Page 138 of The Lost Reliquary

At first, there’s no answer, the divine power that has infused me since I was a child a distant, papery thing, tied to a near corpse lying on a cold stone floor. I reach for it, straining into that growing ashen darkness without letting it take me. My own memories rise—that first rush of divinity, the slice of a blade through my skin, the feeling of sinking sickles into flesh.

A taste of a gifted pastry. The loss of a very good horse.

The first time Nolan laughed and meant it.

I stop calling the flame anddemandit. This time, it answers, an ocean wave of burning blue, orange, and red. The blaze envelopes me, wraps around me like a new flesh, bringing Tempestra with it. Dragged from whatever place a dead goddess goes to, their existence folds back into mine, their divine light infusing the entity of us. I let it happen. Imakeit happen. Because out in the world I’d so wished to leave behind, there is someone that needs me.

And all it costs me is my freedom.

Now, finally, Tempestra gets the full measure of my hate, my desire to be rid of them and embrace what little bit of independence I had during my time with Nolan. There is no judgement; as we merge, they understand. They disagree, but understand.

I have always loved you. All of you.

And we loved you. But only because we had no choice.

Youstill. Notus. I feel our minds weave together, but the threads remain their own colors.

Not forever. Eventually we will be one.

But not now. I have time.

I have time. And I have myself.

Now shut the hell up and heal us, “Mother.”

It is already happening. In that faint feeling that is my…ourbody, blood begins to pump again; skin stretches and knits itself back together. The gray cold recedes behind the warmth of the Flame, which drives death back to a place more distant than ever before.

And oh, oh, there’s more… The world feels like a garment around me, tight in some spots and loose in others, itchy and rough, silken and fine, and when I press back against the discomforting spots I feel it answer, try to obey my will. Such awareness of the stone, and the bone, and the dead things I—theyonce called children. And life too… little flickers of it… still fighting to remain.

Nolan is there, blood singing, but so quietly now.

And something else.

Lys, daughter, it is almost…

I know. I sit up, body again in full working order, and stronger in ways there’s no chance to contemplate.

Because something else is here. Someone new.

And they are looking at me through Nolan’s eyes.

Fifty-four

Some will listen. Some will come.

—OSIRON

WE ARE TOO LATE.

Tempestra and I succeed in our joining, but not before Osiron finished his work: A new divinity has been born into the Devoted Lands.

Desperate, I search familiar eyes for the recognition theyshouldhold, but find nothing, and though I know Nolan is still in there, the deity is in control now.

It’s weak. He belongs to me. It can be forced out of him.

I can feel Nolan. Blood sings to blood. And he was part of me—of Tempestra—first. Osiron might have called in a new tenant, but they couldn’t get rid of that claimed territory. And now that I have a goddess inside my head, I understand.

That is how I get Nolan back.