Page 59 of Queen to the Sunless Court (Brides of Myth #2)
He Who Is Darkness
Calliste
The ground rippled, melting into a tidal wave of glistening ink that soared from it, poised to crash down.
It reshaped into the head of a giant sculpted from onyx, emerging as if from the depths of an inky ocean, with his long black hair streaming down and winding just beneath the surface.
Everything near him had dissolved into liquid, midnight-black nothingness. A crown of stars blazed in his hair. He surfaced up to his shoulders, but his size was already staggering, and it was clear to Calliste that if he rose to his full height, he would reach the ceiling of the Underworld.
Deathly pale, Eris stared at him with raw terror in her eyes and it was no wonder. His all-encompassing attention was intense and harsh enough to stir blind panic, except neither of them had anywhere to run.
“A mortal and a goddess of discord,” Erebus said, his voice splitting into multiple unsettling echoes, calm and rough, as if from sleep. “Which one of you stirred me awake?”
Calliste couldn’t utter a word, fear gripping at her throat, feeling weak and insignificant beside a deity older than her own world.
Eris trembled, stepping back once, then twice, her form paling and thinning.
But Erebus was swift and merciless, his massive hand shooting up from the liquid beneath her to grasp her.
“So it was you. Ah, but now I see.” The stars in Erebus’ hair blazed, their light reflected in his bottomless eyes, black where the whites should be.
His irises and pupils were like two full moons, their white glow skimming over the watery substance he floated in.
“An immortal hungry for strife, sucking my powers like a leech. You dared .”
“Spare me,” Eris pleaded, the torn shreds of her golden robe fluttering. “I didn’t mean to disturb you. This mortal provoked me, and I forgot myself.”
Erebus’ gaze shifted to Calliste.
She braced herself to utter the most inadequate words she had ever spoken—and she had no idea how to address an immortal capable of wiping out worlds. In the end, her only answer was the steady glow of her pendant, piercing the dimness around them.
“That is all you have to say?” Erebus asked Eris, drawing her close to his face.
“Disappointingly predictable.” His voice was like a frozen winter river at night.
“I did not wish to be awoken.” Then he enclosed Eris in his fist, pulling her beneath the surface.
Her shredded robe glistened dimly as she vanished into the depths with a muted scream that soon faded into silence.
My turn. Calliste tried to move, but she was still hollowed out and senseless.
Erebus floated closer, his unfathomable, moon-like eyes locking on her.
He seemed like a solemn, powerful priest of a dark order, and from up close, his size dwarfed her even more; she might just as well be a lone dandelion seed adrift in the vast, black ocean.
Darkness clung to him like countless moths, twisting, and fluttering and blossoming, until a tendril reached out and touched her forehead.
Her body jerked as she regained control, scrambling to her knees on what seemed like a tiny island floating on the liquid darkness surrounding Erebus, and the aftermath of the fight with Eris became clear: her body was mangled beyond repair.
The sensation of damage was still distant, as if she was numbed to it.
Perhaps Epione had been looking over her, shielding her from the agony, but Erebus now forced her to feel it, and it took all her willpower not to weep before him.
“Mortal priestess.” Erebus’ voice had changed—not echoes and swirls, but a lustrous blackness. “Why are you here?”
She paused, knowing her answer was always the same. It had been since she’d helped her first person begin their journey to recovery. “I’m here to heal.”
“I am not unwell.”
“I can also soothe.”
“Soothe me ?” Erebus’ eyes glowed, unsettlingly large from up close.
“Soothe your anger. Help you sleep again.”
“Ah. It might cost you more than you can afford.”
“The price is irrelevant.” Her pendant’s light was barely a flicker against the blaze of the stars in his crown, insignificant in the presence of this ancient force capable of wiping out immortals and worlds, making it clear how little she had to offer. But I have to try.
Shadows rippled around him. “You have the boldness of one who has dealt with immortals before. Yet you’re humble.
” He closed his eyes for a moment, leaving only the stars glinting in the darkness.
He opened them again. “I was awakened by the petty squabbles of immortal children, who have yet to learn that toying with me is courting destruction.”
“It wasn’t our intention to wake you.”
