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“Lore.” All he could get out was her name. “Lore, I—”
Gone again. Apollius, shaking out his now-healed hand, trailing gold in the dark sanctuary air. “I should’ve expected that answer,” He said, stepping toward Lore again. She tried to back away; her knees hit the pew, making her sit down heavily on the hard wood. “But I wanted to give Her one last chance, you see. For old times’ sake.” The same hand that had made to slap her caressed her cheek, now, almost unbearably warm. “She really did love Me. Like I said. She might’ve hated Me, but She loved Me, too.”
“What did She do?” Lore asked. “When You said She wouldn’t have done it if She didn’t love You, what was it?”
But Apollius wasn’t interested in Nyxara’s memories, in old history. There was a light of determination in His eyes, a god on a mission. “Here’s what’s going to happen, Lore,” he said, relishing her name on His tongue. “It’s quite simple, really. Pretty much what should’ve happened the night of the eclipse, with one very important exception. You are going to give me Nyxara’s power. Then you are going to be my Queen.” He smiled, and it looked like Bastian’s, the one he’d give her when he was particularly pleased with himself. “You get to live. Isn’t that what you damned the whole world for?”
It was the only thing she’d wanted, the refrain that had run through her head constantly the night of the ritual. Her life, her own, paltry and ragged thing though it was.
Don’t let him make His own selfishness someone else’s burden to bear.
Lore didn’t know if the words were a memory, or Nyxara murmuring them again into her head.
“I didn’t damn the world,” Lore said. “That was all You.”
“I’m sure you wish that were true.” Apollius still grinned, but there was a flicker in His eyes. Not fear, but wariness. “I would’ve had the others’ powers if Nyxara hadn’t risen in you. But when you chose to live, the others followed. You caused the elemental magics to go out from the Fount again, to tip the balance of the world.”
“None of that is my doing.” Lore stood from the pew, glaring up at Him. “You chose this path, because You’re terrified of dying. Terrified of facing the hell You’ve undoubtedly made for Yourself. Because that’s what this is about, right? If the Shining Realm exists, You can’t go there.”
It still wasn’t quite fear in His eyes, but it was closer. Like she’d brushed up to a truth, but not landed on it fully.
“You’ve made Your own choices, Apollius,” Lore said. “But You could never live alone with them. Not then, and not now.”
She thought He might try to strike her again, saw the twitch of His hand. But it stayed by His side. Bastian, in there, fighting.
You have to kill Him, Lore. More pain in her head, but it felt secondary, now, faced with a terrible and furious god and the ultimatum He was giving her. You have to, you have to begin the end.
But Bastian.
“Living is preferable to dying, alone or not.” Apollius tipped a finger beneath her chin. “I’m sure you’d agree. And this is the choice you have, though it’s not much of one: Give Me Nyxara’s power, and live. Or die, and I’ll take it anyway.” He touched her lips, feather-soft. “She knows how to give it to Me.”
Lore was frozen, there on his fingertip, desperately looking for a solution, for a way out of this that didn’t lead to death for one or both of them. She didn’t think she could kill Apollius, even if she made herself forget about Bastian locked inside—Jax was right here, spear in hand. If she tried to channel death, the god could just sever the threads; His aura shone so bright with Spiritum that Lore could nearly see it, even without trying.
Apollius caressed her hair, twisting one brown-gold strand around His finger. His thumb brushed along her jawline, and He looked in her eyes.
And He let Bastian come forward, just a little.
The god was still in control, at least of the body. Every one of Bastian’s muscles was held tight and tense, nearly vibrating with the effort of keeping still. But the eyes were all him, all her Bastian, and they were terrified.
“Lore.” Their voices came from the same throat, but his sounded so different from Apollius’s, raw and hoarse as if he’d been screaming. “You have to do it.”
A flicker of a self-satisfied smile across the mouth that Apollius still controlled, so incongruous with those terror-stricken eyes. Sure that Bastian was telling Lore she had to take the deal, she had to give up Nyxara’s power and live at Apollius’s side.
But Lore didn’t think that was what Bastian meant.
“You have to,” he said again, words that didn’t match the pleased curve of his mouth, an awful composite of god and man. “For me.”
For him. The real him, trapped in his own body, watching a god wear it to do awful things. To bring down war on all who would oppose Him, to tear the world apart.
Lore closed her eyes. When she opened them, Bastian was gone, Apollius fully in his place.
There was no way to know if he was gone for good. Maybe he could keep fighting his way to the surface, over and over, snatches of moments when he was in control. But what kind of life was that? Was it enough of one, if she loved him?
She held life and death in her hands, braided them together, wove them into tapestries of her will. There had to be a way to have both, to thread the strands through the same needle. She thought of the docks, of that dream on the pew. The moment when life and death were one and the same, both real and both present, a forked road where either turn could be taken.
In her head, Nyxara was silent, silent.
“I’ll do it,” she murmured, and it was an answer to all of them at once.
