The imperator of Itreya staggered on his feet, clutching his head, dragging his hands back through his hair. He screamed once, mouth open wide, his tongue black and gleaming. The room trembled, as if in an earthquake. His shadow swelled about his feet, burst like a bubble, spilling out across the floor in a hundred shapeless rivulets. Scaeva tore at his robes, roaring again as black vomit gushed from his mouth.
“Julius!” Liviana wailed with horror at the sight of her husband. “Julius!”
The shadows around the room whipped and thrashed, spilling out over the tiles at Scaeva’s feet in a bottomless flood. A wind had picked up from nowhere, howling through the hall with a tempest’s fury. Liviana staggered toward her husband, eyes narrowed in the gale, hand outstretched.
“Julius!” she cried. “I beg you, stop this!”
Scaeva screamed again, clutching his temples. The shadows lashed about in blind fury, clawing great gouges through the walls, ripping upward through the ceiling. Mercurio crouched low as the mezzanine level shuddered and collapsed, the entire structure shaking. A vast chandelier overhead broke free, crashing to the floor and crushing the imperator’s wife before shattering into a million glittering shards.
“Mother!” Jonnen cried.
Scaeva clutched his temples again, roaring so hard his voice broke.
“FATHER!”
Scaeva’s eyes were filmed with black. Tearing off his mask of three suns, he cast it to the floor with a snarl of hatred. Black tears running down his cheeks, he lifted his foot and smashed it under his heel. Laughing. Arms about himself and groaning. And staring into those bottomless black eyes, Mercurio could see the fury of that fallen god was breaking loose inside him now. All the rage, all the pain, all the perfect hatred of a son betrayed, wishing only to destroy the temple to his betrayer.
Scaeva held out his arms as the room shuddered again. Wings of liquid darkness sprouted from his shoulders, lifting him into the air. Marielle dragged herself away from his dark fury, taking shelter against the pillar where Sidonius lay clutching his sundered belly. Black winds roared in the hall, almost forcing Mercurio to the floor. The burning coals in one of the cookfires had spilled, setting the tablecloths ablaze. Staggering across the bloodstains, heart thundering in his chest, the old man took hold of Bladesinger’s tunic and dragged her unconscious body to shelter near the weaver.
The old man worked at Marielle’s manacles with shaking hands, the lockpicks clicking as her irons slithered free. The scent of smoke was rising in the unholy wind as the flames spread. Mercurio gestured to Jonnen, now pressed back against the wall near Scaeva’s shattered throne.
“We need to snatch the boy and get the fuck out of here!” he bellowed.
Their pillar was ripped apart, the gravebone splintering like old, rotten wood. Mercurio cried out, the companions scattered and tumbled across the blood-soaked floor. The bishop felt ribbons of black seize his throat, wrap about his waist, strong as iron, cold as graves. He was dragged up into the air, gasping, flailing, clutching the bands of darkness squeezing his throat.
He found himself floating before the thing that had been Julius Scaeva. Pale cheeks smudged with black tears. Lips smeared with darkest blood.
“But…,” he gurgled.
Looking death in the face. Death smiling back.
“But … w-who writes the … third book?”
Black blades reared up, wicked sharp, gleaming dark. Ready to cleave his chest and heart in two. But with a hissing sigh, the thing that had been Scaeva suddenly turned his pitch-black eyes to the ceiling. Pale fingers curled into fists. The winds quieted for a moment, a tiny, fractured breath within the breaking chaos.
And into that silence, the godling breathed.
“She comes.”
CHAPTER 44
DAUGHTER
She wore the night.
Her gown was silken black. The jewels at her throat, darkling stars. Long skirts billowed out from her waist, flowed down to her bare feet, a corset of midnight cinched tight across ghost-pale skin.
White powder on her cheeks.
Black paint on her lips.
Legions in her eyes.
She alighted on the stony shore of the Nethers, a city of bones laid before her. A blade of the same in her hands. The black velvet wings at her back were vast as open skies, tips brushing the piers, the cobbles, the buildings beside her as she stalked up from the crusted waterline. The city’s shadows sighed at her coming, caressed her face with loving hands, welcoming her home.
The merrymakers. The hucksters. The beggars and the priests and the whores. All of them felt her before they saw her.