I came awake, hacking and heaving salt water. My upper half was splayed on the stone floor of the cave, my lower half still in the pool. I was freezing, shaking, and for a while too weak to pull myself the rest of the way out. When I finally did manage it, I collapsed.
Once my breathing returned to normal and some of the shaking stopped, I pushed up to a sitting position.
Oh.
Ten feet in front of me lay Calliadne’s head. The physical response to that sight was instant, and my stomach scrunched up tightly. I winced, turning away only to see a thin red line going down the cracks and dips in the floor. I followed it back to the source where her body lay next to the altar. It was a gruesome sight, but even so I felt an enormous amount of satisfaction for Sandra. Next to the body was a pile of ash that had once been Arethusa.
Hank was gone. Ephyra was gone. The siren with the whip was gone. And so was the tablet.
The chamber was quiet except for the ever constant sound of the waves flowing into and out of the cave. And then it hit me. The sea. Panopé. Holy shit. Holding my breath, I opened my palm. They were there. They were real. The Source Words of Creation and Destruction lay nestled in the palm of my hand.
Heart pounding, I picked one up to examine the softly glowing inscription wrapped around in a spiral. God, it was beautiful and mesmerizing, and I felt a little like Frodo Baggins looking at the Ring of Power.
You’re losing it, Charlie.
Sandra would’ve had a good laugh at me for that random thought. But Sandra would never laugh again. A hardness settled over me then, a tight, steely resolve. I pushed to my feet, wringing out as much of the gown as I could with one hand, and then headed for the passageway.
With every step I took, I grew weaker. Once I made it to the room with the three doors, I had to sit on the same bench that Sandra had pointed out before she died.
Blood was splattered on the wall across from me. One of the guards lay in a heap on the floor. Sirens could live for hundreds of years, as long as they didn’t face a trauma too intense to heal from. Decapitation, fire, the heart being ripped from their body, or—like the siren on the ground—the skull being bashed into a stone wall until the brain was damaged and exposed.
If I thought Hank had sounded insane before, I knew now he was consumed. Some might take the opportunity to run away and escape. But others like Hank didn’t think about their own lives—only about defeating the evil or die trying.
I turned away from the scene, knowing I should feel something, have some reaction to the blood and small clumps of brain matter stuck to the wall, but the sight barely even turned my stomach. The physical drain had crept into my mind and dulled everything, even my reaction to Hank’s bloody rampage. But I had the Source Words. With them we had a fighting chance. I had to keep going.
That last surge of strength that always got me through, that always enabled me to shove everything else aside, felt so out of reach. Two of the Circe were dead. One by me, one by Hank. He was clearly on the warpath, but was his rage enough? Not if Ephyra made it back to the grid. If she drew upon the power of the Malakim, we were toast.
“I’m not done yet.” I kept one hand on the wall to support myself as I stood. There was no fight left in me, but if I was going to crap out, then I’d do it after giving Hank the Source Words at least.
The hallway that led to the Circe’s inner chamber was empty and quiet save for my movement and breathing. The Circe had been so sure of their power, so set in their ways and secrets that now their lack of protection worked against them.
The sanctum door was wide open. Two bodies lay over the threshold. I stepped over them, sliding in their blood. My feet were bare, the soles leaving bloody prints as I edged around the vast room.
Power pulsated strong and loud, mingling with the eerie echo of chanting. Ephyra stood in front of the strange glassy statue, which I realized was a cage imprisoning the deity and her power. The bridges were gone. The last Circe was completely out of reach, and was glowing with gold radiance.
Hank faced off with his tormentor, the siren with the whip, as Ephyra watched. They circled each other as I continued to edge my way around the room. The smaller room off the main chamber came into view and beyond it the pedestal with Sandra’s head. I froze. Her eyes were open and glowing green. Her voice was the source of the eerie chanting, her mouth moving fast and possessed, spouting off strange lines and rhymes, increasing in magnitude. The power was so thick in the air that I wondered if it had set the oracle off.
The sound of the whip made me flinch. The siren arced it over his head and aimed for Hank. No longer shackled to a wall, Hank could move. And he was fast, just rolling out of the barb’s touch. A crack filled the room and then the whip sailed again, this time Hank didn’t dodge, but spun, and snatched the barb. It sliced his hand, but he held on, using his other hand to grab the leather and yank the whip from the siren.
The siren advanced, but Hank was ready. They met in a brief but brutal hand-to-hand, Hank never letting go of the whip and finally wrapping it around the siren’s waist. With a hand on each end, Hank pulled, using all of his brute force. The whip tightened around the siren until it cut into him, severing him to the spine. Hank shoved him off the chasm ledge as his body broke in two pieces.
