A roar of anguish, primal, and harsh with suffering pierced the quiet. Sethi staggered against one of the pillars, his fingers digging into the back of his skull, desperate, savage. Rivulets of blood ran down his hands, stained his shoulders.

Urhi-Teshub edged toward him, his ax gripped in both his hands. His face hard, he lifted it to strike.

"Stay your weapon," Istara cried. Hope pinioned her, wove its gentle fragments through her broken heart. "Wait, I beg you."

Sethi lowered his hands. He turned toward her, slow. Across the pectorals of his chest, his fractals rotated, seamless, perfect, a symphony. His eyes found hers, golden, clear, the eyes of her consort, harsh with regret. His lips moved. Her name bled from him. His heartbeat collided with hers, and he shuddered. He backed away, horror stealing her from him. "No," he panted, his hands tightening into fists, the muscles of his arms standing proud. "Run. There is no time. Do not let me near you. The jihn—"

He tore his eyes from hers, raking a panicked gaze over the length of the corridor until he found the weapon. Against a pillar's base, it lay quiet, subdued. A faint beat came from its heart. A single flicker of blue-white light, then, nothing. The blades dulled, turned opaque.

He cut a look back at her, fierce, desperate. "Go!" he shouted, harsh. "The sun will soon rise."

"It is hours until sunrise," Istara whispered, her heart loaded with the suddenness of him, the weight of his existence. Her consort, the god of war, who had once been the commander of Egypt, who had sacrificed everything for her, and risen again. And now, he was here, the one she remembered, the one who loved her. She took a step toward him, her arms aching to hold him, to feel him, for her lips to taste him. For her body to love him. He shook his head, his look severe, laden with warning. "I cannot stop what is within me. Once the sun breaches the—"

"What happens at sunrise?" Urhi-Teshub asked, cold. He moved in front of her, blocking her way, the ax's lightning bolts picking out the splatters of blood on Sethi's shoulders.

"The device," Sethi answered, his bloodied fingers going back to the base of his skull, digging anew, "it reawakens."

"What device?" Urhi-Teshub demanded.

"The one Marduk planted in me as we crossed into Elati." Sethi retorted, his eyes darkening, hard with the memory of his oppression. "How else could I have become what I have?" His gaze left the storm god's and touched hers, brutal with remorse. "Each morning, at dawn, I am myself again, and can remember all I have done, the guilt is—" he clenched his jaw and looked away, swallowed, his throat taut, then continued, low, "—once the sun rises, I forget."

"The device," Urhi-Teshub shot a tight look at Istara. "We need to get it out of him."

Istara nodded. "Can you do it?"

A look of uncertainty flickered through his eyes. A heartbeat later, it was gone. He nodded, terse, and pulled a dagger free from a holder on his thigh. He turned to Sethi. "This is going to hurt."

"Just get it out." Sethi sank to his knee, and tilted his head forward, exposing the bloodied spot.

Istara eased closer, her light seething, brilliant, granting Urhi-Teshub the illumination he needed.

Urhi-Teshub hesitated a heartbeat before he set his ax on the floor and moved to stand over Sethi. He settled the point of his dagger against the base of Sethi's skull. Footfalls approached, soft. Sekhmet eased nearer, her dark eyes wary. A residue of sorrow laced her features, tainted her lips. She moved in front of Sethi, positioned one of her dagger blades close to his throat.

"Make one move I don't like," she said, quiet, tilting her blade up until it was a breath from Sethi's flesh, "just one."

"I pray you will use it if you need to," Sethi muttered. He grunted as Urhi-Teshub punched the dagger's tip into the base of his skull.

"How deep?" Urhi-Teshub asked, his eyes intent, fixed with concentration, ignoring the bright blossoming of Sethi's blood spilling over the blade.

"It's in the center," Sethi panted as Urhi-Teshub shoved the blade deeper. Sethi closed his eyes, enduring, stoic, as the storm god worked the blade from side to side, feeling for the thing which had brought so much misery upon Elati. He took his time, oblivious to Sethi's shallow breaths, and the deterrence of Sethi's light, working against him, healing him even as Urhi-Teshub delved. The cut of his jaw thickened, stubborn. He pressed on, determined to find the device, his probing methodical, thorough, until the hilt lay slippery with blood.

