Chapter 69: Others Like Me (3)
My gaze lowers in time to see one of them—the other-blooded—cutting his palm open.
The blood splashes onto the table in a sudden, savage gesture.
I watch as green blood splatters across the table. The man behind it is tall, thin, and stooped like a withered reed. He raises his bloodied hand and begins to chant in the tongue of the golden—the language of the gods.
“We, children of the goddess of mirage, of the goddess of veil. Oyá, we praise you. Let us, oh mother of nature, wield the power that flows through us all—once through you, and now through me.”
He stops abruptly, breath ragged, pressing his hand to his chest. I hear his heart hammering, so loud it seems to match the shuddering in my own lungs. Blood drips between his fingers—green as new grass—soaking the front of what was once a pristine white shirt.
He draws a cross over his heart, closes it with a circle. Over his chest, blood traces the crude shape of an eye without a pupil. I watch him, and for a moment I wonder if it’s only my imagination that makes the wind coil around his form.
But no—I see it. Oxygen thins in the room, the air swirling in distorted eddies, a maze that collapses and reforms around him.
This is what I’ve always longed to see. The power in our blood. Its true origin. The origins of blood itself—the legacy of the gods. The golden ones. Even though I despise them.
I keep my gaze fixed on him. His hair is the same brown as everyone else here, though there are variations—a bit more amber here, more burnt sienna there. Only the noble in disguise, Arthur, and I are blonde. But I can’t look away from the one performing the ritual, speaking the gods’ tongue, his eyes gone entirely pupil-less, shining with a deep emerald glow.
“I sacrifice my blood for your holy tears to fall upon us—for the sweat and hardship you gave us by making us mortal—to grant us the use of your powers.”