“Would you like to know where your mother has been these last years,” Envy continued, his tone taunting, “what she’s been doing?”
And then I saw it. The slight movement of a shadow on the wall. Someone was standing just out of sight. I tensed, hoping Envy had sensed something my dulled mortal senses had not and that was why he’d started distracting my twin. Vittoria hadn’t taken her focus from the prince, making me wonder if she was already aware of who was slowly approaching and was unworried. Or if they’d cast a glamour, hiding themselves from her. I prayed the latter was true.
“I don’t care,” Vittoria finally said. “She hasn’t been trying to break our spell-locks. Hasn’t bothered to come to our aid. She created us to watch over the underworld, then left. She’s wonderful at disappearing, traveling to whichever realm or universe that strikes her fancy. It could be a thousand years before we see her again.”
“House Wrath is a peculiar choice of residence for someone who is uninterested in her daughters. Well,” Envy amended, “at least one of them.” He looked to me then. “I believe her title was the Matron of Curses and Poisons.”
“Celestia.” My voice came out in a shocked whisper. I wasn’t answering Envy. I was speaking to the woman with silver and lavender hair that had come up behind my twin.
Her dark eyes met mine before dropping to the claw marks on my chest. Something like anger flashed in her ancient gaze, something I recognized in myself.
From one blink to the next, she’d summoned the roots from above us, wrenching them from the ceiling, and wrapped them around Vittoria, chaining her arms, legs, and body. My sister thrashed, completely caught off guard, then stilled as the Crone stepped in front of her.
Celestia’s smile was the thing that made monsters afraid. Here stood not simply a goddess of the underworld, but its creator. “Hello, daughter.”
TEN
“Mother.” Vittoria’s shock dissolved almost as immediately as it had appeared. She thrashed against the roots binding her, shouting curses and hexes. Celestia watched, unconcerned. My sister was a powerful goddess, but Celestia was the Crone. A titan. Seeming to realize that, Vittoria stilled, breathing hard, her gaze even harder. “You proved your point. Let me go.”
The bars on my cell flared with lavender brilliance, then sank into the earth. I gingerly stepped over the barrier, relieved when I exited the cell without pain or difficulty.
I rushed to the cell beside mine, gripping the bars tightly. Antonio’s broken body was slumped on the floor, a pool of ruby-red blood catching the torchlight. My twin lying on an altar, a similar pool of blood surrounding her, flashed across my mind. Unlike my sister, Antonio wasn’t immortal. He wouldn’t rise again. He would rot, his bones eventually turning to dust. And he would cease forever. No matter what he’d done to me, he didn’t deserve this.
“Help him,” I turned to the Crone, “please. Give him his heart back.”
Celestia’s attention moved to the body. There was nothing in her expression to indicate her thoughts. She looked back at me. “He’s gone, child. To bring him back now… it is not natural. He would not be natural.”
I looked from the Crone to my twin, desperate. “Vittoria brought a werewolf back. And Antonio didn’t die a natural death. There must be some way to fix him.”
Celestia pulled the jar with his heart from the ether and held it up for me to see. I wanted to be sick but forced my gaze to not waver. Celestia tapped the glass. “It no longer beats. There is nothing to be done. He’s beyond our reach now. You must let him go, Daughter of the Moon.”
“I can’t.”
The tears I’d been holding back broke free and spilled down my cheeks. It was too much. All of it. Wrath was missing and poisoned; he could be suffering at the moment, and I felt powerless to help him. My childhood crush was brutally murdered before we could find true closure and forgiveness. And my twin—who I literally traveled to Hell to avenge because I loved her that much and was desperately trying to save—was the source of all the heartache.
A sob racked through me. The more I tried to suck it back in, the more I broke down. It wasn’t just Antonio’s senseless death. It was everything. My whole world was crumbling. My family. My life. Nothing was as it seemed. Not even my understanding of my own life, of who I was as a person, as a goddess. The weight of it all, it crushed me.
