I’d only seen the sky like that once before. When we had the attention of the gods.

I raised the vial above my head, as if offering it to the heavens.

“My Mother of the Ravenous Dark,” I screamed. “I call upon you, Goddess of Night, of Blood, of Shadow. I offer you the blood of your husband, Alarus. Hear me, my Goddess, Nyaxia.”

74

ORAYA

For a few long, terrible seconds, nothing happened.

The battle continued. Simon kept slowly pushing himself to his knees. Raihn kept dying.

More tears welled up in my eyes.

No. This had to work. It had to.

My arm shook as I held that vial to the sky, held it as high as I could, my eyes staring unblinking into the god-touched night above.

Please, I pleaded, silently. Please, Nyaxia. I know I’ve never been yours. Not really. But I’m begging you to hear me.

And then, as if she heard my silent prayer, there she was.

Time seemed to slow, the figures above moving in slow motion. The breeze through my hair grew cold, the strands suspended in midair. My skin pebbled, as if in the moments preceding a strike of lightning.

Just like last time, I felt her before I saw her. A staggering sensation of overwhelming adoration, and overwhelming smallness.

“What,” a low, melodic voice said, deadly as a drawn blade, “is happening here?”

There was only one thing, I realized in this moment, more terrifying than the presence of a god.

And that was the rage of one.

I slowly lowered my eyes.

Nyaxia floated before me.

She was just as beautiful, just as terrible, as I remembered her. Hers was the kind of beauty that made you want to prostrate yourself before her. Her hair floated in tendrils of ink-black night. Her bare feet hovered, delicately pointed, just above the ground. Her body, dipped in silver, gleamed and shone like moonlight in the darkness. Those eyes, revealing every shade of the night sky, were dark and stormy with utter fury.

The world itself felt that fury. Ceded to it. As if the air was desperate to please her, the stars moving to soothe her, the moon ready to bow to her.

Perhaps the fighting stopped, when Nyaxia appeared, soldiers on all sides shocked by what they were in the presence of. Or perhaps it just seemed that way, because everything else ceased to exist when she arrived.

Her shoulders rose and fell with heavy breaths. Her bloody lips contorted into a snarl.

“What,” she ground out, “is this atrocity?”

She spat the word, and with it, a burst of power shook the earth. I cringed, my body folding over Raihn’s as rocks and sand cascaded from the ruins. Wisps of stormy shadow surrounded her, leeching out into the air with the ominous darkness of tragedy.

Simon had managed to get himself up to his knees. He turned to her, bowing, blood spilling from his mouth as he spoke. “My Goddess—”

I didn’t even see Nyaxia move. One moment, she was before me, and the next, she was at Simon, hoisting him up with a single hand and ripping the pendant from his chest with the other.

It was so sudden, so brutal, that I let out a little gasp, my own body bracing tighter over Raihn’s.

Nyaxia let Simon’s corpse, limp and bleeding, fall to the ground without so much as a second glance.

Instead, she cradled the twisted creation of steel and teeth in her hands, staring down at it.

Her face was blank. But the sky grew darker, the air colder. I was shaking—whether with shivers or fear, or maybe both, I wasn’t sure. I still leaned over Raihn, and I couldn’t bring myself to stop, even though I knew it was pointless.

I couldn’t protect him from the wrath of a goddess.

Her fingertips traced the pendant—the broken teeth welded into it. “Who did this?”

I wasn’t expecting that. For her to sound so… broken.

“My love,” she murmured. “Look at what you’ve become.”

The pain in her voice was so naked. So familiar.

No, grief never really left us. Not even for the gods. Two thousand years, and Nyaxia’s was still tender as ever.

Then, in an eerily sudden movement, her head snapped up.

Her eyes landed on me.

My head emptied of thought. The full force of Nyaxia’s attention was devastating.

The pendant in her hands disappeared, and suddenly, she was before me.

“How did this happen?” she snarled. “My own children, using the body parts of my husband’s corpse for their own pathetic gains? What incredible disrespect.”

Talk, Oraya, an urgent voice reminded me. Explain. Say something.

I had to force the words out.

“I agree,” I said. “I’m returning what is rightfully yours. Your husband’s blood, my Mother.”

I opened my fingers, offering her the vial in my shaking palm.

Her face softened. A glimmer of grief. A glimmer of sadness.

She reached for it, but I moved it away—a stupid move, I recognized right after I’d done it, when her sadness was replaced by anger.

“I ask for a deal,” I said quickly. “One favor, and it’s yours.”

Her face darkened. “It is already mine.”

That was a fair point. I was gambling with something that was not mine to trade, with leverage that was laughable against a goddess. I was so afraid. I was grateful I was kneeling, because otherwise, I was sure my knees would have buckled.

I tethered myself to the sensation of Raihn’s fading heartbeat beneath my palm, and my own heightening desperation.

“I appeal to your heart, my Mother,” I choked out. “As a lover who knows grief. Please. You’re right, your husband’s blood is yours. I know I cannot, and would not, keep it from you. But I—I ask you for a favor in return.”

I swallowed thickly, my next words heavy on my tongue. If I wasn’t so distracted, maybe this would have been funny. My entire life, I’d dreamed of asking Nyaxia for this very gift—but never did I think it would be under these circumstances.

I said, “My Mother, I ask you for a Coriatis bond. Please.”

My voice cracked over my plea.

A Coriatis bond. The god-given gift I’d once thought would give me the power I needed to be Vincent’s true daughter. Now, I was giving up my father’s greatest weapon to bind myself to the man I’d once thought was my greatest enemy. To save his life.

Love, over power.

Nyaxia’s gaze flicked down. She seemed to notice Raihn for the first time since she’d arrived, with only passing interest.

“Ah,” she said. “I see. Much has changed, I suppose, since the last time you begged me for his life.”

Before, Nyaxia had laughed when I’d asked her to save Raihn’s life, amused by the antics of her mortal followers. But there was no amusement in her eyes, now. I wished I could read her face.

I wished I had better words for her.

“Please,” I choked out, again. Another tear slid down my cheek.

She leaned down. Her fingertips caressed my face, tipping my chin toward her. She was so close that she could’ve kissed me, close enough that I could count the stars and galaxies in her eyes.

“I told you once, little human,” she murmured. “A dead lover can never break your heart. You did not listen to me then.”

And Raihn had broken my heart that night. I couldn’t deny that.

“You should have let the flower of your love remain forever frozen as it was,” she said. “So beautiful at its peak. So much less painful.”

But there was no such thing as love without fear. Love without vulnerability. Love without risk.

“Not as beautiful as one that lives,” I whispered.

A flicker of something I couldn’t decipher passed over Nyaxia’s face. She reached for the vial in my palm, and this time, I let her. Her fingers touched it tenderly, like the caress of a lover.

She let out a soft, bitter laugh.

“Spoken by someone too young to see the ugliness of its decay.”