Chapter 415: The Velvet Serpent
Jax hadn’t taken his eyes off the recording, and the fist at his side had gone white all the way through the knuckles.
On the screen, Beatrix stood out on her balcony looking up at the sky like there was still something up there worth hoping at.
Then the door banged open without a knock, a maid coming through first, and behind her a man built like a viking.
Beatrix turned, and the panic crossed her face before she could put it away.
Ravana bowed his head slightly. "Lady Beatrix. Tomorrow is the Grand Night of Kaalratri, the greatest festival in the Asuran Empire. Once a year my people gather to pray, while I give myself to the worship of the Goddess of Destruction, who gave me my throne, my victories, and every blessing I have ever been handed."
He smiled at her, and it was a gentle thing. "It would bring me great honor if you would accompany me."
"You are free to refuse the invitation, of course. I would never force your company on any terms."
His voice never lost its warmth. "However, I must still ask that you attend the ceremony, even from a distance, if that is your preference. For you to be absent altogether would be read as an insult to my Goddess, and that is the one thing I cannot allow."
Then he turned to the maid. "See that Lady Beatrix wants for nothing. Open the royal treasury if you have to. Jewels, gowns, ornaments, anything her eyes so much as pass over."
"Tomorrow I want my people to look upon the true jewel of the Asuran Empire. Even if she has yet to stand at my side."
Jax watched Beatrix stand there with nothing left to fight him with, and the pain sitting on her face was not something a man could miss or mistake. It wasn’t the woman he knew. It wasn’t close.
Beatrix had always been so full of life that it spilled out of her, even while she carried a schedule that would have flattened anyone else. And he’d seen the version of her the world never got to.
She could be childish when nobody was watching. Playful, a little ridiculous, funny without ever seeming to try. Seeing that same woman ground down into this made the veins stand out along his arms.
He turned on Loki, and the anger came out with his voice. "You haven’t lost yet. That means you’re still a celestial, and that means you’re still useful to me. So give me your blessing. Make me your ascendant, or your slave, or whatever the hell you people call it."
"Then open a portal to Luminera. It’s time somebody made an example out of every celestial, god, and devil sitting up there." He jerked his chin at the field. "And hurry. This battle’s almost over, and neither of us knows the hour they strip you."
"My, my. That’s awfully rude, ordering around the woman who just handed you the one thing you desperately needed, and risked her own life to do it." Loki paused, then chuckled at herself. "No. Sacrificed. Sacrificed is the more accurate word."
She shook her head. "You really are a heartless man, Jax."
Then she met his eyes. "But I don’t see what I gain from any of it."
"Just tell me what you want from me, and I’ll make it happen."
’Are you out of your goddamn mind?’ Echidna snapped. ’Can you not see that she’s using you? No gain, my ass. She wants you walking into that hell to save whoever that woman is, and that’s exactly what you’ve agreed to.’
’And that job is nothing like as simple as you’re treating it, because Ravana is standing on the road to it, and you have no idea what that man can do. So either she wants you to kill him, which is impossible, or she wants him to kill you.’
’Don’t let your emotions put you on a string and make you dance. We have had this conversation already.’
’I know what she’s doing, Echidna,’ Jax said. ’I know she wants me pointed at him. But there’s no other option on the table. I can’t leave Beatrix alone in the darkest Chapter of her life, especially not when I promised her she’d never have to face it by herself.’
’And there’s one thing you’re missing. She’s on our side.’
’On our side?’ Echidna’s laugh came out ugly. ’Puahaha. Oh my gosh, don’t joke like that. Jax, you don’t know this woman at all. She is what mothers point at when they teach their children why trusting people is dangerous.’
’If deceit ever wanted to walk around in a body, it would have borrowed Loki’s face.’
’And if my memory serves, she had a nickname once. The Velvet Serpent. They say she sank her fangs into her own family, so what exactly makes you think she’d hesitate over you?’
"Sister Echidna. You really do hold quite the grudge against me." Loki leaned in close to Jax’s ear to say it. "Though I’ve stopped blaming you for it. I’ve grown used to it. Let’s just say I was never blessed with a very competent PR team."
’...Wait.’ Echidna’s voice had gone flat. ’You can hear me?’
’Enough, Echidna. Let me explain a few things first,’ Jax said. ’Start with this. Hunting me was never her aim. She’s aiming at something much further out, and she’s been testing me since the first day. All while making sure that if a full scale war ever does break out, it finds this world standing together instead of scattered.’
’Every piece we fought had a job in it. Take Athanor. That fight between father and daughter was hers from beginning to end. She deliberately sent him at the one person alive who could bring him down.’
’Nobody else was stopping that man. Nobody.’ He looked over at Rashida, being treated where she sat while Athanasia was carried away.
’And why go to that trouble? Because she wanted those two shown the truth. Not out of pity or sympathy, I’d bet everything on that. It was a move that laid the reality of celestials bare without her having to say one word of it out loud.’
’You know the rule. Celestials are forbidden from revealing their secrets to the people of this world, and even ascendants get a curse laid on them for the same purpose. It’s the exact reason Cleenah goes quiet whenever we ask about her patron or stuff like that.’
’So Loki used Athanor to put a celestial’s real power on display, and to drag out a truth almost nobody down here has ever been told.’
’And that move doesn’t only expose what the celestials have done. It gives this world a reason to stand together the next time something comes through.’
He turned toward Zia, still trading blows with Rora in the air. ’As for her, Loki’s aim was to show me there’s an obsessed girl out there with my name in her head, holding the single greatest weapon that can obliterate celestials.’
Then he pointed at the dark academy headmaster being hauled off the field by Claude’s order. ’And she put the traitors’ faces in front of us too. The ones who’d have sunk their teeth into our backs eventually. Him, his people, those sea elves and their whole kingdom.’
’Now their leaders are in chains, and everything they’ve done is going to come out with them. Which puts every one of those factions under the academy’s control, one way or another.’