83 | ACT V, SCENE X

P R E V I O U S L Y

It was the woman.

CALCHESTER CITADEL, STEFFITH.

TRISTAN

HER EYES WERE SOULLESS, ENDLESS pits of pitch black, as if filled with dark ichor that glared back at me. Slowly, ominously, the pale woman picked up her green skirts with a smooth gesture, giving a mocking courtesy to Edwina.

"Your Grace," the female spoke in sugar coated venom, inching closer. I pulled my shaking wife and swept her behind my back.

"Who are you?" Helios's voice rumbled down the hall at the strange woman, who whipped her head back, her lips pulling back in a sharp smile.

"Cousin," she tinkled softly, each syllable as harsh as crushed glass, her very voice hurting my ears. "How delightful to see you again after you locked us into that hell!"

Cousin.

Cosmo, and the Titan, Zadicus, had been brothers. Helios was Cosmo's son, and if she called him her cousin-

She was one of Zadicus and Pandora's three daughters. A member of the House of Tytos, one of the cruel, wicked creatures Cosmo and Helios had locked into Seattoria after the first Titanomachy.

The woman swept again in a mocking bow, her every moment fluid and lithe as water. Darkness rippled off every inch of her deep green robes, filling the room with stifling, burning rivers of wickedness.

"Leora..." Nyx whispered, her eyes frozen, wide as plates. Her hand rested on the hilt of an encrusted daggers, and even as she pulled it out, the slender stranger turned her shimmering, cold gaze to her.

The dagger crumbled into nothing, leaving only metallic dust behind.

The room grew tighter, colder - every living being in it suddenly on alert, hearts pounding as the deceiving, predatory female destroyed the weapon with merely a flick of her eyes.

Leora - the eldest of Pandora's daughters.

She stalked silently across the marble floor, her feet not making a single sound as the dangerous creature stopped to a halt right in front of the remaining three prisoners awaiting execution.

"You must be the one who called me back here," Leora hissed in a sharp voice, tilting up Drusilla's chin with a blood red nail. The Everly goddess went completely motionless, and the pallor of her skin turned a sickly shade of white.

"What - I didn't..."

"Oh, but you did," the Titan said in a voice richer than midnight. "That night, Drusilla Everly, nearly a year ago? When you performed a Blood Ritual to summon a shade and make your pathetic wish?"

"Blood Ritual? It is banned to perform one!" Eric's voice was too faint in the large hall, trailing away into nothing.

"Quiet, vermin," Leora snarled blackly at him, turning her attention back to Drusilla. "You called a shade to fulfill your wishes, did you not?"

"What wishes?" Helios blinked furiously.

The lady laughed an unnerving laugh, merrily twiddling her fingers.

"She wanted to become Queen," she threw back her head and laughed again, her voice a silk purr. "Fool! You thought a mere immortal like you could ever do such great Rituals on your own? Little fool," she leered. "To ever think that scum like you could do such things!"

My blood began to heat. Across the hall, Deimos's lips had pressed into a thin, hard line, a black scowl beginning to form.

"You," he seethed slowly, his voice barely containing his temper, "stop accusing my daughter of things she has never done."

Leora merely smirked, her lips alight in a ghastly smile as she strode to him. He faced her with fury raging in the violet of his eyes, pulling out his sword as her white hand reached out for it.

"Is it?"

She snapped his neck in the blink of an eye.

"Father!" Alaric cried out, even as his motionless body crumpled to the floor. Drusilla held him back with frost in her eyes, beside her, Aeneas did the same. We watched with silent horror as Deimos lay still on the polished tiles, his gaze empty and hollow as it stared up lifelessly at the dimly lit chandeliers.

So powerful - she was so insanely powerful, incapacitating a powerful god like Deimos with just a flick of her fingers.

"You gave up your own blood that night, didn't you?" Leora only curled her lips once more, revealing perfect white teeth that she bared at Drusilla. Her eyes lingered over the crowd, over all of us, before finally resting on the tiny Miriel who clung to Amphitrite's leg. "Now watch your blood give you up."

