“You have no choice,” he hissed, carrion breath enough to make her gag. Valchior wasted no magic on making himself handsome and whole, not anymore; he used only enough to stay in a nearly human shape, the better to batter her with. “We cannot be killed by discarded god-bones, Neverah, you can’t wrench a femur off the wall and stab us with it. If we are going to relinquish our souls, we do it on our own terms. You cannot force us.”
Her mind cast back to when he’d led her through the labyrinth of bones to Solmir—hours ago, or days, a blur of time that didn’t apply in the underworld. Only god-bones could kill gods, and it had to be a god made in the same manner, forged in the same fire. We made ourselves gods, he’d snarled.
She thought of the Leviathan, speaking through the corpse of its dead lover across a table full of seaweed and salt water in wineglasses. Telling her that divinity was simple, half magic and half belief. He believes in you. And, for what it’s worth, so do I.
How had the Kings made themselves gods? Magic, on the surface, using more than anyone else could, letting it make them powerful. And magic here, too, of a different and darker kind—absorbing the powers of the gods, killing them and draining them dry.
Just like Neve had done.
Half magic, half belief.
Neve closed her eyes and threw herself backward, physically but mentally, too—tugging herself from the grip of Valchior’s illusion so hard she stumbled when it cracked away, leaving her once again in the circle of the stone Kings. Solmir caught her, held her steady. His hands shook on her shoulders, though he still wore that arrogant sneer on his face, and Neve wondered if it had been an act all this time, a scared boy playing at being cruel.
She stepped away from him. Soon enough, she’d find out.
“Oh, Neverah.” Valchior leaned forward, just like she wanted him to. “You could’ve been a god.”
The edges of the spikes that made his crown were dagger-sharp, with a wicked gleam that reflected the ivory of the skull above them. Sharp enough to cut through skin and muscle and tendon.
Sharp enough to cut through bone.
Reaching up, acting before she could change her mind, Neve rammed the edge of her right hand against the razor edge of Valchior’s crown, bent over her like prison bars. A sharp, blinding pain burst behind her eyes, a scream pouring out of her mouth before she could stop it. But still she pushed until she felt the snap of bone, felt the give of her smallest finger detaching from her hand.
She caught it, slick with blood that geysered gray in the monochrome light of the Shadowlands.
“I already am,” she snarled.
Then Neve pushed her severed finger into where Valchior’s eye should be, god-bone cutting easily through stone.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Neve
For a moment, stillness.
Solmir stood behind her, his hands still curled as if he wanted to touch her but couldn’t make himself move. Around them, the stone effigies of the Kings, the churn of their thoughts nearly palpable in the air though their forms were frozen.
“This isn’t how it was to go.” Byriand, his voice aged and shaking. “This wasn’t—”
Shadow, hissing, seeping from the hole in Valchior’s shroud. His power, his soul, pulled out by the piece of bloody god-bone wedged in his empty eye socket.
Neve’s bone.
Valchior’s stone hand lifted, almost disbelieving. Neve’s blood dripped from the razor-sharp spike of his crown.
Then the huge rock-hewn hand shot toward her, the storm-squeal of shifting shale like a collapsing mountain.
Neve read the movements, knew what was coming. She’d believed herself a god and that made it true, and the power in her center thrilled to it, darkness flashing along her veins, making her thorns grow longer, sharper. She felt like a veil had been lifted, her new divinity polishing everything to the bright shine of perfect clarity.
Moving quicker than she ever had before, she reached up, tugged her severed finger from Valchior’s face. It was slippery with blood, but she kept her hold. “Solmir!”
She didn’t look behind her to see if he caught the grisly weapon she threw him. Didn’t make eye contact to make sure he knew what he had to do. She trusted him.
He might even deserve it now.
The heel of Valchior’s hand collided with her forehead, so forcefully that it might’ve knocked her out if she wasn’t a newly forged god. Still, it hurt, and she had to fight to keep her balance as the touch of the King wrenched her out of reality and into illusion.
Half an illusion, anyway. Valchior was caught somewhere between the man he’d been and the monster he’d become as his soul poured out of his eye. The half of his face she’d stabbed was immense, monstrous, bone and stone and tattered veil, the proportions dissonant and unable to fit together. The other half of him was the man he’d been, the same physicality as he’d shown her before, but somehow twisted. Fury gnarled his hands into knotted fists and his mouth into an inhuman snarl.