Lore flailed in the air for ten seconds that felt like an hour before getting her feet on the cliff enough to push up and alleviate some of her weight from Dani’s hold. She flopped herself overonto the newly made edge, sending Dani stumbling back. Lore pulled her feet in behind her and curled into a ball, panting in the sudden silence.
When her panic had calmed enough to move, she sat up slowly, peering at Dani in the shadows. “Thank you.”
The other woman held her arm at an awkward angle, but it didn’t look broken, though Lore had probably come close to pulling her shoulder from its socket. Dani held her elbow a moment before shaking it out. “You can’t die yet.”
And that was that.
Lore stood, her legs surprisingly steady. Dani had brought her pack, and she stuck her hand inside, bringing out the dagger. “He’s in here somewhere.” She marched into the dark.
They didn’t have to go far. Inside the cavern, just deep enough for the sunlight not to penetrate, the God of Everything was stretched out on a shelf of stone.
Even in this strange not-quite-death, His body glowed, gold phosphorescence running beneath His skin. He was beautiful in the same shocking way Bastian was beautiful, only amplified by His otherworldliness: light-brown hair curling over His ears, a finely made face, strong nose and jaw. His wings spread out on either side of Him, gently draping over the stone that had become His plinth, the color of midnight snow no one had yet touched. A white loincloth covered Him from hip to mid-thigh, but other than that He was naked, all the wounds from His fight with Nyxara on display.
One, in particular.
The hole in His chest made a noise. A low, subtle sucking sound, like trying to drink from an empty cup. And there was the beat, a low murmur that echoed in the chamber, His heart thrumming long after it should have stopped.
Lore stepped closer, unable to tear her eyes away. His heart looked like a fist of congealed blood, the rim of the hole in Hispale chest gummed with gold and scarlet. His ribs had broken around it perfectly, an ivory cage with sharp edges.
She reached in without a second thought.
His heart was warm. Even the blood that should have long since dried to flaking crust was liquid on her palm, coating her eclipse scar. Lore fit her hand around the organ, so small for such an important thing.
“If it didn’t work the first time,” Dani said behind her, “I doubt it will work the second.”
It had worked, but Lore recalled her memory of the Godsfall, how Nyxara had replaced His heart once She’d torn it out. Lore didn’t say that, though. She pulled her hand carefully from the nest of bones and wiped it on her thigh, hefting Dani’s dagger in her hand.
“I don’t think there’s any special way to do it,” Dani said, coming up beside her, almost uncomfortably close. She held a rock in her hand, as if she’d use it as backup if the knife didn’t work.
“The sharp part goes in,” Lore said.
The other woman raised a brow. “You’ve been slow with the stupid jokes since we got to the Mount. And here I thought being in a divine presence had made you magically mature.”
A barb, not even a clever one, but it gave Lore pause. Dani was right. Since they’d arrived here, Lore had felt… disconnected from herself. Hollow, scooped out. She’d chalked it up to how lousy this place was with memory, how thin magic made barriers of time.
Maybe there was more to it than that.
This is good, the Fount soothed, Its voice quiet and distant.
Her most recent dream rose to the surface of her mind, never far from her thoughts. Gabe, the feel of him against her, inside her, panting breaths and slides of skin. That was the last time she remembered feeling something fully, not at a remove.
That conversation they’d had, afterward. The one they hadn’tput words to, but each knew what the other was thinking anyway. Maybe they could do something better with this power than just give it up.
Lore tightened her grip on the knife. She had to kill Apollius. She had to—
—take it—
The song in her head resolved, not words, the not-voice. She nodded, considering, agreeing, there must be a vessel to bring it back—
“Lore?”
Dani didn’t sound concerned. She sounded eager. The rock turned nervously in her hand.
Lore shook her head. Tightened her sweaty grip on the hilt of the dagger again. Apollius’s heart gleamed in His open chest, blood shining on barely moving muscle.
She took a breath. The song in her head paused.
She raised the dagger above her head, clenched in both hands.
