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Malcolm was already standing over the glass, nearly vibrating with anticipation, ready to read as soon as he had enough light. Alie stood a bit behind him, not hovering like he did but still close enough to see, worrying at her bottom lip.
Lore didn’t approach the glass-protected prophecy at all. She’d look at it, eventually, but the prospect of it sent dread swirling through her, a cold storm of it rising through her chest and making her throat feel too narrow.
Gabe set his torch into an iron ring on the wall, crossed his arms. “Well?”
“It’s long.” Malcolm frowned. “And there’s something at the bottom I can’t read, that doesn’t look like written language at all. Just swirls and lines.”
Silence. They all waited.
Malcolm cleared his throat, then read aloud in a clear, unwavering voice. “Two things must occur for Apollius to return within His chosen vessel, and two things must be prevented. The things that must occur: The unfaithful King must be dethroned, and the daughter of the dark must be brought to the chosen, just before his ascension.”
Things that had already happened. Apollius was here.
“The things that must be prevented,” Malcolm continued. “The dark’s daughter must not linger past fulfilling her purpose. And the…” He trailed off, brow furrowed, leaning in closer as if to make sure he was reading it right. “The war must not be allowed, for no one faithful to Him is an enemy, and our task is to make a Holy Kingdom that spans the earth.”
“Sounds like an Empire to me,” Alie muttered darkly.
“Also sounds like we’ve fucked up most of this prophecy already,” Lore added.
Waving a hand at both of them for quiet, Malcolm kept reading. “If these requirements are not met in full, the power of the Fount will find new vessels. One for each It lost—for Nyxara, for Apollius, for Caeliar and Braxtos and Lereal and Hestraon. The cycle will continue anew, and it will spell woe for the world.”
Six gods. Four people in this room. Bastian, waiting in the Citadel, trying to hold on to himself.
Malcolm leaned back, frowning, then looked silently to Gabe.
“So we aren’t just dealing with two gods,” Gabe said. “We’re dealing with Them all.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The world is not eternal.
—Carved on a seawall in Myrosh
It was wildly inappropriate, but the first thing Lore felt was relief, her suspicions proven correct. She and Bastian weren’t alone.
The next thing she felt, far more appropriately, was terror.
She looked at Gabe again, trying to gauge his reaction. But Gabe wasn’t looking at the floor with that furrow across his forehead that said he was deep in thought. Instead he was looking at the sconce on the wall, with its steady, nearly flickerless flame.
“So what do we do with that?” Alie, as usual, taking the information in stride and moving forward. “As Lore noted, most of these parameters have been fucked up already, but that didn’t stop Apollius from possessing His vessel.”
“But neither did all the predictions come true,” Malcolm said. “No one has prevented a war. In fact, I’d say one is far closer than it was before, after that explosion.”
Alie’s brows drew together, her expression going distant. Lore wondered if she’d been back to speak to Caius, to see if she could get unequivocal proof that Kirythea was behind the attack that day. If she had, she hadn’t shared it with Lore.
“And if the other gods taking vessels manifests the same way Nyxara and Apollius have for Lore and Bastian, I’d think it’d be obvious,” Malcolm continued. “They’d be exhibiting elemental powers by now…”
He stopped, silence like a stopper in his throat. His eyes went to his hands, then to Gabe. “The plants,” he murmured. “In the library.”
Slowly, his eyes still on the flame, Gabe nodded.
“Shit.” Malcolm stared at his hands a moment more, then rubbed one over his shorn head. “Shit on the Citadel Wall.”
Still standing by the prophecy, Alie’s green eyes were so wide that the whites showed all around her irises. None of them had to spell out what Malcolm had just realized, the truth running through them clear and sharp as a bayonet end.
“Can you hear Him?” Alie breathed. “Braxtos?”
Malcolm shook his head, his candle-inked palm pressed to his temple, like he was listening very closely to the space between his ears. “Haven’t heard anything, nothing like a voice.” His eyes swung to Lore. “When did it start, for you?”
