1
BERU
Beru gazed out at the Witnesses gathered before the altar, a sea of black and gold. Pallas’s palm rested gently on her shoulder, a reminder to the Witnesses, and to Beru, who was in control here. Her skin crawled. The god was restless, bristling beneath Pallas’s hand, straining against the Four-Petal Seal that kept it bound inside her.
She could feel the god’s vitriol, the ever-present desire to strike Pallas down, a low hum in the back of her mind.
“Today,” Pallas intoned, “is a day of glory. A day of divine judgment, where the wicked are punished and the worthy rewarded.”
His long fingers dug briefly into Beru’s shoulder as he nodded at Lazaros. The Witness slunk like a shadow toward her, his Godfire scars gleaming in the torchlight.
His hands were cold as they unlocked the Godfire collar that circled Beru’s neck. As the metal drew away from her skin, Beru felt the sudden jolt of the god’s power flowing through her. It was almost painful.
WE COULD STRIKE HIM DOWN, the god whispered in her mind. WE WOULD BE FREE.
Without the collar to contain it, the god’s hatred seeped through Beru like acrid poison. She closed her eyes against it and stepped up to the edge of the altar, raising her hands. She could feel the invisible currents of esha that reverberated throughout the temple, and with a twist of her wrist she tugged on them, flinging the temple doors open. Bright white light flooded the sanctum. The revelers gasped in awe.
Pallas’s voice echoed through the chamber. “Who among these faithful will be the first to receive revelation?”
The crowd parted, and a Witness dressed in black and gold robes marched toward the altar. A woman in chains stumbled along behind him, her dark hair lank and loose around her shoulders. She looked frail and dirty, a trapped, half-starved creature, but there was a ferocious gleam in her eyes.
“Immaculate One,” the Witness said, bowing to Pallas as he reached the altar. He turned to Beru. “Holy Creator. I seek revelation, and I bring you this unholy sinner to receive your judgment.”
The chained woman trembled as she stood before them, but her gaze didn’t falter.
Beru felt sick. She used to score her body with alchemical ink—one mark for every murder her sister had committed to keep Beru alive. She bore no physical marks for the people whose Grace she had stolen over the past two moons, yet she knew her count far outnumbered Ephyra’s. Her horror never abated; each was as awful as the first had been.
“Come forward,” Pallas said, stepping aside to let the Witness and his captive onto the altar.
The Witness knelt at Beru’s feet. The captive resisted, standing tall, until a violent yank on the chains sent her stumbling to her knees with a sharp cry.
Beru knew what Pallas wanted her to do, the role he wanted her to play. And she knew, too, that she would play it. But she would make him wait, first. Make him wonder if maybe this time, she would refuse. Maybe this time, she would decide this game wasn’t worth playing any longer.
Maybe this time, she would strike.
Every order Pallas issued was a careful calculation. What would he ask her to do next? Would it be awful enough to make her hesitate? To make her refuse? Open defiance from Beru would mean punishment for Ephyra, whom Pallas had locked in the citadel. But Pallas didn’t know what Beru’s limit was.
Beru didn’t know, either.
She raised her hands, the god’s power surging into her palms and fingertips like cold fire. The captive stared up at her, mutinous. Beru made herself take in the woman’s face, her wide brown eyes and the stern set of her mouth, as she reached with the god’s power and grabbed hold of the pulsing warmth of the woman’s Grace. The captive let out an anguished cry as Beru spread her fingers and pulled against the woman’s Grace, unraveling it thread by thread from her body.
Beru closed her eyes against the horrific sound of torture. That sound would ring in Beru’s head, joining the other screams and shrieks that haunted her. In a moment, it was over—the woman collapsed, her Grace ripped out of her.
“The abomination has been cleansed,” Pallas intoned. “And now the righteous rewarded. What was corruption has been purified, transformed into a blessing for the faithful few.”
The Witness kneeling at Beru’s feet rose.
Beru extended her hands again, and the bright, shivering Grace she’d ripped out of the captive swirled around the Witness as Beru carefully knitted it to his esha. The Witness cried out, falling to his knees.
Before Beru knew what was happening, she was whirling around toward Pallas, Godfire leaping from one of the torches and into her hands. Pallas froze, his blue eyes wide. The god’s vicious satisfaction oozed through Beru as the crowd behind them gasped.
Beru slammed her eyes shut, heaving in a breath as the god wrestled for control. She could feel it, like a dark fog invading her mind.
She reached for a memory to drive it back.
When I was seven, I found a bird with a broken wing beneath the acacia in the yard, she thought. I brought Ephyra to it, and she healed it.
She saw the memory in her mind, holding on to it tight. The way the bird’s little feathered chest had trembled when Ephyra touched it. The way it had hopped away from them, shifted its healed wing. The little warble it had made when it flew away, joining the other birds high up in the branches of the acacia.
The details of the memory grounded her. Reminded her of who she was and what she could feel. She let those feelings fill her like light, breaking through the fog.
YOU WANT TO, the god said, pushing against the seal. I CAN FEEL THE DESIRE IN YOU. YOU WANT TO END HIM AS MUCH AS I DO.
Between one breath and the next, she considered it. Killing Pallas. Letting the god go free.
But she couldn’t. As evil as Pallas was, the god would be worse. If she set the god free, then there was nothing to stop it from wreaking total devastation upon the world, the way it had in Behezda, with Beru just a passenger inside the beast.
She felt a presence at her side. Lazaros hovered behind her, ready to restrain her with Godfire chains if need be.
She dropped her hands, letting the Godfire extinguish, and turned back to the Witness and the chained woman on the altar. The Witness groaned and climbed to his feet.