And Ephyra watched the entire thing. She never lifted a finger to help the siren, and she didn’t seem surprised or upset that her last defender was dead.
Hank stood in front of her, chest heaving, gripping the handle of the whip. Ephyra looked strong and so sure of herself. She didn’t need any guards, I realized. Whatever power was contained in that statue, she had tapped into it. That’s why she glowed; that’s why she looked smug. She was also holding the stone tablet in her hand.
I squeezed the jewels tightly in my fist, considering my options.
A chill crept up my spine. Her head turned toward me. I straightened. “Ah, so you survived,” she said in a voice magnified and so powerful that my eardrums rang. Before I could cover them with my hands I was picked up and tossed with a word. I experienced two seconds of weightlessness before slamming into the far wall. My skull, which was already bruised and battered, hit hard and something cracked in my back.
I slid to the floor, the movement agonizing to my back, neck, and head. My lung wasn’t working right. I was numb on the left side and knew I must’ve broken a rib, one that had punctured my lung. There was so much pain that I was too afraid to move. One tiny shift would intensify the hurt, and might make me pass out.
But I had to move, had to—
My vision swam. Heat radiated in me as my body tried to heal itself, but there just wasn’t enough time. Using my forearms, I began dragging my broken body ever so slowly—ever so excruciatingly—over the floor. Keeping my head up was like trying to lift a bowling ball. Blood filled my mouth. I spit it onto the floor.
“Hurt much?” I heard Ephyra say, before I was jerked by an unseen force and swept along the floor. I screamed, holding tightly to the Source Words. Don’t pass out. Don’t pass out. Not yet. Please, not yet . . .
I didn’t stop sliding until I came to the ledge, one hand dangling over and feeling the cool air rushing up from the depths below.
“You do the honors, Niérian. Whip her.”
Had I been able to laugh I would have. Sick bitch. Hank stood over me with that evil whip in his hand. Sweat and blood covered him. His eyes were flat and his jaw was tight and grim. He shook all over and I realized that he was trying to disobey her.
“Do it,” she commanded, using all of the power at her disposal. His aura was still blank, but now I could see faint grayish words and symbols around him.
His hand lifted and a frown began to crease his forehead. His breathing became even more pronounced, as though he fought his greatest battle right then and there.
“Remember our deal, Niérian,” she said, her voice trembling with power. “The NecroNaMoria still binds your soul. Only I can release it. You have two choices. Honor your word and I’ll lift the spell. Or try to kill me to end it. I know you’d rather kill me, but really . . . look at me. I have more power than you can ever imagine. My sisters’ power is now my own.” She glanced up at the energy flowing upward. “And the deity’s and the Malakim’s . . . You can’t kill me. And when you fail, you will face the next thousand years wishing for a death I will not grant you. Your soul will never find freedom, never find that peace you’re so desperate for.” She glanced at me and smiled. “You follow this one order, and I will lift the NecroNaMoria.”
Hank glanced to the chasm. Ephyra laughed. “Killing yourself won’t release you. The spell does have certain safeguards. No, Niérian. You are mine. Mine until I release you. Whip her until she dies.”
He looked wild, feral, and I knew he couldn’t fight her. “And let’s not forget,” Ephyra added, “that she lies. She thinks you nothing more than a simpleton. She never really cared for you. Never loved you.”
“That’s not true.” Blood spilled out with my words. “Hank, you know she’s lying.”
Ephyra laughed again. “Peace, Niérian. I offer you a swift death and a soul free to enter the Afterlife.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Oh, didn’t he tell you? He gets the death he longs for in return for following my orders.”
That couldn’t be right. Hank would never wish for death. He was a fighter to the end. And he sure as hell would never wish it if it meant harming someone else. Like me. “That true?” I asked him. “You’d rather die than fight?”
“If he continues to fight and loses, his soul is forever tied to his body, his bones . . . It is a hell, a torture you cannot possibly fathom, human,” Ephyra answered for him. “He can’t risk that. He knows he can’t defeat me. So, what will it be, Niérian? Rest and peace, or everlasting torment?”
Our eyes met, mine and Hank’s. There was no emotion there. They’d hurt him so badly that all he wanted was to die. I swallowed, wondering if he’d do it, if he’d kill me—part of me not blaming him if he tried.
The only way to free him and leave him alive was to take out Ephyra before she killed him. And from where I was lying, she sure as hell had the upper hand. I coughed up blood and a spasm of pain ripped through my side. Cold sweat broke out.
Unable to keep my head turned anymore, I let it fall back on my arm. I felt Hank over me, heard the spark of the whip as he withdrew it off the floor in a slow arc, heard the sigh as it went airborne.