"How?" I demanded quietly, my voice ringing in the hall. "How did you escape?"

Edwina pulled me aside, whispering frightened pleas in my ear to stop talking, to stay silent before she snapped my neck and flung me aside too.

The Titaness slowly turned her head to me, every moment of her body a lethal dance. Her eyes were pure black from lid to lid. So deep, so dark, not even my reflection looked back at me as she glided over the marble. Nothing but the candles bounced light off those deep pools of nothingness as Edwina pulled out a dagger and I wrenched it out of her grip and cast it aside, holding her tightly to me.

We both stood death still as Leora finally gazed right into our very souls.

"I was chained in the outer peripheries of Seattoria. You don't know how lucky you are, Storm King. You don't know what it is like to feel your death rain on you in that dead world, where the empty, hollow sky above you burns like a stifling flame. It was no small relief to escape my shackles when this fool performed her Rituals wrong - so wrong, that they flooded the air with so much demonic power that I escaped."

Her bruised, pale white knuckles tightened at her sides, and her jaw hardened as her full lips twitched, as if considering whether to crack my spine.

"I escaped, and I have haunted the corners of Endollon ever since that night," she continued in an enchanted, deceiving lilt.

Since nearly a year - she had been walking among us since nearly a year.

"What do you want?" Helios let out a low growl.

"Why, only that which my mother intended for me to have, if we ever return," Leora answered, her gaze burning hell. "The Logogram. So that I can collect the pieces, finish the device, and... kill you all."

"You didn't find it, did you?" Eric asked, cautiously guarding Amphitrite as the Titaness stalked towards them, like a prey toying with predator.

"No," she sulked. "So I poured my soul into possessing the one person who would know exactly where to look for it. Edwina," she laughed, her voice a death knell as the entire room looked right at her. "Tell me, Tristan Valmont," she chimed merrily, "how hard did she try to convince you that she saw me that night? That night in the corridor before you were married, when she slapped you after you nearly choked her?"

Edwina's face went white and pale, eyes sinking in depths of despair. My head swum round and round, back to that night.

There's someone there! She had shouted. I swear to you by all the gods, you devil - there is someone outside, on the other side of the glass. Blond haired, black eyed. Her eyes have no whites!

"So I possessed you," Leora grinned, "and then you fainted."

And it looked like my wife was going was going to collapse again, any moment.

"He carried you to your room," the Titaness chuckled with a nod to me, her voice grating down my nerves in a sickly, painful way. "I sat there right beside you in your sleep, picking at your brains for any information. You didn't come down for two days, darling. Until the morning of your wedding, when your sister knocked on the door, and I answered by mistake. It scared the daylights out of her when she saw you fast asleep."

Amphitrite let out a shrill cry of fear, and the dangerous female only gave her a careful, sweet smile, feasting on her fear, preying on it, before she turned her attention back to Edwina.

"You woke up with a headache on the morning of your wedding, didn't you?" she asked softly in a dulcet caress. "That was me. You were unable to bend the knee during your coronation too, weren't you? That was me too. But Cosmo made you drink that wine before that oath - that power laced wine, potent with potions that forced and drove me out," Leora's face contorted in anger, her features a deadly white. "So I had to leave, and I entered the body of the person nearest to you. Your brother."

I was unable to speak - unable to form words, for I had seen it. Seen it from the corner of my eye, seen the way Aidon's lips had curled into a sly, secret smile after she drank the wine.

"I tried again that night. On your wedding night. Your bedroom was right on top of the spelled piano my mother had hid under the Citadel. The piano hid the sheet of code music that could free the first piece of the Logogram. Thanks to the spells Pandora put on it, the piano began to play on its own when it sensed my demonic origin. So I scared you both out of the room in order to get to the piano."

Edwina had felt it. Heard it. Someone tapped my shoulder! She had cried. She's outside, she's standing outside this room, she tapped my shoulder! The light, anguished cries that night. The soft, fearful whimpers. The burning smell, the smell of acid.

