Page 12 of The Endless One

“I thought we were finally free of them. No offense to you, but your siblings were certainly not kind to anyone or anything around them. There were so many people praying to them, asking for gifts from the gods and getting them without any rules on whether they should or not. So much bad happened in the name of gods, by people who thought they were doing the right thing.” She shook her head. “And now I fear we are going right back into the same time. It was better when the gods were dead and the few remaining worshippers never had access to the gifts they would have been given in the old days.”

He nodded a few times, although he did not know why. “If I could stop him, I would.”

“I know you would, dear. But I also saw how easily he overpowered you.” She looked at him then, that troubled expression doing nothing to ease his nerves. “I thought you were strong enough to stop him?”

“I could have stopped Leon if we’d made it there in time. If I hadn’t underestimated the remains of my sister that the priestesses still had in their grasp. The magic he had…” Elric couldn’t look her in the eye and say this. So he stared down at his hand in the sand, focusing on all the scars along his knuckles and the ragged tips of his fingers. “I am not a strong god, Sybil. I never have been compared to them. Asking me to go up against the two strongest gods in our pantheon is like asking a flea to fight the dog it feeds off of.”

Her dark, wrinkled hand slid over his. “You are so much more than what they led you to believe.”

The words nearly broke him. She’d believed in him, and he had failed her. He was supposed to be a god! Why couldn’t he do this?

Sybil’s hand squeezed his. “Focus on the sand, Deathless One. This was the beach where it all happened. Do you not remember?”

“Where what happened?”

“The death of the gods. Perhaps you were not there, but I was. I saw the spell the gravesingers wove in the air, although I still do not know what it was. I saw the intricacies in their curse as an entire coven of gravesingers, the people who were closest to you and guided your coven, danced in the moonlight. It was like a web they wove between each other’s fingers, balancing the power only you could give them. It was beautiful.”

And in his mind, he could see them. The ghosts of his own gravesingers as they danced, their bare feet leaving imprints on the sand before the waves washed them away.

Her voice continued, low and quiet, like a whispered prophecy. “They brought about the end of an age where so many had fallen prey to gods who hated them. Your gravesingers took the essence of life that floated in the air, and they brought it down upon the effigies of the gods. I remember what it looked like.”

“You said you weren’t there.”

Sybil smiled, and the expression was full of secrets. “I lied.”

“So you know how they died?”

“No. I wasn’t supposed to see it. I was only supposed to help build the small effigies so that the coven could kill them. But then I couldn’t help myself. I came down the sands, and I watched them slice through the gods. One by one, in a spell so beautiful it was heart wrenching. And they were only able to do that because of you.”

No, that wasn’t the truth of the story. Because now that she said it, he could finally remember what happened as well. It surfaced in his mind, like the gravesingers, in the realm he had trapped their souls, finally wanted him to see.

“They killed themselves to do it,” he murmured. His eyes filled with unshed tears as he said the words. “It wasn’t beautiful, Sybil. It was tragic. They slit their throats, one by one, all of them sacrificing themselves and then ending up with me. A god they hated more than anyone on this planet. They killed me to do it, and all I wanted was my revenge.”

Sybil shrugged. “I don’t blame you for that either. They made you hurt, and so you hurt them. Even if they were the ones to free us all, they did so by stepping on your neck.”

He shuddered. “All of this is too hard, Sybil. The guilt. The need for revenge. The aching pain of knowing I lost her to a god, and that of all the gods, Ajax likes pain best.”

“We’ll get her back.”

“And if we don’t?” Now wasn’t the time to question himself, but he was certain that Sybil would understand. “I cannot live knowing that she is under his thumb. Ajax knows how to get into the mind of a human and make them believe whatever he wants them to believe. It is not a good end, Sybil.”

Already he was having a hard time not thinking about what Ajax would do. His brother was swift in his torture because he knew how to break a human mind. He was likely forcing her body to contort any way he wanted, twisting her bones and cracking through the heaviest of them. He’d once watched Ajax break a man’s femur, collarbone, and skull all at the same time, just to see how much pain he could withstand before he died.

Knowing that he might be doing that to Jessamine, even now? It made him want to shred the world, but there was nowhere safe to put his anger.

“We will do what we must,” Sybil said, her voice hard. “I will not rest knowing that she is there, suffering when she does not need to suffer. I know she didn’t want to lead this coven, but we all look to her as that person. The coven needs her calm and reason to keep it moving in the right direction.”

“Until we get her back, that job lands on your shoulders.”

“Oh, I know. Agnes has already been talking with too many of the younger recruits. They are telling stories that I will have to end quickly and without mercy.”

The troubling words settled between them. He knew what she alluded to. He didn’t need her to pretend that it was anything other than the logical solution to all their problems.

But he could be gentle about it. Because that was what Jessamine would wish him to do.

The words were hard to choose, but eventually he said, “I know they want to sacrifice me, Sybil.”

Another long pause answered him. He knew she was struggling to find the right words, but there weren’t any. How was she supposed to soften the reality that yet another coven wanted to tear into him? The more pain they caused, the more magic would spill out. He knew this. She knew this. They didn’t have to pretend that wasn’t what would happen.