He Who Breaks the Earth (The Gods-Touched Duology)

When Mateo’s eyes blinked open, he was on the ground. His whole body felt stretched and sore, worn like an ill-fitting coat. He rolled onto his side, stomach heaving, but there was nothing inside him to come up.

Willow had raged to life at the sight of those braids, not looking for a sword or a soul, but to destroy. His fingers had grown, and she’d filled them. His teeth had cut where she bit. It was his body scraped and bruised, but it was Willow who had attacked Anwei.

Anwei.

He pressed his mind out to find her, to find Lia. Devoted were arranged around him like arrows, Lia on the other side of the camp with stars in her aura. Anwei was a terrible blank next to her, and he dredged deep inside himself for the sound of creaking branches and crunching bones. But the memory of broken trees and his sister’s hands drenched in blood, had gone quiet, like it had never been real. A story someone had told him in the darkest part of the night, only now he’d woken up to see the truth.

Was the memory of her a story? Like Aria alive and not quite right in the tower? Shoved into his mind, like a trap closing the moment he stepped too close to the truth?

When Anwei had come into the tent, she hadn’t come with a knife and a curse, ready to end him. She’d been something he knew well, an ache he hadn’t known was deep inside him. It tasted salty and sweet, like the tears of a boy suddenly finding himself alone.

Worse than alone. Turned to something new. Something that shouldn’t exist. Something wrong. Mateo tried to breathe, the last words he’d said—that Willow had said through him—like poison on his tongue. I want to live.

There wasn’t much chance of that now. At least the Devoted were all staying out of the tent, hovering back where he couldn’t snag them with claws and drag them to their doom. The question was whether Lia would stab Mateo before or after Willow had drained the last dregs of life out of him. Perhaps the Devoted would all come together and make a Mateo pincushion. If only he’d worn a clean coat. Something with bolder embroidery. The paintings people would do later of the last shapeshifter being destroyed would be so much more effective if he’d looked the part.

It wasn’t until much later, the sky outside dark, and Mateo lying on the ground, trying to remember how to sleep without cushions and a blanket, that he saw Lia’s aura wink out.

He closed his eyes, turning his face to the tent wall, the feel of the ghost’s teeth in his mouth. Lia had seen him as he really was. He’d given her the stone—the one way she’d be able to hide from him, from the Warlord, from Calsta herself, probably. Mateo had given her a way to escape, and she was taking it.

Which was why he wasn’t expecting the tent door to slip open and Lia to step inside. Mateo let his eyes drift shut, not wanting to see the moment she reached for her sword.

“They listened to me.” Lia’s voice was quiet, her feet padding closer. Not within reach, but much nearer than he would have ventured if their places were swapped. “About the Warlord being in grave danger. That your father isn’t to be taken lightly, and that I left the order back in Chaol specifically to follow him undercover.”

“They believed you? Not so surprising after you were the only one who expected me to… who could face down…” He swallowed, his whole body beginning to shake. The ghost had just… taken hold of him. Elbowed him aside and reached for Anwei as if she were a sweet roll Willow wished to eat and Mateo had been in the way.

Before, it had seemed like an inconvenience, a symptom of a sickness Tual Montanne would be able to cure. And then almost like Willow was a friend who understood. And now, more than ever, an emergency because there wasn’t room for more than Mateo inside his own head and body. Willow seemed to know it too and was ready to take exactly what she wanted.

Him.

Don’t I deserve to live? she’d said. It itched inside him, not a disease, but a thing that would destroy all that was left of him if he did not act. The way Anwei had looked at him in the tent before Willow had taken over had been the worst part of all: as if she’d come looking for a treasured painting hidden from the sun and found the canvas eaten away.

“Willow does it to Knox, too, you know,” Lia whispered. “It’s, like, a new thing because the sword is unstable. She’s not supposed to be able to reach through, but she’s not supposed to be connected to both you and Knox, either.

“She tried to use him to kill Anwei before, and Anwei says that… maybe she can fix it. That’s how Knox and Anwei became friends in the first place—Knox was trying to get Willow out of the sword, and now Knox is…” Lia’s voice broke. “Well, Anwei says she might know how to do it. Maybe it would fix you, too.”

Mateo rolled over and forced himself to look up at her, surprised when he found her kneeling right next to him, the curls at the end of her braid brushing his shoulder. “What?” he asked.

