“Is there no other way?” said Raiva.
Tuer’s face was stricken. “There is no other way.”
He knelt before Eda, putting his huge hands on her shoulders. “I am sorry, little one. When I caused Raiva to put her light in you, when I sent my Shadow to draw you here, I did not know I would come to care for you, as I watched you grow, as I endured all the sorrows you endured. If there was any other way, I would choose to sit here for all eternity in your place. But there is not, not anymore. I am sorry. When it is done—when you are bound and the world is free, perhaps we can find a way to save you. And perhaps we cannot, but know that we will honor you, always.”
Eda ground her jaw. “Bind me, then. Before I change my mind.”
“Take my hand, daughter of dust. Close your eyes.”
She did as she was told, folding her slender hand into his much larger one. She felt his pulse underneath his wrist and thought it odd that a god should have a pulse. She shut her eyes.
“I am sorry,” Tuer repeated.
That was all the warning she had before a dark, raging pain seared through her, from her fingers down to her toes, and all the way up her spine to the roots of her hair. She screamed, thrashing, trying to break free, but Tuer didn’t let her go.
The pain continued to fill her up. Heat and cold, knives and stone, a thousand stinging scorpions—her body writhed on the ground, unable to contain the full weight of her agony. Because Tuer was giving her his chains, his sorrow. She felt his grief, his rage, his helplessness, every last ounce of every dark emotion he had experienced for the centuries he’d been here, bound in the dark.
She couldn’t bear it. She screamed at him to stop but still he held on, still his sorrow poured through her.
She was broken. She was remade. She was broken again. She would splinter apart, and there would be nothing left.
And then suddenly, the pain stopped. She opened her eyes. Tuer and Raiva stood towering above her in the full weight of their immortal power, and they were both so bright she could barely look at them.
“I am sorry,” said Tuer yet again.
Raiva brushed cool fingers across Eda’s forehead. For an instant Eda stared at her, shocked to see wrinkles pressed into the goddess’s face, age weighing on her as it would on any mortal.
And then Tuer and Raiva turned and were gone, leaving her alone in the darkness.
The mirrors flashed and whispered before her. The jagged crack in the world writhed and groaned above her head.
It was only then, as she unconsciously tried to stand, that she felt the chains, heavy, cold, unbreakable. The chains that bound her forever to the Circle of Sorrow.
Chapter Forty-Four
THE CRACK IN THE WORLD GROANED ANDshook above her. In every one of Tuer’s mirrors a similar crack split the sky, and winged spirits poured through. The screams of a million souls filled her own, broke her and broke her again. But the chains bound her where she knelt, and the only thing she could do was lift her head.
Above her, a single shadow flew through the crack: Rudion, crowned with fire. Flames licked along his brow, but did not consume him. His eyes hungered for her. “Little Empress,” he hissed. “How do you think to save the world, when you cannot even save yourself? The god has tricked you yet again. He is free, and you are not, and you will perish, here, in the depths of sorrow.”
“It wasyouwho tricked me.” Her throat was raw from screaming; every word was pain. “It was always you. You tricked me, just as you tricked Ileem, just as you tricked Tuer. How did you do it? How did you make him think you served him, when really you plotted to keep him in chains as you worked to free your own kind?”
Rudion laughed and paced near her, his wings folded against his shoulders. In the dim light from the mirrors, he seemed almost to shine. “The proud are always the easiest to fool, because they think themselves so very wise. Especially a god.”
Dimly, Eda was aware of one half of the godkiller lying just past her knee. “And yet for all your scheming, you have lost,” she said. “Tuer is free, and he goes even now to unlock the doors. When he has done so, the cracks in the world will heal, and you and your kind will be sealed forever into the void.”
Rudion put his bone sword to her throat. Cold burned her. Cut her. Blood trickled down her neck, sliming her chains with red.
He dragged one clawed finger down her cheek. “Little Empress, little fool. Queen of Sorrow and ruler of shadows. How small you are. How very, very small. I wanted you here. I meant for you to take his place. You are the last piece holding the world together. When I kill you, the Circles will fracture apart, and not even the god can repair them. Soon, all my people will be free: an army as vast as the stars. Mankind will fall, and the gods themselves will bow at my feet. How much agony will you feel, I wonder, as your body is torn apart? Perhaps not more than you feel right now. Perhaps your death will be a mercy.” Rudion laughed again and raised the sword, swinging it toward her.
Eda shrieked as her hand closed around the half of the godkiller, and she thrust it hard into Rudion’s chest.
The bone sword clattered to the ground. Rudion screamed and jerked back. Darkness poured from his wound like smoke, more and more until it consumed him, and his fiery crown clattered to the floor. For an instant he stared at her, shock written into every line of his frame. His wings lay dark against the stone, some wind she did not feel stirring through black feathers.
“I told you,” she hissed through her agony. “I told you I would kill you.”
And then his body fell all to ash, and the wind blew him away.
Eda shuddered, the chains weighing on her, pain splintering every inch of her. She wiped the blood from her neck and looked again into Tuer’s mirrors.
