Chapter 22: Drink the Rite, Bleed the Dawn
Apollo felt the pressure in his head spike, a drumbeat that matched the priest’s cadence. He wondered if anyone else could feel it. Nik looked bored, Lyra wary; Thorin had closed his eyes, lips moving as if in silent calculation.
"What is the rite?" Apollo asked, surprised by the steadiness of his own voice.
The priest’s smile was a wound. "You drink, and you are forgiven." He gestured to the altar, where a set of clay cups waited in a careful line. Behind the cups, a basin brimming with a thick, iridescent liquid.
’Don’t do it,’ Apollo’s instinct spat, but he moved forward anyway, compelled by the logic of the place, the certainty that whatever this was, it would not let them leave unmarked.
He reached the altar, looked down at the cups. The liquid inside smelled of honey and vinegar, and something else, something that reminded him of the blood that ran in the old temples, the taste of iron and dusk.
He took the nearest cup, weighed it in his hand. "Does it matter which one?"
The priest smiled again, wider this time. "They all lead to the same place."
Apollo turned, looked at his companions. Lyra’s expression was pure refusal; Nik’s, blank calculation; Thorin’s, a resignation that bordered on relief.
He brought the cup to his lips. The liquid was thick, almost gelatinous. It clung to his mouth, coated his tongue, slid down the throat with a slow, deliberate heat.
The taste was not entirely unpleasant, but it lived in the back of the throat like a memory of smoke.
He set the cup down, wiped his mouth. The priest watched, expectant.
"Now what?" Apollo asked.