“The Devoted are going to attack the house in the morning.” She sat down, not quite meeting his eyes. “And they are probably going to try to put you somewhere safe before they do.”

“If they ride over the bridge, they’ll all die. You saw what my father did while you were at the keep.” Mateo straightened, brushing off his coat front, the taste of stolen energy still in his mouth. It was impossible to face Tual Montanne. Not even Hilaria, keeper of all good food had been left face-down in the blueberries. “You saw what I did, and I don’t have control. How many Devoted fell while I was… not myself?”

If he were Tual Montanne, he wouldn’t have asked. He wouldn’t have cared. He wouldn’t have fallen to his sister’s herbs, and Anwei would be dead. He’d have enough energy to live another few weeks or months. Maybe a whole generation, choosing who would have the great honor of giving up their life to feed his.

Mateo thought of the graves in the tunnel, their names carved into his thoughts. At least one per generation. The layers of rock and dirt over the room where they’d dug up Tual’s lost love, hundreds of years’ worth.

He’d suspected it already, but suspecting was different from knowing. From really believing that his father had eaten up at least one child of the old keep whenever he hungered, maybe feeding them the same thing he’d used to sedate the Devoted he’d stolen from Chaol. Changing his appearance every generation so no one noticed the boy, the teenager, the man, who came back to work for each and every family who took over the island.

Tual was the curse. Mateo whispered to himself, forcing himself to feel every word. Tual was the hand that dug those graves, one after another.

Do you really want to know? Tual had asked.

Even now, Mateo still didn’t. He wished for his father’s strong stomach. For Tual’s ability to do what needed to be done.

“A few Devoted were sick, but they’ll recover,” Lia said it slowly. He knew she’d heard his whisper, but she was decent enough not to look surprised. Hopeful. To pry. “They want you locked away, but I know we need you, Mateo. We’re going to use their attack tomorrow as a distraction. While Tual is fighting them off, I need you to show me how to find Aria. And Patenga’s sword.”

“You… still want my help?” Mateo’s heart began to beat again ever so slowly, each pulse a jolt of pain.

Was there a chance the plan could still work?

But the thought felt like sick in Mateo’s belly.

Lia was right there next to him, touching him, confiding in him—all things he’d thought were impossible, as if she could see him for who he was and valued him anyway.

And here he was thinking about shoving a sword between her ribs.

“I had to argue a little, but in the end Anwei and Altahn agreed,” Lia continued. “He loves you—your father. If anyone could show us how to best him, it would be you.”

“Anwei agreed? After what happened?” He shifted uncomfortably. “Why did she follow us for so many years? My father says he would have taken her too. Protected her. But that she fought instead. So why didn’t she just leave us alone?” The last came out sharp as the pain inside him.

“Because she loved you, Mateo.” Lia pressed a hand to her cheek, a flicker of anger crossing her face. He went very still, her fingers warm against his skin. “She gave up a lot to find you. Some things that weren’t hers to give. But I understand now, I think, how it feels when someone you love has been taken away. How it can… change you.” Lia’s hand dropped, and she settled against the table next to him, her arm brushing his shoulder. She opened her fist to show him a bit of chipped stone, a tiny fragment of the one he’d given her. “We broke it up so we all could hide at once and sneak out of camp. But Anwei told me I had to choose whether or not you were coming because I was the only one who knew you. She thinks everything you were before is gone.”

Gone. Mateo’s gut twisted, glad Willow was still occupied because he was beginning to wonder which parts of him were his own and which were hers. “And you trust me?”

“It’s not that simple,” Lia whispered, her fingers closing around the shard of stone. “Calsta offered to give back my spiriter powers so I’d be able to see one way or another, but then she told me it isn’t what I want.”

A shiver needled up Mateo’s spine, blossoming into panic. He couldn’t let her see his thoughts. He couldn’t let her see the hole inside him begging to be filled. He couldn’t let her see his father going step by step over how Mateo could persuade Lia to trust him. To love him. And then—

Lia shrugged. “Calsta’s right. I’ve always been used like a sword. I hardly know how else to be—swords were all I ever learned. But holding one hurts because I’ve been using it for things I shouldn’t have.” She looked over at him, and the panic arcing between his ears dulled to a muted hum. “I worry that if I saved Aria tomorrow, she’d be in just as much danger with me as she is on the island with your father.”

