Page 74 of The Curse of Gods (The Curse of Saints #3)

Aya stared at the granite throne unseeingly, lost to the memories of the last time she’d stood in this room. She swore she could still hear the crack of Tova’s neck reverberating throughout the space.

They’d dragged Will to the dungeons, leaving Aya to her own fate. He’d stayed calm until they tried to separate them, and then he’d thrashed against them, his neck craning to keep Aya in his sights.

An Anima had rendered him unconscious a moment later.

Aya closed her eyes, as if that would stop her tremors. They’d shackled her, of course, but this iron didn’t carry the heavy restriction of her affinities the way the shackles in Kakos had. Not that it mattered. Aya’s power might as well have been buried in the deepest parts of her.

She wasn’t sure she could manage a wisp of it, not with the way grief and panic were warring inside of her.

She’d expected this—to be greeted not as a weary woman returning home, but as a threat. A criminal. A prisoner. She’d expected this. But she hadn’t expected it to be them .

It shouldn’t feel like such a betrayal. But it did . Gods, it did, and Aya hated how the sting of it tugged at her heart, dragging it into the pit of her stomach as she waited.

A loud click sounded from behind her—the throne room doors opening.

Aya did not bother turning around to greet the new queen, but she tracked every one of her soft steps toward the throne.

Hyacinth stopped just before it, her head tilting as she considered the granite chair,.

Her shoulders rose and fell with a deep breath as she turned to face Aya, opting to stand instead.

She had shed her sheer off-white veil, trading it for the crown of granite Aya had last seen on Gianna, now nestled atop Hyacinth’s red hair. Aya wondered how long the High Priestess had waited before she plucked it off the queen’s dead body and placed it on her own head.

Hyacinth’s maroon Priestess robes, however, remained, and they swished against the floor as Hyacinth closed the distance between them. She stopped just before Aya, a small pinch forming between her brows as she held her gaze.

Silence lingered, full of the same tension that used to hover in those sessions in Hyacinth’s office in the Synastysi. Had she known, then, what she was doing? That in having Aya study Evie, she was opening up a channel between her and the demigod so that Evie could return?

It felt like a lifetime ago that Aya had sat petulantly in that chair, refusing to engage with Hyacinth’s pointed questions. One of them rose to her mind now, an echo of a past Aya felt so far from.

Why is it you believe the worst in yourself?

Because she had felt as though claiming her role as the Second Saint was the worst sort of betrayal to her people. A lie that she loathed telling them because she didn’t know how to save them.

But now…now they were the ones who believed it to be a lie, and they had made their retribution known. She could only hope that Hyacinth would hear reason, that Hyacinth would be the one to not see the worst in her.

“You came back,” Hyacinth finally spoke. “Why?” Her lilting voice held that same curiosity it had during those discussions in the Synastysi. She looked at Aya not like a threat, but something strange to be observed.

Aya swallowed hard, willing her mind to stay present. She could not lose herself in the past, not even with the horrors she’d witnessed in this room begging for her to return to them so that they might torment her more fully.

“I know the rumors you’ve heard. I understand why it is difficult to believe anything else,” Aya began, her voice steady even with the way the buzzing in her head lingered.

She couldn’t shake the smell of blood from her nose, despite the fact she knew the throne room had been cleaned of it months ago.

“But Hyacinth…you have to listen to me. I am not the Dark Saint the realm thinks I am.”

Hyacinth blinked, her hands clasping in front of her. “So it is not you who killed a shipload of prisoners in Sitya? It is not you who has driven the gods to seek retribution across the realm?”

Her voice remained light, but her skepticism was evident in the way her eyes narrowed. Aya reached for patience as she shook her head.

“It’s Evie,” she told her. “The Original Saint has returned. I brought her back through the veil during the Battle of Dunmeaden.”

That small furrow in Hyacinth’s brow deepened, but she stayed silent. Aya seized it for the opportunity that it was.

She told Hyacinth everything—from the dreams she’d had, to the desperation that had led her to pull Evie through the veil, to the revelations that Evie had made with regards to Gianna and her own lineage.

“You once told me her path was one of isolation and darkness, too, but that she did not let it consume her. You were wrong, Hyacinth,” Aya finished. “She’s not a saint, she’s a demigod, and she plans to kill the gods for what they’ve done to her.”

For a long moment, Hyacinth simply stared at her. Aya’s pulse leapt into her throat as she awaited the High Priestess’s judgment.

“You dare to accuse the gods of murder?” Hyacinth finally spoke, her whisper sharp. Pink splotched high on her cheeks as she shook her head in disgust. “I have devoted my life to studying and worshipping the Divine, and you make a mockery of them with these lies .”

“Why would I lie about this?” Aya asked desperately. “Why would I return alone and unguarded if I were working with Kakos?”

“But you were not alone. Your precious Enforcer was with you.”

“And neither of us raised a finger against the guards you had waiting,” Aya bit out, her anger mounting. “I could have leveled them with a single brush of my hand, and yet I let them bring me here. Why would I do that if these rumors were true?”

“I’ve brought you to Katadyré,” Hyacinth mused. Aya frowned at the mention of the prison island. What did that have to do with anything?

