Chapter 139: Divine

The throne room gates were heavier than they looked.

I put both hands on the cold iron and pushed. The silver bands bit into my palms, and the carved dragon stared at me over its own fang like it had opinions about what I was doing.

Nothing moved at first. Then Lee set his shoulder beside mine, Mary pressed her hands flat next to his, and the gates began to groan open.

I wasn’t weak. I just wasn’t strong enough for a door built to keep people out.

The gap widened by a hand, then an arm’s length. A breath of air slid out, and it wasn’t cold or hot.

It was... heavy.

I felt it before I saw anything.

It settled on my shoulders first, then my spine, then the back of my skull, like a hand deciding whether to close. My knees wanted to bend. My eyes wanted to drop.

Something deep in my Spirit Temple, where the fog usually moved so calmly, went completely still.

’This is Divine.’

I had never felt anything like it.

Not Rashford’s fire, not the Kutur, not even Culex’s slap the night Quinn died. Next to this, all of it felt like candlelight.

I forced my gaze low.

Floor tiles.

The edge of my own boot.

That was all I let myself look at, and even that took effort. If I raised my eyes too early, I think I would have forgotten why I came here.

Beside me, Mary’s breathing had gone shallow and Lee’s jaw was clenched so hard I could hear his teeth. None of us were doing better than the others.

We pushed until the gates stopped. Then I looked up.

The throne was empty.

Culex wasn’t on it.

He was above it, hanging in the air with his long black hair drifting around him as if he were underwater. His robes hung straight down. His eyes were closed. He looked asleep, but sleep didn’t explain the pressure.

Under him, where the round hall should have had a floor, there was a pool of blood above an altar.

It was wide and perfectly still, and it didn’t smell like blood.

A single thread of light ran out of it and into Culex’s chest, thin as a hair and brighter than anything else in the room. It didn’t look like it was feeding him. It looked like it was being threaded through him, into the part of him that wasn’t his body.

’Slumber. He’s not awake. But he’s still pushing on us.’

If this was what he did asleep, I didn’t want to know what awake felt like.

Something moved on the floor in front of him, and I almost missed it.

A man was lying there.

He was so thin that for a moment I took him for a pile of robes. His skin had gone the grey of old candle wax, and his cheekbones stood out like something carved.

His wrists were bone with a little skin over them. One hand lay in the edge of the blood pool, and the red had crept up his fingers like it was drinking from him.

I knew the robes.

Dark brown, high collar.

The man who had announced Rico’s promotion with his face hidden.

The chief councilor: Qin Shoson.

I had bowed to this man for weeks. I had kept my eyes on the floor while he walked past and told myself he was someone to fear.

Now he was lying in front of his king, barely breathing, and the thread of light ran from the pool through his fingers and out of his body as if he were part of the wire.

He was alive. That was the worst part.

His chest rose, once, slowly. A little more of the color went out of his face. A little more of the thread went into Culex.

’He’s not a prisoner. He’s fuel.’

My ears went hot. They burned until I could feel my pulse in them, and a shiver ran down my spine and refused to stop. My mind did the thing it does when pieces fall into place, and I hated how fast it went.

A pool of divine blood. A thread running into a soul. A man being emptied to feed it. A king asleep in the middle of it, with his son guarding the door.

Saud hadn’t waited at the gates to stop us. He had waited to buy time.

The thing happening here was Sanctification. A ritual to become a Saint, the first real step toward godhood!

...

[Charolette’s POV]

The pressure hit me while I still had the golden creature to deal with.

It came from behind the gates, like someone had put a hand on the back of my neck.

My stomach turned over. My first thought was not about the creature in front of me. It was about Edmund, who had told me his real name not even two days ago, and who had just walked through that door. But still...

I brought my thumb to my index finger and made an oval.

’Die, you bastard.’

Star Ray shot out through the gap, a thin white line, and punched into the golden creature’s chest.

It shrieked, but the sound was short and annoyed. It didn’t slow down.

We had hit its chest, its ribs and its arms, and it kept coming. Only the back mattered, and this one kept turning to protect it.

Theodore solved that.

He jumped off a broken bench, spun in the air, and drove a kick into its left shoulder.

Something inside it gave way. If it had been a human bone, it would have snapped in two. The creature folded over on that side, one arm hanging, and for a second its back was open.

I raised my sword and let Starlight run down the blade until it glowed.

Then I went up. I pushed off the floor, and the star energy under my feet shoved me higher, and at the top I turned over and let gravity do the rest. The sword came down with all of it behind it.

The radiation was the cost. It always is. I felt the skin on my fingertips blister, a quick sharp burn, and I held on anyway.

The blade took the head clean off.

For a heartbeat I thought that was it. The head hit the floor and rolled. The body stood there.

Then the body turned around.

The bone spikes that had come out through its eyes were still there, standing out of the stump of its neck like a skeleton’s crown.

It didn’t need the head. It had never needed the head. Its backhand swung at me in a wide, blind arc and I dropped flat and rolled underneath it, feeling the wind of it ruffle my hair.

I came up on one knee. ’It still has a damn back.’

Theodore was already moving. He had been watching it too, and he came in from behind while it was still swinging and drove his fist into the middle of its spine with everything he had.

Bang!

The sound was low and deep, like a door slamming at the bottom of a well. It rolled across the hall and came back off the walls.

The creature stopped. It swayed, like a tree deciding which way to fall.

It was still alive. Barely.

I didn’t give it time to change its mind. I stepped in, set my feet, and drove my sword through the same spot Theodore had hit.

The creature went rigid, then slack, and dropped to its knees. It fell forward onto the stone and lay still.

’Ufff. Finally.’

I leaned on my sword for a second to catch my breath.

My fingers stung. My arms shook. Somewhere across the hall, Sera was wiping her blade, and Arthur was dragging himself out of a pile of broken benches.

The golden creatures were all dead.

That left the gates, and the thing behind them.

Between us and freedom, there was only one man left: King Culex.