Page 74 of These Godly Lies
“Dante is dead,” she croons. “His mistake, really. He was a fool to think your kitten didn’t have claws.” There’s no grief in the words. No regret. There’s a trilling note to her voice, like they’ve given her an unexpected gift wrapped in blood and sacrifice. Her blade traces over Anna’s pulse, so close Anna need only swallow for it to cut. The sadistic grin pressed against her skin feels just as sharp. “Not that it matters. The First is going to befuriouswith both of you.”
Khiran could still run, Anna thinks. The only thing tying him here is her. He would get so much farther, move so much quicker, without her weighing him down. She wants to scream the word, but it catches in her throat.
She knows his heart the way she knows her own. There is nothing she can say, nothing she can do, to convince him to save himself. They had promised each other, in her garden under the summer sun, that they would face what came together. Had the knife been pressed to his throat, had the opportunity to save herself been placed on her, she would do no different. They are too tangled, too crucial to each other’s happiness, to walk away now.
Still, her eyes beg him. A silent, heart wrenching plea her parted lips can’t speak.
Run.
Even though she knows he won’t.
Run.
Because she has to try, anyway.
In his answering stare, she sees his answer reflected back to her.I won’t. I can’t.And Anna feels her heart crack, her lungs burningaround a sob she can’t shed. She can’t let him see how much she hurts, can’t let him carry the weight of her heartbreak when he’s being crushed by his own. Tears slip down her cheeks before she can stop them.
“Oh, she is a pretty crier, isn’t she?” Marcia croons, tongue dragging over Anna’s tear stained skin. “Howdelicious.” She shifts, the arm caging Anna in, extending out with a closed fist. “What will it be, Liesmith? Do you yield, or will you give me the pleasure of breaking you?”
There are apologies in his eyes when he looks at her. Anna doesn’t believe she deserves them. Softly, his answer leaves his lips with the weight of all their shattered hopes. “I yield.”
Marcia opens her palm, golden threads spinning from her fingertips like silk—coiling and twisting around his neck, his wrists, until they’ve braided into a rope as thick and heavy as chains. When her fist closes, the rope tightens, binding his hands together and drawing them to the noose around his throat with enough force that Anna can hear the aching thump his fists make against his chest.
“Would you like to know something funny, girl?” Marcia’s mouth twists into a razor wire smile, her free hand sliding down Anna’s right arm before grabbing her hand with a bruising grip. She forces it up until the scarred tissue of her missing finger fills her vision. “I may need to touch you for my magic to learn your signature, but it doesn’t require your body parts to be attached. You threw that finger of yours out to throw me off the scent, but all you did was give me another one to track. Like a bloody, fleshy breadcrumb.”
She drops the blade from her neck, spinning Anna around to face her, Marcia’s bruising grip goes from her hand to her face—cold fingers digging into her jaw. She towers over her, pale blue eyes as hard and honed as ice as she holds up her hand, gold braided magic connecting her to Khiran’s bindings. She pulls, and Khiran staggers forward, landing amongst the weeds with a grunt. “I want you to remember that while you watch him suffer. Remember that his death and all the pain that leads up to it is entirelyyour fault.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
True hatred is a rare thing, but he feels it rushing through his heart like a poison. A vicious venom that burns his veins with a fury that blisters. If not for Anna, for her fate balancing on his every action, he would let it consume him entirely.
EDUN
JUNE1975
There is no path.
Anna doesn’t have time to wonder how it works, though. Not when Marcia’s blade presses between her shoulder blades, urging her forward. She shadows Khiran’s steps, the golden rope binding his hands swaying between him and the caster as the landscape changes. The rocky mountainside surrenders to lush greenery, tall evergreen trees slowly disappearing into a patchwork of flora. Lacy ferns brush her ankles, the pale twisting trunks of banyantrees creating a canopy so thick, Anna can barely see slivered bits of sky between the branches.
Then the ground beneath her shoes changes from rich forest underbrush to snaking roots. Anna watches where she steps, trying not to trip over the increasingly thick tangle lifting from the soil. Between the trunks, she catches glimpses of moss covered rock rising around them and realizes why the air feels different and the light seems dim. They’re in some sort of sinkhole. One large enough to house an entire ecosystem.
Abruptly, Khiran stops, and Anna nearly collides with his back. Then she follows his gaze and understands what made him falter. Rising before them is a tree larger than any giant.
The one from which their immortality stemmed. The one that made a god of man.
It is both everything and nothing like she envisioned. It climbs higher than the skyscrapers that gather in the heart of New York, its trunk surely just as wide. At the base, the roots lift from the earth like giant hands cradling the world. It would be beautiful—shouldbe beautiful—but for all her awe, Anna can’t fight the sense of wrongness. Because the tree Khiran spun stories about was vibrant and full of life and magic.
The tree in front of her now looks closer to death.
Its branches are barren—skeletal arms reaching across the sky like lightning captured mid strike. The breeze moves through its limbs, a deep and subtle moan that echoes in her chest like a low note held too long. The bark is cracked, sap dripping from the wounds like an infection. In the center of it all is a mass of gnarled roots twisted into a throne. In its seat, a pale shadow of a man stares down at them. Silas, Cassius, and Malik line up at his left hand side.
Cassius and Silas stare back at her with masked detachment while Malik sits at their feet, his tiny fingers drawing looping patterns in the dirt, seemingly uninterested. Remembering the apathy in his expression, the shadows in his eyes as his flames surrounded them, he probably thought their capture was inevitable.
Her eyes lift, catching Silas’ dark gaze, and sees the warnings hiding in his eyes. The First cannot know of their alliance. Anyassociation to her would put both him and his lover in danger. For now, it must be as if she is no more than a stranger.
When she looks to the man on the throne, he’s already returning her stare with quicksilver eyes. He’s a portrait in grayscale; as if time has bled him of all color. Pale skin as smooth as one of the Roman statues lining Cassius’ garden, his gray hair so light it looks like strands of silver hanging below the lithe line of his shoulders. There is a power to him. Anna can feel the weight of it bearing down on her, a shiver trailing up her spine. It isn’t until his gaze slides away from her that she realizes the air in her lungs has turned stale.
“Where is Dante?” he asks, voice rumbling like thunder.
