It had never stormed as loudly as it had that night.
Not even when Havryil died, had the sky answered her anguish and agony, mourning as she did, mourning as the goddess Itri had when Evîn had sacrificed himself. It had happened eons before Arevik's birth, but she remembered Livia's shining eyes when she had recounted the story.
It had been dark for weeks, the silver of the stars dimming as if they had died with Evîn. Itri's grief had been all-encompassing, and Taniyn had been unable to breach it, unable to continue her steps in their dance of light and night.
It was said that it was Zilar who brought the stars back into the sky. Zilar, who had brought the goddess down from her grief, taking her to the sea where her tears made the oceans rise.
''Imagine that,'' Livia had said, voice filled with something dreamy, heavy as the clouds. ''Having the devotion of a god. Having someone love you that much.'' Livia had wanted that same devotion. Arevik had seen it, wherever the girl went. Had seen it even when Livia had told the servants who to love, who to hate, and had delighted in watching the melody of her voice wrap around their minds and muddle them into submission.
Livia had been cruel, and yet she had wanted adoration. Arevik had been certain she would not know how to give, only to take, fingers sticky with greed and envy.
Tears filled Arevik's eyes, and outside her window, a lightning bolt struck. The sound reverberated through her, took hold of her bones and shook them, shook them until she could only think of bleeding Livia, beautiful Livia, terrible Livia, dead Livia —
And Arevik who had ignored her. Arevik who had been a coward, who had refused to look at her, those eyes a muddled image of a past she wished to forget. But the two girls were part of each other. Even in death, Livia's grip was iron, a finger lodged underneath Arevik's rib bone, a shard that would only burrow deeper with each shuddering breath Arevik took.
Livia was dead, and Arevik had been awful.
But had Livia not been the same?
The sound of the storm grew louder, battering against her window, as if the veiled fingers of the wind were threatening to destroy it for her thoughts. Guilt and grief were a concoction in her chest as she lay there in the dark, blanketed by shadows. Rhodys had asked her if she wanted Arevik to stay with her. Arevik had refused.
Had refused for a foolish hope glimmering in her chest like an ember. Perhaps if she closed her eyes and allowed the storm to carry her to sleep, she would open them to Livia's smiling face. She would smile at Arevik, and would laugh, reaching for her tousled hair to straighten the wayward locks.
''You didn't think you'd be rid of me this easily, did you?''
But when creaks of morning light crept upon the floor, a slow crawl followed by the smell of lingering rain on earth, Arevik opened her eyes and saw no one.
He dreamt of his uncle that night.
In his dream, it was him with his hands around the older man's neck. Him squeezing the life out of him, each finger an extension of Death's scythe. Him, smiling as he felt the beat of his pulse, slow and slow until it hissed into silence.
Him, who smiled at the ease in which he took a life.
Icharen woke with a startle, and all he could do was stare at his hands.
She didn't sleep that night. Jasia had insisted on staying with her, the rhythm of her steady breathing filling the room as she lay in her bed.
Laia's bandages unwound and fell on the floor, crumbling petals of a dying flower.
Her hands were still the same, fingers stained and cut, every semblance of colour swallowed up by something insidious. She thought of the dead, how she had watched Livia take her final breath, how her blood kept flowing, water breaking through stone.
And the looks on the Anunnaki's faces as they found them.
It was the same harrowing look Laia saw when she looked in the mirror, when her hands ached and her dress stained with so much red.
Fear.
Once, long ago, Ilari had believed in humans.
A boy of eight years, Evîn's blood surging through his, mingling to show red still, never gold, never ichor — and yet Ilari had felt the god's call with each thrumming of his heart through his chest. It echoed Evîn's final breath in the world.
He had left to make the world better, to extend his hands throughout Illéa, fingertips grazing the corners of each province as his antlers had once touched the sky.
Ilari had thought it a shame not to use his powers for good. To help.
But wherever he extended his helping hand, his fingers were slapped away, or forcibly pulled where he didn't want to go, where he didn't want to use his powers. His parents had robbed him of unseen daylight as soon as they realized what lingered underneath the mist in their son's eyes.
He still remembered the sound of the clicking lock when his parents hid him from the world. From using his powers.
He still remembered the sound, high and mighty, shrill and bursting, that he released when he finally escaped.
