all the futures she’d allowed herself to wish for. All the happy endings she’d let herself dream. Resting her forehead against the unyielding rock and exhaling the last of the hope inside her.
Nothing now remained.
Nothing at all.
She turned to Mercurio, and the pity in his eyes almost broke her. She looked away quickly, to Sid and ’Singer, standing close enough to touch. Sorrow in their stares, pain at seeing her pain, no comfort at all. And finally, she looked to Tric, standing still as the statue of the Mother above them, scales and sword heavy in her hand.
“To live in the hearts we leave behind is to never die,” he’d told her.
But in the agony of the end, is the having worth the losing?
Mia hung her head. Face in her hands. Wondering what came next.
And then, came agony.
Black fire burning in her bloodshot eyes. Black lice crawling beneath her tearstained skin. She gasped and clutched her chest, falling to her knees, the shadows about her rolling, clawing, biting. The walls were trembling. The earth beneath her crumbling away and dragging her down into darkness. The taste of rot on her tongue. A crushing weight on her chest. The sensation of drowning in a liquid black as truedark, the stink of blood and iron. It seemed for a moment like all the world was screaming so loud her eardrums might burst.
And then she recognized the voice.
“Mia!”
Dark flame in her heart. Dark wings at her back. Dark skies above her h—
“MIA!” Mercurio cried.
She opened her eyes. Gasping and filmed in sweat. Her old mentor was crouched beside her, arms wrapped about her, holding her still. The hall about them was in chaos, the tomb doors flung open by shadowed hands, the votive candles extinguished, the great iron chain on the Goddess’s scales broken in two. Her comrades were wide-eyed, pale, staring at her in fear.
“O, Mother,” Mia whispered.
“It’s all right, little Crow,” Mercurio said. “It’s all right.”
“No,” she breathed. “No, it’s not…”
Mia tried to catch her breath, still her struggling heart.
“MIA?” Tric stepped forward. “WHAT IS IT?”
Mia knelt on the graven stone, her breast heaving, hair plastered to the fresh sweat on her skin. She pressed her knuckles to her temples, her skull close to splitting, black pain behind her ribs. Her heart was still thundering, her belly still full of cold dread, the shadows around her still trembling with her fear.
“Mia, what’s wrong?”’Singer asked.
“He’s done it,” she whispered.
“Done what?” Mercurio demanded. “What are you talking about?”
Mia could only shake her head.
“The fucking fool has actually done it…”
* * *
They met in the Athenaeum again, gathering in the hungry dark.
Aelius smoking like a chimney and watching Mia intently. Sidonius and Bladesinger, eyes filled with concern, clad in their worn leathers. Adonai in his red velvet robe and Mercurio in dark bishop’s garb, staring at her with pale blue eyes. Tric all in black, his skin now kissed with a faint warmth that did nothing to warm her at all.
And at the center of them all stood Mia.
Black leather britches and wolfskin boots. A white silk shirt and leather corset. A gravebone longblade slung on her back, another of Ashkahi blacksteel hanging from her waist. A burning cigarillo on her lips to smother the smell of her girl on her skin, a bottle of wine in her belly to numb the pain, and the fragments of a god long slain burning in her chest. They’d listened as she spoke of the dark tremors that had run through her, the grip of agony on her heart and the taste of black blood in her mouth.
And then she told them what it meant.
“How canst thou be sure?” Adonai asked.
“I can feel it,” Mia replied, her voice cold and dead. “Sure as I can feel the ground under my feet. Scaeva’s consumed the godsblood that pooled beneath the ’Grave. United the shards of Anais that rested below the city inside himself.”
“THEN HE’S DOOMED,” Tric said. “THE SHARDS BENEATH THE CITY OF BRIDGES AND BONES WERE A SOURCE OF POWER, AYE. BUT CORRUPTED. ROTTEN THROUGH.”
“Then let the bastard rot,” Sidonius growled.
Mia watched Tric with black and empty eyes, dragging on her smoke.
“You told me the pool beneath Godsgrave was made of the pieces of the Moon that wished only to destroy. All his rage, all his hatred, left to fester in the dark. What do you think will happen now that the most powerful man in all Itreya has them inside himself?”