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Without another word, Betha gathers me in her ghostly arms, colder than deep winter, and carries me through dark tunnels and endless passageways until she dives with me into the River Cryth.
I gasp too many bubbles from the initial shock. Deja vu rears inside me from this icy crypt closing all around me. Unlike last time, I don’t battle the spirits. By now, they know me. I trust Betha. Ironic. Born of Morrygna of Doom, the ban-Sythe who became the agent of Death. But I trust the weeping wailing one.
As the spirits enclose my body, their forms like bitter ribbons wrapping me, I imagine what it would be like to be a current. To fade into the undertow. To disappear with dark water until all I become is...death.
The moment my spirit surrenders, the moment my body falls into the undertow is when the spirits haul me through the dark water. They carry me through the shadows of the fabric of the world. What I thought was cold in the River Cryth is nothing compared to passing through the veil into the spirit world. Infinitesimal. A tempest of frost and ice howls over me, numbing my body. My breath seizes, spasms in endless ghost puffs until I crash to my knees.
I catch myself, hands splaying on what feels like black marble, but it shifts like shadows to mix with the water droplets tumbling off my flesh. An undercurrent of power reverberates into my body, latching onto all the runes upon my skin.
At my back, countless spirits gather, whisper, chilling my flesh with their gasps and words. But once I lift my eyes, all the spirits’ voices fade to nothingness.
The golden Gates of Eyleanyn.
The entrance to the Isles. To the home of the gods.
Already, the heat from the infinity fire of the Gates kindles my chest in a dire warning, contrasting the deathly cold at my back. And my side. To my right, Betha floats and hovers with a soft smile as if reminding me of my former words. Of the impossible. If I want to earn my freedom, it’s on the other side of these Gates.
I don’t look back.
With every fiber of my being quaking, my heart heavier than an anvil, and my teeth chattering, I stand, approach the Gates, and close my palm around them.
First, I cringe, recoiling from the pain searing my flesh from those Gates. I stare at my palm, at the infinity brand I know is eternal. Because I am mortal, I am forever marked by god-fire. The truth is sealed into my flesh, my blood, my heart. But tonight, I must be more.
Tonight, I will no longer be Isla?the farm girl from Cock Cross, the Bone Games victor, the wild girl who dove into the Cryth River, and the first tribute in centuries. Tonight, I will no longer be the Queen of the Underworld.
This will not be my undoing. I will not be reduced to mere violence. A scar of a soul. Nor will I become a vessel of the gods and their maddening games. Perhaps this is the truest choice I have ever made, my own gods-damned choice. My desire, my freedom, my gloriousredoing!
I grow.
I grow corpus roses, black death roses, white Inker, scarlet heart, and a host of others. I grow vines to bind the gates so I may climb. In moments, the infinity fire eats my vines, splitting them. My right foot stumbles, my body colliding with the gates so the flames scorch a part of my gown but not my skin. All the runes on my flesh awaken, some with fire, some with ice. But I lean into my Nether-mark until it becomes my touchstone. My swirling, unbroken eternity knot: thetriskeylehas shadowed me all my life.
Behind me, thousands of spirit voices ripple into my ears. My breathing is louder. My heartbeat thunders in my skull to suffocate all sounds. Nerves charged and crackling like lightning, I grow more and more vines to scale the Gates. This pain, this toil is nothing compared to the nightmare of becoming the Curse, of carrying a damned child. I press onward, growing and rebirthing. More vines for the infinity fire to split. More flowers for the flames to wither to fragrant embers. More thorns for the inferno to shatter.
The Gates smolder more of my gown until it hangs in loose tattered ribbons on my flesh with only the rib cage bodice shielding me. By the time I reached the pointed bars of the crest of the Gates, it feels like it’s been hours. My muscles scream in agony, my throat aches from the windstorms I’ve inhaled. My hands and fingers throb and bleed. Enough sweat has dripped from me to form a well at the base of the Gates.
When I lift my head over the edge, dozens of eyes of vengeful conflagration greet me. The eyes of the lower gods. Still, I do the impossible, careless of anything save for the vines I bind around my hands three times. Once I get over these final bars, I will fly in a final taunt to the gods waiting for me. Spirit screams echo behind me as I raise one leg over the pointed bars, snagging a gown tatter. It catches fire and rips.
Tears like rivers blur my vision from the Gates’ heat. My breath cleaves and heaves while my hair clings to my sweat-soaked skin to constrict my vision. But I haul my second leg over and dangle, holding on to the crest for dear...death. Eyes and mouth agape. The last of the vine-bindings on my hands wither and sever.
I let go.
I fall.
I soar through incense-laced wind and wait for my body to shatter upon the hard ground. Instead, I land on a raiment of shades, soft like a bed. All that remains to clothe me are a few dark gown shreds, the rib cage bodice, and these...shades whispering blood fire across my flesh.
Dazed, I thrust my head back to stare directly at the gods—breathless and quaking in the wake of their heated eyes, of their mouths open and hungering. They wear the skin of the stars. They drink the dew of constellations. And pure liquid sunshine. As if a dam bursts from their individual runes, a wave of ice unleashes in my being. Compared to them, I am a mortal husk, bleeding and shriveling in their god shadows.
But I have climbed their Gates.
I curl my bloodied fingers into the Isle soil. And smile. It feels like crumbs of dreams tingling my fingers. As the gods close in, I dig my fingers deeper into the soil, close my eyes, part my lips and sigh softly, waiting for them to reap more of my soul. What did I expect would happen? They will not be tricked or cheated. Betha was wrong. Only doom awaits me.
A multitude of claws descends toward my hair, my face, my skin, my body. They prepare to strip it clean.
Before they land, the shades surround me in a bone-chilling embrace, ever-swirling with the deepest and most powerful of blood-fire.
A phantom voice of deep twilight, a voice from my dreams, with the scent of gray dew and dead leaves, thunders into the god circle like a final, crashing storm, “Nobody touch her! No one fucking touch her!”
The gods hiss, seethe, and snarl, breaths like poisonous vapors drifting across my face. But they relent. Reluctantly, they inch away, though their eyes do not flee from my being. They part like ethereal waves before the familiar shade voice.
