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CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

GABE

HESTRAON

Those who are united in rage become one in their determination.

—The Book of Mortal Law, Tract 890

H e remembered all of this.

His vision fractured and spun as he ran through the burnt forest, through the ruins of settlements the early Church had built.

Now rubble, now new and shining, centuries vacillating in front of his eyes.

He was Gabriel Remaut, but he was also Hestraon, Hestraon as He’d never been before, as He’d always secretly wanted to be, in the most shameless depths of Himself—imbued with more power than just fire, holding half of the world’s soul.

He’d never wanted to be the only god. Not like Apollius.

But He’d wanted to be more than He was. Wanted to be someone who could bring Them all three together, finally, Him and Apollius and Nyxara all made equal.

Someone who could fight through the layers of possessiveness and jealousy that kept Apollius away from Him.

Hestraon loved Apollius, but He hated Him in equal measure.

Apollius had wanted to keep them all caged; was what Hestraon wanted so different?

To make Him be good. To change Him. To use this power They’d taken to leave the world better than They’d found it.

And Gabe wanted that, too. But he also wanted Apollius dead.

We can reason with Him.

“Fuck that,” Gabe growled as he ran on legs that knew no human weariness. “He dies today.”

There’s another way.

The path to the Fount was a shining golden road, but beside it, visible in this magic-sheen, was another. Thin and wavering, following the curves and dips, leading not just to the Fount but to the final piece of It.

When you put It back together, you can leave that part out , Hestraon said. You don’t have to wish it away. You can hold on. Make Him see reason now that We’re equal.

Gabe didn’t answer.

The world flashed by. He’d phased into fire when he left Bastian and recalibrated to new magic, then back out halfway up the mountain, driven by some instinct that told him to conserve his energy.

He also wanted to look for Lore—he assumed she was probably at the Fount with Apollius, her power somehow strung out into the god’s control so He could rule the dead, but there was always a chance she was elsewhere on the island.

He couldn’t feel her as he ran past the ruins of temples faster than any mortal could go.

Couldn’t even feel the dregs of her, traces of where she might have once been.

And when he finally reached the Fount—the broken columns framing the broken well, the collapsing cathedral—he saw why.

There was Lore. Not Lore, at least not fully.

But her form, stretched large, her skin gleaming with all the flame of the sun, the only light on the island.

Her eyes were like lighthouse beacons, piercing him; wings spread from her back, huge and unwieldy, white seamed in gold.

The sound of mournful singing was everywhere, seeming to come from the Fount.

Lore looked at him with those lighthouse eyes, tears leaking from their corners. Her expression twitched, changing emotions with tiny movements, going from triumphant to terrified.

“I did it,” she said, and it was her voice, but also not. More resonance behind it, the same kind that had been in Bastian’s. “I drank the soul of the world. Half of it. I stopped a war.”

In a way; she’d stopped the armies from fighting one another by tearing them apart with the dead, some twisted victory. Gabe edged closer, his hands up to show his candle-inked palms. In his head, Hestraon was silent. Waiting to see what he would do.

“Lore,” Gabe murmured. “Apollius.”

“Both of us.” That wasn’t her voice; that was His. Her expression changed again, not just triumphant, but gloating. “You become one, in a marriage. Finally, we’ve done it. She’s mine in every way she possibly could be.”

Gabe lunged forward, calling fire from the air and sending it toward Him in a furious torrent.

And not just fire—earth, too, and air, an onslaught of every power he had. Not to kill, because at this point to kill Apollius would be to kill Lore, but to do something . Roots tangled around the god’s ankles, a gust pushed at those monstrous wings.

The god laughed, and it was Lore’s laugh, free and loud but with a low, menacing undercurrent.

A wave of her hand; the roots severed, the wind stopped.

But the fire caught on her wings, adding more horrible light, and she raised them as they burned, though Gabe could see them blistering and knew it had to hurt.

“You could never compete with Me.” Her eyes matched her burning wings for intensity, blazing in her face, all gold with no iris.

“Did You think breaking that rock would change it? That You’d become just as strong?

” She grinned. “I know all about what You did, Hestraon, even if the others never noticed that the stone was broken. It changed nothing.”

