Goddess by Liv Savell (autobiographies to read txt) 📕

in the same damnable place as we started. Va'al!” She reached for his wrist with her only good hand and yanked him back. “I can do it. I’m not some weak-hearted mortal. I can still kill her. I can do it.”

“Look at yourself!” Va'al was yelling now, his face pale with anger. Enyo was pleading, damn her. Crying like Alphonse would. “You’re proving Esha right even now, and you know what? I don’t care! I’ve been in this pathetic body for eighty years! Eighty years that you don’t even remember. And ever since Thlonandras, you have been dragging your heels, too busy cavorting with wildflowers to focus on getting our bodies back. Do you even want your body back, Enyo? Or do you like being the simpering mortal?” This speech finished, Va'al fell silent, his chest heaving. No one spoke.“Well?!”

❂

Enyo’s face colored, red and purple spreading over her throat and chest.One hand hung uselessly at her side, stone, flesh no longer. The other bunched into a fist, and her breathing was ragged. Clouds gathered overhead, and a fierce wind bit at their clothes. Perhaps it would fuel the fires into new life, but the thunderheads promised rain.Electricity crackled, and the wind picked up bits of debris and dust, a small whirlwind. A cyclone was forming.

“Enyo,” Esha warned, but the Goddess flung her good hand out, commanding Esha to stop. No fool, the Fertility Goddess stood rooted to her spot, watching as little sticks and dirt whipped against Enyo’s face.

Va'al crossed his arms and sneered at her. “Oh look, another delay. Enyo’s putting off leaving the human body again. I can’t really say I’m surprised. It’s like you don’t even want to stop Mascen. Are you so proud of the destruction our son has caused that you will stand here and throw a tantrum rather than getting the artifact from your precious priestess?”

The Goddess screamed her fury, and a bolt of lightning streaked across the sky. Calamity came quickly into her hand, and she threw herself at Va'al. He dodged her attacks, forcing her to keep up or lose sight of her query.

Enyo tired so quickly, her body aching, her arm dead weight. At a bend in the road, she forced wind directly into Va'al’s face, blinding him long enough for her to cut him off. With a triumphant yell, she launched herself into him, slamming them both into the ground. Calamity’s hilt was in her hand, the blade too long, too sharp to be any use to her here. She raised it up, brought down the pommel into Va’al’s chest so that the blood-stone formed of her own flesh crashed into him. When he grunted for pain or air, she did it again. And again, leaving dozens of Enyo-shaped bruises drilled into his skin.

Their son was a monster; she the victim of his ire. Helpless against his power, helpless again. She had vowed to never return to what she once was, what she had been in the Cursed Realms. And now, Mascen was forcing her into the subservient role. Forcing her to relive the past. He was remaking the Cursed Realms without even knowing it, turning Rhosan into the same place that had bred her and the other Gods.

Calamity, feeling her terror, leaked down into Va’al, pressing its influence onto her foe. Her lover.

“I am not proud!” she shouted into Va’al’s face as she struck him again, limbs already trembling with fatigue. With a deafening crack of thunder, the rain fell in a torrent, drenching the land. And Enyo. The raindrops raced her tears down the contours of her face.

Was this her fault? Her father—No. No.

“This is your fault! You taught him to plot and conspire! You made him want more!” Enyo struggled to her feet, watching with some satisfaction as a trickle of Va’al’s blood leaked from his mouth. He wiped it with the back of his hand, smearing blood in a crooked half-smile up his cheek.

“I didn’t make him anything!” His voice was hoarse, loud even over the scream of the wind. “This is just what he is,what he’s always been! Don’t you get it? You and me— Together, we make a monster.”

She didn’t want it to be true. She didn’t want Va’al to be right. There had to be someone to blame. Someone to take the faults that Mascen showed. If Mascen simply was a monster, what did that make her? The fire in her veins smoldered. “Do you love him all the same?”

“Yes.” Va’al pushed himself up, slicking rain-soaked hair back away from his face. He caught her wrist, forcing her to drop the sword, and pulled her bodily against him. “That doesn’t change what we have to do, though.”

Despite all that she was, Enyo shivered. Cold or afraid, she didn’t know. The fires were dying inside her. The storm around them lessened, fading into a gentle drizzle. “I didn’t mean to.” It was a painful admission, and she whispered it so that only Va’al could hear her. Could know the truth.

“I know.” Va’al tightened his grip around her waist and brought one hand up to tangle in her locks. He pressed his forehead to hers, and rain dripped from his hair onto her collarbone. “We can still make this right. We can still fix this. Like last time.”

Enyo nodded, allowing herself one weak moment where she leaned against Va’al, soaking up his strength and acceptance. She nuzzled his throat and breathed in his scent.

And straightened up. “Let’s go.”

It was time to take back Rhosan.

⥣          ⥣           ⥣

The darkness was so complete that when Meirin yanked her eyes open, she could not tell the difference from when they had been shut. Blinking did little to clear her vision, but Etienne’s sharp words urged Meirin to focus. “The wards snapped. They’re coming!” Sleep made her mind befuddled, but years of training forced the warrior to her feet, preparing to fight or flee.

Wards. Runes. Magic. Gods.

She smacked her