“Oh, I know exactly what has happened.” In boundless quiet, a tendril of darkness unwound in the air toward her and reached through her chest. Thick darkness swept through every cell of her body, descending to search her soul.
She bit her lip to stifle a cry as it reached the roots of her being, first looking, then searching with a stir of interest.
Time unfurled in lingering moments while she knelt before the ancient immortal—who no longer seethed, she noticed, and she didn’t dare break his silence.
“A mortal entrusted with immortal power. A fragile vessel that you are, you still took good care of it,” Erebus murmured.
“What do you mean?” she asked, then cried out as she felt a pull from every direction, as if a part of her soul was being uprooted and drawn out of her.
A wave of nausea swept over her, and she saw a sphere of emerald light, so bright it hurt her eyes.
It hovered before her, connected to her chest by a thin thread.
“Hold it in your hands,” Erebus said, withdrawing his dark tendril.
The emerald sphere glistened like a misted gem, its light singing a faraway, sweet tune that brought tears to her eyes.
“You said the price is irrelevant,” Erebus continued. “Prove it. If you hand it to me, I’ll accept it, since this is more than you’ve ever known it to be, born alongside light and dark.”
She stared at him, then at the thin thread of energy connecting the sphere to her chest, uncomprehending.
“Renewal,” Erebus explained, his voice unexpectedly taking on a sweeter tone.
“Renewal is part of creation and destruction—a part of who I am. You’ve been carrying power that belongs to me.
Now that our paths have crossed, I shall collect it from you, but you must offer it back to me freely and fully. ”
What lay behind his words, as obscure as everything surrounding them, she didn’t know, and she intuited that he wouldn’t offer an answer as to whether she would survive afterward.
But this was her chance to complete what she had begun when she let her blood drop onto the Last Pact—and everything leading up to it: as though she was following the path the Fates had set out for her to the heart of her destiny.
That sense of alignment made it easier for her to accept that this was the end. “I’ll offer it to you freely and fully.”
The streams of Erebus’ black hair glinted in the darkness as he tilted his head. “Do you not fear for your life, priestess?”
“I do. But as a mortal, I knew my life would eventually end, and I’ve been so lucky that I have no regrets.”
“What does a mortal like you consider luck?”
Her hands ached from holding the sphere of light, but sharing what was in her heart made it almost weightless.
“I was fortunate to meet a woman who wasn’t my mother, yet she gave me everything a mother would.
Then, I was lucky to meet a man who wasn’t my husband, but who offered me a love deeper than the one who called himself my husband ever did.
Lastly, I cared for a child who wasn’t mine, and came to love as if he were.
If the price for them to live is to give you all I have, I’ll pay it with gratitude. ”
Dark liquid rippled in front of Erebus as his open hand emerged, his fingers towering like stalagmites. He waited.
Calliste lowered the sphere of light onto the liquid surface before her. Through the energy thread connecting them, she fed it her power, surprised by how much still transferred into her offering. It kept growing brighter until eventually, when she searched within herself, there was nothing more.
At that moment, she heard a faint, glassy crack.
She glanced down at her emerald pendant, now charred inside and fractured with several jagged lines. She stared at it, slowly understanding the emptiness within her, as if what had kept her alive was gone. She looked up at Erebus and nudged the sphere toward him.
It floated to Erebus, illuminating the watery element. He lowered his hand, waiting for the sphere to hover above his palm, then closed his fingers around it.
A hush of eternity settled between them as Erebus weighed it in his hand, estimating its value.
“Very well,” he said, closing his eyes. One by one, the stars in his crown faded like blown-out candles.
As the last one expired, his form melted away, leaving only a ripple on the surface of the liquid darkness to hint at his presence, and soon even that smoothed into stillness.
Lying on her back in infinite darkness and silence, Calliste let out a breath.
The coldness of the ground beneath her worked its way into her bones, familiar, unmistakable.
Life drained from her in a gentle trickle.
Once there was nothing left, she would see the light of the Everlasting Enclave and her own tree, and that small certainty felt like a warm spark in the omnipresent chill.
A wave of bittersweet emotions swept through her: the joy of fulfillment, along with the sharp pang of regret. But she was at peace.
“Theron,” she whispered, his name like the last drop of sweetness on her tongue before she closed her eyes.