With a tight shake of his head, he pulled the blade out. A torrent of blood and clear fluid gushed out onto Sethi's neck and down his back. He shuddered, his chest rising and falling as several tendrils of his light swarmed out from within his wound to weave his flesh back together.

Urhi-Teshub clenched his teeth, the muscles of his jaw taut with irritation. "I cannot find it." Another look of uncertainty touched his features. He met Istara's eyes. "If the device is one of Marduk's—" he tilted his head in the direction of the central complex, meaningful. Istara understood his discretion: he did not wish Sethi to know what they had done. She nodded, recalling Thoth's words from when they retrieved the cores from the dying pyramids: The power of the cores render Marduk's devices useless. If Thoth was correct, it should mean as long as Sethi remained on Anki, the device could no longer control him. And yet, if Thoth were mistaken . . .

Urhi-Teshub wiped the flat of the dagger's blade against his leather-clad thigh, staining it with the god of war's essence. He eyed Sethi, his face closed in thought. Istara stepped closer, longing to answer the call of her light—to ease Sethi's suffering. In his grim pursuit of the device, Urhi-Teshub had spared the god of war no pain.

Urhi-Teshub caught her arm, pulled her back. "No," he said, terse. "It is better for him to be like this."

"Istara's light could find it," Sekhmet said over Sethi's ragged breaths. When Urhi-Teshub kept his hold on Istara's arm and said nothing, she continued, her words sharp and precise, honed, like her daggers, "She is his consort, after all."

"I want to do it," Istara said, pulling herself free of the storm god's grip, for once in agreement with the goddess of war. She continued, unable to keep the reproach from her voice, "It is better than blindly hacking into his skull."

Urhi-Teshub picked up his ax, his eyes hard on the god of war, watching as Sethi's savaged flesh knit together, slow. Silence reigned for a long time, thick, oppressive. Urhi-Teshub's grip tightened on his ax, his thoughts ambiguous, unreadable. From the courtyard: the tread of heavy footfalls. Istara turned. Horus stood at the mouth of the corridor, eyeing them, his face and shoulders highlighted by the pale illumination of the shield's canopy. A glint of silver came from the handles of his weapons, tucked into his belt, their cerulean heartbeats silenced by the empowered cores. He hesitated, taking in the strange tableau, his gaze skimming over the golden tendrils of light swarming along her torso and arms, to Urhi-Teshub gripping his ax, its blades alive, their fierce light stuttering over Sekhmet's blade at Sethi's throat, and Sethi—the one his light had become—on one knee, his face tight with endurance, tendrils of golden light flickering against the back of his neck. Horus turned and left, his footfalls retreating to his vigil at the portal with what remained of Ahmen.

"Get it out," Sethi rasped, oblivious to the one who had just been regarding him—the one who had once been him, "before it is too late."

Istara didn't wait for Urhi-Teshub's approval. She set her light free. It arced from her fingers and encircled her consort. Four tendrils eased into his skull, searching for the root of the darkness that fueled him, for the bitter, poisoned seed Marduk had planted the day Sethi became a god. She sensed its muted presence in the back of his brain, near the lobe which controlled his vision. Just as she began to probe the spot, another flare erupted from his frontal lobe where rationality triumphed over the fire of emotions. Two more flares erupted, one at the base of his frontal lobe where he processed speech, and another deep within his amygdala, the foundation for his emotions and memory. She sent more tendrils in, ten, then twenty, chasing the flares as they blossomed from within the corridors of his brain, a dozen eruptions, then two, then ten, until his brain glittered, afire.

Her heart clenched. Her light had to be wrong. He had said it was a single device. She sent more tendrils out. This time she searched the whole of him, delving, gentle, into his chest, torso, legs, feet, hands, groin, until every cell of him lay bared to her—bones, sinew, organs, cells, blood. The brilliance within him blinded her. She hauled her light free. Tears clogged her throat. The pillared shadows crept back, enclosed them in its embrace. Pressure, thick with grief congealed in her chest. She stared at him, the one she loved, as horror and denial clawed at the walls of her sanity. No. No. No. Please. No.

"Istara?"

The uncertainty in his voice pierced her anguish. She knelt and touched his face, uncaring of the cost. All was lost. For her, nothing was left.