My fists tightened around the jewels. Under Ephyra’s spell, giving it to him now could be a monumental mistake. I didn’t know what to do. But I did know if he did this, if he killed me, it would destroy whatever thread of sanity he had left.
And then the barb struck.
A shocked gasp robbed me of breath and filled me with a sting, a burn so harsh it felt like someone held me down and poured boiling water over my skin. Then I was crying out loud. How had he endured this?
The barb had torn my gown to my waist, baring my back. Then Hank’s knee touched my side as he knelt beside me.
“What is this?” His question came out very low, guttural, angry as his fingertips brushed my mark. He was silent for a moment. “Truth mark,” he whispered to himself, remembering.
All he had to do was ask, ask if the lies the Circe had told him were true. The mark prevented me from lying in response to a direct question. “Ask me,” I forced out.
“Finish her,” Ephyra commanded.
Before he could rise, I braced myself for the pain and rolled onto my back, just praying I would have enough time before I passed out.
I grabbed his left hand, as his right still held the whip, and pressed the pearls into his bloody palm. I wanted him to ask me to tell the truth. If he did, he’d know everything Ephyra said about me was a lie. But he didn’t ask me, he just stared at me coldly and then opened his hand to look at what lay there. “They’re Source Words,” I bit out, holding on to consciousness. “Yours. Your family’s . . .”
He didn’t respond. His hand closed over the pearls. There wasn’t a flicker of anything, and I didn’t know what else to do. I wanted to reach up and touch him. His hair, dark and wet with sweat hanging over his brow, his blood-streaked warrior’s face, the small lines around his eyes that used to deepen when he grinned, the strength in every breath he took . . .
“Choose, Niérian.”
“Ask me,” I forced out. “Ask me the truth.”
His voice was hard when he spoke. “I don’t have to.”
He stood and faced Ephyra, his left hand fisted, still holding the pearls. Tiny spider veins of gold appeared through the skin. He lifted his hand and opened his palm, eyes fixed on his prey.
The Circe’s eyes went wide. So did mine.
The blood vessels in Hank’s hand and wrist shimmered gold, the power of the words filling him, sweeping up his arm. It took my breath away, and I knew this was one of those images branded into my memory forever.
He’d whipped her. The barb had rent the gown from her shoulder, exposing her back and the mark she bore. The mark like his. He knelt next to her. He knew what it was, and yet . . .
“Finish her.” Ephyra’s command shivered through him.
He went to place a hand on her broken body. Pushing her off the ledge would be such a simple thing and then he’d find peace.
The serenity he’d glimpsed and longed for so many times called to him, beckoned him stronger than any siren lure.
Just do as asked and then it’d be his. Or he could kill Ephyra instead.
He wanted to scream with this war inside of him. This fucking indecision.
Niérian. Hank.
Who the fuck was he?
Did it even matter now?
And then she placed the words into his hand. His fist closed tighter over the pearls. The tighter he squeezed, the hotter they became.
“Choose, Niérian,” he heard the voice of the Circe call to him amid the oracle’s constant utterings and the ragged breathing of the woman next to him.
The indecision pulled on his mind, stretching it out like a rubber band as far as it would go and then snapping back, breaking, opening, flooding with something new. Warmth surged from the words, seeping down into his hand, spreading out and bringing with it understanding and knowledge. “Ask me,” Charlie urged. “Ask me the truth.”
“I don’t have to.”
He didn’t need to ask her for the truth; he already knew it.
He didn’t need to decide; his decision was already made.
It was crystal clear, and he’d rain destruction down on them all.
And then try like hell to survive it.
When he glanced up, he realized that only a heartbeat had passed and the last Circe was waiting for him to fulfill his part of the bargain. He stood.
His hand was hot now. Shimmering golden power snaked through him. He opened his palm for the Circe to see. The pearls were gone. They’d sunk deep into his skin, into the essence of his being, leaving behind a round brand. The words that had been inscribed on the jewels were now within this mark, shimmering like the gold energy radiating from the Circe.
His mouth twitched, then widened in a deadly smile.
Time slowed. Realization appeared in her look and she threw out her hands, her mouth opening, a syllable coming out. Oh, she knew. She knew the choice he’d made.
But he was already speaking, already drawing that shimmering gold knowledge into his core, gathering the word he knew but didn’t know, building and building and building.
Destruction rang out of him with utter clarity; he didn’t care if it killed him because he was taking her with him. Either way he won. He saw her death before his word even reached her.
As her power flowed out to him, it was obliterated by his as it rode on an unseen wave toward her. Her eyes went wide. And then it reached her and blew her body apart.
One second there, the next . . . not.
An unsatisfying revenge.
Directly behind where the Circe’s body had been, the wave connected with the statue.
