Chapter 35

CHAPTER35

Iwake with a groan, rubbing my temple. Something cool and wet tickles my skin. When I roll on my back, I smell grass and moist clay earth and chalk dust. I open my eyes to a sky the shade of blue that seems discordant with the pain coursing through my head. I groan again and push myself up until I’m sitting, my stomach churning as though I’ve had far more fangria than should ever be consumed in a single sitting.

“Aglaope?”

When I finally digest my surroundings, I see my sister crouched before me, her smile reassuring.

Except I do not feel reassured at all.

“What the fuck, Aglaope?” I ask as I reach out to her, my hand stopped by the magical barrier I can already see between us.

“I am sorry, my love. It is for both our protection.” Aglaope stands and gestures to the ground beside me. I look to where my hand keeps me steady against the Earth. A bag of blood rests next to my fingers. “Drink, sister. You will feel better.”

I look from the bag to my sister and back again, weighing the pros and cons. Though trapped behind magical glass, I still need all the strength I can get to work my way out of this predicament, and I doubt she would have poisoned or drugged it. Aglaope’s smile widens when I take the bag and struggle to my feet. I open it and check for the scent of anything added, then suck the blood down with a glare like petulant child drinking a Capri Sun.

“Ashen’s blood, hmm? Did you siphon it from his wound when you stabbed my husband in the fucking guts, sister?” I ask, spitting the words like venom.

Aglaope laughs. “My darling, please. Despite the unfortunate necessity of having to keep your husband away for a little while, I am no villain. He will be fine, I assure you. He is just too protective for his own good, and I could not take the risk.”

“What the fuck, Aglaope,” I snarl, throwing the empty blood bag toward her. It slaps the barrier between us. I cross my arms and stare her down, but it only looks as though she’s trying not to laugh.

“There’s another one behind you.”

“Fuck you.”

I pin her with a fierce, vampiric glare of crimson light before I turn around and retrieve the second bag to the sound of Aglaope’s gentle laugh. The pain throbbing in the side of my head begins to lesson as Ashen’s blood fizzes down my throat. I press my hand to my mark. There’s a weakened sense of his emotions beneath my skin, and even with the dulled sensation, I can tell he’s fucking enraged. I glare at Aglaope again on his behalf.

“Ah yes,” she says. “I am sure he feels a little angry. I do like him, my love,” she says.

“Yeah. I could really tell when you stabbed him and pushed him into the sea.”

Aglaope lifts a shoulder. “It had to be enough to slow him down. A simple leg wound would not do. I like your eyes, by the way, sister. The sparks within the glow are very pretty.”

I narrow my glare at her and turn away to test the boundaries of my small cage, the dome thoroughly surrounding me in a thin shield of light. “Are you sure you’re not the villain, Aglaope? You sound very villainy right now.” I give the dome a few hits and kicks to test it for weaknesses, a growl building in the depths of my throat with every unsuccessful attempt. I try whispering to my pendant for Ediye as my back is turned, but the magic only bounces back at me. My sister waits in silence as I complete the circle and face her once more with a menacing hiss. “Let me the fuck out.”

“You always were the most dramatic of us, sister. It makes it even more impressive that you managed to spend the last three centuries living a quiet, clandestine life. I suppose it does make sense that you would swing from that to the exact opposite by claiming the throne of the Shadow Realm.”

We regard one another for a moment long enough for fear to start corroding the edges of my anger. Aglaope clearly has all the cards here. She stands outside the barrier between us with my bag for the Soulfate stone in within her reach. I hear it humming, and another purr with it, the sound of the Deathfate stone.

“How did you get that?” I ask, nodding to the bag containing the stones. “The safe was spelled.”

“You can spellcast too, can you not, my love? Then you can undo them,” Aglaope says, and I watch her, thinking for only the first time now that maybe I could have undone my binding spell with Ashen, though I’m glad it never occurred to me. Perhaps, in my loneliness at the time, I just didn’t want the idea to surface. I’m glad it never did.

When I tear my gaze from Aglaope’s, I survey the rest of the landscape that surrounds us. There’s short, bright green grass among crumbled stones in the vague shape of ancient, fallen buildings. To my left, cliffs overlook the sea. Beyond us are jagged hills interspersed with thin scraps of forest. And to my right, an arched granite structure. The rock still looks as though it was hewn days ago. The edges are clean and precise.

Anthemoessa.

“Do you recognize this place, Leucosia?” Aglaope asks. She nods not to the village, but the archway itself. I slowly nod my head. Even though I recognize it from our life on the island, it was never more than a simple stone archway past which our small cottages lay. I’ve walked through it a thousand times.

“How the fuck…” the realization dawns and I look down at my hand before tightening my fist until my nails press bloody marks into my palm. “The ring. You spelled it somehow so you could get us here.”

When I meet Aglaope’s eyes, she gives me a sheepish smile, and she looks a little saddened, as though the sight of the archway structure nearby should have sparked a memory that doesn’t exist. Aglaope turns to toward it and reaches out to trace her finger along the arc. “All those years with the last of the true gods on the other side of a veil, forever tying the threads together to lead us right here, to this very moment. I have seen it before. You and me, here at the gate, just like this. Exactly like this.”

“Where? How?”

“A premonition. Long, long ago. In dreams that plagued me. Those visions found me once more in the time before you washed to the shore. Not all memories were lost, not for me. This is what we were sacrificed for, Leucosia. A mystery hidden in plain sight.”

