Page 41 of Tears of Tungsten
Knox
She was gone. She was dead. She was ash.
In the wake of Selene’s disappearance, I stood on top of Cerberus, feeling like my chest had been carved into and someone had scooped out my insides. I couldn’t focus. My mind kept running through the same thought process, revisiting the nightmarish experience I’d just endured.
“Stop!”she had screamed. But we hadn’t stopped, not in time, and now, she was gone. She was dead. She was ash.
A grief-stricken, blood-curling scream echoed through the sudden silence. A disheveled woman stumbled through the ruins of the village, ignoring us. She dropped to her knees over the charred ground where Selene had been and started clawing at it, as if she was trying to pull Selene out.
Green sparks emanated from her fingertips and fat tears trailed down her cheeks. “Please, Gaia, please. No, not like this. Please. Please.”
She was incoherent with pain and loss. Her gift trickled into the ground, but the strands of green were falling apart.
“Selene… No, please.”
It was Tanya Renard, the High Priestess of New Washington. She must’ve been the one who’d brought Selene here. Under different circumstances, I’d have gotten mad at her for endangering my lover like this. Selene should have never set foot in this ridiculous village. She should have never spoken to a single rebel, no matter how harmless or non-violent.
Tanya Renard had put Selene in a horrible position, because for good or ill, Selene had been an official of The Grand Judiciary. If The Grand Judiciary hadn’t sent us here—or had not known about this place—Selene would have been forced to keep a pretty terrible secret and maybe commit a grave crime in the process.
But that didn’t matter anymore, because Selene was dead, and it certainly hadn’t been Tanya Renard who’d done it.
As if hearing my thoughts, the High Priestess abandoned her futile quest and stood up. Still shaking, she turned toward Brendan and shouted, “You killed her! You killed my daughter! I’ll tear you all to pieces!”
Seated above the Typhon, Brendan was like an emotionless statue. “Yes,” he whispered, his voice utterly and completely dead, “yes, I did. She died by my hand.”
I wasn’t sure that was technically true, but it was close enough. Typhon’s fumes had been the ones that had harmed Selene. The fire wouldn’t have hurt her otherwise, but Typhon’s venomous breath could kill almost anything.
It had all but disappeared now, Selene’s final defiance, her attempt to fix what we’d broken.
“No, hatchling,” Typhon said mournfully. “It wasn’t you. It was me.”
He was trying to comfort Brendan, but I knew it wouldn’t work. Brendan would never be able to separate his own actions from Typhon’s, and he’d been the one to guide his chimera. At most, it was a shared blame, but Brendan would never see it that way.
I didn’t resent him for it. He’d never liked the idea of this plan and had even warned me in the shuttle to keep an eye out, to be careful just in case something went wrong. But I’d let my bloodlust get the better of me. I hadn’t cared about any of these people. As far as I was concerned, they’d just been a means to an end, and I’d reveled in the dark rush Cerberus got when he hunted them down.
If I’d paid attention, I might have seen her sooner. I might have been able to sense her. I might have managed to stop her before she rushed into the cloud of toxic smoke. I hadn’t done any of those things.
By now, most of the remaining people in the village had scattered. The only ones who lingered were some men who looked like guards and a few robed women, the local servants of Gaia. One of them hesitantly went to Tanya’s side and wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
“Your Holiness—”
“Whatever you’re about to say, Sister Anya, don’t,” Tanya cut her off. “You will never understand the pain in my heart.”
As the two women spoke, the Scylla flew up to us, carrying August. I had a pretty good idea what must have happened to Sphinx. If she’d been caught in the backlash of Selene’s death, she’d doubtlessly gone dormant and wouldn’t wake up anytime soon.
Scylla set August down, at which point I noted he looked almost as bad as he had the day he’d taken a bath in solar radiation. “I won’t deny this was our fault, but aren’t you all forgetting something? There was an apsid here. He’s the one who stepped in at the end there.”
He was right. I’d been so lost in my grief that the thought had completely slipped my mind. It hadn’t been Selene’s fire that had vaporized her, but something the apsid had done.
“That means nothing,” Tanya sneered. “The Sun-Dweller was likely trying to suppress her powers, to keep her from affecting whatever interests his people have in this area. But that doesn’t change the fact that she died because of you.”
“I don’t know about that. I think… I think I recognized that creature. I’ve seen him before. Don’t you think he looked familiar, Knox?”
Familiar.Think, Knox. Come on.August recognized him. August… August looked ill, but his spark wasn’t extinguished.
Think.Did August know something we didn’t? Did he believe Selene was still alive? It couldn’t be. Or could it? Selene had survived the mirror trial and we already knew that her gifts went beyond anything we’d seen before.
Thankfully, Cerberus was there to give me a paw. “That was the same apsid we saw on Mercury, the one we ran into when we went after Charybdis. You remember, don’t you, pup?”