“You think you’re a danger to Aria?” Mateo couldn’t hold the words back, couldn’t understand why she was sitting there next to him, couldn’t be what his father wanted him to be. The liar. The survivor. The shapeshifter. “Lia, didn’t you see what I am?”

“Yes.” Lia licked her lips. “It makes me want to believe there’s hope for people like us.”

Mateo blinked, completely lost. “What?”

“You left your father even though leaving might kill you. He can’t heal you anymore, and you have… darkness waiting inside. All the Devoted saw—you knew I’d see, but you came because it was the right thing.” She raised her eyebrows, cocking her head at him.

Mateo’s throat wouldn’t swallow, his hands beginning to shake. He wanted to be the person who was doing the right thing. The self-sacrificing, wonderful person she was trying to make him out to be.

But he wasn’t.

Lia looked down at her hands again, shoulder against his as she traced the lines of her own naked fingers. “I could take back Calsta’s power. Read all your thoughts to know if you’re here to help or if you’re here doing your father’s bidding.” She breathed in, her fingers slowly balling into fists. “But if I do that, I’ll still be the sword. If I want to build something new, I have to be different.”

Mateo couldn’t make himself look at her.

“Your father loves you,” Lia continued. “He trusts you. It seems like you’re the only thing that matters to him, and…” She sighed. “I don’t think I’ll be able to find my sister without your help. And so I’m choosing.”

The cracks in Mateo’s head began to burn, all the things his father had taken from him waiting for him to notice them. Because he didn’t want to be like Tual Montanne. He didn’t want to be alone, sipping lives down every few years to keep the wrinkles from creasing his forehead. He didn’t want to hurt Lia. He wanted to remember the person Anwei had been searching for when she’d come into the tent.

He had to look.

He didn’t want to look. Because Tual knew how to save him. Tual was the one who’d saved him in the first place. Tual was the one who had told him to come here and ask for Lia’s help to get her back to the island. Tual was the one who had tried to shield Mateo from Aria Seystone’s murder, as if they spent enough time talking about the world and magic and sweet rolls then they could forget Mateo had been the one who had done it.

Tual wasn’t the one who had sliced through two tents and attacked his own sister. Willow was in Mateo’s head whether he wanted her or not, but he’d been the one to let her stay without too much of a fight.

She’d let him feel alive again and Mateo hadn’t worried too much about who she was killing to let him feel that way.

“What is it?” Lia’s voice made him jump, and she was searching the tent as if he’d found some threat she had missed, a snake or a sword or a sky-cursed narmaiden hiding under the bench, when the threat was him. It had always been him.

Mateo looked at her, really looked, Lia’s eyes that sharp blue that flashed when she was angry. So much of her was hard angles and points. But her cheeks were smooth pink. She was alive, full to bursting with it, and he was near empty except for a scary little ghost who had learned to be big.

He had nothing. He was nothing. And the thought of Lia finding this out was worse than the feel of Willow’s talons stretching out through his fingers, her teeth in his jaw. But when he met her eyes, she didn’t flinch. “I just wish… everything were different.”

Lia stared back at him, haloed in light, her aura masked by the rock in her hand, but he could imagine the golden halo it made around her, the touch of a goddess. And then she leaned toward him.

“What are you doing?” Mateo’s heart began to race, a terrible beat that would kill him in seconds.

“I don’t want to be the sword any longer.” And Lia kissed him.

Mateo couldn’t move because Lia’s hands were pressed to his chest. Her lips were gentle and tentative against his, the one soft thing Lia had ever done in her life. And then Mateo wasn’t frozen at all, the feel of her against him like a sigh of relief, and when he pulled her closer, she shaped herself against him, his arms around her waist.

She pushed away, her cheeks pink enough to put an entire batch of Hilaria’s rose tarts to shame. He didn’t let go for a second, then realized she was trying to step back, and he couldn’t get away fast enough. “What… I’m… Lia—”

Lia didn’t look away, her hands creeping up to press against her cheeks. “I get angry sometimes. Maybe all the time.”

“What?” Mateo was having a very hard time caring, the shape of the words on her lips all he could take in.