“You’ve seen what guilt and desperation for repentance does to people,” Hyacinth continued. “I imagine this is your own search for redemption. Or perhaps it’s simply another trap you’ve laid. Either way, I will not fall for it.”

Aya’s irons rattled as she curled her hands into fists, her nails biting into her palms, as if she could contain her rage in those small points of pain. “Our people have already suffered because of their queen’s zeal. Do not make the same mistake, Hyacinth. I am begging you.”

She had not come this far to simply let the High Priestess continue on as Gianna had. This devotion to the Divine was devoid of full understanding, and it had to stop. Hyacinth had to make it stop .

“Our people have suffered because of you,” Hyacinth snapped, her voice sharp with anger in a way Aya had seen only once before—in a meeting room in this very palace, when Gianna had first spoken of the Decachiré returning.

Hyacinth paused, her lips pressing into a firm line. Her spine straightened as she schooled her face into something more composed. “But I will give them the justice they are due.”

As if they hadn’t already tried to enact their own justice. They had burned her father beyond recognition. They had murdered him in cold blood, and all because they could not see Aya for who she was.

A year ago, she might have even agreed with them. But after all she had sacrificed for her kingdom, for her people…

Aya had not lied when she spoke of her rage to Evie. But she had tried to understand, tried to reason with herself and remind herself that there were innocents among them. But were there?

The whole reason Aya had sought out Hyacinth was because she’d known facing the people without support would be a lost cause. And yet her own comrades had handed her to another zealous queen without taking a mere second to consider her innocence.

They are not deserving of your mercy.

She hated how easily the demigod’s words rose in her mind.

She hated how easily she agreed with her.

Hyacinth cleared her throat, her gaze moving beyond Aya to the back of the throne room. Aya turned to see Yara standing just inside the door. She hadn’t even realized she’d been present.

But Yara didn’t deign to spare her a glance. She kept her focus on the High Priestess as Hyacinth said, “Let the people know the Dark Saint and the Enforcer have been captured. Tell them that they will be beheaded in the throne room for their crimes at midnight.”

***

Will was painfully acquainted with the palace prison cells. He’d tortured enough poor souls within them to recognize exactly where he was when he rose to consciousness—and to know there was no chance of an escape, at least not without aid.

He leaned his head back against the rough stone wall, his shackles clanking with the movement. There was a sort of poetic justice in this, he supposed. He had committed enough sins within these very walls that it was only fitting that his own demise should happen here as well.

The thought did nothing to cool his ire.

He shifted, wedging his body further into the corner of the room. They’d put Aya in a cell next to him, and though both were entirely enclosed, a small hole in the wall made it so that they could speak to one another.

It was through that hole he’d learned of their fate. And it was through that hole that he was trying, desperately, to reason with her.

“You could easily use your power to break us free from here,” he muttered, his voice low so the patrolling guards would not hear. “Hells, Aya, you could have killed Hyacinth where she stood.”

He wasn’t angry at her, but his tone was sharp regardless, his fury at the realm at large unable to go unheard.

“I could have,” she agreed quietly. “And then I would also have to kill every guard, Dyminara or otherwise, that stood in our path.”

And they would deserve it, Will thought viciously. But he bit back the words. Aya wasn’t finished.

“And then what?” she asked. “We address the people as murderers of their queen and those who vowed to protect them?”

“ We vowed to protect them,” Will seethed.

They didn’t deserve her. None of them deserved her.

“Either way,” Aya breathed, “I end up being exactly what they feared.”

Will shoved his head back against the rock, the pain no match for what was aching in his chest.

The distant memory of an old argument on a terrace of Trahir rose to mind: him, urging Aya to kill anyone in her path if it meant she’d live to see another day. He still wanted her to do it. Damn these people to the lowest layers of the hells.

They didn’t deserve her.

“Aya…”

“It doesn’t matter,” she whispered. “No matter what I do, I’m painted as the villain. And I’m…” Her words cracked, and she paused for a moment. “I am exhausted.”

Grief hollowed him out as he caught the wetness in her voice. She couldn’t give up now. Not after all they’d been through.

Fight with me. Fight with me, dammit.

And yet…

He couldn’t bring himself to make that plea of her. Not when she’d carried the weight of this fight for far too long.

“So what do we do now?” he asked instead.

Aya was silent for so long, he wondered if she had answers to give. He had plenty, but…he did not know how to ask her to continue to bear this burden. Not when he could hear the agony in her voice.

“Hyacinth will bring us before a crowd,” Aya finally said heavily. “I can make my case then.”

A muscle feathered in Will’s jaw as he swallowed down a thousand retorts.

Executions like this were typically held in front of nobility and upper merchants, but not for the purpose of a fair trial.

They were a spectacle for the rich. It was too much of a risk to trust them to hear reason.

Not when they were so fearful. Not when they were so selfish.

We should fight.

But Aya sniffed, and Will’s chest tightened, and when she spoke again, her voice was thick. “Will you do me a favor?”

“Anything,” he vowed.

“Will you just…be here with me?”

The request was soft, vulnerable. Godsdammit, what Will wouldn’t give to tear this hole in the stone wider so that he could hold her. He settled instead for forcing his affinity across the small space between them.

She’d already lowered her shield.

His eyes burned as he poured every ounce of love he had into that small tendril of power between them.

“Always, Aya love.”