The Burning God (The Poppy War #3) - R.F. Kuang Page 0,215

shoulders jump higher, resembling wings for an instant before they flared out toward Petra. “Or I will char every part of your body. I’ll do it slowly, and I’ll start with your throat so I don’t have to hear you scream.”

Trembling, Petra stood up, climbed onto the examination table, and lay down.

Rin reached over the side of the table for the straps. Her left hand fumbled with the buckles, but she managed to loop them through the metal rings on the sides of the table and yank them tight. Petra lay still all the while. Rin could see the veins protruding from her jaw where she clenched it tight, trying to conceal her fear. But when Rin pulled the straps around Petra’s waist, pinning her arms to her sides, a keening whimper escaped the sister’s throat.

“Calm down.” Rin gave her cheek a patronizing pat. Somehow, that felt better than a slap. “It’ll be over soon.”

A year ago Petra had strapped her naked to a table and lectured her on the inferiority of her mind, the shortcomings of her body, and the genetically determined backwardness of her race. In the months since then, she’d likely done the same to Nezha. She’d probably stood where Rin stood now, watching impassively as lightning arced through his body, taking meticulous notes while her subject contorted in pain. She’d probably lectured him, too, on why this was the Divine Architect’s intention. Why these humiliations and violations were necessary for the slow, holy march toward civilization and order.

Now it was Rin’s turn to proselytize.

“Remember that time you drew my blood?” She smoothed Petra’s hair back with her fingers. “You filled entire jars with it. You didn’t need that much; you told me so yourself. You just wanted to punish me. You were angry because you wanted proof of Chaos, but I couldn’t show you the gods.”

A pungent smell filled the air. Rin glanced down and saw a damp spot spreading through Petra’s robes. She’d soiled herself.

“Don’t be scared.” Rin reached into her back pocket and withdrew a sachet of poppy seeds. “I’m giving you what you want. I’m going to show you the gods.”

She pulled the sachet open with her teeth, tipped it into her palm, and clamped it over Petra’s mouth.

A soldier might have been able to resist—might have held their breath, bit Rin’s palm hard enough to draw blood, or concealed the seeds under their tongue and spat them out the moment they broke free. But Petra didn’t know how to struggle. The Gray Company were untouchable in Hesperia; she’d never had the need. She wriggled pathetically under Rin’s grasp, but couldn’t break free; Rin jammed her stump over her nose, restricting her air flow, until at last she had no choice but to open her mouth and gasp.

Rin saw her throat bob. Then, several long minutes later, she saw her eyes flutter closed as the drug seeped through her bloodstream.

“Good girl.” She removed her palm—empty, good—and wiped it against her pant leg. “Now we wait.”

She wasn’t sure this would work. Petra could not even conceive of the Pantheon’s existence, much less how to get there. And Rin was not Chaghan; she could not flit back and forth between planes, dragging souls along like a shepherd.

But she could call upon the gods, and hers was the god of vengeance.

She dragged a chair next to the table, sat down, and closed her eyes.

The Phoenix answered immediately. It sounded amused. Really, little one?

Bring her to me, Rin thought. And take us to your brethren.

The Phoenix cackled. Whatever you wish.

Darkness rushed in around her. The workroom faded away. She felt herself hurtling into the void, spiraling through the bridge in her mind like an arrow shot straight into the heavens.

“Where are we?” Petra’s presence lashed out, panicked. “What is this?”

Rin could sense her fear like a tidal wave, an ongoing flood of horrified, uprooted alienation. This was the same emotion Rin had felt in the New City dialed to the extreme: the jarring realization that the world was not what she thought it was, that everything she believed, everything she had faith in, was wrong.

Petra wasn’t just scared, she was falling apart.

“It’s divinity,” Rin told her gleefully. “Look around.”

Suddenly the Pantheon was visible, a circle of plinths surrounding them like spectators around a stage. They crept closer, cruel and curious, one and sixty-three entities entranced by the presence of a soul that refused to acknowledge their presence.

“These are the forces that make up our world,” said Rin.