“I could have put sugar in my tea, I suppose.” She laughed, her cheeks going from pink to crimson. “But I had to break my oaths somehow. I can’t afford to lose control tomorrow, which means I can’t be the sword or I’ll ruin everything. So I’m going to be myself. Calsta says I’m enough.” She pulled a second shard of rock out of her pocket and placed it on the ground. “If you’re coming, don’t pick it up until the moon’s at its zenith. That’s when we’re sneaking out.”

Mateo sagged back, his head hitting the canvas wall. “I hate you so much, Lia Seystone.”

“That may be, but it wouldn’t have worked if I hated you.” She smiled when he gaped at her. “All those weeks on the road, I kept hoping you’d… show up.”

“But I didn’t.”

“You didn’t. But you kept Aria safe.”

Everything inside Mateo turned to bile. All he’d wanted was for Lia to believe him so that his father’s plan could work, but her choosing to believe him was worse than an episode, worse than Willow’s claws in his chest.

It was worse than dying.

She reached out to touch his arm, taking a hesitant step closer, then wilting a little when he flinched away. “Anwei might be able to help you, too. She’s a really good healer when she remembers to care about the rest of us.” And then Lia was gone.

Mateo stared at the open tent flap for too long, hating everything. So when an old woman burst through the doorway, all he could do was stumble back in surprise.

But she made no move against him, just settled on the ground, crossing her legs in front of her and looking up at him expectantly. Her eyes were glazed white, and he realized after a moment that she was staring at the spot just over his shoulder, seeing him but not with her eyes. She had no gods-touched aura, so she wasn’t one of the Devoted there to kill him.

Clearing his throat, Mateo looked around, hoping for some clue. “Can I…. help you?”

“How many times has she tried to come out of you, Mateo?”

Mateo’s cheeks stung. “Excuse me? Also, who are you?”

“The ghost girl inside you. How many times has she tried to crawl out through your bond and take your body?”

“Who are you?” he demanded again.

“You know me.” She smiled, and her teeth were black. “I’ve been guarding your home for longer than even your father has been alive.”

“You’ve been guarding—” Mateo blinked, coming out of a haze. “I’ve seen you before. You were with Lia’s friends when I first came into the camp. And you looked like her… only not.” He shivered. “Why are you old now? And I’ve never seen you at home—”

“Out in the deep, Mateo.” She sang it, almost like a narmaiden. “In the lake, away from people who wouldn’t understand us.”

Mateo’s chest began to contract, all the air bursting out of him as he tried to breathe. He sat down across from her, mouth gaped open a few times before he got the name out. “Abendiza?”

She gave a regal nod.

“You’ve always been… this?” he asked. “A person? A shapeshifter? Why didn’t you help us? Why didn’t you show me…? You ate my cat!”

She licked her lips with that tongue. “We are going to destroy your sword. My sword. Our sword. But this ghost of yours worries me. No little girl could take control as she did this afternoon. What do you hear when she speaks?” Her eyes flickered closed, as if she could detect the thoughts Lia could not.

Fear pulsed in Mateo’s chest. “I hear a monster. Death. Hunger.”

Abendiza opened her eyes and nodded. “Your souls are all trying to come out.”

“I’m very tired, and it’s lovely to meet you like this and all—I always felt very safe with you… out there in the water.” Mateo swallowed, drawing his knees up to his chest, trying to stay back from her.

“The souls on the other side of the caprenum plane are trying to use you to crawl out of their prison. Thousands of them, all shapeshifters and the people they killed. Bits of you are already trapped in the sword. Part of me, too.” She looked down. “I saw in Anwei’s memories that the ghost tried to come out through Knox, but he was too strong for her to take hold completely. But now things are even less stable. She took you easier than grabbing the ripest banana at the market.”

“I’m feeling extremely uncomfortable right now.” Mateo rose from the ground. “So if you don’t mind, I’ll go scare some Devoted by standing near them.”

“I can’t see into your mind, boy. I never could with other shapeshifters. Their blasphemy keeps me out. You’ve made your decision though, haven’t you?” She grabbed both his hands, wrenching him back down. “Otherwise you would have told Lia Seystone that there’s not much of her sister left. Your father put her to sleep while she died, just like he did to the Devoted he was using for power. Like he’ll do to all the Devoted to keep them compliant while he steals their energy a little at a time, as needed. His own farm of bodies sleeping like death, unable to care that he’s taking their souls.” She jabbed two fingers to his collarbone. “Even he couldn’t do more than draw out Aria Seystone’s death. The last of her is there inside you, keeping her body from rotting until you use her final drop.”

