her off from the B’rei Mira city beyond, and the vast stretches of empire beyond that. So, she would take her final breath in a foreign land after all. “If it be your will that I should meet my end here, then I welcome it.” She pulled herself to sit on her heels, blinking at the harsh moonlight against her face. “I assumed I’d die by Alecsander’s hand at the Per-Siana border. Not here in this dark maze. But not my will, El. Not my will, but yours be done.”
“Only I know the number of your days, Adassah.”
Her mind wanted sleep. Her lungs squeezed through their breaths, the chambers growing thinner as they fought for air. “I wish I could have seen Xerxes one last time,” she admitted. Thoughts of her King, whispered words and forbidden shared smiles, were followed by memories of her Folke guardswoman, Heva’s wicked smile, and then thoughts of her cousin in his long emerald green Priesthood robe. Matthias. Theo. All sitting around her kitchen table for celebrations and laughing. Bastone appeared next, Faro, Dolem, and Yusuf. Geovani and the priestesses lounging across the pews in the First Temple. Ryn wondered if her mother would be proud of all she’d accomplished, all the people she’d met. She let her eyes slide closed as she planted those memories deep within her heart one last time, her shoulders dropping as her mind drifted toward slumber.
“Wake up, Adassah. You’re not finished yet.”
Wind sailing through the walls lifted her sticky hair off her neck. She heard the thorns behind her rattle, the ivy leaves shudder overhead. A cold raced in with it, pulling Ryn’s skin tight and drawing her eyelids to peel apart.
Low hissing sounds slunk through the labyrinth.
Ryn blinked her heavy eyelids. “That last task you have for me…” She dug the tip of her sword into the ground and used it as a brace to stand. “It doesn’t happen to be dealing with a snake, does it?”
A low, dark laugh rumbled across the air, swiping down her back, brushing her ankles and rustling the grass at her feet. She pictured that red snake in the nest, and her face puzzled. That snake had been tied up, and she hadn’t heard it laugh last time.
“Did you think that measly red snake was the Cobra god?”
Ryn felt her pulse in the sides of her head as she fought to keep her eyes open.
“We are god over the children of this kingdom. We sway young minds and choke the life out of them when we please. What makes you think you can stop us?”
Children… Ryn’s mouth closed. She thought of young Sarai. She thought of Prince Emad trembling before the god that had possessed and destroyed his father. She thought of all the other children this serpent had influenced, confused, taught lies to, driven fear into. A spirit of death, of identities. A choking spirit that wound around souls and dragged them away from the truth, from El’s chosen destiny for them. She hadn’t noticed all this in the B’rei Mira empire until she’d had her vision with Sigilene. She thought she came here to face Alecsander, a War King. But it was clear now what she had really come to face.
“Who do you think you are, Bride of B’rei Mira? You have already sworn yourself to us. You’re our prisoner. Your identity is ours to decide now.”
Ryn wiped a trail of sweat from her forehead. “It was never yours to decide.” She raised a hand and pointed to the darkness. “I am Commander Adassah of Burn Division Twelve, prisoner to no one. Servant of the God Original who is with me now, who made this land, who owns this land, and who shall now take it back with all authority.” Her vision sharpened, her muscles bracing with a strength that wasn’t her own as a warm support wrapped her knuckles and lifted her up. The dizziness fell from her mind and the haze left her eyes, allowing her to spot something shifting in the darkness at the far end of the path.
“You’ve come to die.”
“If that’s what it takes,” Ryn rasped. She raised her sword, her arm encompassed in a sleeve of light. “I think you came to die, too.”
A roar of laughter.
Ryn took her first step forward, loud hissing shaking the ground below her feet. She broke into a sprint, and she leapt into the darkness.
Light. Shadow. Screeching.
Ryn gritted her teeth. Flashes of light collided with thunderous dark.
She was bitten. Smoke burned down her throat and spoiled the last of her lungs as her midsection was pierced by prongs, as stones broke from the walls and hurled themselves at her, as thorns ripped down from above and tried to wrap her neck.
But she tore the shadow right out of the snake’s body with her fingers, ripping god from flesh.
She stabbed the god into the ground. A scream erupted and angry spirits retaliated as they burst into dust and scattered over the dirt.
And all the strength left Ryn’s body.
