Page 34 of Once Written in Gilded Blood
The vision picks up right where it left off with the younger Kalel and his mentor—the man looks like he is a knight, based on the way he’s dressed in a military uniform with shoulder plates that are no different than the ones Tessa and Nikolai wear.
Kalel reaches into his satchel to pull out the bones.
It’s disorienting at first to be thrust into the vision. I was just in a cold cell in the dark, but now I’m standing outside beneath the veil in a different time. The air is fresh with the scent of upturned soil and flowers, the sun warming my skin and tricking my senses.
The goddess with the raven hair is standing beside me again. She looks at me with melancholic eyes, filled with truths that she perhaps doesn’t want to have to share.
“You’re still reluctant to see them for what they’ve done,” she says gently. “Let me show you.”
I don’t want to see. But I have to, no matter how much it tears my heart out.
Tears prickle my eyes, and I force my gaze back at the two demons in the garden. Fear starts to move its way up my spine, and I have to take a few steps back as I watch Kalel reach inside the bag and pull out a gilded skull.
For a second, it doesn’t process in my mind. It looks like a statue, something poured into a cast and used for decoration on a desk or perhaps on a bookshelf. It can’t be what I think it is…but it is.
It is, and I know it deep in my aching soul.
It’s a demigod’s skull, golden blood still trickling from the base and dotting the soil in beauty and horror all the same.
Time seems to slow as I watch him set the skull into a pre-dug hole. He wipes his brow, then covers the bones with dirt and looks to his mentor. Golden blood is spread across his forehead, already having stained his hands.
Grief swells inside me. How can something so heinous be true, even as I watch it unfold? Proof from the gods.
This cannot be. It must be a lie.
Because if it isn’t…
You mustn’t pick the flowers. That was Kalel’s only rule for the garden.
My heart is ten times heavier than it has ever been. It clenches and twists as my lips tremble with the blight of this vision.
“The veil… It is not a power that the demons have found—it is a power they have stolen.” My voice carries through the palace garden. The vision speeds through the decades, until every flower bed in his palace is filled like the rest of Devicit and every last piece of my heart is torn into pieces.
My silver hair lashes in the breeze as I turn to see the entirety of the palace grounds. The peonies are bright and glowing…whispering.
They’ve always been whispering, haven’t they? Trying to warn me.
Tears pool in my eyes, and I fall to my knees, sobbing and pressing my palms to my face. “This cannot be. Kalel wouldn’t do something this…monstrous. He wouldn’t,” I cry to the goddess.
A soft hand lands on my shoulder and beckons my eyes up. It’s the woman. Her dark hair falls over her shoulders as she tilts my chin up to look back at the flowers I once cherished so much, and there the phantoms are once more.
Hundreds…thousands of demigods standing beside their respective graves. Their faces forlorn and weary, lost and confused.
They are clearer now. Every wrinkle of sadness and hopeless eternity is written on their expressions. Mother, daughter, father, son.
Misplaced. Scared. Powers drained even in death.
Darkness spills into the hollowest depths of my spirit.
My eyes dilate as I whisper, “Can they not find their way to Mortem?”
The goddess shakes her head slowly. The gilded jewelry she wears is warm against her dark tones. Kindness seeps from her sympathetic eyes, tears falling as she stares at the same lost souls as I do.
“No, they cannot escape their fate. Not on their own.” Her voice is silk, soothing in its own consoling way.
“What god are you?” I ask as I look over all the graves, sickness rising in my stomach, and disgust at myself for not figuring it out. I felt them calling to me the moment I set foot here. It felt like home…because of them.
She grabs my hand gently and murmurs, “I am Minerva. Goddess of wisdom.”
