“Nothing,” I said, leaping off the couch, desperately wanting to close the gap between us. “I swear. There’s nothing else.”
I hadn’t even stepped any closer and Herald had already backed away. He wanted so badly to physically distance himself from me, and it hurt that much more.
“You know that I would kill for you,” he said. “Do anything to protect you. I would freeze the world if it meant that you would be safe from harm. Instead I helped you find one of the swords that were meant to take you away from me all along.”
My hand lifted, and my lips parted, like my body was struggling for something to do, or to say, but nothing came. My arms fell to my sides. “I’m sorry,” I said.
The soft, yellow light of Herald’s apartment glinted against his glasses, making it difficult to see his eyes just then, but instinctively, I knew he wasn’t angry anymore. My heart clenched yet again. I’d never seen him cry. I’d never meant to make him cry.
“I think you should go,” he said quietly, his voice harder than it should be.
“Herald, please, we should talk this – ”
“You want to talk this out now?” He hadn’t raised his voice at all, but the words sliced me like a knife. “After I’ve already helped you take another step towards your own doom? No. No more talking. This isn’t the time. Not like this. Please. Just go.”
I picked up my things, the bottom of my backpack dragging against the floor. I felt like my heart was there, too, smearing blood as it limped along beside me. Herald stood at the doorway to his apartment, waiting for me to leave. I almost bent in to touch him – to kiss him, to stroke his hair, I don’t know, to do anything – but every inch I moved towards him, he moved away farther.
“I’m sorry,” I said, because there was nothing else left to say.
As Herald slowly shut the door, I saw the first tear fall. “I’m sorry, too.”
Chapter 20
We didn’t talk after that. Herald didn’t answer any of the five text messages I’d sent him, but neither did I expect him to. I’d done too much, asked too much. All that time I was worried about something as stupid as finding Bastion attractive, when it turned out I was hiding far worse things from him.
On purpose? I suppose it was. How do you tell someone that your entire existence has been funneled towards one horrific, ultimate act? That there’s no other choice but to sacrifice yourself in the most literal sense of the word? That was where my road began with the Eldest, with Thea, with the Dark Room. And sacrifice was where it was going to end, where everything was going to end.
But it was selfish to keep Herald out of it, to keep my father
and all the others in the dark. I understood more than ever why Sterling was so angry with me. Herald would freeze the world for me, he said. I knew that my friends would have done the same.
Yet this wasn’t their burden. This was mine. And as days passed, things only got worse. The spontaneous combustion in France was only one of the many incidents worldwide that happened within the same span of minutes. I didn’t think it was ever reported in the media, that actual coincidence of so many people dying, so many accidents occurring within five crucial minutes, but it was how the human mind worked.
We look for patterns everywhere, to make sense of a universe built on numbers and random occurrences. But knowing that hundreds died at the same time on the same night, all over the world? That pattern was too much to bear. Couldn’t have happened. A freak coincidence. But happen it did. Humanity has created so many weapons, so many armaments, but denial has always been among its strongest.
The news reports had come in thick and fast, human disasters that were clustered too close together to be mere coincidence. Twenty children gone missing from a rural Thai village, their beds discovered empty. A mine in Japan collapsed in on itself, a sinkhole that swallowed a tiny community in Africa. All signs of Agatha’s killings.
Several more incidents must have been left out of the news. Places too remote for the media to pick up, maybe. Gil had made it his personal goal to track down all the stories he could find, all of them corresponding to that same night, that same hour. Now we knew what those thirteen crimson stars meant. They were all part of the same ritual. But a ritual for what? Astronomers took note of them, too, “anomalous curiosities,” they called the stars, not a warning, or an ominous threat. If only they knew. But denial is our strongest weapon.
We alerted the Lorica, and we would have to assume that the Lorica informed the Hooded Council and their global counterparts in turn. But that was the worst thing. Nothing had been heard of Agatha Black since that night. The Lorica had injured enough of its Eyes trying to track her movements, but suddenly, radio silence. We had to move, and fast.
We gathered again, those same friends and I, in the silent corridors of the Boneyard, specifically in Carver’s office. He’d decided on our next target. We still needed to acquire a sword from one of the gods, and based on Carver’s deduction, there was no sense arguing with him about it. The plan seemed perfect.
“I’ve identified the ideal candidate,” Carver said. “And according to our little god-detector here, that candidate is somewhere in Southeast Asia. Somewhere among the rainforests of Sabah, in Malaysian Borneo.”
Gil cracked his knuckles. “Wow, a rainforest? Count me in.”
“A mountain, to be exact,” Carver said, raising one finger. “The deity in question is currently airborne, so we’ll need to ascend to higher peaks to access them.”
I raised my hand. “Quick question. You did say god-detector, didn’t you?”
“You are not mistaken.” Carver squatted and held his hands out, and Banjo came running out from under his desk, leaping straight into his arms. “Banjo here will help us track our quarry.”
I groaned. “We’re looking for Odin again? Isn’t he locked in some kind of battle to the death with Loki?”
“It is precisely what we are hoping for.”
Asher raised his hand. “Other question. Last time we saw Odin, he did something to Banjo, removed the rune from his forehead. Do you mean to say that it didn’t actually erase any of Banjo’s powers?”