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Parentage? “I swear to all the gods I’ve ever met that I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The other gods you have met might have held some tolerance for your corruption, but I see differently. You should be cleansed, the taint burned right out of you. No, no. Your taint should be burned right off the face of this earth.”
Amaterasu charged again, teeth, eyes, and blade flashing in the beautiful, hellish light of the mirror shards above us. That was the source of all my trouble. I clenched my jaw, narrowing my eyes as I looked up. If I could deactivate its enchantment, bring back the shadows –
The goddess slashed, and I wove out of the path of her sword. She was a talented fighter – how I knew that, I can’t explain. All I knew was that anyone who could handle a sword well enough to almost hack my limbs off multiple times in succession must have possessed some amount of skill in swordplay. She growled at the annoyance of missing me again, but that was all I had: agility, reflexes, a quick mind.
But I also had a sword.
I whirled in place like a shot putter, using Vanitas’s weight to propel him, and swung upward with all my might, hurling him into the cluster of broken mirrors. His edge blazed green and gold in the radiance of Amaterasu’s chamber, and she roared in fury as the sword’s point met home. A tinkle, then a crash, and the rainbow brilliance flooding the domicile vanished as the shards showered and clinked to the ground. Which meant the shadows were back.
“No,” Amaterasu shouted, dashing at me again, but this had to end. If she wanted to play dirty, then I was allowed to pull out all the stops, too. And hey, maybe it meant I could have some practice honing. Just a little. I stepped into a shadow, retreating to the far end of the chamber, buying myself enough time to work.
But it didn’t take long. I feared calling out the elements of the Dark Room because of what it could do to me, because of how it left me half dead when I first did it. The Dark didn’t care, though. It always wanted to come out. Always. I was only the enabler, the conduit, and all I had to do was open the door. That was the worst thing of all: that it was so easy, so effortless to cause so much destruction.
There were only a scant few shadows across the marble floor of Amaterasu’s chamber, but they were more than enough. Black mists rose from each of them, swirling, coalescing into solid shapes. How the Dark Room knew to bring its horrors to Amaterasu’s realm, I couldn’t know. But there was a different quality to the shadows this time. It was ecstatic, ravenous, and raring to emerge.
Shapes burst out of the darkness in massive waves, great, glistening tentacles of solid shadow lashing and breaking at everything within reach. I couldn’t tell where Amaterasu’s shrieking ended, and where the sound of shattering crystal began. The darkness frolicked in its dance of joyous obliteration, a raging, frothing pandemonium of shadows, blood, and mirrors bending, breaking, bleeding.
I collapsed to the ground, the marble cool against my cheek, my blood a warm, comforting puddle, all the shattered pieces of crystal and mirror like strings of diamonds in a growing lake of crimson. I made that, I thought to myself. I painted that picture, in red, and black, and white.
“I’m a shadowcrafter,” I said, burbling into a mouthful of my own blood.
I stopped breathing.
Chapter 13
My chest was on fire, like an ember was burning inside of it. The pain felt very much like the night I first died, when Thea had plunged her verdigris dagger into my heart. I moaned in a gloom lit only by candles, half asleep but just awake enough to send curious, frightened fingers groping around me. My hands met with long, smooth patches of stone. I was laid on something flat.
The altar.
I screamed as my eyes flew open. No. Not the altar. I was fine. I was back in my quarters at the hideout, the furniture around me hewn from stone, the mattress at my back flat and firm, but comfortable, nothing at all like the stone altar where Thea had murdered me as an offering to the Eldest. What I thought were candles was just the incandescent lamplight from my side table. I was safe.
Safe, but in a hell of a lot of pain. I groaned as I wrenched myself into a seated position. I grimaced at the bandages wrapped around my chest, and at the spot of blood that was still damp on them. Something inside me wilted. So I ripped myself open when I unlocked the door to the Dark Room again. How the hell was I ever going to sharpen my talent if it meant bleeding myself half to death every time?
“Calm down,” a voice beside me said.
I jerked at the sound of it, at the sudden realization that someone was sitting right by me, straddling a chair with his arms slung over the backrest, chin pushed into his forearms. Sterling watched me with a serene expression, unmoving, perfectly still, like he’d been sitting there comfortably for the past –
“How long have I been out?”
He continued staring at me for a few uncomfortable seconds. “Hours. I want to say about twenty-four now?”
“What?” I threw the covers aside, wondering what I was even supposed to accomplish by doing so, when I remembered that I really only had to look at my wrist to know how much time had passed. I winced as I raised my hand to my face, dreading what I would see on Dionysus’s tattoo.
Fuck. One petal. I don’t know what I was expecting. I thrust my face into my hands, ruffling at my hair that, as anticipated, was greasy from days of not washing. That deep knowing that showers were the least of my problems only made things worse. I was going to die.
I guess I must have been distraught enough that I didn’t even flinch when Sterling’s cold hand came to rest on my bare shoulder. He squeezed in what was almost a reassuring way.
“Cheer up. My offer still stands.”
“For fuck’s sake, Sterling.” I shook his hand off my shoulder. “Can you not make this another creepy game right now? I’m going to die.” I raked fingers through my hair, swallowing my frustration. “At least tell me that you guys managed to track down the Viridian Dawn. At least tell me that this is over.”
He shook his head, the subtle tic in t
he creases of his eyes telling me that an attempt to be sympathetic was struggling to fight its way out of the alabaster mask of his face.
“Carver told you, didn’t he? We’re supposed to go together, as a unit. We need everyone on board for this job. He refused to proceed without you. Besides, he wanted you and Gil to be rested after that – the whole incident with the sun goddess.”
