The Rise of Deragon (The Deragon Duology #2)

32

Geneva

R en gave me the official rundown on what to expect from the Temple of the Shrine as we walked here this morning. Individual chambers for each deity—all of which are uniquely experienced by every individual visitor—and only one room can be visited in a twenty-four-hour period. To ensure it, I’d leave with a mark across my hand. It wouldn’t hurt, but it would bear the look of a scalded, white-hot brand.

“It encourages travelers to stay longer,” Ren explained over breakfast. “To experience every sanctuary before returning home.”

What he hadn’t quite prepared me for, however, was how massive the space was.

In many ways, it emulates the same glory and splendor that Urovia’s throne room does, only instead of it being extensively wide, it towers high. The floor we enter upon stands at the temple’s summit, and as the building drops down from the edge of the great hill, winding stairs help direct patrons to different sanctuaries. Like standing inside a colossal silo. Signs indicate who occupies the top deck and how the deities progress the lower you descend—Pluto residing in a subterranean space that even Ren, a seasoned veteran here, doesn’t wish to explore.

Sunlight streams through the overhead windows, warming the skin along my neck. The rays draw Ren’s attention there, and in its wake, we both remember Ren’s lips and what they were doing in that exact spot last night . . .

Ren clears his throat. “I know where I’m going,” he says plainly. “Do you?”

“Minerva,” I answer, the blush in my cheeks negating the solemnity in my tone. “Maybe she’ll have answers on Pandora’s whereabouts.”

He nods. “Good choice. Meet on the front steps when you’re done? The weather’s lovely, so if one of us takes longer, it shouldn’t be too—”

I shut him up with a kiss, sparing him the need to scramble for an explanation.

Ren frames me instantly, his kiss soft and exploratory all at once. No dramatics or flare or heat—as I certainly wouldn’t hold enough composure in such a sacred space if he started down that road. Just a gentle reminder of how much we enjoy one another. Care about each other. I try not to think about how I’ll miss him, even though I’ll see him again in a few hours.

And then, Ren strolls down the first set of descending stairs without a care. Only once he’s gone do I realize I hadn’t asked him which deity he was off to confront.

I stand among a bustling crowd of travelers, my eyes tracing the signages of which deities lie where. Minerva’s name appears etched into an emblem instructing me to descend two levels, which shouldn’t be too daunting. But if that’s the case, why am I so conflicted?

I came here to visit Minerva, to clear my conscience about letting Pandora slip past me in the streets yesterday. Any guidance she could bring me to keep my suppressed culpability from overcoming me is vital , and likely only something she could grant me.

And yet . . .

My traitorous heart begins to race, my skin heating as every instinct drifts towards the statue of Venus. The shape of her body reminds me that my own body is beautiful, even after an early motherhood and years of healing from malnourishment. But the statue’s eyes . . . that’s what really bewitches me. I look into eyes of stone and somehow see an otherworldly persuasion. A dreamlike temptation forever frozen in her molding.

The words Love, Beauty, Desire, Sex, Fertility, Prosperity, and Victory in various translations grace the stone wall overhead, and as I approach the arched doorway, a veiled attendant closes her small hands over mine. I don’t know how to interpret the kind gesture until I feel the touch of something thin graze my palm.

“Set this along the surface of your tongue,” she prompts, her voice light, like the first warm wind on a winter’s day. Then, she cracks open the temple door and nudges me inside. “And may the goddess meet your needs,” she adds, and just as quickly as she appeared, she departs, shutting the door with a resounding clang .

I stand motionless in a room of silence and stone. No inscriptions or decorations line the walls here, but the very architecture seems to slope towards the smaller door in front of me—porcelain and teeming with mystery.

Peering down at the contents in my hands, I immediately make note of its texture: one side smooth, one side sandpaper. Like a square piece of tape without the sticky side. Stamped into its lavender center, a heart in darker purple seems to glimmer back at me, even with the minimal lamplight.

I turn from the shrinking side of the room and place my hand upon the door I entered from. It faintly creaks—and I realize that the acolyte didn’t trap me here. I don’t have to face what lies within this chamber if I truly don’t wish to.

But Ren’s already been traipsing through whichever sanctuary he wandered off to for long enough. He’s done this likely several times before. So I do not allow myself to dwell on any more possibilities or apprehensions, setting the patch along my tongue, turning from the exit, and entering Venus’s sanctuary.

+

The room is pitch dark until the first orb of violet light burns in the faraway distance.

I almost presume it to be a torch set aflame by enchanted firelight, but the light begins to flit around the space, drawing close. Soon, the orb takes shape, a circle stretching into an oval, and the oval adopting symmetrical, sloping lines near its base. Almost like—

A human jawbone.

I don’t bother asking who approaches, not when I know that bone structure. I made that bone structure. More light drips towards the floor, forming limbs, a torso, and a head full of curls I’d recognize anywhere.

“Pandora?”

“Mother!” she calls out, no hint of surprise in her voice. Only delight. She rushes towards me, her features detailing the closer she becomes. Her light surges in a glow. “We’ve been waiting for you!”

“We?” I ask.

At the same moment the word leaves my lips, another beacon of light emerges. Brighter—not in intensity, but in hue. Pandora’s purple light has a coldness about it, but there’s only heat in the red flames that burn in the distance. The very essence of it tells me it’s my sister, and its magenta twin sprinkles into existence beside her. I watch as Venus and Calliope float towards my daughter. In a defensive movement, I reach for Pandora’s hand, attempting to shelter her from Venus’s wrath, and yelp at the heat that sizzles my palm.

Real fire—Pandora and the rest of them. They’re made of real fire here.

