Reyna and Meg moved cautiously—as one does when approaching a cornered wild animal or an angry immortal. They took up positions on either side of Harpocrates, raised their blades above the fasces, and mouthed in unison: One, two, three!
It was almost like the fasces had been waiting to explode. Despite Reyna’s earlier protestations that Imperial gold blades might take forever to hack through Imperial gold chains, her sword and Meg’s cut through the cords and cables as if they were nothing but illusions themselves.
Their blades hit the fasces and shattered them—sending bundles of rods blasting into splinters, shafts breaking, golden crescents toppling to the floor.
The girls stepped back, clearly surprised by their own success.
Harpocrates gave me a thin, cruel smile.
Without a sound, the fetters on his hands and feet cracked and fell away like spring ice. The remaining cables and chains shriveled and blackened, curling against the walls. Harpocrates stretched out his free hand—the one that was not gesturing, Shh, I’m about to kill you—and the two golden ax blades from the broken fasces flew into his grip. His fingers turned white hot. The blades melted, gold dribbling through his fingers and pooling beneath him.
A small, terrified voice in my head said, Well, this is going great.
The god plucked the glass jar from his lap. He raised it on his fingertips like a crystal ball. For a moment, I was afraid he would give it the gold-ax treatment, melting whatever remained of the Sibyl just to spite me.
Instead, he assaulted my mind with new images.
I saw a eurynomos lope into Harpocrates’s prison, the glass jar tucked under one arm. The ghoul’s mouth slavered. Its eyes glowed purple.
Harpocrates thrashed in his chains. It seemed he had not been in the box very long at that point. He wanted to crush the eurynomos with silence, but the ghoul seemed unaffected. His body was being driven by another mind, far away in the tyrant’s tomb.
Even through telepathy, it was clear the voice was Tarquin’s—heavy and brutal as chariot wheels over flesh.
I brought you a friend, he said. Try not to break her.
He tossed the jar to Harpocrates, who caught it out of surprise. Tarquin’s possessed ghoul limped away, chuckling evilly, and chained the doors behind him.
Alone in the dark, Harpocrates’s first thought was to smash the jar. Anything from Tarquin had to be a trap, or poison, or something worse. But he was curious. A friend? Harpocrates had never had one of those. He wasn’t sure he understood the concept.
He could sense a living force inside the jar: weak, sad, fading, but alive, and possibly more ancient than he was. He opened the lid. The faintest voice began to speak to him, cutting straight through his silence as if it didn’t exist.
After so many millennia, Harpocrates, the silent god who was never supposed to exist, had almost forgotten sound. He wept with joy. The god and the Sibyl began to converse.
They both knew they were pawns, prisoners. They were only here because they served some purpose for the emperors and their new ally, Tarquin. Like Harpocrates, the Sibyl had refused to cooperate with her captors. She would tell them nothing of the future. Why should she? She was beyond pain and suffering. She had literally nothing left to lose and longed only to die.
Harpocrates shared the feeling. He was tired of spending millennia slowly wasting away, waiting until he was obscure enough, forgotten by all humankind, so he could cease to exist altogether. His life had always been bitter—a never-ending parade of disappointments, bullying, and ridicule. Now he wanted sleep. The eternal sleep of extinct gods.
They shared stories. They bonded over their hatred of me. They realized that Tarquin wanted this to happen. He had thrown them together, hoping they’d become friends, so he could use them as leverage against each other. But they couldn’t help their feelings.
Wait. I interrupted Harpocrates’s story. Are you two… together?
I shouldn’t have asked. I didn’t mean to send such an incredulous thought, like how does a shh god fall in love with a voice in a glass jar?
Harpocrates’s rage pressed down on me, making my knees buckle. The air pressure increased, as if I’d plummeted a thousand feet. I almost blacked out, but I guessed Harpocrates wouldn’t let that happen. He wanted me conscious, able to suffer.
He flooded me with bitterness and hate. My joints began to unknit, my vocal cords dissolving. Harpocrates might have been ready to die,