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What he hadn’t expected was crying.
Her voice wavered. “It... it couldn’t be allowed to happen. Not like that. Not like that.”
There was a war between rage and pity on Calix’s face. “I know, Ramuna,” he said, approaching her slowly. Each footstep was an echoing stroke of a funeral bell. “But I come to deliver your punishment.”
“Punishment?” she sniffed. “How much more must I endure? I went to the Grove for him! I picked the rose! And it bloomed. We loved each other! And rather than a life of bliss, I got this as my reward! A lover who betrayed his love. A city that betrayed its goddess. And a goddess who long ago betrayed me, no matter how much I gave and I gave and I gave!”
“Stand, Securia,” said Calix, looming over her, his voice a low rumble.
The bronze curves of the goddess were washed red with firelight. “Is this your will, Mother? Is this your plan for your own daughter?”
“Stand, Securia,” repeated Calix, a great tension in his jaw. “I am offering you the mercy of a swift death. But defy me and I will not hold back.”
With surprising speed, Securia swung around, placing her hands against Calix’s cheek. “Don’t worry, dear boy. Neither will I.”
Calix froze.
And Securia swung.
Rather than some feeble slap, she connected with an almighty punch—the fist structure perfect, the placement sublime, and the force phenomenal.
Calix went flying across the room.
She twinkled in blue and purple stars, the light refracting across motes of dust. “Goddess! The vitality. The strength. And all of it will be mine. Not in the hand of some miserable boy. But in the hands of someone worthy!”
With a glimmer of midnight and the sound of sand falling against marble, she changed.
Where she had once stood was now a perfect copy of Calix. She held herself with a confidence and domination that the real prince only had in satyr form. “Don’t worry, boy. I will do a much better job on the throne than you would have!”
The fake Calix leaped, but the prince rolled away just in time and lunged back at her. Securia caught him in midair and threw him to the side. She mounted his chest and laid into him with punches, one after the other, the sick sound of wet meat being struck.
Calix was helpless to respond, trying to grab the hands, to shield his face, but all his strength had been stolen.
“It was you!” screamed the fake Calix as the blows rained down. “I would have had him if it weren’t for you!” She grabbed Calix’s head and smacked it back into the floor.
“Get off him,” screamed Aurelius, diving onto her back. He writhed, scratching and biting with all his might against the slab of muscle.
The Calix copy grabbed him around the throat and sneered. “Still here, Herald? Well, best you stick around. After all, the people will need someone to execute!”
Aurelius was smacked against a slab of upright marble at some kind of sculpture station. He crashed into the floor in an eruption of dust.
The first thing he saw when he opened his dazed eyes, as if by divine fate, was the door.
As he lay there, body aching, he knew she was right. If he stayed, and she took the throne, then she would drag him before the people and execute him.
The fake Calix returned to its beatdown of the real prince. And there was nothing he could do to stop it.
But there was one thing he could do.
As he reached out to drag himself up, his hand fell upon cold metal. It was a stonemason’s hammer, still covered in the dust of countless projects. He had never wielded one in his life, but he could feel the weight, the strength within the tool.
Just like the strength that Securia had stolen from Calix. Just like the strength she was beating out of the man he loved.
Aurelius took another look at the door, closed his grip, and ran.
The smack of metal was sweet against her ribs. In her daze, the bloody hand of the real Calix grabbed his mirror’s jaw. There was a moment of stillness, then her false form faded back into the high envoy.
She rolled off Calix. Her gaze was suddenly frenzied.
