Twelve hours earlier
Winter clung to the bronze helm. When the Hyaena touched it, the skin of her fingertips froze to the dark metal for a painful instant before ripping free, leaving a single layer of skin behind.
“It is cold because of where it is from,” the Praenuntius said, answering her unspoken question. “The Underworld is a place of unending night.”
She nodded, though she didn’t fully understand—one more thing to add to the list of mysteries that seemed to grow longer by the day. “No wings on this one,” she said, laying the dark helm on the Praenuntius’s bed. “But they say it’s even more powerful.”
The old man nodded slowly, staring at the helmet warily. The more power the item holds, the more it saps from him, she thought, noticing the wine-dark bruises beneath his eyes. The Host had worked him hard—and the battle had just begun.
The bolts on the door slid open with a pneumatic hiss. The sharp-faced Heliodromus strode into the room, wearing his red robes. At his waist hung his traditional coiled leather whip—a fitting weapon for a man who considered himself the master of everyone around him. The Hyaena dreaded what he would do with more power than he already had. But it was not her place to question the Pater’s decrees.
The Heliodromus didn’t greet her, didn’t even look at her—if it were up to him, she wouldn’t even be present, but the Praenuntius would obey only her. The thought gave her little comfort.
As the Heliodromus stared down his beaked nose at the Praenuntius, his jaw jutted forward defiantly. She wondered if he felt afraid. Or whether he simply couldn’t bear to have a Pretender in his sight without sending him to his death.
She released the straps around the Praenuntius’s wrists. The Heliodromus took a wary step backward, his hands straying to the handle of his whip, and the Hyaena repressed a smirk. For all his arrogance, he still feared the old man.
The Praenuntius made no move to attack. He’d long ago resigned himself to fulfilling his side of the bargain. He merely circled his wrists and danced his long fingers in a slow pattern, as if sculpting the air. The first time she’d seen the motions, the Hyaena had thought he only sought to stretch his hands. Now she wondered if he reenacted some ancient ritual. He believed, after all, that he had sculpted mankind in the dawn of time. Does he wish he’d left us in the riverbank? she wondered. Unmolded clay, unable to wreak destruction upon his kind?
His hands fluttered back to the blanket, and he looked at the Hyaena with mournful eyes. He knew what had happened with the last item she’d brought him. She’d told him how the young Corvus Secundus had ignored the Pater’s instructions to keep the winged hat hidden and pursued Diana on his own.
“Hubris,” the Praenuntius had said when she finished the tale. “No mortal can take down the Huntress without help, no matter what he wears.” Yet now he was about to add another weapon to the Host’s arsenal. How long could Diana—or any of the Pretenders—survive against an enemy so well armed?
“Go on,” the Hyaena urged her charge, not ungently. “You know this is the only way.”
“Remember your promise,” he said, his voice strained.
“Only if you remember yours. You said all the Pretenders would fall. So far, we’ve captured only one.”
He held her gaze a moment longer, as if he had a thousand things to tell her and none he wanted to say. Then he relaxed completely, closed his eyes, and inhaled. When he let out the breath, it sounded like wind on a winter’s day … then it rose to the keening cry of a father mourning his child. And it didn’t stop.
His eyes snapped open, and his hands streaked through the air to grab the Heliodromus’s wrists. He dragged the man forward so that both their hands rested on the frigid crown of the helm.
Frost gathered on the Heliodromus’s thumb and forefinger where they touched the dark bronze, yet sweat poured down his high forehead. His eyes watered as the Praenuntius’s breath stung his face like hail; his body spasmed with the power of the gift he received. His knees crumpled, his head lolled, but the Praenuntius wouldn’t release him. He merely took another deep breath and continued the storm. The Hyaena wondered if he made it hurt on purpose. A tiny revenge for centuries of torture.
She checked her stopwatch. It had been one minute so far. It would take a hundred more before the Praenuntius’s breath would allow the Heliodromus to wield the helm. A hundred minutes of violent, paralyzing torment. He wouldn’t be able to walk for hours. She’d watched it happen to the Corvus. Yet when he donned the winged cap, he’d flown.
She would give anything to endure that pain.
When it was over, the Heliodromus sat slumped on the ground beside the bed. The Hyaena wrapped the dark helm in a cloth. She retied the old man’s restraints. He made no move to resist.
“Thank you,” she said softly. He turned his head to the wall, as if he couldn’t bear to see what he’d done.
The helm clutched against her breast, she left the patient’s room and walked to the vault deep within the Templo. She unwrapped the helm and placed it on the shelf beside the Host’s other treasures. A bronze hand mirror, its back intricately ornamented. A leather quiver of six golden arrows. A sickle, its handle plain wood but its curving blade serrated with teeth so fine they sparkled like diamond chips. A staff twined with gilded serpents, their eyes uncut rubies. A wreath of unripe poppies, each a waxy green bulb leaking dream-milk. A whalebone trident, the shaft inlaid with branching corals in hues of orange and red. A gold cap, the sweeping wings at each temple shining with silver, copper, and bronze, fluttering in the air like the softest down.
The helm seemed almost to suck the light from the brighter objects around it, a hulking, evil thing, crouched in a pool of shadow. For a moment, the Hyaena wondered if that’s what she’d become—a destructive darkness, erasing the beauty from the world. Then she brushed aside the thought. I do only what has been fated.
The Pretenders must die. Will die. Then, and only then, can we restore the one true God to the world.