He only believed in the Anunnaki now.
And his words from the night before, barbed and taunting, haunted him as he stood with Naenia, holding a plate in his hand that grew heavier as she placed food on it.
It haunted him that an Anunnaki died. That someone had killed an Anunnaki, butchered her from what Erra had described to him.
But Ilari had always learned to rely on himself and his armour of words, and it slipped out of him, a torrential wave that he could not stop.
''That's enough,'' he murmured, when he felt the plate grow heavier. Against his legs, Blázon's fur brushed, warm and comforting. Ilari saw the outlines of it all, echoed by his words, appearing in his mind though his eyes refused to gaze with him.
Naenia's voice was sceptical. ''You're a twig, Ilari. Might as well take advantage of the food of the gods if we'll be having our last meals here.'' Her words were heavy, though they always sounded thus, sharpened by the accent of Buyan. But this was the voice of a Naenia he had come to know was tired. Not as attuned to her as he was to Erra, who had introduced them to each other, he knew what she sounded like when her fingers itched for her blades, and when the creeping sense of sleep had eluded her entirely.
He imagined they might all look like they hadn't slept.
He wanted to ask Naenia about it, ask her where the trail of her footsteps with Icharen's had led, but he knew better than to probe, when he didn't even know what had happened between them in the first place.
Either way, he didn't imagine anyone, especially men, could escape Naenia Kitezh unscathed.
''Fine. I suppose this twig could do with growing into a branch,'' Ilari said, nudging Blázon with his foot when the cat's front paws lifted to jump atop the table laden with food.
''You're bold, bringing your cat.'' Naenia finally stopped filling his plate, turning to her own.
''You're bold, bringing your mother.'' The lines of her form sharpened, and she appeared, turning to him.
''Careful now, Ilari,'' she said, slowly. ''I know you like to talk, but it'd be a pity to try without a tongue.''
Ilari smirked, leaning down to lift Blázon with his free hand. ''Always a delight, Nae.''
His fingers tapped against the bottom of his plate, his footsteps deliberate and loud, each sound bouncing back to him, sketching out his surroundings, showing him where to sit at the long table. He imagined sunlight might be flooding in from in between the columned walls, opened to the outside. He imagined the colours of the painted ceiling might be brighter than the residents of Buyan had ever seen. He thought, would it be lapis lazuli which the gods' emblazoned their rooms with? Or perhaps it was all marble and gold, echoing their blood.
''What a delightful looking creature,'' a voice came from beside him. He recognized her as one of the Anunnaki who had shared in the suspicions of Laia and Icharen. Daeva reached forward, scratching Blázon under its chin.
Blázon purred, and Ilari released the cat as he sat down with his plate. ''Blázon is as dumb as they come.''
This earned him soft laughter from Daeva, who, without being invited to, sat down beside him. Ilari tried to hide his mild annoyance. He had wanted to sit in silence, perhaps try to hear what the other Anunnaki were thinking, if anyone still reeked of Livia's blood.
''You're from Buyan, aren't you?'' Daeva asked, and Ilari nodded, pricking his fork into a piece of sausage.
''Unfortunately. And you?''
If she was offended that he didn't know, that he didn't hear it in the way her words ebbed and flowed in a more rigid tone than the harshness of Buyan, she didn't show it. ''Abalus. Though some would argue we're all from Limuria.''
Ilari only hummed.
Limuria. They all sat in the gods' domain, and one of them had already found their end in it. Perhaps it was fitting for them to die here, to die where Evîn had, for their blood to return to where his had fallen. What would he say, if he saw how the Anunnaki were treated in Buyan? Would he look at the lashes on their skin, the fear in mismatched eyes that should burn in righteousness?
What would he say, if he heard of what happened to some of them?
They'd been stories told to him by Yelena. Akin to bedtime stories told to children with ruddy cheeks and starry eyes, their cheeks kissed and their hair brushed by loving hands. Yelena wasn't soft, but she had taken him in when he had nowhere to turn. She had kissed his cheeks with wind-rough lips and had held him with hands that spoke of age and wisdom, cutting in their bones.
And she had told him of the Anunnaki before him. A warning to keep to those who were like them, to guard them and keep them safe, for the world was all too eager to carve out their eyes.
