Total pages in book: 126
Estimated words: 123065 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 615(@200wpm)___ 492(@250wpm)___ 410(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 123065 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 615(@200wpm)___ 492(@250wpm)___ 410(@300wpm)
“No!” I pull him to his feet. “Who told you this? Apep? Inti?”
He doesn’t fight me; he just shakes his head again and again and keeps singing.
“Daggon!” I slap him across the face. “Snap out of it!”
He starts laughing and then turns to me and grabs my face with both hands. “You don’t know yet, but you’ll see, it’s going to be over with and you’ll suffer the most. What an ending. I think I’ll just go stand by the water now, maybe let it drown me since I know what I know.”
“What did you do?”
“I touched her.” He looks away. “I saw. I fell.” And then his eyes lock on mine. “We always say not to look at our eyes, but I saw my own reflected in the chaos of hers. Interesting, isn’t it? Because I became lost. And the worst part? I wanted it. I wanted it all to end.”
“She’s chaos, she can’t help but show you horrors like that.”
“She’s going to destroy us all,” he says sadly. “But maybe you can enjoy the fall in the meantime.” He pats me on the shoulder and walks toward the water then drops to his knees again in the sand.
I’m so pissed I can’t think straight as I stomp toward the mouth of the cave.
Cleo is there, obviously, and she’s already on her knees, palms up as if she’s ready to worship. My steps falter.
I trip twice before actually making it to her.
Her head is bowed.
It’s so pretty.
So serene.
So weak.
Me. Not her.
I feel weak.
So instead of telling her how beautiful her hands are, how soft her hair is, and how much I want to touch it. I pull open my robe and I pause.
I see the scene set before me. The violence. Me shoving myself in her face, telling her to take me deep. Me shouting at her demanding she service me. Me. Me. Me. It’s all about me.
Not her.
Sick to my stomach, I watch in my mind’s eye as she tries to push me away.
I feel nothing but anger.
Hatred.
Want.
I hate that my heart is cold and all I want is violence, that I want to wrap my hands in her hair and tug so hard she cries.
What has happened? What is this vision? I would never. Would I? In my obsession to ascend have I become the very thing I hate?
A tear runs down her cheek.
She gives in.
She lowers her head.
No. Not this way. Not this way.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.
I stare into her eyes.
I drown.
And lose myself more than I should.
I hate myself in that moment of hesitation. Forget my frozen heart, my soul screams out for me to stop, that this isn’t how it began—this isn’t how it should end.
I preach not to look too close to us, and yet forget not to look into the sacrifice, into her fathomless blue and green eyes. I see the future. I see myself so fully as the monster I’ve become.
I’m haggard.
I’m broken.
I’m doing a job for humanity but really, it’s for myself. At what cost? I swear as she’s tasting me, tears coursing down her face, I hate myself for the first time in my existence.
I truly hate.
And it’s not the gods.
It’s me.
What even am I?
My heart clenches as ice breaks around me, crumbling, falling, dying.
I jerk away from her and fall to my knees.
And for the first time in a century…
I, the creator of worlds, Ra, God of Gods, after seeing a vision of what I will become if I stay on this journey.
Weep in blood---of those I’ve killed.
CHAPTER 30
CLEO
“Stand by your own trial and not by what others say.” – Gudmundur Jonsson
Ihate him, but I can’t hate his tears.
My own cascade down my face.
He’s cruel.
Mean in a way I never thought possible.
He knows that every touch he gives me is like a gift and yet he uses it as a curse, and I hate him for it. Every time he leaves this cave, I’m left wanting. This time he was trying to punish me, but I think he’s the one who got the punishment.
My single goal when he came in here was to try to seduce him, to get him to falter, to fall. Instead, I was the one tricked, the one who was broken, or so I thought for a few brief moments.
He digs his hands into the dirt and screams. “The gods have failed me, I have failed myself.”
His hands shake as he lifts them from the ground, covered in dirt, he presses them to his chest, then his eyes flash to mine.
I’m not sure if he saw what I saw, him forcing me, him silencing me, but it’s all I can do to sit there, mouth open, tears streaming down my face, for him, for myself.
“Why would you do this?” he rasps.