Chapter 164: Reviving

King Culex looked at me. "How much time has it been since my son and the other people died?"

He didn’t seem angry at me, which was honestly surprising. His voice was quiet. I had braced for a blow, and it did not come. I kept waiting for it anyway, and my shoulders stayed tight.

I swallowed. My throat was dry. The question was simple, but I had killed his son with my own sword, and I was sure he knew it. I made myself answer. "Half an hour."

King Culex nodded. He turned and began walking out of the throne room. His steps echoed, slow and unhurried, and I realized he was heading toward Saud.

Sera’s hand was still on my sleeve. I felt her fingers tighten as he passed us, and neither of us moved to stop him. We both knew we could not.

I followed at a distance, with the unconscious survivors lying behind me like fallen wheat. Some of them were still twitching. A man near the door had his crossbow clutched against his chest like a child.

Saud lay where he had died, against the gates, with his head tipped to one side and the hole through his chest dark and dry.

His uniform was stiff with old blood. Culex stood over him for a moment. I could not see his face from where I was, only the back of his head and the long black hair hanging still. Then he knelt and put his hand on his son’s head.

Instantly the wounds began to regenerate. The torn flesh knitted together. New skin formed over the hole, pink and fresh, and a faint color crept back into Saud’s cheeks. It happened in perfect silence. There was no light and no sound, only a hand on a head and a body remembering how to be alive.

Suddenly, Saud opened his eyes.

He was alive again.

’What the...’ I thought. My mind went white. I had felt that man die. I had stood over him while he laughed his last laugh.

As if reading my thoughts, Culex said, without turning around, "If it has been less than an hour, then I can revive the dead. As a Saint."

I nodded. It was all I could manage.

Saud stayed on the floor for a long moment, breathing as if every breath were new. Then his eyes moved and found me.

They stayed on me, and I could not read what was in them. It was not rage. It was not thanks either.

Culex rose and went to the other people.

One by one, he revived them.

He moved from body to body with the same steady patience, a hand on a forehead, and each time the wounds closed and a chest began to rise and fall. He did not hurry and he did not rest.

He did not look at any face longer than he needed to.

They woke up gasping, confused, touching their own necks and ribs as if checking that they were real.

They were shocked. Then they were happy, in a stunned and shaking way.

Somebody began to sob.

Somebody hugged the nearest person without looking who it was. A woman with a broken arm laughed while she cried, and she kept laughing even after the bone had set itself straight.

He even revived the Titans.

I watched the golden skin crack and fall away like old paint. The bone spikes withdrew from their eyes. The huge bodies shrank, and when it was done, five ordinary soldiers lay on the floor, blinking at the ceiling, with no idea what they had been.

One of them looked at his own hands for a long time. Then he pulled them against his chest and curled up around them.

They turned back into humans...

Then Culex went down to the staircase, to the soldiers who had fallen there. I followed.

I saw the loyal ones I had felt respect for, and the two ex-soldiers, lying where they had died holding the stair.

One by one, he revived them too. Each of them woke already reaching for a weapon that was no longer in their hands, and each of them stopped when they saw who was standing over them, and went very still.

Everyone was alive again.

Behind us, the survivors were beginning to stir. They had woken up one at a time, groaning and rubbing their heads, and they looked around at the revived people with their mouths open.

Some of them backed away. Then somebody pointed, and somebody else shouted, and the whole hall filled with noise.

Lee’s twisted story spread faster than I could have stopped it.

The survivors told the revived people that King Culex was the puppet of the Twilight Order.

Culex only snorted. He said nothing at all.

I watched his face when they said it. Mary had told me once to watch his face, not his words. There was no anger in it. If anything, he looked tired, and a little amused.

Sera moved up beside me. She did not say anything.

My regret fell a little as I watched the dead walk and breathe again. It was not gone. Quinn was still dead. Rashford was still dead.

The ones who had died days and weeks ago stayed where they were, and no hand could reach them now. But the weight on my chest had shifted, just enough that I could take a full breath for the first time in an hour.

Then Culex spoke, and the whole hall went quiet.

"We will wait for the captains... Then we will go toward the portal."

I understood.

The captains were still out there, riding after a watchtower that did not exist. When they came back, they would find every plan I had made lying open on the floor.

The thought should have frightened me more than it did. Instead I stood there and watched the red light creep across the stone, and waited.