The bite of stone into her knees, her hands at her chest, as if she could reel all of this in and tie it back up. But once unspooled, her packed-down emotions kept coming, heightened and sharpened by the voice of the Oracle, slicing in and knowing all, an arterial pump of truth.
You never admit when you’re wrong you’d rather die than let anyone know you made a mistake all of this is your fault if you’d just listened to Red and let her go you’d still be with Raffe even though you don’t deserve him—
Neve wanted to pass out, to fade from consciousness, but the Oracle’s onslaught kept her viciously, horrifically present, anchored in all the moments she’d done wrong, seeing the face of every person she’d let down.
It was terrible. It was deserved.
When she felt Solmir streak past her with a roar in his teeth, felt him wrench the god-bone from her hand, she barely noticed, crouched on the bone-strewn floor with her soul in tatters in her chest.
Solmir leapt at the Oracle, over the chains that bound it to the dais, and slashed the bone across the god’s throat.
Immediately, the pounding of all Neve’s failures through her head ceased, the endless parade of all the ways she’d fallen short. She looked up through swimming eyes.
The Oracle was shuddering. Though shuddering seemed like too gentle a word—the space the god occupied seemed scrambled, making its shape judder from side to side, edges unmatched as if Neve were seeing it through window slats. Shadows poured from it, writhing into the air with their chittering sound, louder and more violent than she’d ever heard before.
The bone dropped; Solmir thrust his hands out, calling the rogue magic to him as it drained from the gaping wound in the Oracle’s throat. The shadows wound around his arms, filling him with darkness, and Neve saw the moment when his clenched jaw unhinged, when the pained scream became something he couldn’t hold in anymore.
The ground rumbled, dust raining from the ceiling. The pile behind them shook, loose bones rattling, sliding down to the bloodstained stone floor.
The Oracle fell to its knees, knocking the rotting rose crown askew. Its mouth opened, letting loose a high laugh, chased by more gibbering shadows, a cacophony of madness and unraveling. It reverberated in the air and in Neve’s skull; she clapped her hands over her ears.
Foolish of me, the Oracle whispered in her head. Foolish to think he offered freedom instead of death, but I’ve grown so tired of shackles that one is nearly as welcome as the other. Though not quite as foolish as you are, Shadow Queen. Thinking there’s something worth saving in him. Thinking there’s something good.
Pieces of rock fell from above now, chasing the dust. The bones behind them bucked and slid. Another quake, collapsing the cave, maybe collapsing the whole mountain. And still magic seeped from the dying god and poured into Solmir. Still he screamed, blue eyes flickering into black.
“You deserve each other,” the Oracle said, aloud this time. “Two fools, damning themselves over and over again.”
The Oracle’s body twisted, jerked in painful angles, winnowing away into smoke and shadow. The drain of its magic ate it away to muscle, to bone, the skeleton oddly shaped. Then, in another plume of dark smoke, it was gone.
The shadow rushed into Solmir’s hands, and he fell to the shaking ground. Darkness covered his skin, as if he’d dipped his arms in ink. His irises shuddered from blue to black, blue to black, his soul at a tipping point.
Neve had to get up. The cave collapsed around them, bones sliding and rocks falling; but she had to take some of that magic, too, siphon it out of him so he wasn’t consumed. She lurched forward, ramming her knee against the broken end of a sharp tibia. It punctured skin, the warm weep of blood seeping down her leg and making her stagger. Between the wound and the weakness left over from the Oracle’s assault on her mind, Neve could barely stumble across the floor.
When she made it to Solmir, he was pushing himself to stand, darkness seeping away from his veins, out of his eyes. “Don’t.” Loud and commanding against the screech of the falling mountain. “Don’t take it, we’ll need it all.”
“But you—”
“I,” he snarled, shoving the god-bone in his boot, “am perfectly suited to this.”
Another shudder shook through the cave. A stone fell from the ceiling, careening directly toward Neve’s head; Solmir grabbed her arm and pulled her to him, out of the rock’s path, then immediately released her, unwilling to linger on her skin.
“Promise you won’t take it,” he said, shouting into her face to be heard over the crash and collapse around them. “Not until it’s time!”