I stop my pacing and look at my sister, though her gaze is still caught on the sweeping curve of stone that casts its shadow through my dome. “What do you mean? You remember seeing this before you came to Anthemoessa?”

“Yes,” she says, and I tamp down the desperation I suddenly feel to ask her what else she might recall from her life before Anthemoessa. “You. Me. Our sisters. We were never what they forced us to become to protect gods who have long since abandoned us. We were powerful. Magical. It is time to regain what we have lost, and to take that which is owed for our service. Our suffering.”

Aglaope holds my gaze for a long moment. I see not only empathy in her eyes, but determination. And Aglaope’s brand of determination is what makes me particularly nervous about being trapped in a spellcast dome. She is intent on dragging me with her in whatever plan she’s set into motion. She’s like a rip tide, and I’m already halfway out to deep water.

My sister turns away and I resume my agitated pacing at the edge of the glittering barrier between us. “What are you doing?” I ask as I watch Aglaope kneel, withdrawing a folded page of parchment from the inside pocket of her jacket. She carefully lays it on the ground and presses it flat, and I recognize it by the scent before I even see what’s on it. It’s a page from the Book of the Fatespeaker, the one with the image of my mated mark. Aglaope looks at the page in detail and turns it to the blank side. Then she takes two vials from her other pocket. Ushgada.

“Where did you get that? Where’s Wynter?” I ask as I watch Aglaope unstopper the vial of liquid. For a moment I think she might knock it back, but she doesn’t. Her eyes are still caught on the page.

“The apothecary is fine, not to worry, sister. She just has a little bite and a bump on the head. She will recover well, if that is what you wish.”

My heart drops to my feet, hitting every bone on its way down. “If I wish?” I ask, but Aglaope doesn’t answer. I watch as she tips the liquid on to the page. The parchment replies with a light that illuminates hidden text. From where I stand, I can see the Dingir writing, though I can’t make out every word. But it seems that my sister can.

Aglaope’s lips move as she reads, a smile pulling at their corners.

“The Nephilim never needed the ushgada, did they? They never came to you at all,” I say.

“No,” she admits, darting a quick look to me before returning her attention to the page spread before her. “They do want the stones, yes. But not the ushgada. They can withstand opening the gateway without it. They can take what lies beyond it with only the stones.”

“What lies beyond it?”

“Freedom. From pain. From purpose. From fates. Eternal freedom, and the power to shape the realms to the design we wish, not the one imposed upon us,” she replies. Aglaope leans back against her heels and regards me for a long moment, her eyes softening. She regards me with the same sisterly affection she did that first moment I saw her when I washed up on the beach, but I’m not sure I recognize the woman looking back at me. “I see the burden you carry as Queen of the Shadow Realm. Enemies not just at your back, but right in front of you, aiming their arrows right at your fierce heart, even though you only hold the best intentions for the demons and creatures there. These are obligations no one person should be forced to shoulder. It does not have to be that way.”

I open my mouth to argue, but I can’t, because these are all the same thoughts and trepidations I’ve carried with me from the moment I stood on that dais in the Kur and chose the spear over the key. Sometimes, in the darkest moments, I’ve wondered if I should have made the other choice.

Aglaope gives me a knowing smile at my silence before turning back to the page, tapping the vial to add a little more liquid to the parchment. It glows brighter, showing more of the hidden text. “The Nephilim may not have needed the ushgada, but they did need you to retrieve the Deathfate stone. The cavern you found it in was at the base of an island in the Black Sea. They intended to take you to retrieve it. When they did not capture you in the Shadow Realm, they knew you would require a Resurrectionist eventually. Their spies had already told them you had killed Imogen, of course. They have their ears tuned to every whisper, my love, even within the Guild of Gilgamesh. All they needed to do was wait for the request to be made through the apothecaries and for it to be released from their vault. The ushgada would lead them straight to you and the first stone. But they did not count on my clever sister slipping through their fingers,” she says, her eyes landing on mine once more. Her smile is warm with affection. “More proof that we have been chosen by the fates to supplant them, do you not agree?”

I don’t answer as Aglaope turns her attention back to the page, replacing the first vial in her pocket as her eyes skim the text again.

“I had captured Barbossa Sarno before I ever struck the deal with Davina for her to harvest the demigod,” she says, pulling the questions I want to ask from my stunned silence. “He was the one who told me a demigod lived near Évora, that he was named Dimitrios, great grandson of the goddess Gula. Barbossa had killed Davina’s parents shortly before I captured him. When your husband told Davina of the existence of a demigod, she in turn told her mother, and Barbossa stumbled upon the information in the process when he took their lives.”

“So you placed yourself in Davina’s path,” I say, as though fog is lifting to reveal a hidden realm. “You already knew about the existence of the demigod when you showed up in Évora, so Davina didn’t have to share information she shouldn’t have known in the first place to get what she wanted. It made her more receptive to what you had to offer.”

Aglaope gives me a slight nod and a proud smile.

“But how did you know what to use the harvest for?” I ask.

My sister unstoppers the vial of powder. She holds it over the page, the parchment still lit in a gentle glow, and begins to tilt the ampule. “Because I never forgot where we came from, or what we were created to do.”

The powder hits the page. It crackles and sparks and lifts the words away, turning them to silver smoke that rises from the parchment. I watch as Aglaope gathers her long hair in a hand to hold it back from her face as she leans forward. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath of the smoke. She inhales every wisp of script that curls from the page. When the last letter is gone, the last breath taken, my sister falls.