The Hidden Goddess (46 page)

“This is what the Temple Warlocks did to my father!” Dmitri’s eyes went from Perun’s face to Stanton’s. But Stanton did not look at Dmitri; his dark gaze was fixed on Fortissimus.

“Tell me,” Stanton said.

Fortissimus tensed, hissing agony.

“The harder you resist, the worse the interrogation acid will burn in your blood.” Stanton’s voice was soft and calm. “You think the pain is unbearable now, but it will get worse. Submit, Flannigan. Tell me and the pain will stop.”

“Dreadnought,” Emily whispered. “No.”

“Tell me how to find the Black Glass Goddess,” Stanton repeated, his voice perfectly level, as if striving to make each word balance precisely with the next.

Fortissimus threw his head back and cackled—something halfway between a laugh and a shriek. Tears streamed down the sides of his face, mingling with the sweat that ran in rivulets down from his forehead.

“I don’t know!” he screamed. “I swear it, I don’t know anything!”

“Tell me how to find her!” Stanton said, his voice rising.

“Dreadnought,
no
!” Emily seized his shirt in her good hand, shook him, made him look at her. “I did not help you regain the power of the Institute so that you could do this!” Her eyes searched Stanton’s face frantically. “I told him the
truth
! I told him you were
decent
! And I told myself …”

“Emily …” Stanton looked down at her.

“Don’t make it a lie,” Emily whispered, her voice tiny and desperate. “Oh please. Please don’t make it a lie.”

She saw the flicker of anguish behind his eyes. His face softened for a moment, but it hardened again almost as quickly, like wax cooling. He put a hand on each of her arms. “It’s the end of the world, Emily.”

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than a vision knifed through her like a cold glass blade slid between her ribs. The agony of it drove her almost to her knees.

The Black Glass Goddess, thrusting a knife of obsidian deep into Stanton’s side …

“Xiuhunel!”
she cried, tearing herself away from his grasp, throwing herself away from him, running out into the beautiful, strong, powerful hallways of the Institute.

She ran until she came to the Veneficus Flame, and when she reached it, she collapsed beneath it, pressing her hot cheek against the cool marble pedestal. She pressed a hand over her mouth, her stomach heaving.

There were swift footsteps, and a warm hand was laid on her shoulder. A figure crouched down beside her. Dmitri. His eyes were wide with betrayal and anguish.

“Goddamn him,” he growled. “Goddamn them both.”

She stood quickly, intending to run, but he caught her arm and jerked her close. It was as if he needed to be comforted as much as he desired to comfort. He wrapped his arms around her, pulled her to his chest.

“A torturer. A sangrimancer. I told you so!” Dmitri said again, clinging to her. “And Perun … How could he let it happen?”

Emily pressed her face into Dmitri’s shoulder, stared at the weave of his jacket. She didn’t want to think. She wanted to lose herself in the calm, orderly arrangements of threads. Hot tears stung her eyes, flowing into the fabric of Dmitri’s jacket. Then she was sobbing without restraint, jerking and shuddering.

“I will take you away from here,” Dmitri said firmly. He sounded as if it was the only thing he could do that would make the world right. “Away from all of them.”

She looked up at him, shaking her head, and in that instant Dmitri’s mouth came down over hers roughly. She pushed against his chest, but he clung to her, embracing her with the desperation of a man seeking to replace a shattered illusion with a new one.

It was the sound of a betrayed gasp that finally made him release her.

Rose stood staring at them, her mouth open. Her eyes were
wells of anguish. She brought up a hand, put it over her heart as if it hurt her terribly.

“Shame,” Rose whispered. “Shame on you!”

Sobbing, she spun on her heel and ran toward the Sophos’ office. Pushing herself away from Dmitri violently, Emily ran, too—in the opposite direction.

Emily went back to her room on the fourth floor, where she could almost make herself believe that the beautiful summer day she saw out of her window did not contain torture, pain, and betrayal. She felt numb and old, so very old. She felt as if her body were made of poured lead, her limbs stiff and slow, her core hot and vitreous. She found a chair to sit in. She stared out the window at the tops of the trees, waving mutely in the warm afternoon breeze.

Not honest. Not forthright. Not decent
.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she implored Ososolyeh. “How could you let me fall in love with him?”

Stanton came to her an hour later, the doors of the room flying open without his having to touch them. They closed behind him silently. She struggled not to look up, to keep her eyes fixed on the tops of the stirring trees, but just as she had been unable to ignore Mirabilis in his own Institute, just as she had been unable to ignore Zeno, she could not ignore Stanton. The Institute was his now; it belonged to him and he belonged to it. She glared at him, despising the intrusion.

He stared down at her silently. She could see that despite his mastery of the Institute, he did not know what to say.

Good
, she thought, bitterly. As long as she could unsettle him, discomfit him, she’d never be totally under his sway. It was a horrible way to think about a fiancé, but it was a perfectly logical way to think about an ex-fiancé. She thought about taking the diamond ring from her finger and throwing it at him, but the action was unnecessary; the diamond itself spoke more loudly than even the most desperate of gestures. It sat on her finger as dead and flat and lusterless as a piece of glass.

“Fortissimus wouldn’t tell us,” Stanton said, looking down at her. “Pushing him any further would have killed him.”

“Well, why didn’t you just kill him, then?” Emily spat. “That’s what sangrimancers do, isn’t it?”

There was a long silence. He stared down at her as if expecting her to speak, but she held her lips together tightly.

“Rose saw you,” he broke the silence, finally. “She told me.”

Emily stared into his eyes, putting all her strength into the gaze. She pressed her lips together until they ached, until she tasted blood behind her lips from where her teeth cut into them. Stanton wanted her to apologize, to beg for his forgiveness, to say that the Russian meant nothing to her. And he
didn’t
. But no one would force her to say the words. Not ever. Not with all the glowing needles in the world.

