Page 104 of The Lost Reliquary

“You were given a test.” Rion, placid to a level that is increasingly maddening, traces the whorl of a knot in the wooden table with a finger. “One you passed.”

“We couldn’t take you on your word.” Avery is apologetic. “We needed to know that, given the chance, you would truly stand against Tempestra-Innara.”

Can’t exactly fault that, as much as I want to. “That doesn’t explain how or why I just saw them.”

“You are a unique opportunity, Lys.” Rion ignores my inquiry and stares—a searching, probing gaze that makes me want to squirm. “As far as I know—and I know quite a bit—the divinely Chosen have only ever turned against each other, never their masters.”

“Maybe they’re all smarter than I am.”

“Maybe,” Rion concedes. “Or perhaps everything occurs, even the seemingly impossible, given enough passage of time. At the bookshop, you told me you believed Tempestra-Innara was the only goddess.”

“That’s right. And no one better get the silly idea that I believe in your cause. I may be a traitor, but it’s for one reason: freedom. Specifically, mine. I know better than to believe the old gods are gonna come roaring back becauseyoukept the faith and got rid of the competition.”

Avery’s eyes take on a fervent brightness, a grin spreading on hislips. “We don’t need to believe,” he says. “We know the dead gods are dead. But they’re still here.”

This is making less sense by the minute. “I don’t understand.”

“They’restill here.” Avery smiles even wider. “Another divinity. The Whisperer.”

The—?

Fuck.I have made a very bad decision. Not only have I surrounded myself with heretics, but I have willingly walked into a cave full of lunatics. I’m on my feet immediately.

“Okay, that’s it. I knew you all had to be mad to take on the Goddess, but at least I could relate. This? The Whisperer fell eons ago. They’redead.”

“With all due respect,” says Rion in a new tone, one that sends a familiar shiver through me, “I’ll have to disagree. Because I feel very much alive.”

Forty-one

Weakest of the gods, the Whisperer tried to manipulate their siblings, turn them against each other. Instead, they came together in unity, a force against which the Whisperer could not hope to stand. They were destroyed, their power so insignificant, their followers so few, that unlike all future divine deaths, they left no trace upon this land…

—THE DIVINE HISTORIES, VOL. II (RESTRICTED TEXT)

OSIRON… THE FIRST GODto die.

A lie. A delusion. A game. This must be one of those things, or all of them, since there’s no possible way the Whisperer has survived for as long as this in secret.

And yet…

No, it can’t be possible. I am clearly in the eye of some storm of unchecked heretical madness. I consider fleeing—fighting my way out, if necessary. Wandering in the labyrinthine cliffs for as long as it takes to escape.

Instead, all I can manage is to echo what was asked of me: “Prove it.”

Rion tips his head. “Haven’t I already?”

“What—oh.” The changing passages, the vision of Tempestra-Innara… “Not enough. You could be trying to pass off some druggy hallucinations as divine.”

“Fair enough,” he says. “Please sit, though.”

“I’ll stand, thanks.”

The stone beneath my feet suddenly shifts. The mosaic floor churns briefly before lurching up, encircling my wrists. I am yanked downward, back into my seat, the liquid stone solidifying again. Then comes the hiss, a nearly imperceivable reverberation whose source seems to be everywhere. The two faces before me ripple, change. Across the table suddenly sit Morgan and Prior Petronilla.

The sound stops. I blink.

Rion and Avery are back.

And I am still trapped, but sufficiently convinced. Rion is a godsdamned god.