A crack boomed, shaking the chamber.
Oh shit.
He reached down and grabbed Charlie, tossing her screaming self over his shoulder. He heard another crack, this one from Charlie, and knew that something else had broken inside of her. He’d wounded her more, but then wounded was better than dead, and that’s what they’d be if they didn’t get the hell out of there.
He ran, but her voice stopped him. “Sandra,” she slurred. “You have to get her. Please. I promised . . .”
“Fuck.” He swung back around and raced for the oracle who was chanting wildly to the eerie sound of the statue cracking, like an arctic ice sheet about to give way.
He fisted the black hair, dragged the head off the pedestal, turned, and ran.
Over the dead sirens at the door, down the passageway . . . And then it shattered, the sound dropping him to his knees as he tried to balance the woman on his shoulder and not drop the head in his hand. He used his forearms to cover his ears, as something bigger and far more powerful erupted outward, blowing apart the chamber behind them like an atomic bomb.
He surged to his feet.
Out into the chamber that was open to the sea. The walls behind him blew. They were picked up by the force and sent hurtling toward the cave opening. The walls disintegrated. His body was pinged by debris, large portions of the wall, tiny pebbles like a million arrows slicing into his flesh.
And then they were out, blinded by light and then submerged in deep water.
He kicked his way to the surface and dragged them to one of the many rocks that jutted up into the bay of Fiallan. He pushed Charlie as high as he could, laid the head of the oracle beside her, and hung on, his body pulled back and forth by the churning water.
His strength waned.
The cliff that made up the south side of the bay collapsed, rocks dropping into the sea, the great obelisk tower on top of it crumbling, too. And like dominoes the next two towers in the wall went down. The last one, which rose out of the cliffs on the other side of the bay, remained standing.
A massive wave barreled toward them. “Fucking hell.” He drew in the last of his strength and hauled his ass onto the rock and then dragged them higher, to the very top while the wave crashed at their feet, spraying over them with force and moving on out to sea.
He lay, belly down over the jagged rock, breathing harder than he ever had before. Soaking wet, his body limp, and his exhausted mind in disbelief. The grid was down. The Circe were gone.
After a time, there came a strange, echoing “Thank you.” It flowed through his exhausted mind with a warmth that he could only describe as a smile.
“The sea will heal you”—this time the echo was clear, the voice grief-strickenly beautiful—“and restore that which was needed in you to end the Circe’s reign. You have done well, siren.”
As she spoke, he saw images of the past and knew that in the sirens’ time of need, during the war with the Adonai, that the deity had shown herself to the Circe and given them the means to protect the city while its strongest warriors were away fighting. The deity had offered her own power, a temporary gift. But the Circe had bound her, turning her own power and that of the Malakim against her, binding her there where they used the power, drank from it, used it to rule, and to live far longer than they should have.
All this time, she had been trapped.
Until she was able to pass along the gift of the Source Words to him. And now they were his. He opened his palm to find the mark still there, like some round brand made from pearly white ink with the golden shimmering inscriptions written there. His words. His family’s legacy finally achieved. He’d been made for this. Trusted.
“And the Malakim?” he asked, staring over the settling water to the crumbling towers.
“Three will survive. One has chosen to pass on to the Afterlife. The truth will be shown to the people.”
He stared at the city that had betrayed him, the city that had stood by when his family had been killed. He felt no love for it, no love or understanding for its people. He was not one of them nor did he want to be. His path was set. His choice made.
“They would follow you,” the voice said to him. “You could be king . . .”
The thought made him shudder.
He sure as shit wasn’t going to devote his lifetime serving those who never once questioned the Circe, never once took a fucking stand. Besides, he already had a life, one he fully intended to embrace now that he was no longer a fugitive and the Circe were dead. “I’d rather be Hank.”
“You would go back to Earth, to your old life?”
He thought for a long moment, not about his choice, but about the damage done to his psyche, his soul. He would never be the same, he knew that. He knew the road he faced, the way the pain would creep over everything he was and wanted to be. How the hollowness left from his soul continually leaving and returning would grow. He was fractured. Even though his soul was back and he was free from the NecroNaMoria, he no longer felt . . . whole.
“Stay with me and heal, Niérian. Give yourself time.”
He let his forehead fall on his arm, tired, so fucking tired . . . “I would go home.”
A soft sigh seemed to blow over him. “And so you shall, but healed from your wounds at least.” She hesitated before adding softly, and with so much love that it burned his chest, “Your strength will see you through, Niérian. Your soul will heal in time. Until then . . . enjoy . . .”
He lifted his head, immediately knowing her intent. “No, I don’t want—”
And with that the sea rose up and swallowed them.