“Behold!” Pallas said, stepping smoothly out in front of Beru as if nothing was amiss.
The Witness took a lurching leap, his newly stolen Grace launching him farther and higher than an ordinary human could manage. It was a clumsy and somewhat inept demonstration, but he would learn to wield his Grace in time.
Beru met Pallas’s icy gaze. Dread pooled in her gut. Though she’d managed to stop the god, the damage was done. And Ephyra would pay for it.
* * *
That night, they returned to the Archon’s residence in the citadel, and Beru to her collar. She was used to the slight sting of the collar by now, and it was a relief not to feel the god’s emotions encroaching on her mind like storm clouds.
Beru took a seat by the fire, and Lazaros lurked by the window. Lazaros was her own personal shadow—standing guard to ensure that the god inside Beru was under her control and that Beru herself didn’t step a toe out of line. For as much as Pallas seemed to enjoy ordering Beru around in front of his followers, he did not elect to spend any time alone with her. He knew very well how the god longed for his death as much as it longed for freedom.
Beru found Lazaros unsettling. The Witnesses flocked to Pallas for a variety of reasons, but Lazaros’s devotion went above any of them. He’d burned out his own Grace just to prove it. That kind of devotion defied explanation—Beru had sensed that even some of the other Witnesses were wary of Lazaros.
Even after two months, she had not quite gotten used to his watchful gray eyes, the jagged pattern of scars that crisscrossed his face, or the careful way he held himself. But what unnerved her most was the way he stared at her so reverently. To Pallas, she was a tool, but to Lazaros she was something to worship. She didn’t know which one she hated more.
As the sky darkened outside Beru’s window, a knock came at the door. Lazaros slunk over and opened it.
Ephyra stalked inside, flanked by two other Witnesses. Godfire cuffs encircled her wrists, although unlike Beru’s collar, they were never allowed off. Beru noticed a fresh welt across Ephyra’s cheek, and the stiff way she walked hinted that there were more injuries Beru could not see.
Beru rose from her seat and went to her sister, embracing her.
“Thank you for delivering her,” Beru said to the Witnesses in a clipped tone. “You may leave now.”
They hesitated as Beru stared them down, casting their gazes over her shoulder, where Lazaros skulked. Only when he signaled did they retreat.
“Bring us some supper,” Beru called after them.
“And some wine!” Ephyra added.
The second the door clicked shut, Beru seized her sister’s chin to get a closer look at the welt.
“I’m fine!” Ephyra huffed, batting away Beru’s hand and flinging a nervous glance at Lazaros.
“I’m sorry,” Beru said plaintively. The welt seemed to shine on Ephyra’s face, a reminder from Pallas that it was Ephyra, always Ephyra, who would suffer for Beru’s disobedience.
These meetings with her sister were part of the negotiation between Beru and Pallas, but it was not lost on Beru that they provided Pallas with something else to use against her. A gift offered that could easily be revoked if Beru disobeyed.
“Don’t be,” Ephyra replied, a hint of pride in her voice. She reached into the fold of her jacket. “Brought you something.”
Lazaros shot toward them. Ephyra rolled her eyes but dropped the proffered item into his hand. It was just a seashell, collected from the cove that the Archon Basileus’s residence perched over.
Once Lazaros was satisfied with his examination, he held it out to Beru. When she opened her palm, he pressed the shell into it. His touch was always cold, like Godfire. Beru suppressed a shiver and drew her hand away.
“Thank you,” she said to Ephyra, and went to put the shell with the others on the windowsill. “Come on, let’s sit.”
Together they returned to the fire, letting it warm their hands. A chill was beginning to take the air in Pallas Athos as the hot summer months turned over into fall.
Servants, holdovers from the Archon Basileus before his arrest, arrived a few minutes later with their supper—a stew of lamb, walnut, and pomegranate pillowed on a bed of saffron rice, with a jug of wine to wash it down.
Beru and Ephyra were both so used to surviving on scraps and living in hovels that they’d had to adjust to the newfound abundance of this place. There were other things to get used to, too. Like the soft, searching looks Ephyra sent her as they ate. Like the guilt gnawing at Beru’s heart as she tried not to think about the faces of all the people she’d tortured today.
There had been eighteen of them, more than usual. She didn’t want to think about what that meant—that Pallas’s message was spreading, that more and more people were taking up his cause, going out and finding Graced to capture and mutilate.
“I’m sorry,” Beru said suddenly, setting down her fork.
Ephyra touched the welt on her cheek. “Beru, I already told you—”
“Not about that,” Beru said. “Or—not just about that. I’m sorry that I never understood until now what it was like for you. All those years, killing people just to—I’m sorry.”
“Beru, that was never your fault,” Ephyra said, staring at her intently.
“I called you a monster,” Beru said, her throat heavy with tears.
Ephyra looked away. “Maybe I am one.”
“Then what does that make me?” Beru asked. “Those people today, in the temple … I’m a hypocrite. I blamed you for everything you did for me. But now that I’m in the same position—”
Ephyra clamped a hand down on Beru’s, a storm roiling in her dark eyes. “You could never be a monster. You’re my little sister. And we’ll—” She cut a quick glance at Lazaros, and Beru understood what she had stopped herself from saying.
We’ll find a way out of this.
“It’s going to be all right,” Ephyra said. She patted Beru’s hand with a wan smile.
Beru turned her palm up and squeezed Ephyra’s hand once, willing her to understand the dangerous words she left unsaid.
There was no way out of this. Not for Beru. Because with each passing day, the balance of power tipped—not toward Pallas, and not toward her, but toward the god. Its will grew stronger, and Beru didn’t know how long she had until it wrested control from her completely.
And then they’d all be doomed.
Copyright © 2021 by Katy Pool
