The Tyrant's Tomb

As faint and muffled as her voice was, I should not have been able to
hear it. Only the utter silence of the shipping container made her audible,
though how she cut through Harpocrates’s dampening field, I had no idea. It
was definitely the Sibyl. I recognized her defiant tone, the same way she’d
sounded centuries before, when she vowed never to love me until every
grain of sand ran out: Come back to me at the end of that time. Then, if you
still want me, I’m yours.
Now, here we were, at the wrong end of forever, neither of us in the right
form to choose the other.
Harpocrates regarded the jar, his expression turning sad and plaintive. He
seemed to ask, Are you sure?
“This is what I have foreseen,” whispered the Sibyl. “At last, we will
rest.”
A new image appeared in my mind—verses from the Sibylline Books,
purple letters against white skin, so bright it made me squint. The words
smoked as if fresh from a harpy tattoo-artist’s needle: Add the last breath of
the god who speaks not, once his soul is cut free, together with the shattered
glass.
Harpocrates must have seen the words, too, judging from the way he
winced. I waited for him to process their meaning, to get angry again, to
decide that if anyone’s soul should be cut free, it should be mine.
When I was a god, I rarely thought about the passage of time. A few
centuries here or there, what did it matter? Now I considered just how long
ago the Sibyl had written those lines. They had been scribbled into the
original Sibylline Books back when Rome was still a puny kingdom. Had
the Sibyl known even then what they meant? Had she realized she would end
up as nothing but a voice in a jar, stuck in this dark metal box with her
boyfriend who smelled like roses and looked like a withered ten-year-old in
a toga and a bowling-pin crown? If so, how could she not want to kill me
even more than Harpocrates did?
The god peered into the container, maybe having a private telepathic
conversation with his beloved Sibyl.
Reyna and Meg shifted, doing their best to block me from the god’s line
of sight. Perhaps they thought if he couldn’t see me, he might forget I was
there. I felt awkward peeking around their legs, but I was so drained and
light-headed I doubted I could stand.