She brought it down.
And as she did, Apollius opened His eyes.
He smiled.
Shock hammered through her, but her course was set, an arrow already fired. Lore gasped as the blade cut swiftly down into Apollius’s open heart and slid in as smoothly as if the organ were the dagger’s sheath. Lore tugged it out, sent it clattering behind her, gold-crimson blood torrenting from the wound.
Apollius pulled in a breath, His beautiful face a rictus of mingled pain and elation as He bowed up off the plinth, bent backward and nearly in half. All the atmosphere of the room seemed to pull in toward Him, a dying star eating the world. Lore braced her hands on the plinth to keep from falling forward, her face nearly touching the gaping hole of the god’s chest.
His back settled against the stone again, as if it were a feather bed. His body was deteriorating, the same way Nyxara’s had,becoming gilded ash as His heart pumped out. Distantly, she heard Dani scrambling, running back this direction.
His hand cupped her cheek just before all of Him winnowed away, sweet and gentle. “You’re Mine.”
And then Lore’s mind was a storm.
A great rushing in, all the hollow places of her filling with something new. Spiritum, a crashing golden wave of it. Apollius, His second bodiless life strengthened by bodily death, rooting down into every hidden place He could find.
I told you, He said, His voice reverberating and echoing and all she could hear.You were Mine, and are Mine, and will be Mine forever. This is a kind of being together, Lore. Nyxara. This is as close as We could ever be.
The Fount said the only way Apollius would ever leave Bastian was if there was somewhere else He’d rather be. Inside her. Owning her, as fully as one could possibly be owned.
Lore tried to scream, but when she opened her mouth, it was His laughter.
She wasn’t thrust to the back of her mind, not like Bastian was, not made a passenger like the time in the Church when she’d let Nyxara take over. Lore remained in charge of herself by half measures—able to move, to push herself back from the plinth where Apollius’s body was now so much golden smoke. Able to claw at her ears to try to drown Him out.
Able to see Dani coming at her with the dagger she’d dropped. “Better than a rock.”
Her eyes were wild, her smile wide—she swiped at Lore carelessly, clearly not anticipating much resistance. Her smile fell when Lore dodged clumsily out of the way, but not by much.
“You don’t want it,” she snarled. “All you talked about was how much you don’t want your power, fucking whining all the time, wishing it away. So give it to me.” Another swipe. Lore fell backward, her legs gummy and coltish with new power, the control ofher body swapping rapidly back and forth between her and the god burrowing into her skull. “We both know you won’t do anything good with it.”
You can prove her wrong, Apollius whispered.
“It doesn’t work like that,” Lore rasped. “You have to be a god.”
“I’m willing to try,” Dani said, and lunged for her again. “I told you exactly what I wanted, Lore. That the world would have to be remade, every old thing passing. I knew it’d take someone with a parasitic god to kill Him.” She swiped out, catching Lore’s shirt, linen tearing. “But you? I’m pretty sure I can kill you all on my own.”
Lore scrabbled back against the wall of the cavern, scraping her fingernails to bloody tatters. Dani stabbed forward at Lore again, and Lore threw up her hand.
The blade went straight through it, carving a hole in the center of her eclipse scar. She howled in pain, knees buckling.
Don’t worry, Apollius soothed.
Lore didn’t have the mental capacity to concentrate on channeling, on healing her hand—but she didn’t need it. The god in her transcended the need for channeling mechanics, and the hole in her palm slowly closed, pushing the dagger blade out, like a rose slowly blooming from soil.
Gasping, Dani stumbled back, her expression gyring from disgust to awe. She rushed toward Lore again, gripping a sharp rock.
But Lore was ready. When the dagger was free of skin and sinew, Lore turned it around one-handed, in the same palm it had cut.
Make her pay.
She stabbed out, the blade sheathing into Dani’s abdomen, right above her hip. She choked, falling inelegantly to her knees. “You don’t want this,” she spat, blood on her teeth. “You never did.”
A lie, one Lore had stopped trying to believe about herself longbefore this moment. Maybe she’d never wanted the power she was given, but the concept of power in its entirety—that, she wanted.
“It’s not just the power.” Lore’s voice, Apollius’s voice, harmony from a single throat. “It’s the chance to make a difference.”
Dani sneered. “I can think of no one worse suited to becoming the God of Everything.”