Of the Divine by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

Author:Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-08-15T04:00:00+00:00

Part 2

Summer, Year 3917 in the Age of the Realms

Inside the tall, golden walls of the Numen’s high court, the arbiters and judges stood at the throne room at the highest floor of the citadel and argued with ringing voices that made cool rain fall on the mortal realm. The only one absent was Mir, the high justice, who had responded to a summons even he could not ignore.

On his knees, not from respect but from despair, the judge who had tried from the start to object to the arbiters’ plan gasped, “No. No. I didn’t mean this. I just wanted . . .”

“This has all gone wrong,” declared the third arbiter, Veronese. “Doné, you know you have my love and my faith, but it is time for us to withdraw from the mortal realm.”

“Even you, Veronese?” the second arbiter, Doné, replied incredulously. “You who have stood by me since the days of the old war, you too now doubt me?”

“My children are dead, and worse than dead!” Veronese cried. “I cannot even bring them home to the citadel to comfort them. And that beast walks the mortal plain.”

“That beast is why we must not surrender now. Our children have faced so much fear and pain and loss. We must not allow it to be in vain.”

“There is blood on my hands,” the lesser judge said hollowly. “The death of one of my own chosen. You urged me to—”

“Veronese has the right to question me,” Doné interrupted, “for he has served beside me for millennia and holds a throne in the high citadel. You, child, have the right only to obey.” More gently, she said, “Mortals suffer, and mortals die. That is why we do this.”

“Your child will come home to you,” Veronese comforted the lesser Numini. “You will be able to embrace him again. He may already stand before our gates.”

Unlike his own, whose confusion, anxiety, and desolation resonated in Veronese’s heart like a festering growth. Veronese had begged to greet him at the gates, to welcome him back, but Mir had refused and gone to “deal with the situation” himself.

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