Chapter 4

Chapter 4

T he sweat-drenched chills wracking Mariah’s frame were the first sign that something was very, very wrong.

She could hardly keep her eyes open as she lay helplessly on her stiff mattress, unsure if it was her sweat or her blood that clung the threadbare blanket to her skin. The wounds from the flogging were deep; her memories, her nightmares, were consumed by the feeling of sharp stone flaying her skin, scourging deep rivets in her flesh as pain scorched and burned.

Without a healer’s touch, and in this disgusting cell, she’d quickly fall prey to infection. The fester of her wounds would spread rapidly in her malnourished body, her weakened state unable to stave off the onslaught.

The rot seeped into her blood, and as death brushed against her back, she didn’t even have the strength to feel afraid. Nausea rolled through her gut, a ship lost at sea, before her eyelids fluttered shut, and she slipped back into unconsciousness.

Was this part of the lords’ plan? They wanted her power; she knew that now. And while they had obviously tried to break it out of her, perhaps they’d now resorted to letting her die.

Ryenne’s lessons flashed through her fever-hazed mind. A queen had never died outside of an ascension ceremony. If Mariah died now, would her magic find a new host? Or would the cycle end, the queen’s magic returning to Qhohena’s waiting hands?

Perhaps the lords had decided they wanted that power vacuum. No more queens meant an empty throne, ripe for their taking.

Mariah didn’t know if days or hours or minutes passed before she opened her eyes again, only to be blinded by a raging, burning silver light.

It hurt her eyes, just for a single fleeting second, before it receded to reveal a familiar female shape, dark skin and silver hair outlined by incandescence.

Mariah tried to speak, to greet the Goddess of Death. She wanted something, anything, to stop the rotting pain wracking her body. Her mouth opened, lips parched and cracking, and she tried to push words from her throat.

She failed.

Zadione floated closer, a somber look on her unnervingly beautiful and ageless face. “Do not try to speak, Mariah. I can hear you, regardless of your words.” Her silver eyes roamed over Mariah’s emaciated body, her ravaged back. When she returned her attention to Mariah’s face, her expression was wrought with dark fury and depthless sadness. They were not the emotions of a mortal life but an immortal goddess who’d seen too many try to achieve all their desires and fail catastrophically every time.

“I tried to warn you. Love … it is always a weakness. But I suppose it is impossible to change what was always meant to pass.” Zadione’s words were not scolding but tragically empathetic, the emotion washing from her to Mariah enough to cut through even the thick haze of sickness.

Was this one of the gifts of the Goddess of Death? That in these final moments, it was only her voice and her presence that could be felt clearly?

If this was the way Mariah was to go, with this goddess to keep her company, then perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad. Her friends were strong; they would face the lords without her. Mariah, though … she was so, so tired. She just wanted to rest.

But Zadione took a floating step closer. Reached out a hand. Rested her luminescent palm on Mariah’s skin. Even through the warped shadow of her fever, the goddess’s touch was like being kissed by the brightest moonlight on a winter night, gentle and caressing but also harsh in its revealing light.

“It is not your time, Mariah. We are bound, you and I, in ways you cannot yet fathom. Your work on this earth is not yet finished.”

Mariah’s eyes snapped back open, meeting the goddess’s mercurial gaze.

“Am I … Am I dreaming?” Mariah’s voice was jilted and rough, her throat sore from disuse and sickness, but they were pulled from her by the deity’s touch and the otherworldly glow washing through the room.

Zadione smiled another agelessly sad smile. “No. No, unfortunately, this is all very much real. For both of us.” Her hand left Mariah’s cheek to rest against the side of her head as she shifted closer, sitting beside Mariah on the thin, stained mattress. Sadness still clung to the goddess’s face, so out of place on her star-bright features, so at odds with the macabre animal bones woven into her unbound silver hair. “So young and already enduring so much. Here, allow me to inspect your wounds.”

Mariah obeyed, rolling onto her stomach, breath hissing between her teeth. Zadione peeled up the soiled tunic, sticky and cracked with Mariah’s blood, bunching it at the base of Mariah’s neck. Mariah closed her eyes as the goddess’s hands roved across her skin, clenching her teeth against the anticipated pain.

