She had always been Ches’s.
With a gasp she was yanked back to the tomb, which she’d never left.
Reina was in the sanctum’s entryway, hunched in front of a golden filament, her shoulder searing with the stench of burnt fiber and flesh. The scene materialized instantly: Eva cornered to a crouch against a wall, her litio barrier held up with both hands and separating her from Reina. Maior screaming as Do?a Ursulina dragged her across the bridge by the hair.
“Reina?” Eva said in a shivery, fragmented voice, inspecting the changes in her face. “You’re back?”
That’s when Reina realized the scorching pain of her shoulder—the skin bubbling from its fresh burn—had been self-inflicted against Eva’s glittering curtain. Fury and panic boiled out of her throat. Her grandmother had used her against Eva, like some mindless ram. And now Do?a Ursulina had Maior.
Reina thrust herself up, wobbling from side to side, snorting out blood from an injury she couldn’t recall. She nearly retched.
She sprinted to the bridge. Her nerves on edge, she tackled Do?a Ursulina around the middle, shoving her against the railing so she’d release Maior.
The three toppled to the ground, rolling toward the dais, limbs skinning against the stone. Behind them were the statues of the two gods, surrounded in the drying blood of the damas.
Reina’s nose itched, the air putrefactive. She scampered to her feet, tugging Maior up with her. She stood between the human and her grandmother, a barrier, and this time she was not going to be struck down. Maior took her cue to flee to Eva again.
Do?a Ursulina gathered herself up to her feet, her face contorted from the insolence. She slid a hand over her hair, flattening the curls breaking free from her updo; she smoothed out the wrinkles on her jacket. “What are you doing? You should be dealing with the other valco.”
Reina’s breaths were broken, her heartbeats frenzied and irregular, but this fear eating her from the inside was not for her own life. “I am not your tool!”
It gave Do?a Ursulina pause. She stepped back, raising her hand to the air in that gesture for control.
There it was again, the tug.
“You will not use me ever again.” Reina’s voice was thunder, strong as the roars in her chest. The memory of the abuse fueled her, even when her iridio reserve was so dangerously low.
Do?a Ursulina’s influence existed within her, but the control was weak and easily sundered. For Reina had Ches. All along, that was what the dreams had been about. It had been his way of telling her. Reina had simply been too deaf to listen. But now, even though her heart was fractured, forever incomplete from all the people she had lost, knowing he was with her filled the emptiness instead.
It made it easy to take a deep breath. To flare whatever iridio she had left in her. And the iridio ran through her brutally, burning every inch of muscle and bone. Damaging her, probably, but she was unafraid.
“Obey.”
Reina broke free. “No.”
She was met with a scowl. “I groomed you to be useful to me. This strength of yours—of my son—was meant to serve me. Not be squandered against me. I saved your life.”
Reina pounded her chest. “You did, and you did it to use me, knowing all I ever wanted was family.” She pointed a hand behind her, where Eva and Maior stood—where Celeste lay. Her tears were not of sadness but of anger. “They are more family than you’ll ever be. As long as I live, you’re not taking that away from me.”
Do?a Ursulina raised her hands again, this time stirring the roots keeping the damas in place. “You would choose death rather than a brand-new heart? After everything I offered you? You were supposed to be my successor!”
There was no dignity in it. To Reina, it sounded like her grandmother was preparing to beg.
“I will never be your successor, and I regret everything I have done for you.” Reina almost smiled. There was a fullness in her chest she hadn’t realized had been missing since the night of that fateful attack. Whatever the tinieblas had taken from her, Ches had given it back.
“Then you will die with the rest of them.”
Do?a Ursulina thrust her hands forward, shooting the gnarling roots at Reina and Maior—her final gamble to restrain them. The seconds slowed to a crawl as Reina watched dozens—hundreds—of them crawling out of the earth, reaching for her.
Her golden blade materialized in her hands then, coming to her like an afterthought. There was no sun in the tunnel, yet it was blinding. A gift from the only other divine presence in the tomb. Light skinned the darkness from walls rippled in agonized faces. It revealed the fear that burned bright in Do?a Ursulina’s eyes.
Reina lunged for the roots, even as she knew there were too many to prevent them from seizing Maior. But as long as Reina was breathing, she was going to try.
Then a fireball blasted past her, a star, so incendiary that it caught the roots and spread through their network in fragments of a moment. The fire roared through the sanctum, lighting every nook and cranny, cooking the blood, suffocating them with its heat and smoke. It had Eva’s name written all over it.
The air turning to smoke meant there was a countdown to the end. Reina didn’t waste a moment of it. Screaming, she rushed her grandmother with her golden blade and swung, slashing from shoulder to hip.
Do?a Ursulina’s cry joined the roar of the fire. It etched into Reina’s heart. And Reina didn’t spare a look. She couldn’t, or else she would end up adding another regret to the night.
She circled the dais, guided by a final resolution that she knew Ches himself had planted in her. The instructions were clear as day.
She vaulted like she was reaching for the ceiling and used the pull of gravity to bring herself down. She swung her blade toward the center of the dais, right in between the statues, where Do?a Ursulina had stirred Rahmagut’s power. The blade’s radiance dueled with Eva’s fire, blinding everything and everyone. With it, Reina was like a comet headed for the earth.
She made impact. Her blade shattered the dais, cratering the stone with a great quake that sent Do?a Ursulina and the fallen damas slinging against the walls. The sanctum shuddered, a storm of dust and fire raging through it. The two statues finally toppled, raining debris, threatening to crush Reina beneath the rubble.
She dashed out of the way, meeting a collapsing bridge. To her immense relief, Maior and Eva weren’t in the sanctum anymore.
The chamber shook behind her. The ceiling and the walls caved in, the tomb’s pillared foundations surrendering to the chaos. The whole room collapsed with a great bellow that hurled Reina to the outlet tunnel, where her body crashed to the wall and her temples clattered against the stone.
42
Two Warring Gods
Everything about Eva’s body ached: her temples, her joints, her wildly fluttering heart. She took a big gulp of air and nearly drowned in the dust covering her nose and mouth.
A tremor rippled through the tunnel. The sanctum behind it groaned. Eva opened her eyes to utter darkness.
She sat up as bits of rubble and dust descended from a ceiling on the verge of collapsing. When she invoked galio to numb her pain, it came with ease and soothing relief, healing her beyond what she had intended. She summoned a flame and nearly blinded herself from the potency.