“Do you love him?” Stanton’s voice was acid.

“I don’t think I love anyone,” Emily said. They were the words she wanted to say, not the words Stanton wanted to hear, and she said them with great relish.

“Perhaps you are not capable of love,” Stanton said. “Perhaps you are only capable of making men desire you. With underhanded powders and potions and—”

“Stop it.”

“Perhaps it’s all a matter of convenience with you,” Stanton continued, his voice low and brutal. “Perhaps that’s what men are to you. Convenient harbors for the dingy little boat of your life. Creatures you can manipulate into loving you—”

“I said stop it!” Emily screamed.

“No,” he said. “I won’t stop. Not in my own—” Even though he checked himself, Emily knew perfectly well what he’d been about to say.

“… in your own Institute.” She completed the sentence for him, fury whipping her. “The Institute that you stole with blood magic … that I lied to get back for you!”

“Lower your voice,” Stanton said through gritted teeth. “I’ve had enough of your shrieking.”

Emily stared at him, breathing hard, her heart thudding. She wanted to fly at him, tear him into bloody strips. But with great effort, she calmed herself. She took a deep breath. When she spoke again, her voice was low and resonant—so low as to be almost inaudible.

“It’s all right,” she said finally. “You won’t have to listen to it much longer. I’m leaving.”

“You can’t leave,” he said.

“Can,” she spat. “Will.”

He seized her as she tried to dart past him, wrapped her in strong arms that had the force of iron bands. She struggled against him, but he held her fast. Finally she subsided, breathing heavily, staring down at his chest. She held her body stiffly. Her hand was a fist.

“Let me go,” she breathed, the words growling in her throat.

“No,” he said. “I won’t.”

They stood like that, locked in anger and fear, for a long time. Finally, without slackening his grip, Stanton murmured something by her ear.

“It will be terrible, Emily. More terrible than Perun described. More terrible than any of your visions.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know that it will be terrible,” he said.

“No, you know more than that,” she said. “For God’s sake, stop lying!”

“It will be terrible!” he shouted, the force of the words shaking her, rattling her bones. She couldn’t stand under the force of those words; only his arms, wrapped tightly around her, kept her from sinking to the floor.

“You’ve seen it all, too,” Emily said, awareness dawning on her. “How?”

Stanton’s eyes were closed, his face was painted with terrible remorse.

“Alcmene Blotgate,” he said finally.

“Did you love her?” Emily searched for an explanation, any explanation.

“Sangrimancers don’t fall in love.” Stanton’s eyes remained closed. “They use each other for mutual benefit.”

“Then how—”

“She took me to the Temple to be initiated into the Goddess’ service,” Stanton said, the words tumbling out in a rush. “When I was a cadet. I failed the initiation. The Goddess released
my neologism, showed me the world remade. Showed me
temamauhti
. I couldn’t bear it. I ran away.”

“You knew?”

“That’s why Alcmene Blotgate tried to kill me—because I was a traitor. Because I was a failure and a coward. I don’t know why she didn’t finish the job. I was ready to finish it for her when Mirabilis found me. He made me see that there were better choices—”

“You knew?” Emily cried. “You knew it was coming? You knew ten years ago, and you did nothing? When men like Morozovich, or my father—my
father
!—were dying, trying to save the world? How could you? How
could
you?”

Stanton opened his mouth to speak, and it was clear the intended retort was scalding. But in the end, he didn’t say anything. He just shook his head and released her from his arms, as if finally realizing that it was futile to hold on to her any longer.

“You’re right,” he said. “About everything. Hate me. It will make things easier for both of us.”

Taking a step back, she slapped him across the face, hard.

“Go to hell, Dreadnought Stanton.”

He nodded, rubbing his face tiredly.

“I will,” he said. “It was only you who ever made me think I could go anyplace else.”

And as he left the room, the doors slammed behind him with a force that made the whole Institute rumble.

After he left, Emily sank to the floor, as if he’d taken all her strength with him. That was that, then.

At length, Emily got up. She took off the peach-blush dress, let it fall to the floor, laboriously removed her corset and chemise and everything soft and lacy, and stood savoring her nakedness for a long time.

Then she put on old things. She would have put on the clothes she’d brought from Lost Pine, if there’d been anything left of them. But there wasn’t. So she put on the simplest gray dress she could find, dragging it down over her head and buttoning it slowly, her ivory hand tinking against the buttons.

Then she sat down wearily on the window seat to wait for the end of the world.

She watched the leaves of the trees swaying in the early evening wind. This time, she saw them moving a special way, a way she knew. This time, she already knew there would be a message for her in them. But she didn’t want to see it. She tried to look away. She was tired of messages, tired of the responsibility they brought. But, still, she looked.

Zeno is in the Dragon’s Eye
.

Emily contemplated this with black amusement.

Ososolyeh, beloved earth-mother
, Emily said to it, trying to send her reply down through the treacherous stone floors of the Institute.
I’ve had just about enough of you
.

She knew what the Dragon’s Eye was, of course. It was the brown and green orchid, Zeno’s favorite plant in the Institute’s conservatory. In her vision, Zeno’s last words had been soft and simple, spoken in the language of wind and water and wood:
I am coming home
.

Komé had transferred her spirit into an acorn; Zeno had sent the last drop of himself singing along a root. But that place, the place he’d died … it had seemed so immeasurably far away. How could he have made it all the way back here, to New York, to the Dragon’s Eye orchid he loved?

Sighing, rising wearily, she thought about not going. She thought about ignoring the message, but she knew she could not. She went to open the door and found, completely unsurprisingly, that it was locked.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE