She shoved me, her voice shaking with fury. "Lynara, who do you think you are?"
"How dare you speak to your senior brother and sister like that?!"
Edwin stepped between us, his expression the picture of composed reason. "Lynara, don't be rash."
"The Dawnveil Sect was always a small, unremarkable sect. Master spent his entire life trying to make it flourish and never could. What chance would we have?"
"Besides, all of us have ascended to immortality now. Isn't that a glory the sect can be proud of?"
He reached out and took hold of my arm.
"Come now, be good. I'll take you to see the Sovereign. I'll make sure you get a fine celestial rank..."
But before the last word left his mouth, my short sword was already buried in his chest.
Edwin never even had time to react. He crumpled to the ground, eyes wide and glassy, dead before he hit the stone.
Every celestial soldier in the vicinity went rigid with shock. Blades sang free of their sheaths, all pointed at me.
Rosalind stumbled back two steps, her face white. "Lynara, what kind of cursed thing are you holding?!"
She asked because Edwin had already ascended. Immortal energy shielded his body.
An ordinary weapon couldn't have come within a foot of him.
So in her mind, my blade had to be something unholy.
I raised the short sword, letting the light catch its edge. My voice was flat and cold. "Cursed? No demon is worthy of wielding this."
"But you'll find out what it is soon enough."
I crouched beside Edwin's body and used the blade to carve out his heart.
"Since our dear senior brother had no heart to speak of, his heart's blood might as well serve a better purpose. A blood offering for my sword."
"Lynara, you vicious monster!"
Rosalind's eyes went red with rage. She summoned her weapon and lunged at me.
But at the critical moment, a celestial soldier beside her seized her arm and hauled her back, his hand trembling as he pointed at the sword hovering above Edwin's corpse.
"Lady Rosalind, look. Your junior sister's sword... something's wrong with it. It's drinking the blood on its own."
Rosalind didn't care. She scoffed. "Cursed objects never play by the rules. What's so strange about that?"
The soldier shook his head frantically. "No, you don't understand. You've only just ascended."
"In all the millennia since creation, there has only ever been one sword that craves the heart's blood of immortals..."
Rosalind blinked, clueless. "What sword?"
The soldier's lips trembled around two words: "Soulreaper."
Rosalind's jaw dropped. The color drained from her face.
But before she could gather her wits, a voice split the air from the void above, heavy with authority that needed no anger to terrify.
"Silence!"
"I destroyed that demon goddess with my own hands. Soulreaper was shattered by my power. It no longer exists."
"You will not spread such baseless fear!"
I knew that voice. I knew it the way you know the sound of your own heartbeat. Aldric Voss. My enemy for as long as I had drawn breath.
And the one who had wounded me deepest of all.
He was right about one thing. I was the demon goddess he claimed to have destroyed.
I was also the only other true god who had escaped the Primordial Wastes alongside him, the only one who had survived the cataclysm.
The year the Wastes were annihilated, the two of us had nowhere left to go. We set aside our enmity out of necessity, clinging to each other to survive.
For thousands of years after that, Aldric treated me well.
Demon gods are born cold-blooded. He was the one who taught me how to cry and how to laugh.
Under his guidance, I slowly learned to live in the world beyond the Wastes.
So when he told me he wanted to take me to the Nine Heavens, that he would look after me for the rest of my life, I agreed without a second thought.
Three thousand years as husband and wife. Every one of them devoted. Every one of them tender.
Until Aldric met a mortal woman, and everything veered off course.
That woman was Elara, the one he now called his wife.
Elara was flesh and bone, purely mortal. She could not set foot in the Nine Heavens. The only way was to replace the mortal essence inside her body with celestial energy, or with the power of a god or demon.
Aldric searched every corner of the Nine Heavens and found no justification to take what he needed from anyone else.
