Page 70 of House of the Beast

Chapter

T he Heavensguard charged me as one. I would have readily given myself up for what I had done, but my body refused to listen.

Aster had taken over it completely.

These soldiers were the best of the best of House Metia. Their spearwork was precise and powerful and their coordination flawless; despite their protector now being dead, they were keeping level heads. I hoped they would be able to subdue me.

But I could only watch as my sword caught their onrush, parrying all of them with blinding speed before darting in to seek the kill.

Death guided my steps like music to a sharp waltz.

Weapons were knocked away, men driven back, by the impossible force of an elder god.

My sword sang through the air with such ferocity it was nothing more than a black blur, blood spraying in the wake of its path.

It punched through bone, tore through muscle, severed limb from torso.

Screams filled the air, and the water around me churned red.

“Aster, stop!” I cried.

But no words came from my mouth.

I felt more than saw the bolt of light zipping through the air toward me. A simple step to the side and it whipped past my cheek, coming close enough to sear the strands of my hair. Lynel Metia was already summoning another bolt between his hands.

I could have cried in relief. I didn’t even mind the way he looked at me with horror as his Heavensguard surrounded me, their spears pointed at my heart.

He should be afraid; I was too. His wide eyes went to the pile of bodies around me, and he brought his fingers up to his forehead, then forward and down.

The question was clear. Why had I done it?

I didn’t mean to , I wanted to say. I was wrong to come here. I have damned you all. Please forgive me .

Instead, what came out of my mouth was a laugh. A sharp, mean laugh. Then, a whisper: “By my decree,” said Aster in my voice, “you have no power here, Lynel Metia.”

The light between his hands sputtered into nothing. Shock twisted Lynel’s face. Then pain, as I dashed forward and put my sword through his throat. He fell to the ground, his blood mixing with that of his men in the water.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to rush to Lynel, to stanch the blood spewing from his neck. How? How had I broken another elder god’s power, simply by saying so?

Nausea surged through me, but even then, I did not stop.

The spears thrust at me were knocked away by the flat of my blade as if they were nothing more than twigs.

The Metia guards with their so very mortal reflexes were overwhelmed one by one.

My blade plunged again and again into soft flesh until I was drenched in blood.

At the end, I stood with the corpses of almost two dozen men around me, my allies who had taken a chance on me against all odds. I tried to scream.

My metal hand, sticky with blood, came up to cradle my own face. “Just a little longer,” my voice murmured to myself soothingly. “Would you like to speak to your father? I can allow you that, at least.”

My hand dropped away. I found that I had control of my mouth again.

“Fuck you!” I shrieked at the air. “Get the fuck out of me! Why did you do it? Why did you kill them, you lying son of a bitch?!”

Even as I yelled, my body began marching me toward my father.

I tried to dig my feet into the ground, tried to throw myself off-balance, but my limbs did not obey me.

I was nothing more than a passenger, and the sheer helplessness of it made me want to scream.

I stopped before him, breathing raggedly and brimming with rage and horror.

My father had not moved the entire time, and was now watching me with surprise, some wariness, but mostly amusement.

Slowly, he walked past me to where Lord Carnus’s severed head was lying on the ground and tapped it with his boot.

It rolled a bit, leaving those empty, dead eyes to stare up at me accusingly.

“You’re not in control of yourself right now, are you?” my father asked me.

“Fuck you, too!”

He laughed. A full, hearty laugh, the likes of which I had never heard from him before.

“What rich irony! For a moment I almost believed that the rumors were true—that my own daughter heard the Beast better than I did. But perhaps, in the end, the divine word was too much for you to handle. I have been favored.” He smiled with something near exultation.

“I heard his voice, telling me to offer my own men to the Wanderer until you arrived. Now their sacrifices have paid off and this fallen star is mine for the taking.”

I could only watch in horror as he marched up to the wounded, exhausted Wanderer, sword drawn.

It lifted those filaments to him, trembling in song, as if in one last attempt to sway him away.

But there was nothing it could do against his fervent mind.