I went to my knees and submitted to the waves of grief tugging me under. I didn’t know how to go on. To get back up. I didn’t know if I wanted to get up. I was tired of fighting so many battles, both emotionally and physically. Maybe the world would be better off without goddesses and their cruel, inhuman power and wicked games.
Everyone I loved, everyone who had the misfortune to meet me, was suffering.
Envy’s gleaming boots came into view as he stepped beside me. I half-expected him to offer a cutting remark, to provoke me into feeling something other than the crushing sorrow weighing me down. Or perhaps to call me the pathetic creature I was.
Instead, he extended a hand. Tears streamed down my face as I stared at it, my sobs nearly choking me now.
“Rise,” he said softly. “Just as they always feared you would.”
His words, the very same he’d spoken to me weeks ago while I’d visited his House of Sin, drew my attention to his face. He wasn’t looking at me like I was pathetic. He looked like someone who understood, intimately, what it was like to lose everything. To be forced to stand when you wished to fall. To get up on your own and defy the hand of fate that brought so much pain by smacking you down time and again. To choose to live and flourish despite the bad. And most important, to dare to dream of better days while your current world was a living nightmare.
“Rise, Emilia,” he repeated, his hand a lifeline. “Remind them all.”
My tears slowed as my fingers clasped his. He tugged gently but firmly, helping me to my feet. I took a deep, ragged breath and held on tighter, the last of my tears drying. “Thank you.”
He squeezed my hand once before letting go. “Naturally, this benefits me. Don’t be too grateful. I still don’t like you all that much.”
I knew it wasn’t the complete truth, but I didn’t question how he’d managed to partially lie. Instead, I looked at Celestia and Vittoria. My family by blood. My twin still struggled in her magical root chains, and my mother’s face was impossible to read. There would be time to talk, to see what could be done about my mortality and memories, but right now I had to get to Wrath.
I addressed my mother. “The wolves?”
“Are locked in the Shadow Realm for the next hour,” she said. “Go. And don’t forget, you owe me my book of spells. I’ll come for it soon. Have it ready.”
“I will.” I held the Crone’s stare and nodded once. Like any god, I imagined she was mercurial. Her moods shifting with her next whim. I did not need another enemy to look over my shoulder for and was grateful I’d remembered to stick her book into my satchel the night I’d discovered Vittoria was alive.
Envy started down the earthen corridor, not bothering to see if I followed. As promised, when we emerged in the room where I’d first found the Triple Moon Mirror, no werewolves lay in wait.
Envy glanced around the space, his attention landing on everything as if mentally filing the information away for later use. “Not very goddesslike, but I suppose there is a certain amount of rustic charm. If one overlooks the stone and dirt.”
Smiling at his commentary, I shook my head and moved toward the pedestal in the center of the room. Last time I was here, it contained the Triple Moon Mirror. Now my dagger gleamed from where it hovered, point down, in its center. I wrapped my fingers around it, feeling a surge of determination fill me. And perhaps hope. I would find my king, then I’d find a way to break my spell-lock. Somehow during that time, I’d also figure out the truth behind Vesta’s murder or disappearance and clear my sister from wrongdoing. Or see her pay for her crimes.
I let loose a breath. It wasn’t going to be easy, but I’d find a way to accomplish it all. First, I needed to find my partner. My husband.
I faced Envy, remembering what my sister said about Wrath’s location. If she could be believed. I wasn’t fully a goddess again, so I couldn’t be certain, but so far I didn’t have any issues lying. Unlike the demon princes.
“Do you know where Vittoria’s temple is?” I asked. He nodded, his attention fixed on the dagger. “Then let’s go.”
We stood outside the gates of Hell, right at the beginning of the Sin Corridor, looking at the fierce magic that crackled over the bones. Wrath had cast a spell to lock the gates when we’d first arrived in the Seven Circles, and the magic twisted around it like demonic vines.