exertion of breathing seemed to tire her more. But she knew she couldn’t stop.
Risk lifted her boot and put it down on the step above her. Her muscles protested, shaking violently as if with rage. She was beyond rage, though. So far gone in exhaustion that all she had was a singular purpose.
To climb.
The days had blurred together. She wasn’t sure if it were weeks or months or even years that had passed. She was starving, and yet her body hadn’t given out. Risk hadn’t fallen prey to hunger, nor had she withered to bones as she once was. Her muscles were simultaneously stronger and weaker than ever.
It wasn’t natural how she could go so long without food or water . . . and yet she did.
Somehow.
Risk climbed higher and higher and higher until she could no longer use her feet. Instead, she climbed with her hands and knees.
It was on all four limbs that she finally reached the top and could climb no more.
A lovely voice rang out; the first she’d heard in what felt like ages. Time was lost to her.
“Is it done?” Mazzulah asked her.
“It is,” she whispered back between cracked lips. She tasted blood on her tongue, and she wasn’t sure if it were her mouth or her lungs bleeding. Perhaps both.
She’d climbed the stairway to the dark realm twice now.
The first time for Quinn.
The second for Mazzulah, who said that if she wished to release Quinn from this realm, she had to carry her back. Risk did just that.
She carried her sister in her arms for endless days, back to the realm of the living. She left her outside the door and walked away, but Risk knew that Quinn would be okay. If there were ever a creature that was meant to not just survive this harsh world but own it—it was her sister.
“Good,” Mazzulah said, drawing Risk’s attention once more. She lifted her head from the stone slab where she’d rested it. To another, it might look as if she were bowing down or praying.
In truth, she didn’t have it in her to stand up.
“Wh-what do you want from me?” Risk found herself asking.
Mazzulah’s feminine lips curled in amusement and sick delight. Her golden eyes glowed with power mortals could not even begin to comprehend. On her shoulder, Alpis perched.
Traitor, Risk thought the word in his direction.
“It is not his fault that he must do as I command. He is your hope. I had to see if you could make it without that.”
Risk narrowed her eyes at the god. The blood moon shining down on them made Mazzulah’s dark gray skin appear a dark red. The gold insignia on her forehead shined brighter, and those onyx horns that Risk also possessed, seemed both maleficent and powerful.
“What do you want from me?” Risk repeated, her voice stronger this time. Steadier. She lifted her shoulders off the ground, and they protested greatly, but she refused to just lay there in the presence of this god.
She had to try.
“I told you already. I am training you to your ascension,” Mazzulah said, tilting her head in a way that sent a pang through Risk’s heart.
“But I don’t know what that means,” Risk said, pausing only to push herself up further—so that she sat back with her knees and shins pressed to the floor. She was still below the god, kneeling, but it was something. “How are you going to train me?”
Mazzulah didn’t answer at first. Instead, she stared.
She stared for so long that Risk began to fidget. While she wasn’t in her male form, the inscrutable gaze of a god was not to be taken lightly.
Just when Risk began to think the god would not answer, Mazzulah said, “Quinn has done a good job with you. She took you from being a meek little mouse and taught you what it meant to have teeth and claws. She helped you heal from the horrors of your childhood. Without what she did, my training would mean nothing. It would do nothing, because without her, I would break you.” Mazzulah stood, and Risk’s heart began to gallop. Her shoulders shook, and she knew with great certainty that it was because of fear. “I won’t lie to you, little bird. I will break you either way. It is only once you’ve been broken and rebuilt that you can be what I need you to be. Quinn taught you how to fight. She taught you how to be strong. She had a beast