Page 2 of The Curse of Gods (The Curse of Saints #3)

Perhaps unconsciousness was a blessing.

There was no pain here. No heavy sensation of Evie’s affinity suffocating her own power. No gleeful laughter as the Diaforaté, Andras, beat her into submission.

Because yes, perhaps unconsciousness was a blessing, but perhaps death would be even more so.

Sip.

Swallow.

Sip.

Swallow.

Live.

And then, when Evie was satisfied, back under Aya would go.

She never knew how it would happen. Evie’s power.

Andras’s fists. All she knew is that it would come: a touch of affinity that slowed her pulse or swept air from her lungs until she fainted, a fist cuffing her face, a foot cracking her ribs, fingers strangling her throat.

She welcomed it. If not death, then at least this darkness was its own sort of solace.

But then the nightmares began.

The awkward bulge of Tova’s neck, broken and twisting her head at an unnatural angle, swam across her vision no matter the dream.

Aya was in her room, carving a fresh block of wood as her mother’s voice carried a song from the kitchen, and—

There.

Tova, in the corner, mouth open in a lost scream, skin ashen in death.

She was running through the woods with Tyr, the cold air of the Malas stinging her cheeks, a grin on her face as she accelerated. Her foot caught on a branch, and she stumbled and—

There.

Tova, dead at her feet.

She was in Will’s bed, moaning in pleasure and lost in the feeling of his hands, euphoric as she finished. She drifted off, warm and sated, only to awake sometime later, hand searching the space beside her for Will, and—

There.

Tova, head unnaturally cocked on the pillow, staring unseeingly at her in the dark.

There.

There.

There.

It was the tenth time, it was the hundredth time, when Lena’s eyes appeared, glinting across the darkness of her mind.

“It’s your fault, you know,” her fellow Dyminara’s voice echoed somewhere in the recesses of her dreams.

Of course she knew.

“Tova…it’s going to be okay…tell me you won’t use your power…”

“Me. Tova. The Dyminara. The Athatis wolves. Our people. Our queen. Your mother. All dead because of you.”

Aya blinked, and the Persi stood before her, blood staining her brown skin as it dripped from the left corner of her mouth.

“The Second Saint, come to abolish darkness.” A laugh cracked from Lena’s chest, and that blood sprayed from her lips with the force of her scorn.

“When will the realm realize the truth, do you suppose?”

Lena staggered a step forward, and then another, until she was right before Aya, her hands fisting in the fabric of her shirt. Aya tried to jerk away, but her feet were anchored, held in place by…

There.

Tova, her fingers locked around Aya’s ankles, her grip iron even in death.

“You are no saint,” Lena hissed, her body swaying into Aya’s space, her face so close Aya could smell the iron that coated her teeth. “You are not chosen. You are nothing .”

There was a hand on her throat, and Aya tried to wrench it away, but she couldn’t grasp it. Not here in her dreams.

“You are nothing,” Lena said again. But it wasn’t Lena. It was Evie, her face haloed by the sun. Distantly, Aya could hear the waves crashing against the side of their stolen skiff.

That hand clenched tighter, and Aya’s lungs burned.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Her vision went dark, her mind sliding toward unconsciousness again, until there was—

Nothing.