There had been an Anunnaki once, long ago.
She'd had an eye the blue of a midnight sky, the other a shade of grey so pale, it looked like bone.
She'd lived in Abalus, born into wealth, but she'd never relished in the name of her House as others did. She saw the poverty in the streets of her city, and she cried over it, tears that fell over rosy cheeks, tears that fell into the aching palms of those most needy.
Wherever her tears fell, wounds closed.
The weak were no longer weak, and the strong grew fearful.
Her family turned on her, cursed her for what she did with her powers.
They buried her alive in the poorest neighbourhood of Abalus, a wooden coffin her final home.
Even her tears couldn't save her from suffocation. When the commoners found her, she was long dead, skin turned to ash. Scratches on the wood, her nails bloody and broken. And her eyes had looked like the dying night sky.
Ilari remembered those stories wherever he went. He remembered them now as Daeva's knife scratched against her plate, as the sound of it rippled around him, and he listened to the others.
He heard them, even when they thought they were being quiet.
''Did you sleep at all? You look like you haven't.''
''I wanted to come find you.''
''Look at him. Doesn't he have a face that screams guilt? Handsome, though.''
''I wonder if her blood is still staining the courtyard.''
''Do you think the gods are angry? Will they stop this?''
''I saw you. You looked scared. Are you still scared?''
And Daeva, ''Oh, look.''
He wanted to sneer at her, tell her he couldn't, when a powerful voice boomed against the walls. It echoed across the table and against Ilari's skin, sketching the image of Ixtilaf, standing at the head.
''Come outside.''
Ixtilaf rested the blade of his sword on his shoulder. It was devoid of all light and colour, as if carved from obsidian, and when the sunlight hit it, it showed the red veins threaded through, like it was a living thing.
Everyone knew the stories of Ixtilaf and his sword.
Rhodys had heard them whispered amongst the people of Buyan, a prayer on their lips as if it might give them the strength of the god.
She heard their words fall through the cracks between the wooden slats of her bedroom wall, hidden between women sighing and wondering how the Grisham family was coping with losing their daughter to Zilar's waters.
Because Rhodys Grisham had been born dead.
Upon opening her eyes, a grave had already been buried. Her mother had tried to deny the gaze of her Anunnaki daughter for years. Had kept Rhodys inside as much as she could, until one day, she made sure even the outside world knew Rhodys no longer existed. Rhodys Grisham had been lost to the water, drowned, her perfect, human eyes closing one last time.
Her father hadn't objected, and Rhodys had been confined to the living grave that was her family's home.
All she had were the flowers she made grow through the cracks in the floor, sprouting from the earth and winding through the empty spaces between her fingers. They turned into offerings for the gods when Rhodys finally escaped her home, leaving the parents who had never wanted her behind.
A moonflower left at the river banks for Zilar was the last one she left in her village — the smallest of her offerings, for the god who had been part of her death, who her parents had worshipped in abudance. Who never interfered in Buyan's cruelty.
Rhodys wondered where the god was now as she stared at Ixtilaf, a finger toying with a long strand of brown hair, the back of her hand covered in mushrooms. When her gaze swept over the large courtyard — different from the small one that had become Livia's grave, the one in the middle of the palace, a crossing point between winding corridors. This one was far larger, embraced by the morning sky in its cornflower-blue glory. They stone yard was tethered to the far end of the palace, where the wind was loud and yet didn't touch them in its blade-sharp currents.
Magic, Rhodys assumed.
Arevik stood by her side, and when Rhodys caught her moss-earth gaze, she smiled at the young girl.
She was growing quite sick of all her smiling.
But she knew it was better to appear such, to leave the Grey One where she thrived in Buyan, to wear the persona of Rhodys in her tavern in Suddene, where she kept her customers happy, well-fed, and drunk. No one would suspect a girl who appeared to have her head in the clouds. Whose mind seemed to drift like the swaying of petals in the wind. Who did nothing more than grow flowers and mushrooms, pretty, but useless.
This Rhodys was harmless. Though she wondered what it was that Livia had done, to make her a threat, to make her end with her skin torn and her blood coating the stones, each droplet a crushed rose petal.