But … that pain never came. She still felt Zadione’s gentle touches, but where her fingers met Mariah’s skin, there was only a steady, soothing tingling, a numbness that alighted across her skin and loosened the vice around her chest.

“I had love. Once, a long, long time ago.”

Mariah’s breathing stilled, her entire body freezing at the goddess’s words.

“He was … everything to me. We burned brighter and hotter together than should be permitted.” Mariah could almost hear the smile in Zadione’s voice. “But sometimes, the things that burn the brightest are what hurt us the most.”

Beneath the blessed numbness, Mariah felt a twinge in her back, the odd feeling of skin knitting together. More warmth bloomed along her spine, from the base of her hips to her shoulder blades.

“I have always valued my freedom. The wilds of the world were my home. But he … he did not understand that. He desired to have me to himself, to keep me locked away by his side. That desire drove him to madness. He decided his brightness made him remarkable, even amongst the gods, and would rather plunge the world into darkness than treat us as equals. We—and humanity—could either bow to him … or die.” While Zadione spoke with the steadiness of one telling a story long since passed, there was a sort of quiet resignation to her voice, a sadness that stretched farther than the gaps between the stars.

“It was Flétrir , wasn’t it? The Scourge?” Mariah’s question tumbled from her mouth. Myths and stories were blending with truths in her mind, and as the pain eased, her thoughts raced.

Zadione halted. Her palms were still warm, and Mariah could feel the goddess’s power sweeping across her skin. Somewhere, locked away deep in her soul, she felt silver threads of light struggle against the walls of a gold and onyx prison, desperate to greet their mistress.

And even though she couldn’t see Zadione’s face, she knew the goddess was staring at Mariah’s wrists. At the stone cuffs shackling that power away.

“He went by a different name then. But, yes, when I refused to submit to him, that is who he became. When the world refused to submit to him.”

The goddess resumed her work, Mariah pondering her final words. If Flétrir had once been known by a different name … were there any besides the gods who remembered it? Her mind flitted for a moment to her mother’s journal, the diary of the Ginnelevé family that had been passed down from mother to daughter for thousands of years and enchanted with a small trace of Zadione’s magic to preserve it against the annals of time. Had one of her ancestors known the truth? What other secrets did that little gray book contain, secrets lost to lazy, forgotten history?

The mattress shifted as the goddess stood.

“You have further injuries. Sit,” Zadione commanded, silver robes rustling around her feet.

Mariah gave a small nod, pushing herself up, a sudden wave of breathless energy surging across her skin. Her tunic fell back around her torso as she rolled her shoulders, the fresh, healed skin of her back tight. She glanced at her right forearm, the deep slice there clotting but warm with infection.

Zadione knelt, wrapping her hands around Mariah’s arm, and that soothing warmth enveloped her once again, illuminating where their skin touched. Mariah watched, eyes wide.

She could hardly comprehend how Zadione felt so … real. Not like an other-worldly being, but someone alive .

Before she could ask, Zadione withdrew her hands. Mariah twisted her arm, inspecting where the wound was.

All that was left was a pale, thin scar, the surrounding skin puckered and jagged but healed.

Zadione stood. “I have done what I can. You had an injury to your knee, as well, but it mended itself when I cleared your body of the infection. Your wounds were deep, but you are no longer in danger from them.” The goddess hesitated, her eyes flaring a touch brighter. “I fear there is nothing I can do about the scars. Those you will bear forever.”

Mariah shifted again, adjusting herself to her new skin. “How?”

Zadione smiled. “Why do you think your mother and the women of your line have always been so talented at healing? That magic was my gift.”

It made such perfect sense. Of course, the Goddess of Death would also be one of healing, of injury and sickness, of the deathbed that ushered lives from this plane into the next.

Mariah swallowed. “Thank you.”

The goddess’s silver eyes hardened and flashed. She’d been so solid a moment before but was fading into the shadows of the cell, her light dimming with each pound of Mariah’s heart.

“Your love used to be a weakness, Mariah. But now that you have fallen, you must find a way to make it your retribution.” The goddess’s parting words were soft, barely audible, but they brushed across Mariah’s skin like the final rattle of life in a dying creature’s lungs.

Zadione winked out of the cell in a burst of starlight, and Mariah was left alone in the darkness, confused and wondering.