Gods & Monsters (Serpent & Dove #3) by Shelby Mahurin

“You gave me life,” I continued, stronger now, the words spilling faster than I’d intended. Cathartic. “Of course I loved you. Why do you think I allowed them to chain me to an altar? At sixteen years old, I was willing to die for you. My mother.” Another tear fell, and the water flowed faster. It touched her hem now. “You never should’ve asked me. I’m your daughter.”

“You were never my daughter.”

“You gave me life.”

“I gave you purpose. What should I have done, darling? Cradled you in my arms while others’ daughters perished? While they burned? Should I have valued your life more than theirs?”

“Yes!” The confession burst from me in a shock of cold regret, and I capitalized on it, clenching my fist. The water around Morgane’s feet froze to solid ice. It trapped her. “You should have valued me—you should’ve protected me—because I am the only person in this world who still loves you!”

“You are a fool,” she snarled, fire lashing from her fingertips. “And a predictable one at that.”

With the slash of her hand, the ice melted, and the ground itself desiccated in a fiery path toward me. It didn’t burn my skin, however, instead passing through it—straight to my organs. My body temperature spiked as my blood literally began to boil, as my muscles cramped and my vision spun. Crying out, Célie attempted to leap to my aid, but the blood witches held her back, recoiling from Morgane. In fear. In hatred.

With seconds to react, I seized another pattern, and the Brindelle tree nearest me withered and blackened to ash.

The lion of Auguste’s cloak began to reanimate.

I fell to my knees, smoke curling from my mouth, as its teeth sank deep into Morgane’s neck. Screaming, she whirled, pulling a knife from her sleeve, but the half-formed lion clung to her back. Tendon and muscle continued to regenerate with gruesome speed. Where sleeves had been, mighty paws rose to grip her shoulders. Its hind legs kicked at her back.

Morgane’s fiery hold dissipated as she struggled, and I fought to rise. To breathe.

When she buried her blade in the beast’s chest, it gave a final snarl before falling limp. She heaved its carcass between us. Blood poured from wounds on her neck, her shoulders, her legs, but she ignored them, clenching another fist. “Is that the best you can do?” Beneath my armor, against my skin, arose an alarming tickle. The skitter of legs. “You may call yourself La Dame des Sorcières—you may kill trees and steal rivers—but you will never know this magic as I have known it. You will never conquer its power as I once did. Just look at yourself. Already, it has weakened your feeble spirit.” She advanced in earnest now, a lethal gleam in her eyes. “The Goddess has chosen wrong, but I do not need her blessing to conquer you.”

Scrambling backward—hardly hearing her words—I pulled hastily at my armor.

Hundreds of spiders burst from the woven fabric. From their own silk. They scuttled over my body in a wave of legs, piercing my skin with their fangs. Each bite brought a prick of pain, a tingle of numbness. Shrieking instinctively, heart palpitating, I crushed all within reach, sweeping their wriggling corpses from my arms, legs, chest—

“You were born to be immortal, Louise.” Morgane lifted her hands, pouring her rage, her frustration, her guilt into another bout of fire. I rolled to avoid it—squashing the last of the spiders—and seized the lion’s skin as a shield. “Though destined to die, your name would have lived forever. We could have written history together, the two of us. You may scorn me now, you may hate me always, but I gave everything—I sacrificed everything—for you. For love.”

Feeding strength to the fur through another pattern, I crouched lower. The grass beneath her feet ignited instead. She leapt away from it with a hiss. “You cannot imagine the grief of your birth. Even you cannot imagine the bitterness I felt. I should have killed you then. I’d even lifted the knife, prepared to plunge it into your newborn heart, but you—you clasped my finger. With the whole of your fist, you clutched me, blinking those sightless eyes. So peaceful. So content. I couldn’t do it. In a single moment, you softened my heart.” Her flames subsided abruptly. “I failed our people that day. It took sixteen years to harden myself again. Even then, I would have gifted you everything. I would have gifted you greatness.”

“I didn’t want greatness.” Casting my shield aside, I pushed to my feet at last. Her heart might’ve softened for a newborn babe, but she hadn’t ever loved me—not me, not truly, not the person. She’d loved the idea of me. The idea of greatness, of salvation. I’d mistaken her attention for the genuine thing. I hadn’t known what real love looked like then. I glanced across the chasm to Reid, Coco, and Beau, who stood hand in hand at the edge, pale and silent.

I knew what it looked like now—both love and grief. Two sides of the same wretched coin. “I only wanted you.”

When I clenched my fist, exhaling hard, my grief ruptured into a storm wind: grief for the mother she could’ve been, grief for the good moments, for the bad moments, for all the moments in between. Grief for the mother I had lost, truly, long before this one.

The wind blasted her backward, but she twisted midair, and the momentum carried her closer to Célie. Wicked intent flared in Morgane’s eyes. Before I could stop her, she jerked her fingers, and Célie skidded from the blood witches as if pulled by an invisible rope. Morgane caught her. She used her body as a shield, pressing her knife to Célie’s breastbone. “Foolish child. How many times must I tell you? You cannot defeat me. You cannot hope to triumph. Once upon a time, you could’ve been immortal, but now, your name will rot with your corpse—”