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I chew on my lower lip, wondering what is happening in the main Court, if Allysteir and Aydon have overcome the Stallion. Where is Franzy?
“Maybe we should?”
“I found it!” Gryzelda announces, injecting two fingers deep into the eye sockets of one skull.
I jerk from the wall shuddering, from the skulls rumbling, and the wall caving in to reveal a dark passage. As I near the passage with Gryzelda hurrying me along, I narrow my eyes. More ice. Hoarfrost. A maddening winter storm of a chill.
I take one step inside to discover a staircasedescendingnot ascending.
Two deep green irises emerge from the darkness. My Nether-mark howls a firestorm at the base of my spine.
But I’m too late. Elder Kanat blows fresh bone powder into my eyes and chants a ritual. My knees weaken, my vision blurs, and my mind dizzies. I crumble into his arms.
I waketo a stone table under my back.
When my eyes adjust to the torches around the underground room, I understand it’s not simply a room. These are catacombs, and it’s not a stone table: it’s an altar.
I take a deep gust. Incense overpowers my nostrils, stinging their insides. But the ropes binding me sting more. Ropes woven over my nude form, barely covering my breasts and lower regions. A layer of bone powder coats my skin. Its musty scent invades the air. I scrunch my brow because my thorns could snap them within moments. I prepare to unleash my power until the low voice hums a trilling tune behind me.
Out of the corner of my eye, Kanat’s robe sways from side to side as he sets about the task of placing different types of bones, all runed in Doom symbols, around my body. Symbols mirroring the ones on my flesh.
Roused, my Nether-mark scalds my spine’s base, but it’s not the mark concerning me most. It’s the ones Kanat has painted on my skin. It’s the scar where I clawed away Kryach’s mark. Because I believed I could win my freedom. But Allysteir was right: I cannot run from the gods.
When I move to summon my corpus roses, my body strikes an invisible wall. My heart spasms in my chest. I can’t so much as lift a finger. Dread massacres my stomach. Some invisible weight presses on my chest with a dark, infecting magic due to those symbols upon my skin along with the bone powder sealing them. Only a little movement granted from my eyes to my neck and face. Everything else is paralyzed.
My eyes bulge from the realization—from the trauma of my past of when the refters held me down as a child. All I want is to release the most primal of screams. Instead, I imagine water closing over my head, shrouding my body. I return to the River Cryth when the spirits dragged me deeper, so I may drown the scream. The water finds another outlet through my eyes.
Gryzelda’s figure blocks my blurry vision, her proud crown adorning her head while mine has been placed between my thighs. I wince, understanding why: it’s constructed of black crystal bearing the energy and essence of the past nine Queens who survived before me along with their bones spiked by diamonds. The rags I’d soaked with an Ith repellent and camouflaged perfume to catch the aftermath of blood are gone. Now, the slight crimson stream trickles to the crown.
While Kanat hums idly, progressing with his bones on the other side of my body, I swallow the burning in my throat, blink back tears, and face Gryzelda, voice cracking, “Why?”
The Queen leans in. Her fire gems remind me of carnal blood drops as if foreshadowing what will be spilled tonight. I flinch when she cups the side of my head and fingers my hair which fans out all around my head. “I warned you, little bride. But you refused to listen. You cannot run from Kryach. You cannot run from the gods. All you can do is survive while they rape your soul. But you denied the gods the blood and flesh from your body. Now, they will take the blood they desire. You could have had your vengeance later.”
I shake my head, wishing I could thrash, but the most I do is seethe, “He’s your son, Gryzelda! Yourson!”
The Queen lifts her chin, her eyes turning cold and hard as iron dagger hilts. “My son died the moment he accepted the Curse, and the God of Death invaded his body.”
I clamp my mouth because it’s useless to argue with Gryzelda. Her trauma scars define her far more than her survival. Perhaps she never truly survived. Those scars lodge in my chest. Somewhere, a part of her is lost—the strong woman who is missing and traveling within the veil between worlds; she’s traded it for allying herself with the likes of Kanat. She traded it for her bones and jewels. Her well-meaning warnings became her poison along with her greatest default: vengeance. A poor aim at me when she could direct it at Kanat and exchange her revenge for justice.
My lower lip trembles as the elder stands behind my head and removes his cloak, his grin malevolent as he leers at me. “As inviting as your flesh may be...” he draws one finger across my cheek to the corner of my mouth. I cringe and snap my teeth at the elder as he finishes, “it only produced one interest for me. A sacrifice. Perhaps that will console you if you happen to survive. But I doubt it,” he sniggers, leaning in to whisper his conclusion.
I launch a well-timed spittle, grinning when it finds its target in his left eye.
A low growl invades Kanat’s throat, but it doesn’t take him long to blink and recover. Or to dig his fingers into my jaw and each side of my mouth. Plugging my nose, he wrenches my mouth open and lowers a bottle for me to drink. My first instinct is to savor the familiar taste of the pomegranates until I realize they’ve been laced with black death roses: a subtle poison. Before I can retch the ritualistic liquid, Kanat slams his hand onto my mouth, preventing me, forcing me to swallow. Wiggling my head is the most battle I can manage while the silky, sweet tang warms my throat. I cringe, not missing the bitter aftertaste.
With one cast of bone powder and a few words, he snuffs all the catacomb torches until everything is black as a Bone Sea storm. The incense wreaks its wrath upon the room, encroaching onto my skin.
At first, I hear nothing, see nothing, smell nothing, feel nothing. Naked in the dark.
Until...the goddess appears in my vision. My mouth parts, but her gaze suffocates all my words—of her one whole eye like the dark side of the moon and her other: a blind, white phantom. Her black hair falls around me, casting the scent of smoke and blood and bone and the sweat of the hardest birthing labor as she leans in and cradles my head. Beneath her hand, I shudder and stare at the defiled part of her which reminds me of Allysteir in a rueful, ironic way.
“Your doom spoke to me,” Morrygna utters in a smoky, dark voice. “How you would deny the gods the fruit of your flesh. Now, we will take your blood, your essence, yoursoul.”
No tears come. Fear is a pointless emotion. Better to become a sword, even a sheathed one.
In the barest of gestures, Morrygna touches one finger to the blood between my thighs. She smears it across my forehead and seals her lips to mine. Whatever pain I felt when Allysteir bit me is infinitesimal compared to this. This isn’t flesh and blood. This is goddess teeth gnawing on my soul strings, on the threads of my essence as she’d vowed. No armor, no thorns, no flowers, nothing can act as a shield. Before Morrigyna, my soul lies naked upon an invisible altar birthed from the runes upon my skin. There is no shame in my screams, or my tears. I writhe from the neck up and launch countless thorns from my pores all for Morrygna to destroy them with her smoke without ever parting from my lips.
For a fleeting moment, I wonder if this is what it would have felt like for Kryach to rape my soul.