With one clean thrust, he drove his sword into the Wanderer’s chest and ended its life.

Power erupted from it. The force of it would have sent me staggering back if my feet had been my own.

It all went rushing into my father, who cried out and dropped to his knees.

Water rippled around us. Starsong burst behind my eyes.

With shaking limbs he forced himself to his feet again, and the edges of him seemed to fuzz, like the twinkling lights in the sky.

He turned to me, and I could see it in his eyes: he had gotten everything he wanted.

I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream and beat my fists against the ground.

All those years I had spent yearning to be the one to take this moment from him, gone.

The endless hours training until my arms shook, studying and planning until my head was sore, staring at the ceiling on sleepless nights envisioning my victory—useless.

The vengeful dreams that had kept me going through the darkest times of my life were now irreversibly tainted by blood, by my monster’s betrayal.

I was nothing but a fool, and I had let my father win.

“My faith has paid off,” my father breathed. “Soon, I will be greater than any vessel seen by House Avera. We must go to the Church. Our god has brought my errant daughter to heel, and I will not squander this opportunity.”

My boiling blood would not allow me to stay silent even in the midst of my own self-flagellation. “Opportunity?” I spat at him. “Do you know what you’ll do to the city? You’ll destroy the whole of Kugara, throw it all into chaos for the sake of your stupid ambitions!”

“Sacrifices must be made if we ever hope to achieve anything,” he replied—words that were distressingly familiar. “You should know this—you were willing to drag our entire House down into the mud for the sake of your petty revenge.”

I faltered, unsure of how much he knew. But something in my expression must have given my thoughts away because he cast an amused look in my direction.

“You thought I wasn’t aware of your plans?

” he asked. “It was easy enough to deduce. I will admit that you were as much a thorn in my side as you wished to be—but I also knew that your pride would not let you stay away. In the end, you will still be able to make yourself useful.”

Looking very pleased with this outcome, he began leading me back toward the city and the light of the Church.

***

BY THE TIME WE REACHED THE INNERMOST CIRCLE OF SORROWSEND , I had stopped trying to resist as my feet carried me after my father.

I felt numb. A voice told him to sacrifice his own men, he had said—to lay a trap that kept the Wanderer occupied until I arrived.

My monster had brought me right to him. They had been working together.

Had it been my moment of weakness that spurred Aster to seek my father instead?

Or had they always planned for this outcome?

Had everything Aster said to me been a lie?

Hurt sliced through me, sharper than any blade.

If it weren’t for the compulsion holding me upright, moving my feet along the streets of the umbral plane, I would have fallen to the ground.

Suddenly I felt like the girl I had been eight years ago, the day I discovered my mother had died.

I wished only to curl myself back into a ball, let myself rot until everything became numb.

I should have let myself waste away then.

The worst part was that I could only blame myself.

I should have seen the ruthlessness behind Aster’s sweet words.

I hadn’t wanted to believe that he could hurt me like this, and so I had trusted in him blindly until the end.

If I had stayed away like Sevelie had warned me to, Lord Carnus and Lynel might have had a chance at stopping my father.

Now they were dead, and it was my fault.

This time, there were no terrors. The ones that weren’t dead took one look at the power emanating from Zander Avera, slayer of the fallen star, and scurried quickly away.

I prayed silently, harder than I had ever prayed, for another Pilgrim to come across us and kill us both.

But we were unmet by any resistance the whole journey back, and soon we were climbing the grand stairs that would lead us to the thing my father so wanted to find.

The first ward enclosing the Church was a sacred circle around its perimeter, a shield anchored in place by an emblem embedded in the stairs.

I entertained the brief hope that it would repel us, a hope that died as soon as it was formed.

The power that had been seething under the outline of my father’s skin, the ichor of a fallen star, flared to life as he plunged his sword down. The emblem shattered under the blade.

There was a reason the Dread Beast had been revered as the master of death for so many centuries. The elder gods of Kugara each had their own gifts, but none matched the Beast in brute strength.