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Except Morrygna ends the kiss, smiles upon me, and concludes, “I took my fair share. Now, it’s their turn.”
One by one, the lower gods appear, claiming their soul threads. If I could arch my back, I would. Paralysis makes everything worse. To know I am powerless to respond naturally to the pain. Except for my thorns like feeble toothpick arrows against the gods.
All. Except. One.
By the time they are finished, thunderclouds riptide through my mind, dizzying my vision. I’m drowning in masses of shorn thorns. My adrenaline has plunged. All the gods depart with my soul strings. How much is left? One thread? The irony. I’d waited for Kryach to reap part of my soul, to leave a scar. He set me free only for all the gods beneath him to reap my soul.
So, why don’t I feel scarred? Or damaged? Yes, I am weak from the ritual, from the aftermath of pain, but like the night Allysteir left me, I’m ready to grow. No, I’m ready tofeed.
The paralysis fades because I can curl my toes again while the feeling returns to my fingers, tingling.
But the fertile green eyes hovering over me are unmistakable. “My kiss for last,” Elder Kanat boasts, leaning in. His scheme all along. Now, I recognize his handiwork, how all the refters were practice for this moment. Dressing them as brides was his brand of mockery. “And when I kiss you, little bride, the gods will welcome my soul into Eyleanyn where I will reign alongside them for eternity.”
“You’re no god,” I hiss, feeling my Nether-mark rousing an ember heat up my spine. “You’re a spineless, little coward.”
Elder Kanat chuckles, ignoring my taunt. I brace myself, tensing for the kiss, remembering the first time his lips met mine. But before Kanat’s mouth lands, he chokes. I stare wide-eyed, curving my fingers more as blood spews from his mouth. Not as wide-eyed as him.
Until he drops, revealing the familiar figure gripping a dagger bloodied from Kanat’s back. The parietal skull bone hangs at his chest.
“Aydon,” I gasp, breathless, eyes casting low to the fallen elder. “The gods, they’re gone. They...”
Instead of the brusque posture, pressed lips, and honed indigo eyes I expect, Aydon steps over Kanat’s corpse, roams his gaze over me, and smiles. “There is one way to reclaim yourself, Bride of the Corpse King.” When his hand brushes my belly, I cringe, leaning away as much as I can.
“Where is Allysteir?” I whip my head around, expecting the King to show at any time.
“Unconscious along with Ifrynna. Not to worry your pretty head, Isla. Our parietal skull bones united were more than able to defeat the Sleeping Stallion. I avenged Nathyan Ghyeal of Elder Kanat’s treachery in awakening such a beast. As I told you, we bear the most responsibility of all nations, the greatest burdens. And I have surrendered everything to protect my country, my people. Allysteir always played the woeful victim as if he made the greatest sacrifice?”
“A rotting corpse for five hundred years!” I shriek, advocating for Allysteir’s price, but Aydon growls low and chains my throat. I heave, lurching. My body hasn’t broken free of the paralysis.
“Oh, how he rubbed it in my face every day, reminding me how he took the Curse for me, but he didn’t have the guts to take the throne, to take the curse of carrying the kingdom every damn day. And yet, he still called himself King while I suffered as Crown Prince.”
I let Aydon monologue because it’s useless to debate him, to convince him of anything but his sick and twisted victimhood. Biding my time, I drown out him railing abouthiscurse, how he was subjected to immortality alongside Allysteir, but every woman he fucked could never produce an heir. A fate solely for the Corpse King.
“You killed them,” I whisper, my gut clenching as I remember the girls, the corpses Betha showed me, discarded like dolls in the Sea of Bones. I clench my eyes, remembering their bodies.
Aydon adjusts his robe and leers, waving his hand. “Oh, you must have stumbled upon my burial hole. Failures, every one. Blame Kryach if you wish. And help me take the war to the gods. You will get your revenge. Imagine an heir of the Underworld free of the Curse, free of the gods and their games. The first in all our world’s history.”
“And what? Be bound to you forever?”
Smirking, Aydon rubs his knuckles across my cheek, sweeping aside my hair. I wrinkle my nose while he concludes, “I was on the throne, Isla. You promised yourself to me. And now, you will fulfill your promise.” He thumbs the mark beneath my collarbone...Allysteir’s mark while fingering the powerful bone at his chest. I inhale sharply, understanding he will overlap his brother’s mark. And with his parietal skull bone, he may annihilate it.
No more words. Monologue over. I try to jerk, but my limbs are still too heavy. As Aydon opens his mouth to unleash his Ith teeth, my heart convulses. I convulse the moment his teeth approach.
“May the one who loves me not
Never have another thought,” the new voice invades the catacombs with the cursing chant, echoing off the walls. She speaks in flawless, ancient Ithydeiran, but I recognize the words, understand their meaning—in more ways than one.
Tears flow down my cheeks.
Aydon turns, snarls, and raises his parietal skull bone to thwart her, but my rescuer lifts her bones, bones I know all too well, and continues, “If his heart be ever dark,
May hell claim with eternal mark.”
Aydon shudders. He falters, hands shaking his parietal skull bone in the wake of the bone magic engulfing him. Jaw low, lips parted, I gaze at the Crown Prince as he falls to his knees. As he struggles for breath from the next incantation.
“May the flesh rot from your bones
As you surrender to your eternal home