"It's everywhere," she whispered, her throat burning, raw with grief. "The device has broken down into millions of fragments and meshed with you, right down to the deepest, smallest parts of your being. There is no way to remove it."

Sethi closed his eyes; shut her out. The line of his jaw, so familiar, so beloved, hardened, carved itself with hate. His hands clenched into fists. The words came, quiet, a curse. "Which means there is no escape."

Sekhmet stepped back, sheathed her dagger, its quiet hiss loud in the thunder of Sethi's silence.

No one spoke. The magnitude of his loss bore down on them, oppressive, suffocating. Istara longed to touch him, to hold him, to reach him through the walls of his alienation as they piled up around him. Instead, she took consolation from his nearness, warmth, and solidity, the weight of his tainted heartbeat in lockstep with her lonely one.

He opened his eyes, looked up at her from under his brow. "I cannot remain here," he said, his remoteness searing her soul. "While I still have time, I must return and destroy the portal in Perev." He lifted his hand and touched her face. Misery twisted his mouth, darkened his eyes, "Though that will buy no more than a handful of days, at most. It will only be a matter of time before I return." He cut a look over his shoulder at the fallen jihn. "That weapon is evil incarnate. I do not think it can be destroyed. Give it to Thoth. He will know what to do. Whatever happens, I must not find it again." He rose, took a step back from her. A tide of despair swept over her as she met his eyes, as they lingered on her, memorizing her. "Do not grieve for me," he said, quiet, an abyss of remorse dulling his eyes. "I ceased to be worthy of you long ago."

Istara sank onto her haunches. Nausea slid through her. It was a nightmare. A sense of unreality blanketed her, numbing her senses. He turned and strode away, his familiar, confident gait reeking of power, authority, and purpose. He paused in the courtyard, to turn and look back at her, the cut of his silhouette reviving memories of shared nights on the terrace of his villa in Waset. It was too much, she would not let him go. She would not face what was to come alone.

She bolted after him, crashed into his arms, surrendered to his passionate embrace, clung to the feel of him, his chest against hers, their hearts beating as one. He could not leave her, could not succumb to his fate without a fight. "Stay," she panted, her heart clenching onto hope so hard, she shuddered, "do not leave. You are safe here."

He stilled. "What do you mean—safe?"

"She means nothing," Urhi-Teshub said, his approach as implacable as an avalanche. "Istara, Sethi belongs to Marduk. He cannot remain here. So long as the jihn exists, the risk is too great." He came to a halt, and caught hold of her arm. "I am duty-bound to protect you, and will do so, even if it means you will hate me for it. He leaves. Now." He tugged against her resistance, sought to tear her from the embrace of her consort, to take her from the one she loved—to separate them for eternity.

Istara yanked her arm free. Fury ignited her despair, fueled a madness within she could not harness. The words spilled free, weapons, her restraint obliterated. "Yes, you swore thus. Did you not also confide the Creator wished for me to lead the gods in what was to come?"

Her words struck true. He flinched at her betrayal. "I beg you, do not do this thing," he said. "It is a mistake. You are making a grave mistake. The jihn—"

"I make no mistake," Istara cried. "Sethi is my consort. I will not stand by, silenced, while the one I love returns to the oppressor when he could remain here, with me, the taint within him rendered useless—"

"Cease!" His eyes ablaze, Urhi-Teshub struck the metal-sheathed butt of his ax against the ground. A dozen lightning bolts exploded from its blades and struck the pillars, their jagged lines racing along the lintel surrounding the courtyard's perimeter, encircling them with the might of his elemental power. "I forbid it. I will not allow it. He cannot remain here."

"You forbid nothing," Istara said, cold. Her light surged, violent, chaotic. It swirled around her, clothing her in brilliance, awakening her, a goddess, arisen. "I accept the burden placed upon me by the Creator. I will lead the gods against Marduk. Without Sethi, Marduk must leave his stronghold and expose himself to those he wishes to oppress. He might be powerful, but he is one, alone. We are many, and we have—" she lifted her hand to the sky, its arc clad in a shimmering web of translucent light "—this."

Urhi-Teshub ground his teeth. Rage flared in his eyes, hot sparks which smoldered against her gown. He knelt, stiff. "As the goddess commands," he said, his eyes and words hard as rocks, "so shall it be." He rose again, the lightning-clad blades of his ax harsh with his fury. "And may the Creator forgive you."