Page 47 of Summer of Sacrifice

His hand locked around her bicep, hauling her up roughly from her chair. An onlooker gasped, putting a hand to her mouth. Thanasim dragged Athania around a corner into the shadows of an alley, releasing her with such force that she backed into the granite wall.

“You know all too fucking well what you’ve done,” he hissed. “Did you think you could hide what you’re doing from the Queen of Aureland? Did you think I wouldn’t find out, even if she hadn’t told me?”

Athania inspected her nails in the thin shaft of light tunnelling through the dim alley. “Did you know this place you sent me to has a portal into Orford?”

Of course he did, but he hadn’t expected her to figure that out. “What is your point?”

“My point,” she snapped, her consonants as sharp as daggers, “is that I tried to retrieve my quill from where I left it within the Orford Castle. That is all that happened.”

“You murdered innocent people along the way, Athania.”

She gave a little disinterested shrug. “It wasn’t my fault the new Queen of Orford had already taken over and given my rooms to someone else.”

Squeezing his hands in and out of fists, Thanasim worked his jaw. “Do you think me a fool?”

“I’m not certain you want me to answer tha?—”

Her words were choked off by a dark coil of his power shooting forward to fit itself in her mouth like a gag. “Aside from the castle massacre in search of the goddess quill, that, by the way, is not yours, you’ve only targeted those of magical origin. Witches, Mages, Elves… Even a Papien scholar for goddess’ sake. Leaving them fucking husks. What are you doing to them?”

One of her hands came up, a sharp fingernail tapping at his power that was gagging her. Baring his teeth, Thanasim tugged the coil, silently commanding it to bind her wrists instead.

When it did, she blinked up at him innocently. “Would you like to see?”

A gleaming dagger of blood-red magic snaked out from behind her, taunting, toying with Thanasim’s hold on her. He watched in fascination and fury as it descended, bent on slicing his vine of shadow to free her arms. Cut, it did, but it was no match for his strength, and the binding held, though it burned like Hades. Just to remind her who he fucking was, Thanasim shifted into his reaper form, something he rarely did since being blessed by Hespa as a god. But his decayed, skeletal form was far more grisly and terrifying than the handsome face and night-sky eyes Hespa had given him.

Athania looked more impressed, more lust-filled than anything else. Revulsion made him nearly take a step back, but he would not be toyed with by this half-witch fallen goddess any longer. “Are you trying to tell me you’re somehow using these creatures to grow your own well of magic?”

The burn of her magic dagger was increasing at an irritating rate. With a growl, he sent another ghoulish vine darting out to wrap around the hilt, crushing it to red, glittering dust that dissipated into the dirt and sand beneath their feet.

“Fucking tell me. Now.”

“Find me my quill, and I’ll tell you what I’m doing with them.”

Thanasim wrapped another coil around her, thicker this time, binding her arms to her sides and letting it slither up and up, threatening her throat. “It’s not your quill.”

A little gasp popped out of her, the sound so light and airy despite her predicament that it was disturbing. “You retrieved it before I could, didn’t you? You still have it.”

Thanasim remained silent. Waiting.

“Well, it’s no matter,” she said, unbothered. “I will get it back, and I will be everywhere you look, but nowhere to be seen until the moment I defeat you.”

“Ravings of a mad woman.” He spat on the ground at her feet. “We have killed menaces like you for far less than the atrocities you have caused.”

“Oh, please. And risk your daughters?” She clucked her tongue.

White-hot rage coursed through him so quickly that he felt Asteria begin to panic within their bond. What in Hades did their daughters have to do with a godsdamned thing?

Thanasim picked her up by the front of her bodice and slammed her against the wall, bringing his decrepit face to hers. “Give me,” he hissed, low and menacing, “one fucking reason I shouldn’t kill you right now and be done with this.”

The laugh that emanated from her was bone-chilling. “She didn’t tell you, did she?”

His skeletal grip on her bodice tightened and Athania tsked.

“Your darling wife never told you how I got any magic at all? And to think, we all thought your union to be perfect.”

His rotting heart was beginning to slam against his ribs. Athania had been a goddess. Lady War. Power was innate… Unless she gave that up, too, when she’d chosen to leave The Primordial. Oh, goddess… No.

Asteria, he whispered through the bond. Tell me you didn’t…

---