Revealed (House of Night #11)(26)

Erebus slammed his hand down on the desk, burning his palm print into the wood. Kalona did not flinch, nor did he look away from his brother, though the sight of him blazing with his father’s light burned Kalona’s moonlit eyes.

“I am here only because you have again made a terrible mistake.”

Kalona leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t deny that I have made a long list of mistakes. Unlike you, I never claim perfection. Which, in that long list, would you like to discuss?”

“Your mistakes are, indeed, vast. Your list of wrongs against mankind as well as vampyres and the Goddess is long. But I have neither the time nor the inclination to recount them all. It is your latest mistake of which I must speak. You allowed a troubled High Priestess of Nyx to turn to Darkness and become a tool of evil. That damaged Priestess has become immortal and unspeakably dangerous.”

“Neferet was intrigued by Darkness long before she knew aught of me.”

“Neferet was a broken girl who became a broken fledgling. Your whispers were responsible for drawing her to this land and feeding her need for control and power, and eventually encouraging her path to immortality and her descent into madness.”

“You’re wrong. You know nothing of Neferet. The Priestess was broken and mad before she began listening to my whispers.”

“I know that Neferet has caused the Goddess much pain, and that means she must be stopped,” Erebus said.

Kalona laughed again. “And now you prove beyond any doubt you know nothing about Neferet. She has chosen the path of chaos. Not even death can dissuade her from it.”

“And yet you will dissuade her.”

“You fool—a week ago the Vessel Aurox, fully in the magickal form of a beast, gored Neferet and hurled her from the balcony of a building as high as a mountaintop. Last night Neferet regained enough of her physical form to manifest on this campus, cause a fledgling to reject the Change, and kill an adult human. Then she disappeared again. She is immortal. She cannot be killed,” Kalona said.

“And yet something must be done with her. You opened the door to immortal power to her—you will close it.”

Kalona shook his head, gathering the cold light of the moon close to him. “Who are you to command me? You are my brother, not my Goddess.”

“I speak for your Goddess!” Erebus’s light flared, burning so brightly that even Kalona could not help but recognize the divine and borrowed power of Nyx he wielded. “When first you Fell from the Otherworld you wreaked havoc upon the humans who attempted to succor you until Nyx heard their cries and answered the prayers of their Wise Women, calling together and allowing them to use the Divine Feminine within them. Thus was fashioned A-ya, she who entrapped you for generations.”

“I remember well what happened,” Kalona snarled. “I do not need you, or Nyx, to remind me of that dark time.”

“Silence, you fool! I come with an edict from Nyx!” Erebus blazed. “I do not remind you of the time. I remind you of the reason behind it. You rejected your Goddess, and in your attempt to replace her you used and cast aside many women, until A-ya was created. Then you recognized the spark of Nyx within her. That is why you were vulnerable to her. That is why you loved her.”

Kalona looked away from Erebus. There had been a time, in the not so distant past, when he would have arrogantly denied his brother’s words and used his own immortal power to cast him from the mortal plane and back to the Otherworld.

But Kalona had changed. And the truth in what his brother said burned him more than did the harsh light Erebus had inherited from his father, the sun.

So the winged immortal remained silent, still as a statue, as Erebus’s Goddess-touched words continued to batter him.

“But you would not remain imprisoned. Even entombed in the earth, wrapped in the arms of she who was breathed to life by Nyx, still you yearned for that which your arrogance had caused you to lose. So you sent out your cloying whispers, seeking another who had been touched by Nyx—one who might fill the emptiness within you. Since the moment she was Marked, Neferet was special to the Goddess, because of, and not in spite of, the horrors she had survived. But she was, indeed, a vulnerable young fledgling. That is why Neferet was susceptible to your call. That is why, after she completed the Change, you convinced her to free you.”

Kalona wanted to flee—to run from his brother’s hurtful words, but something within him bade him stay and hear the edict Nyx had sent Erebus to proclaim.

“And because she, too, was only touched by the Goddess and not Nyx incarnate, Neferet failed to fill that emptiness within you. Her failure turned to poison. Do you deny that you thought you loved her, just as you believed you loved the maiden, A-ya?”

“I deny nothing, just as I acknowledge nothing. Speak your edict and begone. Your words weary me.”

“Look within yourself. It is not my words that weary you. The day you can admit the truth about your past and accept full responsibility for all the evil you have loosed in this realm, is the day your load will begin to lighten.” The anger in Erebus’s voice softened, though the power of his Goddess-enhanced visage continued to blaze. “Then you met the fledgling, Zoey Redbird, and you were instantly drawn to, and angered by, her connection to Nyx. You wanted to seduce and destroy her.”

“But I did neither!”