Page 37 of Winds of Destiny

Cam

The altar is completely engulfed in red now, the three gods inside it visible only in the flashes of light that crackle through it every few seconds. It’s like there’s a lightning storm building in there, clouds of energy growing stronger by the second.

I don’t know the specifics of what this ritual is doing to the gods trapped on the altar, but I do see that whatever is happening in there, Kai and Turo are completely lost to it. Their connections to their gods are intensely personal, far more personal than what I have with Ophiucas, and neither of them can look away from the beautiful, terrible spell playing out in front of us.

Someone else is watching, too, but he’s not lost to what’s going on.

On the contrary—Embros is furious . He screams and beats his hands against the spell, throwing his power into it over and over in an attempt to stop what’s happening, but he can’t. Shevara hovers behind him like a deadly shadow, his body mimicking Embros’s movements. Bang, bang goes Embros’s hand on the spell, sparking red; thud, crash goes Shevara’s tail, beating against the ground in time.

“It’s all wrong!” Embros shrieks. “All wrong, wrong—they’re not the right symbols! They’re not the right ones! ”

I take advantage of his distraction to move closer and get a better look at Kai’s wounds. He’s black and blue everywhere Embros hit him, bleeding from his mouth and a cut over his eyebrow, not to mention the one on his throat, but he’s going to be all right.

“You’re a beautiful sight,” I tell him. I don’t even care that he isn’t hearing me, his eyes locked firmly on Carnuatu’s struggle. I want him to know that I’m here. We’re together now, all three of us. Nothing can break us apart now, not even—

“No gods without worshippers,” Embros mutters, staggering away from the altar. He doesn’t seem to see me, all his focus internal. “No gods without… It can still be stopped.” He lifts his head and focuses all his terrible attention on Turo, who’s standing a few feet from my side. “It can still be stopped,” he growls, and he extends his hand toward Turo. Shevara lunges, covering the ground far too quickly.

It hits me like a blow to the heart—Embros can stop the ritual by killing Turo. If he dies, then his god will vanish. And if Turo dies, I…

Fuck no!

I don’t have a weapon, but I don’t need one. I raise my arms and my power rises inside me, the force of a gale at my fingertips. It’s never been easier to summon the wind, and I use mine to blow Shevara back before the snake can close the distance and sink his fangs into Turo.

The gale catches the cobra’s hood like a sail, shooting him up into the air and far away from us. Embros watches his god bounce off the temple wall a hundred feet away. Whatever scrap of sanity was left in him leaves his face, perhaps forever, as it contorts into a grimace of violence and fury.

“Grrraaaaahhhhh!” Embros draws on his own power, poisonous green gathering between his hands. He builds up an enormous cloud of it and sends it straight toward us.

I call on the wind again, the action as easy as breathing now, and blow the poison back until it dissipates into nothingness.

The lightning inside the altar is getting faster, fiercer. The gods are being drawn together, compressed. It’s hard to tell them apart—a ram with wings, a lion turned black, a cat that goes from the size of my hand to practically filling the entire altar space all on its own. It’s so mesmerizing that I almost don’t notice the jet of bright green liquid coming at me until it’s here. Another summoned gust blows it away, spreading it across a thousand tiny droplets that hiss as they hit the floor.

Venom. It seems Shevara didn’t stay down for long.

I turn my wind on him once more and push him back, but the snake god has his hood tucked in tight to his body now. He learned his lesson, and he doesn’t go more than ten feet before he wraps his body around one of the pillars. The wind is intense, but so is his strength. I can’t pry him off.

Embros is ignoring me now. He’s in a posture of prayer, down on his knees, back arched and arms out in a semicircle around his head, a clear imitation of Shevara’s hood. His eyes are closed, every inch of him bent toward supporting his god…and it’s working.

Despite the powerful wind I’m bringing to bear on Shevara, the snake is gradually unwinding himself from the column. The god stays low to the floor, no rearing or displays of any kind as he slowly but steadily slinks across the stones toward me.

Tiredness tugs at my limbs.

The wind feels like a living thing to which I feed my own energy, and I don’t have a lot of that left. Ophiucas, please, help me! I pray to my god, but I already know he’s not going to be able to do more, not trapped the way he is.

It doesn’t matter. What matters is keeping Shevara away from Turo, who’s still entranced by my side, completely helpless. I have to keep him alive, I have to save him. We just need to last until the chimera is reborn, and then… Then his god will be in control.

I have no idea what the result of that will be, but I’m damned well going to be alive to see it, and so are Turo and Kai.

I’ll have to turn the wind on us and fly us away, which means that first I need to turn it away from Shevara. It’ll be a race, and I don’t even know if I can make us fly, but I have to try.

Shevara is getting closer, fangs gleaming. Green pools in the back of his throat, ready to spray at us.

Hold him off just long enough to—

Suddenly, the snake god freezes. He could be a statue, he’s so still. I can see the venom still churning in his throat, but Shevara doesn’t release it, not even when I tentatively relax my hold on the wind. He’s locked in place, stuck for some reason. But why?

I look over to Embros for a clue just in time to see Dian jerking a paw-like hand, each finger tipped with a long, leonine claw, from where she’s dug it into his back. She’s limping, and her other arm looks broken, but no pain can diminish the pure satisfaction I see in her face as Embros topples over onto the floor.

Shevara slowly comes out of his shock.

There’s no time to think. I move on instinct, running over and grabbing Turo’s sword from its scabbard. Shevara has just enough time to twist his baleful head to stare straight at me before I swing as hard as I can and, with a shout, chop straight into the side of the snake god’s neck.

