The Merciless Ones (deathless, #2)

The second installment in The Gilded Ones trilogy continues the story of Deka, the Nuru, the sole full-blooded daughter of the Gilded Ones, four goddesses imprisoned centuries ago by the jatu, the male warrior-guards who enforce a patriarchal religion centered on the god Oyomo across the empire of Otera. In the first book, Deka discovered that she and other alaki, girls whose golden blood marks them as descendants of the goddesses, were meant to free the Gilded Ones from their mountain prison. Six months after Deka succeeded, the goddesses remain weakened, the jatu still control the capital city of Hemaira, and women across Otera face brutal reprisals for Deka's rebellion.

Deka leads her alaki bloodsisters, including Britta, Belcalis, the twins Adwapa and Asha, and Katya. Katya has taken the form of a deathshriek, the monstrous shape alaki assume after their final death. Accompanied by Ixa, Deka's shape-shifting creature companion, the squad sets out to rescue Melanis, a legendary war queen and one of the Firstborn, the eldest generation of the goddesses' immortal daughters. Melanis has been burning in a jatu temple for a thousand years. The rescue succeeds, but true jatu attack wearing armor bearing a symbol called the kaduth, which blocks Deka's ability to command them. After the jatu leader is killed, his body reassembles with golden blood in what is called the gilded sleep, a deathlike regenerative state previously unique to alaki. He proclaims that Idugu, a feared warrior aspect of Oyomo, has granted the jatu immortality.

In Abeya, the restored city of the goddesses, Deka consults the four Gilded Ones: Anok, Etzli, Hui Li, and Beda. They reveal that an arcane object called the angoro is siphoning their power, a safeguard that activated when Deka imprisoned the Hemairan emperor. The mothers instruct Deka to capture Elder Kadiri, the jatu high priest uniting forces across Otera, interrogate him to locate the angoro's wielder, and return the angoro. They press a finger to Deka's ansetha necklace, a guard of celestial gold containing each goddess's blood, promising it will channel their strength.

Joined by her romantic partner Keita, the group travels east to ambush Elder Kadiri. Before departure, Anok privately tells Deka she is "completely divine" and that "the answer is in the blood," then touches Deka's forehead; Deka's memory of the conversation slides away. At Elder Kadiri's camp, the mission collapses into a trap. A priestess called the Wumi Kaduth, meaning "Lady of the Heart," addresses the crowd, and Deka recognizes her as Elfriede, her former childhood friend who watched silently while Deka was tortured. Elfriede publicly identifies Deka, exposing the operation as a lure. On the platform, Elder Kadiri sacrifices an alaki girl, and Deka watches the blood glow with divine light consumed by an invisible presence. She realizes Idugu is not an arcane object but a genuine divine entity that feeds on alaki blood.

Tears in reality open around the group as Idugu attempts to pull them to the Grand Temple. Deka discovers she can redirect these portals with her thoughts but accidentally sends the group into Hemaira itself, stranding them within the city's impenetrable barrier. White Hands, Deka's mentor and the eldest Firstborn, contacts them but loses her memory mid-sentence when trying to recall Idugu, the same blank reaction Melanis exhibited earlier. Deka realizes the mothers have deliberately erased their Firstborn's memories of Idugu. Her friends force Deka to confront another deception: when she removes the ansetha necklace, her abilities and her friends' emerging divine gifts strengthen noticeably, confirming the necklace suppresses rather than channels power.

Elder Kadiri lures Deka into the open by parading her emaciated, dying father through the streets. Deka rescues him, but he is mortally wounded. In a makeshift shelter Britta raises with her newly awakened earth-manipulation gift, Father apologizes for his betrayals and reveals with his last breath that Deka's birth mother, Umu, is alive and waiting in Gar Nasim, a distant island. Elfriede and Elder Kadiri corner the group with reinforcements; Elfriede admits she advised the priests to burn alaki publicly to prove her loyalty. Karmoko Thandiwe, one of Deka's former combat instructors, arrives and beheads both Elder Kadiri and Elfriede. Idugu's voice speaks to Deka for the first time, thanking her for reasons she cannot fathom.

Sheltered by the Kamanda family, wealthy resistance sympathizers, Deka uses her blood to access divine memories through contact with celestial gold, a gift she first experienced when Melanis's tear triggered a vision during the rescue mission. She enters the memories of Okot, Anok's male counterpart, and learns that the Gilded Ones and the Idugu were originally a single consciousness that split into gendered pairs. The Gilded Ones imprisoned their male halves after three of the four began instigating wars among humans for amusement.

The group infiltrates the Warthu Bera, the training ground where hundreds of alaki are chained and bled for their golden blood. Deka encounters a deathshriek called Rattle who reveals herself as Sayuri, the third Firstborn war queen, retaining fragmented memories the mothers tried to erase. Sayuri warns that all gods are "false" and "cut from the same cloth." After a violent escape, Deka announces her intention to speak with Idugu directly. Melanis, speaking with a layered voice suggesting the mothers are channeling through her, threatens that Deka will never be welcome in Abeya again. Deka defies the threat.

Inside the Grand Temple, Deka finds a hidden chamber with four golden statues, male replicas of the Gilded Ones. Through their blood, she confirms the Idugu created Oyomo as a false identity to harvest worship, and that the Infinite Wisdoms, the religious texts governing Otera, and the patriarchal order were built to sustain them. She accesses memories of the Singular, a fifth god who sent Deka as an intermediary to end the gods before their madness destroys the world. Elder Kadiri, resurrected as a Forsworn, one of the empire's armored male deathshrieks, ambushes the group and slits Keita's throat, declaring Deka the angoro, "bringer of death to all that is divine." Keita enters the gilded sleep and resurrects with the divine gift of fire, as do the other uruni, the male companions bonded to alaki, who accompanied the group. Deka realizes she has unknowingly granted them immortality, beheads Elder Kadiri, and escapes on Ixa, who has grown into a massive winged creature.

Returning to Abeya, Deka discovers Etzli feeding on captive male deathshrieks through blood-eater vines, extensions of her own body that dissolve their victims. Etzli reveals the mothers sent Deka out as bait, allowing the jatu army to approach so the vines could consume the soldiers and restore the goddesses to full power. When Etzli activates the ansetha necklace, which burrows parasitically into Deka's body, Ixa tears it free. White Hands arrives and attacks Etzli; Anok awakens and urges Deka to flee, find Umu, and reclaim her full divine power. Deka awakens White Hands's long-suppressed gift of turning matter to ash and amplifies her friends' abilities at the cost of painful, unhealing sores across her body, a sign her mortal form is breaking down. White Hands destroys the vines; Keita's amplified fire incinerates the imprisoned deathshrieks as an act of mercy; Britta collapses the temple. White Hands warns that Deka must become a god or her body will fail.

Flying toward Gar Nasim, Deka resolves to embrace her identity as the Angoro, not a pawn of the gods but their destroyer, and vows to end both the Gilded Ones and the Idugu to free Otera from divine tyranny.