AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Bellegarde didn’t seem bothered by the subtle change. A creak, as if he leaned closer across the table. “It can be corrected,” he said. “Kill the girl in the tomb, allow her power to be absorbed into Nyxara’s prison, and His divine light will seep into you bit by bit. It will inhabit you comfortably, gradually, without her corruption to make it a flood. He will become you, you become Him. A holy thing. Paradise.”
Lore’s hands clenched to useless fists, thinking of Bastian subsumed into Apollius, Bastian lost.
Fervor rose in Bellegarde’s voice. “This is what He wanted—a vessel, but also a partner. An Arceneaux, chosen from the beginning, made in His perfect image. Kill the girl, and the world is saved. The rains will return, the seasons shake back into their proper patterns, this subtle warping fixed before it can become too noticeable. The earth creaks under the weight of too many gods; it will tear asunder if the full pantheon is allowed to rise, to stand against You again. You said so Yourself.”
He’d transitioned seamlessly from addressing Bastian to addressing Apollius as the sun rose higher in the sky. The silence after his words faded had a brooding quality as the man across the table—man, god, something between—thought them through.
“Perhaps,” Apollius said through Bastian’s mouth, “this world deserves whatever happens to it. Perhaps you do, if you think I cannot handle the rising of a few paltry gods. If you think I cannot change My mind.”
A nervous pause. “You are our god,” Bellegarde said quietly. “Your word is law, Your every thought full of goodness. As You direct us, we will go.”
“Good to know.” The screech of a chair pushed across the floor as someone stood. “In that vein: Tell me again, Bellegarde, what you think I should do about My wife.”
Spluttering. At first, Lore thought it was due to Bellegarde not knowing how to answer. It took a moment for her to realize it was due to a hand wrapped around his throat.
“Whatever You want.” His voice came thin, ragged. “Whatever You want, Your Majesty, Holy One—”
“Easy to say when you feel death crawling nearer,” Apollius murmured. “But not true. You wanted Her dead. You still do.” His tongue clicked in his mouth, the sound one would make to chastise a wayward child. “None of you ever understood, not even the ones who saw Us together on the Mount. I never wanted revenge on Nyxara. I never wanted Her gone. I just didn’t want Her to be a god anymore, and neither did She. With Us here, in new bodies, She won’t be a goddess. She will simply be My Queen, to use Her power at My command. Mine, in every way.”
Lore pressed her knuckles against her teeth, hoping neither of them could hear her quickened breathing.
“That’s the difference between you and the other faithful still in the Citadel.” His voice was smooth and quiet, a lover’s whisper. “They trust Me, instead of just pretending to. They don’t try to direct My decisions like a horse at the rein.” A harsh wheeze was Bellegarde’s only answer.
“I love My wife,” Apollius said simply. “I plan to keep Her, this time.”
And then there was a crack, and the sound of something heavy hitting tile.
She swallowed her surprised scream, forcing it to be nothing but a painful catch in her throat.
On the other side of the door, there was a scuff of boots across the tile, a slide of fabric as something was lifted, a meaty thud as it dropped.
Then a low chuckle.
The door opened before Lore could run. She whirled away from it, barely avoiding being hit. She still covered her mouth, like she could keep from being seen as long as she didn’t make any noise, a child’s safety measure.
Bastian didn’t seem surprised to see her there. Apollius didn’t seem surprised. He stared out from Bastian’s face as the sun rose higher in the sky, a blaze of gold in His should-be-dark eyes.
“Good, you’re here.” His hand latched onto Lore’s arm, sending a bloom of warmth and life that made her head light, made the gem on her engagement ring flare like a sun shard. Too much blood in her veins, too much air in her lungs. “We’re leaving. Now.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Our love is one that will never be destroyed. It will echo through ages.
—The Book of Holy Law, Tract 789 (Apollius’s marriage vows to Nyxara)1
The muscles of Bastian’s chest pressed against her back as they rode, felt through the thin fabric of her gown as if she wore nothing at all. He hadn’t spoken to her since they set out, hadn’t said a word other than to order her to ride with him instead of in the carriage with Alie. Lore complied. She knew better than to fight with a god.
Because that’s what He was, now. Fully. She looked at His face, and nothing of Bastian looked out. Something had changed, there in the darkness of Courdigne when He killed Bellegarde, and whatever bits of himself Bastian had managed to hold on to in daylight hours were gone. He was all Apollius, now.
It made her want to cry. She didn’t. She’d had her one breakdown; there was no time for another.
Alie, for her part, hadn’t seemed fazed by their abrupt departure. Still reeling from having her true parentage confirmed, she’d roused easily when Bastian—Apollius—politely knocked on her bedroom door, Lore’s hand held in a vise-grip, and told her they were leaving. Alie had just nodded, her eyes dim, and packed up the few belongings she’d brought with her. Lore saw her slip a folio into her trunk. Presumably the one with documentation that proved she was August’s daughter.
She wondered what the other woman planned to do with that information.
Luggage had been gathered, footmen rallied. Lore followed behind Bastian docilely as this all happened, spinning her ring around her finger and trying to work through what to do next. If there was anything she could do next.
Bellegarde’s body had remained in the breakfast room. Even though she’d never seen it, Lore knew what a breaking neck sounded like, knew the timbre of a corpse hitting the floor. Severin Bellegarde was dead and apparently would be left to rot in the house he’d surrendered to the same fate.