Blood gouts, and I pull back and cut again. This would never be possible anywhere else—Kamorans number in the tens of thousands, and they all worship Shevara. But this place has made immortals into something changeable, and Shevara’s only remaining connection to Inarime is dead. The snake god will survive, but he won’t be here .

With the last of his strength, he tries to lash out with his tail, perhaps get me in a coil and twist now that I’ve cut through over half of his neck. But I dodge it, hop right over the thick golden body, and strike one, three, five more times. I sever the spine on the fifth blow, and Shevara collapses in a writhing heap. Blood gets everywhere—on me, on Kai and Turo, even as far as Dian and Embros. Even as far as the altar itself.

And the altar reacts.

The lightning coalescing into a ball inside the blood-red curtain suddenly fizzles out. The barrier at the edge of the altar vanishes, and, a second later, our gods leap free of it, entirely themselves once more.

“What—”

Oh, wait.

I fulfilled the terms. I killed a god here.

This ritual began in death, and now it’s ended in death—even though Shevara wasn’t on the altar. The ritual must be over.

The thought disturbs me, and it takes a moment to understand why. Embros overcomplicated everything! He could have sacrificed Shevara and gotten the same damn result without involving any of the rest of us, that stupid—

“Cam!”

I stagger as Turo throws himself at me, wrapping me up tighter than Shevara would have for a moment before pulling back and staring at me like I’ve gone mad. “What did you do?”

“I…” I don’t know , I want to say, but the truth is that I just don’t want to say it out loud. Luckily for me, Kai is there a moment later, and now it’s my turn to grab and hold like I never want to let go again.

“I can’t believe you ,” I say, half laughter and half tears. “I can’t believe you were going to let Embros cut you into—and you’re a prince! A fucking prince! ” I hit him on the shoulder—not hard, because he’s looking a bit fragile for a giant right now, but enough to let him know I’m not going to forget this part. “I’ve been married to my actual husband all along, and you didn’t think that was something I would want to know?”

“I…wanted to make sure you liked me first,” he mumbles against the crown of my head.

“ Like you ? I don’t like you, you stupid, idiot, son of a— You think I like you? I love you, you godsdamn ridiculous—and you lied to me, and I’m angry about that, and I’m going to be angry for a very long time—”

“At least as long as it takes for us to get him into a bed,” Turo interjects, because he’s a jerk , and—

All of a sudden it hits me that this is real. Turo and Kai—Prince Eleas— whatever his name is, they’re real. They love me, and I love them, and they even love each other. And they want to go to bed with me .

I might pass out from the sheer, glorious shock of it all.

“Breathe, Camrael.” Kai strokes my back gently. “Breathe. It’s all right, whatever’s going on in that wonderful head of yours. Just breathe, relax. We’ve got you now.”

They do. They’re here, and they have me, and if I get any say in it, they’ll never leave me again, ever.

I get a sense of being towered over, and a moment later Carnuatu ruffles my hair with his breath. Rhianan is standing right beside him, still enormously tall, silver specks in her fur and an understanding light in her eyes.

“She’s happy you saved her,” Turo offers on his god’s behalf. “She didn’t really want to be the lead head on a chimera.”

Kai looks at his god. “You shouldn’t have come for me,” he says, something broken in his voice. “I’m not worth the risk.”

Carnuatu bumps their foreheads together, a clear message: You are if I say you are. Then he turns and walks away down the long central hall of the temple, and just like that, he’s gone.

“Well… That’s very final, I suppose.” Kai blinks and looks from where Carnuatu just vanished back to us. “Um. So, is that it? Is it all over, then?”

I tilt my head and smile at my men. “It does seem a bit…anticlimactic, doesn’t it?”

Turo rolls his eyes. “What do the pair of you want, trumpets? A choir? For the air to change color or the ground to shake or—”

The rumble that suddenly starts up under our feet cuts Turo off for a second. “That wasn’t a suggestion!” he shouts, but the rumbling intensifies and the temple itself feels like it’s suddenly being thrust into the air. We tumble to the ground, grabbing each other and holding on with desperate strength as the world rocks and shakes like it’s ripping itself apart. The temple holds firm, though, and after a few interminable minutes—or possibly seconds, it’s hard to say—the sound grinds to a halt.

It’s so much lighter. That’s the first thing I notice, the way the shadows have all changed. Instead of a few rays of sunshine squeezing through the temple ceiling, there’s light all around us, casting long shadows from the columns that nonetheless seem insignificant. I get to my feet first, helping up Kai, then Turo. Turo’s cat god is gone—where, I don’t know, but I have the feeling she’s not far. I pull my men with me, heading for the end of the rainbow hall.

When we finally step outside…

Everything is different.

The entire city of Inarime has risen, settling back into place on top of the water instead of inside a sinkhole. The temple, as the highest point in the city, has a perfect view of the sea beyond it—not glassy and smooth anymore, but rippling from the force of the winds blowing all around us.

“They’re back,” I murmur at first, and then yell. “The everwinds are back!”

We’re not in danger of being blown away, but it’s more wind than I’ve ever felt before that didn’t come from me. It seems to spread out from the temple itself, whirling out in all directions. This isn’t a return to the past. This is something entirely new.

I lift my hands, and the wind shapes itself around me, playful and intuitive. It’s so easy to use when I don’t have to generate it all myself. I close my eyes and dance with it, let it support me, embrace me. It feels like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. I’m so—

“ Camrael !”

I open my eyes and look around, but I don’t see anyone.

With a sinking stomach, I glance down.

Turo and Kai are staring up at me in a mix of awe and horror.

I suppose that makes sense since I’m probably fifty feet above the ground.

The moment I let my thoughts interrupt the feel of playing in the wind, my control evaporates. The winds become nothing more than air moving past me again.

And then I’m falling.