“It wasn’t to be strong,” Hestraon answered with Gabe’s mouth. “It was to be something You could love like You loved Her.”

“Idiot,” Apollius sneered. “Both of You were tools, in the end. I just cared for one more than the other.”

It wasn’t Lore. Gabe knew that. Lore loved him and Bastian both, just like he loved both of them.

But how can you know? Hestraon asked, the question just in his mind, for Gabe alone. How can you know, when they were so much more powerful? When you could never compare to a King and a Queen?

Gabe just called more fire. He roared as he sent it out, knowing it would do nothing.

“So we’ll fight, then?” Lore’s voice and Apollius’s, braided together. “Do you think that’s wise, Gabriel?”

A sudden storm, surrounding her in clouds that filled immediately with rain; the fire on her wings was doused, leaving the scent of burnt skin and feathers, and then the storm was gone.

“This is what she is now.” Addressed to Gabe and Hestraon both, a pronouncement of ownership. “She is this, and she is Mine, and there is nothing that you can do about it. You were never more than a diversion.”

“No,” Gabe said, and he didn’t know if he was protesting on his own account or Hestraon’s.

Gabe dove forward, aiming for the god’s legs; he was easily sidestepped, and it felt like something grabbed the heart in his chest as he was slammed into the ground, his lungs seizing, organs momentarily paused in their workings. His Spiritum, held in Lore’s fist. Apollius’s fist.

A stutter in movement. Lore’s hazel eyes, momentarily surfacing from gold, brightness fading. “Hestraon.” Horror twisted her face as she saw the truth through threads of Spiritum, even as she made Apollius loosen his hold. “Gabe, what did you do?”

Apollius, again, golden-eyed, Lore’s mouth bent in a cruel smile. “Yes, beloved. He’s here. We can finally have this out.”

Gabe struck again in the seconds she’d granted him, more useless fire, more grasping vines.

Desperate to somehow unhook Apollius from Lore, to untangle the chimera they made.

Laughter, the god easily avoiding every move.

Lore burned like the sun, all the light in the world packed down into her form; she cast such long shadows.

Apollius taunted, but Gabe wasn’t even listening, concentrated only on the fight he could not win, the prize that could not be secured.

Fighting wouldn’t bring Lore back to him, but it might buy him time.

The thin golden road to the last Fount piece led to Its broken side. The last piece, his piece, and the rest burning in his pocket, making his legs numb.

He could see where they fit into the jagged lip of the Fount. All he had to do was get them there. Gabe crawled forward.

The razor tip of a shining wing, spearing toward him in the unnatural night.

Gabe tried to duck out of the way, but it caught him in the chest, sent him flying.

He landed in a crumpled heap by the Fount, ears ringing, bones that should be broken aching all the more for still being whole.

His power did not heal him, not like Spiritum had healed Bastian; it only made him linger in the hurt.

Lore fought free, one shake of her head. “You can’t win,” she said, but the last word was strangled out, her neck wrenching as Apollius came to the fore again, her voice changing mid-sentence. “Gabe, you can’t win, it’s pointless to try—”

The god crouched, eyes beaming like searchlights.

“I want to hurt you so much worse, but she fights hard against it. Because she loves you, still. She loves you, and that is why she wants you to succumb to this.” The shining hand rose, touched Gabe’s face.

It burned, not like fire but like acid. “This is the better way, Gabriel. Hestraon. I was trying to save you all along. We could never be equal, but we could be something.”

His vision was all flames, and when words came, they weren’t his own. Hestraon, using Gabe’s mouth. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”

“Of course it does.” The hand that had caressed him backhanded Gabe across the face, sent him skittering sideways in a cloud of embers.

He coughed, dirt in his teeth, futilely calling up more fire that the god sidestepped.

“I’m keeping Her safe, don’t you understand?

I could keep You safe, too. Isn’t that what You wanted? Me to care for You the same?”

Another backhand, belying the earnestness of the words. The only thing holding Apollius back was Lore. Fierce, beautiful Lore, who never knew a love that didn’t end in violence.

“I am what You are,” Hestraon said, the words making Gabe recoil even as his mouth moved. “Half the world’s soul. It can be the three of Us.”

“You,” Apollius said, casually kicking him in the ribs, “will never be what I am.”