“You can see Aria’s soul?” Mateo tried to pull his hands away, but her fingers were like claws holding him. “If Aria’s still in there, can you take her out of me? Put her soul back inside her body? I never wanted to do it in the first place. Please, put her back where she goes!”

Abendiza didn’t move, her eyes flickering past him. “I cannot justify taking from other souls. I can heal using the energy of one who asks me to fix them, but taking souls? I have nothing but regret for the years I spent stealing souls.” Her voice cracked like earthquakes and ancient stone. “The world is cursed to bleed. I was the sword meant to cut out the infection. The maggots, the disease. But I only cut it deeper.” She pulled one of his hands toward her, feeling along it until she found the pulse at his wrist. “We share a caprenum prison. Your life will be like mine if you choose the sword. Willow is waiting for you. They all are. Even if they couldn’t crawl up out of you like locusts to spread their disease across the Commonwealth, it would be the same. The sword is worse than death.”

Mateo knew what his father had tried to do to free him of it. He could still smell the blood, the splatters of it sticky on his father’s fingers, the horror of watching the sword melt inside Knox. The boy had died, then hadn’t. Just like the sword had melted, then had reappeared out there somewhere, waiting for him to find it. “I want to live,” he said quietly like a plea.

“The sword will be destroyed regardless,” she rasped, letting him go. “And despite what choice you think you’ve made, you’re going to be the one who does it.”

“I didn’t have any choices. I never have.” Mateo’s voice rose, cracking over the words. “I didn’t choose any of this.”

“I’ll be a monster no matter what anyone else chooses. My future was written long ago by my own hand, and I regret it—all of us who did this to help were too prideful to see all we really wanted was power. Some of us connected to the sword will have to die to keep the others alive.” She stood and walked to the tent flap to push it open, not bothering to hide herself, as if Devoted were nothing to be feared. “Those choices are still in front of you to be made, and I cannot watch you condemn yourself to an eternity of death for a few extra moments of life.” She left without another look in his direction.

Mateo lay back on the ground, the taste of Aria Seystone’s energy like bile in his mouth.

He already was a monster. There was no changing it. There was no saving him. Not unless he saved himself.

Something inside him twinged, the holes in his memory tearing wider as if to protest, to show him what he should have been, and Mateo closed his eyes, letting himself sink into the memories buried so deep inside him.

There were herbs, shelves and shelves of them, their smells sweet in his nose.

A young Anwei sitting next to him with a mortar and pestle, her hair in short curls. The flashes came faster the deeper he went, all the things he hadn’t wanted to remember. His feet in wet sand, chasing waves and falling down to let them soak him through. An octopus laid out on a table as he sketched all its parts inside and out. Jars of paint in every one of Calsta’s colors, colors that woke him in the night, that streaked through his thoughts and pushed him until he let them out. They’d made a mural that flowered out from his brush: a painting of his mother with her hair half braided and her wide, white smile. His father had come out in bold strokes next to her, his face looking toward the hands he used to heal, so much more important to him than the two children Mateo painted at his feet. That had been the part he’d loved most: quick flicks of his brush to make himself next to Anwei, their hands knit together, faces toward the sun.

And then Mateo remembered that a man had stopped to look. More than one, eyeing the paints smudged across Mateo’s fingers.

Mateo curled away from the memory of the men and turned instead to a faded flash of Anwei laughing with purple frosting smudged across her face, only one or two curls left, the rest of her hair braided.

The images all pulled at him, stronger than Willow ever had, as if the ghost girl were only embedded in his skin and Anwei went bone-deep.

Mateo sank lower, and it was Anwei’s smile that stopped him again and again because it wasn’t the same as the one she’d flashed at the Devoted earlier, her edges sharpened to points. It was the differences in them both that hurt the most—who Anwei had been before and what she’d become, and the memory of a boy with more than paints struggling to break free.

A boy who wasn’t the monster Abendiza could see inside him.

The boy he should have been. The one Lia could trust, the one his sister had loved. The boy who was touched by a god. A boy Mateo was not and could never recover, no matter how much he mourned the loss.

Because monsters were the ones who lived, in the end.