Atlas by Nicholas Gagnier

Author:Nicholas Gagnier [Gagnier, Nicholas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781732861053
Publisher: Blank Paper Press
Published: 2020-03-27T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The world is dead, and I have to be alive to witness its end.

Hannah steps over the Habinar’s abandoned weapon, approaching the half moon bench. The blond woman disregards both Barrett and Seraphina on either side of her, trying like all Hell to stifle their losses, and rounds the pedestal to where Venicia and the others were wiped from existence.

Tim’s eyes never leave her.

“Now that we have dispensed with unpleasantness,” she says, and takes Venicia’s seat, “I say the real trial should begin.”

“And who are you to judge?” the High Priestess spits from the sidelines. “Everything we stood for, you have thrown into chaos! Disorder! Ever think of that, witch?”

Hannah smiles— that wicked, upturned grin that unravels my deepest, dark reaches; the smile of a winner, like my childhood friend Alison Delahunt used to flash when she won over me in some stupid, juvenile game. But Hannah is no young daughter of a blue-collar mechanic and there is more than her twisted grin if we lose.

“I find it quite convenient, Priestess,” Hannah replies, omitting half the title due. “To my knowledge, you have spent two thousand years scheming— plotting revenge, biding your time to humiliate gods whose own schemes were beneath you. Unworthy of, say, basic respect?”

Seraphina’s face lights up, yanking it from the shadows it had settled, anticipating despair and rebuke.

“Not to mention the Maesters— isn’t that right, old fellow?” Hannah asks, looking at Barrett. The Maester’s face does not change. The last of his Order keeps a tongue behind firmly closed lips, but Hannah doesn’t linger— her eyes canvass the room, ignoring her former husband. With the Council dead, that only leaves Hardwick and I.

“Stephen Hardwick,” she says. “Step forward.”

My gaze shoots to Hardwick, praying his lips don’t find the upwards curve Seraphina’s did at the blond woman’s promises of power. His thin frame is a good fifty pounds lighter from his adventures in Stone Mountain, making him a shadow of his former self.

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“I recall,” she cooes. “Do you remember our deal?”

Deal?

“I do,” Hardwick says.

“And? Do we still have one?”

What is she talking about?

A woman came to see me.

Hardwick glances back at me, shaking his head. His beard bristles in dead air— quite possibly riled by my storm of emotions— and I recognize a different look than the one he showed in me in Washington, learning of his depraved deeds.

Remorse.

“We do,” he says, looking back at Hannah. “Long as you hold up your end. Reincarnation, as we discussed.”

“Very good,” Hannah says, and dismisses him. Two of the five survivors are in the blond woman’s court— both are my fault. I pushed Seraphina too far; put too much stock in Hardwick’s redemption. He joins the High Priestess— leaving Tim, Barrett and I as her sole challengers.

A familiar rage boils the surface of my throat. Hannah’s eyes drift to me, but she doesn’t call my name before diverging to the prisoner in a gated box with force-fielded walls; they hum like laughter, mocking my oldest friend’s predicament.

“I suppose that brings us to the reason we are gathered here today.

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