Page 34 of Merciless Is My Crown

I had magic, but in this confined area I was more apt to hurt one of my friends than an enemy, and we only had a day’s worth of food. Think, Anaria, think.

“We can’t leave him stuck in his own head and do nothing, Tavion.” I pulled away, letting his shaking hands slide off my shoulders. “I’m going to touch him. Not the skull. Him. That’s what Raziel did.” I slanted him a look, then my eyes dropped to his knife.

“You will use pain to pull us both out.” The blood drained from Tavion’s face when I caught him by the arm and dragged him closer, until we were face to face, my eyes boring deeply into his. “Look at me, Tavion. Trust me on this. You are going to cut me. Nothing deep, only enough pain to pull me out of the vision. I’ll bring Tristan with me. It’s worked before.”

I worked up a watery smile. “Besides, that’s better than getting punched in the mouth, you have to agree.”

“Gods, Anaria.” Tavion looked stricken, his pale green eyes darting between me and Tristan. “I cannot hurt you. Don’t ask me to because I can’t.”

“You can and you will.” I cupped his chin before I pulled the knife out of his sheath and folded his fingers around the silver hilt. “Not deep. Just enough to bring me out of the vision. You are not hurting me, I am asking you to do this, and I trust you, do you understand?”

He nodded, miserable. I almost felt guilty, but seeing Tristan’s blank stare, the blood dripping down his face…we didn’t have a choice. I pressed my lips to his, letting our breaths mingle for a bare second before I pulled away. “You can do this, Tavion. Now let’s get Tristan out of there so you can go home.”

I stepped closer to Tristan, whose arms shook from the strain, sweat dripping down his cheeks, red curls matted to his face. I debated where to touch him. Bare skin would be best, given how direct contact to the skulls dragged us straight into the visions.

I swallowed and wrapped my palms around Tristan’s throat, my fingers caressing the strong, tanned column of tendons and muscles. The last thing I heard before the world disappeared was Tavion choking out my name.

We were too late. We’d tried to get here in time, to save them, but…we’d failed.

I—we—stood in a wooded grove, gathered around the bodies of three of our kin. Ten gods, ten magical gifts, now reduced down to a pitiful seven. I stared at my hands. Not black, not completely. There was still some pale flesh visible, still something vaguely mortal about me, but I could feel it happening.

The Change.

The transformation grew more insidious every time I used the magic, like a weed that had taken root at my core, and no matter how deep I dug, I’d never scrape it out.

Rain pelted down, not hard enough to extinguish the raging fires licking up the tree trunks, blistering the tender flesh of my legs. Not just hurting me but hurting my mates. And I could not abide their suffering, not even for a moment.

Even now, my power strained to get out, a dull, brooding ache I could never quite get free of.

On instinct, I sent out a wave of magic, extinguishing every single flame in an instant until only the sound of pounding rain remained.

We were gathered in a circle, and though not one of us looked familiar, I knew everyone’s name. Vitigis, Adaric, Gattica, the largest of us all, and Saphrax, his long black teeth glinting as he bared them at Corvus and Gelvira, the reason we were all gathered here.

The reason three of us—the best of us all—were dead. All of them gods of birth and life and growth.

Killed by the two dedicated to death and destruction.

“They deserved to die.” Corvus nudged at one of the blackened husks, his foul shadows crawling over Procyon’s smoking corpse, and the husk fell to pieces as if rotting from the inside out, stark white bones poking through ruined flesh. “They rose up against us, tried to eliminate us.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell the twins they were the ones who deserved to die, but Saphrax banded his enormous hand around my arm before speaking softly into my mind. “Do not endanger yourself, Amalla, there is nothing you can do for our friends now.”

The twins were a blight upon this world. This entire universe.

Chaos and corruption, poisons that leached into every crack and crevasse of this planet and sucked the magic dry. If we were not careful, they’d kill us all, one by one, until they were the only things left.

Of course, if they did that, this world would die, and them along with it. There was no way out of this realm. Not now.

“Perhaps they did,” Vitigis agreed neutrally. “But killing them was rash and foolish. Vega was the god of rebirth. Terros the god of living things. How will the magic be replenished now? Or did you mean to condemn us all to a slow, inevitable death?”

The twins traded a look I did not like one bit. “We will wait until the magic is depleted, then make a sacrifice of blood. Surely, the universe cannot deny us then?”

“You wish to kill the creatures of this world to bribe the magic?” I asked, not believing her arrogance. “We are stewards of this world, not destroyers. Remember what happened to our last home.”

Gelvira traded a glance with her brother. “We have been experimenting on the creatures that call themselves the Fae. They possess enough rudimentary magic; a sacrifice will work.”

I did not want to know about their experiments, or how long they’d gone on, or the limits of the twins’ cruelty.

“Such things will stop. If I hear your cruelty continues…” I stared down at Terros and Vega. “I will end you myself.”

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