Redeemed (House of Night #12)(72)

“You fell from the sky and you had a big bloody hole where your heart should have been. I’m not sure which killed you—the hole or the fall. Your wings were all broken up, too. Either way, you were totally, not symbolically, dead.”

“Man, that sounds bad,” Marx said. “Do her visions always come true?”

“She’s right here, and no, they don’t,” Aphrodite said. “Which brings me to the rest of the vision. Nyx told me to tell you”—she paused—“the you being Kalona and not you, Marx, that I was supposed to warn you about what I saw so that you could choose freely.”

Kalona’s gaze went from Aphrodite to the statue of Nyx. “You are sure it was the Goddess who spoke to you of me?”

“That’s what I said.”

“And you are certain Nyx said that you were given the vision so that I might choose freely?”

“One hundred percent. It’s not like this is the first time. I do know a little something about Nyx,” Aphrodite said with her usual sarcasm.

“Do you know why there are always vanilla and lavender candles burning in Nyx’s Temples?” Kalona asked the Prophetess.

Aphrodite shrugged. “My guess is because they smell good.”

“It is because they carry the same scent as her skin,” Kalona told her. “You see, Prophetess, I know a little something about Nyx, too.”

“Fine, you trump me. But I do know her voice, and I’m sure it was Nyx who said to tell you about my vision so that you could choose freely.”

Kalona stared at the statue as the most painful of his memories flashed through his mind. For the first time in uncountable eons he embraced the memory and relived it honestly.

He was on his knees before Nyx, and he was weeping. His Goddess watched him, not with a stone-like expression that lacked compassion but with equal measures of sadness and resignation.

Don’t do this! You are mine!

I do nothing, Kalona. You have a choice in this. I have given even my Warriors free will, though I don’t require them to use it wisely.

Instead of painting Nyx as the villain, as he had in his memory for so many self-deluded centuries, Kalona forced himself to relive the scene truthfully. This time, he acknowledged the tears that had begun to spill down Nyx’s face—and the fact that it was his own expression that had hardened, his own voice that had become spiteful, and not hers.

I cannot help myself. I was created to feel this. It is not free will. It is preordination.

Yet as your Goddess I tell you what you are is not preordained. Your will has fashioned you.

I cannot help how I feel! I cannot help what I am! Remembering the scene honestly, Kalona cringed at how like a petulant child he had sounded.

He had stopped weeping, but Nyx’s sadness could not be contained. Tears spilled from her eyes to wash down her cheeks. In a choked voice, his Goddess had said, You, my Warrior, are mistaken; therefore, you must pay the consequences of your mistake. Then it was not with a thoughtless flick of her fingers that she cast him from her; it was with regret and tears and despair that she gathered her divine energy and hurled the consequences of his own choice at him.

The memory faded, leaving him in the present, looking up at the beautiful statue of Nyx.

“I believe you, Aphrodite. This is not the first time Nyx has bade me make a choice,” he said as the finality of her vision settled within him.

“Was there anything else in your vision that might help us figure out how Kalona is going to be attacked?” Darius asked her.

Aphrodite hesitated, then said, “It’s always harder when I’m inside the person the awful thing is happening to. Everything gets jumbled because time is passing so fast and, well, awful things are happening. I know he was in Tulsa. I think downtown because I remember seeing the skyline below me. Oh, and a big storm was rolling into town.”

In the distance thunder rumbled and the stained-glass windows of Nyx’s Temple quivered as the wind shifted and increased.

“Ah, hell!” Zoey said.

Kalona’s newly awakened memory flashed several other scenes through his mind: his trespass into the Otherworld … his battle with Stark … Stark’s death in the pit … Nyx’s intervention and that the price of her intervention had been a piece of his immortality.

Kalona silently agreed with Zoey.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Neferet

“Thank you, Judson. I knew you would find exactly what I needed. You may leave it on the table there, beside the door to the balcony. Oh, but please don’t go. My need for you is not finished. As you can see, here comes Kylee, right on time with the little group I asked her to fetch for me.” Neferet’s smile included the frightened-looking group of humans who were reluctantly entering her penthouse, as well as her male staff members, though she truly smiled only at her children who possessed the men. “I do appreciate punctuality, Kylee. Pour me a glass of wine.”

Neferet counted the humans. Twelve of them. Out of more than two hundred worshippers, twelve were genuinely kind enough for Lynette to make note of them. The Goddess wasn’t upset by that low number, she simply had to be sure her math was accurate and that there were enough of them. “Yes,” she spoke aloud as she ran the numbers in her head. “One every five minutes should suffice. It’s a short distance from here to the House of Night. That will give him plenty of time and incentive.”