Further, someone scuffed the tip of their boot against the stones, as if impatient. Rhodys didn't need to look to know it was someone from Buyan. She smiled slightly, wondering if the others knew she shared her origins with them. That Icharen was another who had sought refuge amongst the peaceful Suddeni.
''Will that be all?'' she had asked him once, and he had looked at her with a strange, hollow gaze, a boy and a statue, white marbles cracked throughout. He had left with the poison in his pocket, and he had fled from Rhodys' mind as soon as she turned to her next customer.
But Rhodys never forgot faces, even when they no longer looked as haunted as one did in Buyan, a different haunting carving a mask upon his face instead.
She wondered if the poison played a hand in Kitezh's blade on his throat.
She wondered if there would be more blood as Ixtilaf lowered his sword, his tip pointed down like a fallen star, like the end of a crescent moon.
''You've come to prove your worth as a god,'' he started, and his voice boomed across stone, his shadows a shield of wisps around him, circling his arms, his hands, his sword. Beside Rhodys, Arevik straightened her back. On the other side of her, Dhyana did the same, eagerness evident in the upwards tipping of her chin. Down the line in which they had assembled in front of the wrath god, everyone reacted in silence.
''Being a god is more than receiving offers and prayers. You've heard the myths, you've been told of the demons and monsters that lurked the lands.''
They were some of Rhodys' favourite stories, recounted often by drunks in the tavern, cups wielded as if they were weapons. Ixtilaf's midnight gaze moved to her, as if he sensed it.
''Those monsters have returned. Demons, we've long thought defeated, risen again. And so you'll fight, as a god would. You'll draw blood, as a god would. You'll prove your worth as an Anunnaki, that Evîn's sacrifice was not in vain. You'll show us what it is he left you in your bloodstream.''
Ixtilaf smiled, and the red veins on his sword pulsed, as if alive with his bloodlust. His shadows shifted, and fell to either side of him as if they turned into liquid, a waterfall of ink falling and rising, forming until he was flanked by two identical creatures with glowing eyes. The same glowing eyes as the servants who tended to them, the same glowing eyes as the winged Lifebringers who helped Nieba breathe life into the lungs of a newborn.
Creatures crafted by the gods.
Their hands and feet were taloned, horns portruding from their heads, long and curving like two sickles. Their skin was a pale blue as if they were plucked from the moon, their ears winged like a bat, their skin covered in silver spikes. Someone down the line gasped. Rhodys didn't have to fake her fascination as she looked at them, at the magnificence as they stood tall, taller even than Ixtilaf.
''You have a choice,'' Ixtilaf continued. ''Fight one of them, or one of you.'' He paused, and it was heavy, pressing against each of their throat's in a silent threat, Anunnaki eyes containing unease and eagerness. ''Your last choice, is to face my sword.''
This nearly made Rhodys laugh. Only a fool would face the god, but there seemed to be many fools in the Selection, some far too eager to prove themselves already, or to bleed upon the sword of the god.
''Make your choice.''
No one moved. Rhodys reached out, her hand gently touching Arevik's, her gaze questioning. ''Let's fight each other. It will assure minimal hurt,'' Rhodys said gently, and this seemed to calm the storm in Arevik's gaze, shoulders dropping as she nodded.
She trusted her far too easily.
Rhodys grabbed her hand, threading their fingers together, feeling the way Arevik relaxed at the motion. She watched as the others made their choices, needing to supress a roll of her eyes at the sight of Erra shoving Icharen forward.
''You and me,'' he growled, and Icharen only sighed, as if he'd been expecting nothing less, already shedding the heavy white cloak he wore over his clothes. The Buyanese were all too predictable, because Naenia had wasted no time in stalking forward, standing right in front of Ixtilaf. The god only tilted his head slightly, a cat inspecting his prey before he dug his claws in.
Rhodys wondered how much blood he might spill.
And she wondered how much brain Cain actually possessed, because the white-haired fool sauntered after Naenia, positioning himself behind her as if she might be his shield in his fight against Ixtilaf. When Cain looked over his shoulder, he simply held up his hands and shrugged at the baffled gazes of some of the Anunnaki. Marcus, in particular, looked like he wanted to drag Cain back by the hair.
''It's not like he'll actually kill us.''
''Oh, I hope he'll try,'' Naenia muttered, proving once again, that there was something in the air that ate at the minds of people born in Buyan.