Page 1 of The Curse of Gods (The Curse of Saints #3)

The scent of death hung heavy over Dunmeaden, thick in the air like the smoke that lingered, a constant cloud cover settling between the peaks of the Malas.

“It’s not the buildings that still burn,” she’d muttered in retort. “It’s the bodies.”

A once formidable city, with sections now reduced to mere ash in hours. Ash that crunched beneath her boots now as she walked to work.

Ash, and debris, and bone, most likely. She tried not to dwell on it.

It did no good to fixate on the dead when her skills were so desperately needed to attend to those still living.

How the infirmary—more home than her own once she’d earned her healer’s tunic—had escaped the wrath of Kakos, she didn’t know, but she thanked Mora for it daily.

Iliana rolled her shoulders as she stepped through the thick wooden doors that marked the entryway to the infirmary.

It had grown quieter, the screams of pain brought forth by the Anima both desperately fighting death and hastening its arrival having lessened as the time stretched on.

Her footsteps echoed on the stone floor as she made her way to the steel basin at the back of the hall, rinsing her hands before setting about to prepare for her shift.

Penelope appeared moments later, fingers caked with blood.

She gave Iliana a curt nod as she approached the basin, scrubbing at her skin with a vengeance.

“A loss?” Iliana asked softly, her head tilting as she took in the tense set of the healer’s shoulders.

“No,” Penelope gritted out.

Iliana bit the inside of her cheek as she watched the water run red.

The healer turned off the faucet and braced her hands on the edge of the basin, glaring down at the dirty water. “It just…seems pointless for the goddess to spare them,” Penelope murmured, her knuckles going white with her tight grip. “They’re going to die anyway. We all are.”

“Watch your tongue.”

Suja’s voice, sharp in a way it had never been before the attack, startled them both.

Iliana whirled to see the healer glaring at Penelope, no trace of her usual softness to be found.

“Such words are a disgrace to the gifts Mora has blessed you with,” Suja snapped.

“These people have enough to weather without adding your dark mood to it.”

Iliana’s hand clenched around the gauze she’d been rolling as Penelope straightened her shoulders, her chin jutting forward. Iliana waited for her acerbic retort, but Penelope merely shook her head, tears springing to her eyes as she shouldered past Suja and stomped down the hall.

Suja huffed, her lips pressing in a tight line as she moved toward the supply shelves.

“She lost her sister, you know,” Iliana murmured, her eyes fixed on where Penelope had disappeared. “In the attacks. She’s not herself.”

Suja’s brow furrowed as she yanked a jar of herbs toward her. “We all lost someone.”

Iliana opened her mouth only to close it. She had been lucky—her parents had fled and had remained unharmed. But Suja…

There was a reason she had been spending her hours in this infirmary.

Most of the Dyminara were dead, and the rest…

Well, the rest would face trial for their treason, and would likely be dead in a fortnight. No one quite knew how Kakos’s evil had seeped into the queen’s elite guard, how the Dyminara had turned their backs on their kingdom and joined the Kakos soldiers in the attack. But there were rumors.

There were always rumors.

“It does not change that there is work we must do,” Suja continued through clenched teeth, and Iliana wondered if she was trying to convince herself of the matter rather than her.

The words were similar to what the High Priestess, Hyacinth, had said in the days following the attack, when she addressed the people from the heart of the ruins. She’d taken the throne just two days after Kakos had retreated.

For stability , Hyacinth had said.

For obedience to the Divine.

For Tala.

“For her own personal gain,” Suja had spat when Iliana had asked her thoughts on the matter.

Perhaps. But what did that matter in the light of what they faced? Tala was at war. Their queen was dead. And the Second Saint?

Well, no one quite knew what to believe with regards to her. After what was found in the throne room, even the High Priestess couldn’t quell the whispers that were winding through Dunmeaden like the tendrils of smoke Iliana couldn’t seem to escape.

A dark saint.

A pawn of Kakos.

A murderer.

Our destruction.

It hurt to hear them. Iliana had been in the crowd when the saint was sanctified.

She had watched that storm of light eradicate the dark of night.

She had felt that hope swell in her chest with each bolt of lightning the saint had sent into the sky.

She wanted to believe Hyacinth—had found herself nodding along to the High Priestess’s fervent rejection of these rumors, the crown of granite heavy on her head as she shook her fist and yelled, “Let us be wary of the true enemy! It is Kakos who destroyed your homes! Kakos who has your saint!”

“Let us be wary of the true enemy! It is Kakos who destroyed your homes! Kakos who has your saint!”

Kakos, Hyacinth had declared, aided by the queen’s treasonous Enforcer.

No one had seen Will Castell since the attack, but it didn’t stop people from repeating the accusations Hyacinth had flung with red-flushed cheeks.

Treason. Manipulation. Murder.

It was rumored his own father didn’t argue in his favor. Apparently, he found his son entirely capable of committing such acts.

Iliana wasn’t sure what to believe. Neither possibility boded well for Tala. Either the saint was no saint at all, or she was, and she had fallen into the hands of those who could—and would—only cause her harm.

Perhaps the Enforcer had partnered with the Heretic King from Trahir.

There were claims he wielded Incend fire in the battle.

A Visya king is an affront to the gods. Another pawn of Kakos , people swore. But it made no sense. He and his soldiers had been fighting on the front lines for Dunmeaden. He had saved their city. They both had.

“Where’s your head, Iliana?” Suja asked, thrusting Iliana back into the present.

She swallowed, her thumb smoothing over the gauze in her hand. “Do you believe what people are saying? About the Enforcer aiding in the saint’s capture?”

Suja’s brown eyes narrowed, her lips parting in response, but a shout rang out from down the hallway.

“Sir, calm yourself! Sir!”

Suja spun on her heel and took off, Iliana just behind her. They reached the room at the far end of the hall, where a healer was hunched over the bed, his hands planted firmly on the chest of an older man who was thrashing in the sheets.

“Sir, please!” the healer begged. “It’s okay; you’re okay!”

The man’s brown eyes were wide, his olive skin wan as he jerked his head from side to side. Suja surged forward, pushing the attending healer out of the way as she gripped the man’s hands.

“Callias,” she urged, her voice soft yet demanding. “Callias, you are safe. You are safe. No one is here to harm you, Callias.”

It took Iliana a moment to realize whose room they had raced into—to stop focusing on readying her power, on intervening—and instead see not a faceless patient, but a man who she had been sure would never wake again.

But he had.

Iliana’s heart stuttered in her chest as Callias Veliri blinked, the fog in his eyes clearing as he fixed his gaze on Suja.

“Where is my daughter?” he croaked, his eyes darting across the room. “Where is Aya?”