"I watched you both. You saw me stand there at the balcony, and you rushed back to the room. The sheets had been ruffled. I had been sitting right there beside you in the darkness."

The only thing I was aware of was Edwina's hand as she gripped me tightly, and we both held each other, our hearts pounding. That nightmarish, terrible night.

"I tried getting you both to leave the room again. I needed to get a closer look at the piano. But you both refused to budge an inch, so I went to occupying this immortal body of his," Leora nudged Aidon's ribs with a tip of her heel, her face otherwise emotionless and frigid. Edwina strained and pulled with fury and I gripped her tightly.

She had been there - she had still been lingering outside the door. Lingering in Aidon's body, speaking with his voice.

Are you both alright in there? he had asked us from outside the door. If you want, I could show you how to fuc-

And it had never struck Edwina or me for a single second - we had never paused to wonder why he had been roaming outside our chambers even while an afterparty raged on nearby.

"You came back another day and lifted the bed and discovered the piano," Leora chimed, hissing at Edwina. "You summoned the builder. It was late by the time I got there, but by then... you'd already gone. So I killed the builder for information and left his dead body for you. You paid for his silence, Edwina. But it was too late."

Adam.

She had killed Adam, killed him with Aidon's own hands. Then she had left his corpse as a gift, and with it a message written in his blood.

Gold can only keep a mouth shut for so long, Queen Regnant. Try stopping his heart the next time.

Eric looked like he was going to throw up. Truth be told, I felt the same - unable to even speak from sheer horror.

"He was useless," Leora flicked a speck of dust from her sleeve. "All mortals are. So I kept to my own routes, and stayed to my own methods. Your brother is a powerful young man, by the way-" she shot a glance at Edwina. "He resisted. At first. But with time, my influence grew stronger and his will grew weaker. You beat me to the first piece, yes - but I talked to that little fool of a goddess, Celestina. She had seen the three of you toying with the cube. Had known that the cube unlocked only with a specific pattern.  But I could not figure out the pattern. So I gathered your merry little band of enemies, Edwina... and I waited for the Century Ball."

There were beads of sweat all over Edwina's brow, dripping down her sweltering temples.

"I went after the second piece, then. In the mortal world. I saw Cosmo in the Louvre, and I knew he must be knowing. I came back to Endollon, confident in the knowledge that I could go and hunt the second piece after the Ball. Whatever was left of your brother's broken spirit still fought against me as I tortured you for information. Giddy with victory, giddy with the thought of breaking you, I made another mistake. I let it slip that I knew about the Louvre."

As her last word finally hung heavy in the stale, rotten air - I looked around the chamber, looked at the desolate, desperate faces that glared back at me. At Leora. At Edwina, at Drusilla, at Aidon and Deimos sprawled senseless on the floor.

"We will come back," Leora gave us a smile as poisoned as lethal venom. "We will come back, and when we do - I will shove immorality so far down your throat that you'll choke on your own blood."

I fought back the rage, the boiling blood in my head.

"We have two pieces already. We will find the third from Seattoria and turn the nature of the Logogram. And when we do," my voice was bitter, sharp, "we will destroy you all."

"You can't finish the Logogram without the third piece," the Titaness mocked me. "And you can't get the third piece without the ring to the demon realms."

And before any of us could move - could register what was happening-

She wrenched the enamelled box containing the three rings from Edwina's grip.

Nearly the entire throne room lunged for her before she vanished into sparkling green mist, disappearing into the air.

"We will come for you the day the blackthorns of Steffith start to wither," Leora whispered with a harsh smile. "Let this war be done by the player's blood."

And when her voice too fell silent, Edwina fainted in my arms.

• • • • •

HARTINGTON CASTLE, ALNWICK, STORMHOLT.

EDWINA

I woke up from a fitful, drugged sleep in the middle of the night, hoarse cries still tumbling from my lips. Cool, strong hands pulled me back down, and I flitted them away.