But at the spark of that touch, I see a haze of light wrap around my limbs, too. Suddenly, my hands poised before me glow like liquid gold, igniting a bright aura from within me. I reach for Pandora again, and this time, there’s no pain.

I clutch her tightly before turning to look at Venus again, braced for another altercation—

“There’s no animosity, sister,” Venus explains as she draws closer, the full dimensions of her visible now.

Doubt trickles in. “There’s not?”

“Not here, at least.” Calliope laughs, the sound like a bell. “This space, it’s for you.”

I mean to ask further questions, but the smiles on each of their faces wrecks something in me, and I’m unable to find the right words.

Then, Pandora cradles my face in her hands—the gesture so motherly it threatens to sideswipe any composure I have left.

She whispers, “Everyone that you’ve ever loved is here to visit you.”

Instantly, I gasp out the words, “Does that mean Mother—”

“My lovely girls,” her voice chimes from a few paces away.

Violet Deragon sounds exactly as I remember her last, and I thank the Saints with all my soul for allowing me to preserve her memory so well. Chills scatter across my arm at the realization that she’s here—that I’m encountering my mother again for the first time in thirty years. And as she fully materializes into being, I weep at the sight of every woman I’ve loved in my lifetime standing all in one place.

I smile at the gradient of color, despite feeling oddly out of place among them. My presence glows like sunshine, but across the four of them, hues of near blue all the way to fiery red bleed together in a slow blur. Pandora’s aura is purple, yet on the verge of indigo—more blue-tinged now that she’s standing beside her grandmother. Violet is, well, pure violet. Calliope—the closest portrait of our mother—shimmers with a pink flame that heats whenever her smile deepens. And furthest on the right, Venus’s bloodred fire dances with a subdued sort of happiness.

Mother steps towards me and kisses my brow. Purple flame mingles with yellow at the touch. “You gave her my name,” she says, such human inflection in her voice as it breaks with honor and joy and sadness having been gone all these years. “But oh, how she carries your beauty, my dear Geneva.”

I think I could drown in the tears I shed in this moment.

“How lucky am I,” Violet Deragon sighs like a song—awed disbelief and love abounding. “To see my baby with her baby, and they’re both all grown up now.”

To keep from breaking down, I look around the room and ask, “Where’s Father?”

Venus visibly flinches. “What do you mean where is he?” she hisses.

“I mean exactly that,” I say, not backing down. “I loved him too.”

Despite what was later discovered about him.

How he resented Venus so deeply for Mother’s death—even with it being her choice, her sacrifice—that he was willing to let her die in Jericho’s penitentiary for his conspiracies. How Venus’s wrath still burned for the man, if not because of those choices, then because he thought so poorly of the man she grew to love with such unwavering intensity.

“He may take some time to come around,” Mother answers softly, grief for the man she adored so evidently coasting in the depths of her eyes. “I have a feeling that even a realm after death could not spare him from the shame he feels now.”

Perhaps his temporary absence is for the better, then. At least I have my ladies. The truest loves I’ve ever known. My mother, my sisters, my daughter . . .

“What about Kurt?” I ask no one at all.

There’s a suspended span of silence before Calliope of all people asks, “What about him?”

The question seems to trigger a landslide’s worth of panic.

No, he has to be here. I loved him. Even though we were each other’s best kept secret, our hearts belonged to each other. There was no one else. There were no hesitations. I had given him a daughter despite him not being around to meet her, and although I had forgiven Jericho, I had never forgotten the short stretch of time I had with Kurt . . . and how I would’ve given anything for another year. Another month. Another day—

Would’ve.

The word catches in my throat, forming a knot.

I would’ve given anything.

But now . . . did my heart deceive my head? Did I love Kurt like I believed I did at nineteen?

Then, bright as the midday sun, a golden sprinkle of light tinged with orange drifts into view. The warmth of its presence beats into me. It grows more sweltering by the minute, but I don’t mind. Not when this means that in this liminal space, even if it’s only for a heartbeat, Kurt will have the chance to behold the beautiful girl we made together. The orb of sunshine delays on taking form, but I find relief knowing I hadn’t forgotten him like I feared. That forgiving Jericho’s sins hadn’t rid Kurt from the most sacred part of my heart.

“There you are,” I say, heaving a breath of immense relief. The whole room feels the complex array of emotions seeping into the sound of the words—the sadness. “I was worried you wouldn’t come.”

More sunlight shimmers as the entity laughs. “Of course I’d be here. My heart has always called to yours.”

My face wrinkles with misunderstanding. Not at his response, but at the sound of his voice. I silently loathe myself for not being able to remember the way he spoke while he was alive—not like I could with Mother—no matter the years apart.

My lips tremble. “I’ve missed you so dearly.”

Another confused laugh. “I find that hard to believe.”

Does he doubt me that much? My stomach lurches at the thought, at the guilt that slowly creeps into my system—even here, in this otherworld. “How could you think that? Of course I did,” I reply unsteadily.

In my trepidation, I didn’t realize he had crossed the remaining distance to reach me, and it’s his golden touch pouring into me that wakes me up to the notion. Our hands intertwine, and the sensation courses through me like trying to contain a shooting star in our shared grasp. Daylight explodes throughout the darkness, banishing it altogether where we stand united. It’s undeniable, now—that something supernatural exists between us. As if no time or distance can taint the bond we have.

“But Genny,” he says so calmly that I’m inclined to shiver. “I’ve never left you.”

Finally, the detailing in his face comes into view, and I look upon the man who captured my heart.

Only it’s not Kurt.

It’s Ren.