Total pages in book: 362
Estimated words: 347293 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1736(@200wpm)___ 1389(@250wpm)___ 1158(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 347293 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1736(@200wpm)___ 1389(@250wpm)___ 1158(@300wpm)
I lifted my head and, guided by instinct, placed my hand on her chest. Strangely, I didn’t look her in the eye. I didn’t want to as I willed the essence from her body. Her back bowed, lifting clear off the floor. I drew my hand back. Thin filaments of eather stretched from her chest to my palm. The essence soaked through my flesh, causing my breath to catch. Her eather pulsed and flowed, making light dance across the broken mirrors and walls. It poured out of her, and the floor began to tremble, the walls shuddering.
I didn’t want to look at her.
But I did.
I made myself meet her gaze.
“Sera,” Ash whispered. “Look at me.”
I couldn’t.
I shook my head, holding Veses’ stare as the last of her essence left her body and entered mine—as the eather receded from her eyes and veins. I didn’t know why I said what I did next. Maybe it was because I knew what Veses had gone through. At one point, she had been different but had become something cruel and sick due to Kolis’s actions and influence. Perhaps she even willingly became what she was. But she wasn’t always like this. Maybe I truly had no idea why I said what I did.
“I wish it could’ve been different for you,” I said, my voice hoarse as the life flickered from her eyes. “I’m sorry it wasn’t.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Midas, the capital of the Callasta Isles, was silent, and the air smelled of iron as I walked the center aisle of the City Hall while Nektas watched from his perch on the Hall’s colonnade.
Bodies lined the aisle.
Hundreds of them.
“Don’t allow this to leave a mark,” Ash had said as we stood before the gods and godlings who’d refused our offer to start over with some semblance of civility. The majority had quickly accepted and pledged their loyalty to Ash and me, but it wasn’t their loyalty we sought. We wanted their genuine promise to change the way they had lived under Veses’ rule.
I had a feeling that, inevitably, more lives would join those we’d ended today. My suspicions of such were rooted in what lay just beyond the City Hall.
My gaze went to the patches of disturbed earth I saw through the colonnade. There were six of them, and they were as wide as Nektas was long.
A goddess who went by the name of Tindra had told us what they were. Mass graves. Both Ash and I were shocked. If anything was left of a god or mortal, it was generally burned. To leave them in the ground was to allow their bodies to rot. It was a sign of disrespect.
Tindra had said each gravesite likely contained hundreds of bodies. Which meant there were thousands of decaying corpses between the six sites. Thousands. When Ash had asked why they were not given a proper burial rite, Tindra explained that Veses never performed burial rites for those executed. And the crimes committed that were so deserving of capital punishment? It ranged from refusing to carry out an order to actual murder and everything in between. But it wasn’t just the so-called criminals whose final resting place was so disgraceful. Victims who had lost their lives over a quarrel or at the hands of a jealous lover had been routinely tossed into these pits, as well.
My gaze shifted to the slender, dark-haired goddess. Her black robes rippled in the breeze as she stood silent and still, her brown-toned features somber as she stood before the fourth gravesite.
Tindra’s husband had been one of the victims tossed so carelessly into the fourth site several decades ago.
“I think many were disgusted by what was happening,” Tindra had said when asked why no one seemed to have an issue with this. “At least in the beginning. But this…this is how many have lived for so long. Die or survive by any means necessary. It’s the only life we know.”
I could see why Rhain had refused any claims to the Court. And what lay beyond the City Hall was why I feared that what remained of Veses’ Court would shrink in the coming months and years.
I turned to where several gods of the Court were busy wrapping the bodies of the newly dead under the watchful eye of guards brought here when I summoned Attes to assist with locating whatever Ancient bones Veses had stashed away.
Don’t let this leave a mark…
I motioned for Elias to join me. He’d come with Attes, and soon, a contingent of Attes’s forces would join the Shadowlands in securing the Callasta Isles.
The brown-haired god approached, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword. He stopped a few feet from me and bowed.
“Elias.” I sighed. “You do not need to bow.”
“Sorry. It’s a habit.” He straightened, his gaze flickering briefly to the gravesites. “What can I do for you, meyaah—?”