"It's alright - you're going to be alright," Celinette hushed me softly, "everything is okay-"

"No," I protested, shaking, "no."

She tried to convince me to rest, to sleep, but I couldn't stop shaking, not with the knowledge that Leora had been in me, that she had swum under my skin, sliced open my thoughts - I could not think of anything else I hurried to get out of the bed, to get out of the room, still shuddering in my clothes. I slammed the door open, running down the stairs, still disoriented and scared out of my wits. My legs finally gave way when I reached the sitting room, tumbling on the carpet.

My brother was slumped in a chair, his face more tired and exhausted than I had ever seen. Dark circles formed hollows under his eyes, but his gaze was free of the darkness - free of the darkness Leora had tainted him with. Behind him stood my father, equally worried, and beside him, Daniel. Tristan was perched on the table, resting one arm on his knee, sleeves rolled up to the forearms as he continued his quiet interrogation.

All four men looked up.

My husband was beside me in an instant, lifting me effortlessly despite my garbled cries. My father reached for me as well, quietly stroking my hair as I was finally lowered in the warm depths of in an armchair and draped with a blanket. Aidon dropped to his knees, holding my tired hand, his eyes moist.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm so, so sorry for what she made me do to you."

"They're going to kill us," my voice was hoarse. "They are going to kill all of us. She was in me, she was-"

"I know-" my brother croaked. "She was in me for so long... I forgot what being alive even felt like. She - I don't even feel as if I belong to this body, she scraped out every inch. And I fought... so badly. I fought so badly when she made me hurt you like that - made me hold that knife and sink it into your neck, made me watch while they carved out your eye-"

"Aidon," I breathed softly, and he squeezed my hand as a tear rolled down my cheek.

"I wanted to be there for you," he whispered. "I could have knocked some sense in Amphitrite, I could have helped before you decided you didn't want to live anymore," his voice cracked at the end. "It was a relief when Tristan struck me with the Thunderbolt."

"They're going to kill us," was the only thing I could force out of my lips. "They're going to kill us - we will die."

"I'm not going to let that happen," Tristan said quietly, cupping my face in his warm palms, looking right into my eyes. "We do not go down without a fight. We live by the sword, die by the sword. Each and every god, every ally we have - letters have been sent to them all. The ceasefire starts tomorrow afternoon. If Endollon unites as one, we might have the slimmest chance of survival."

I fainted. Again.

• • • • •

Ring a bell, anyone?

It was in the prologue that Drusilla performed the ritual. Chapter 8 was when Tristan found Celestina in his room and then fought with Edwina, almost choking her before she slapped him - and she saw Leora that night.

She was roaming around in Calchester Citadel. And after Edwina passed out, Leora took control of her mind, and picked her brain the entire night. Chapter 9 was when Leora answered the door when Amphi knocked. Edwina had a headache throughout the entire chapter 10 - the nausea, the headache, the confusion - our girl was possessed by a Titaness. Leora was the reason Edwina was unable to bend her knee during her coronation in chapter 13 - and remember Edwina feeling better after drinking the wine which Cosmo gave her? It drove the evil out... and there was one line where I mentioned Aidon having a slight smirk on his face at the coronation.

That was the precise moment Leora began to haunt him.

Remember the way the piano kept in playing in chapter 14? When Leora mentioned being close to Tredwina's chambers? Well, perhaps you also remember Aidon being outside their door just moments before the piano started playing due to the demonic presence.

And Adam dying in chapter 27 - Well, now you know who killed him. Aidon did, but it was the Titan haunting him who made him do it.

This chapter has been in the works for a very, very long time - and it contains much more reveals than any part of this book so far. And now you all know. Now you all know it was Drusilla who set off every event in this book in motion and she is the very reason this story exists - we are in a deadlock now that there is no chance of getting the third piece of the Logogram. A deadlock that can possibly only resolve in one thing.

WAR.

And if we're talking about uniting every immortal - uniting the likes of killers like Deimos and Emerick and Edwina...

If you think this has a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention.