Nahadoth stepped toward Itempas, his aura weaving itself darker and thinner, becoming a glow that no mortal eyes should have been able to see by any law of nature — but of course he defied such laws, so the blackness was plain to all.
“You have always been a coward, Tempa,” he said. The words skittered around the chamber’s walls, darting, striking in echoes. “You pressed for the demons’ slaughter. You fled this realm after the War and kept our children away, leaving us to deal with the mess. Shall I believe you now when you say you cannot help my son?”
I waited for the explosion of Itempas’s fury and all the usual to follow. They would fight, and Yeine would do as Enefa had always done and keep their battle contained, and only when they were both exhausted would she try to reason with them.
I was so tired of this. So tired of all of it.
But the surprise was mine. Itempas shook his head slowly. “I would do no less than my best by our child, Naha.” Only the faintest of emphasis on
our
, I noticed, where once he would have made a show of possession. He did not look at me, but he didn’t have to. Every word that Itempas spoke had meaning, often in multiple layers. He knew, as I did, that his claim on me was precarious at best.
I frowned at him, wondering at this newfound humility; it did not at all seem like the Tempa I knew. Nor did his calm in the face of Nahadoth’s accusation. Nahadoth frowned at this, too, more in suspicion than surprise.
And then something else unexpected happened: Yeine stepped forward, looking at Nahadoth with annoyance. “This serves no purpose,” she snapped. “We did not come here to rehash old grievances.” And then, before Nahadoth could flare at her, she touched his arm. “Look to our son, Naha.”
Startled out of anger, Nahadoth turned to me. All three of them looked at me, in fact, radiating a combination of pity and chagrin. I smiled back at them, bleak in my despair.
“Nicely done,” I said. “You only forgot I was here for half a minute.”
Nahadoth’s jaw tightened. I took an obscure pride in this.
Yeine sighed, stepping between her taller brothers with a glare at each, and came to my side. She crouched beside me, balancing on her toes; as usual she wore no shoes. When I did not move, she shifted to sit against me, her head resting on my shoulder. I closed my eyes and pressed my cheek against her hair.
“There is another option,” Nahadoth said at last, breaking the silence. He spoke slowly, reluctantly. Change should not have been difficult for him, but I could see that this was. “When we are of one accord, all things become possible.”
Again, I expected a reaction that Itempas did not provide. “Sieh’s restoration is something we all desire.” He spoke stiffly because change
was
difficult for him. Yet he made the effort anyway, even though it was an extreme suggestion: to bring together the Three as they had not done since the dawning of the universe. To remake reality, if that was what it took to remake
me
.
To this, I had no snide remark. I stared at them, Naha and Tempa, standing side by side and trying, for my sake, to get along.
Yeine lifted her head, which forced me to do the same. “I am willing, of course,” she said to them, though she sounded concerned. “But I have never done this before. Is there danger to Sieh?”
“Some,” said Itempas.
“Perhaps,” said Nahadoth.
At Yeine’s frown, I touched her hand, explaining as I had done for Shahar and Deka. “If the Three’s accord is not total” — I nodded toward Itempas and Nahadoth, not needing to be subtle in my meaning — “if there is any hint of discord between you, things could go very wrong.”
“How wrong?”
I shrugged. I had not seen it happen myself, but I understood the principle. It was simple: their will became reality. Any conflicts
in their respective desires manifested as natural law — inertia and gravity, time and perception, love and sorrow. Nothing that the Three did was subtle.
Yeine considered this for a long moment. Then she reached up to caress my hair. As a boy, I had loved for her to do this. As a man, I found it awkward. Patronizing. But I tolerated it.
“Then there is danger,” she said, troubled. “I want what
you
want. And it seems to me that what you want is not entirely clear.”
I smiled sadly. Itempas’s eyes narrowed. He and Nahadoth exchanged a knowing look. That was nice, actually. Like old times. Then they remembered that they hated each other and focused on me again.
It was ironic, really, and beautiful in its way. The problem was not them but me. The Three walked the world again and had come together in the hope of saving me. And I could not be saved, because I was in love with two mortals.
Yeine sighed. “You need time to think.” She got to her feet, brushing unnecessarily at her pants, and faced Nahadoth and Itempas. “And we have business of our own to discuss, Sieh. Where shall we send you?”
I shook my head, rubbing my head wearily. “I don’t know. Somewhere else.” I gestured vaguely at the palace. “I’ll make my own way.” I always did.
Yeine glanced back at me as if she’d heard that last thought, but like a good mother, she let it pass unremarked. “Very well.”
Then the world blurred, and I found myself sitting in a large open chamber of the new palace. Templelike, its ceiling arched
high overhead, thirty or forty feet away. Vines dangled from its cornices and wended down the curving pillars. In the handful of minutes since we’d left, Yeine’s power had thoroughly permeated the palace and covered it in green. The daystone was no longer precisely white, either: one wall of the chamber faced the sun, translucent, and against the bright backdrop I saw white stone marbled with something darker, gray shading to black. The black was studded with tiny white points, like stars. Perhaps they would glow, too, come night. Deka sat there on his knees, alone. What had he been doing, praying? Holding vigil while my mortality passed away? How quaint. And how unsubtle of Yeine, to send me to him. I would never have figured her for a matchmaker.
“Deka,” I said.
He started, turned, and frowned at me in surprise. “Sieh? I thought —”
I shook my head, not bothering to get up. “I have unfinished business, it seems.”
“What —” No. Deka was too smart to ask that question. I saw understanding, elation, guilt, and hope flow across his face in a span of seconds before he caught himself and put his Arameri mask in place instead. He got to his feet and came over, offering a hand to help me up, which I took. When I was up, however, there was a moment of awkwardness. We were both men now, and most men would have stepped apart after such a gesture, putting distance between themselves so as to maintain the necessary boundaries of independence and camaraderie. I did not move away, and neither did Deka. Awkwardness passed into something entirely different.
“We were thinking about what to name this palace,” he said softly. “Shahar and I.”
I shrugged. “Seashell? Water?” I had never been much for creative naming. Deka, who had taste, grimaced at my suggestions.
“Shahar likes ‘Echo.’ She’ll have to run it past Mother, of course.” So fascinating, this conversation. Our mouths moved, speaking about things neither of us cared about, a verbal mask for entirely different words that did not need to be said. “She thinks this will make a good audience chamber.” Another grimace, this one more delicate.
I smiled. “You disagree?”
“It doesn’t feel like an audience chamber. It feels …” He shook his head, turning to face a spot beneath the translucent swirl-wall. I took his meaning. There was a votive atmosphere to this chamber, something difficult to define. There should have been an altar in that spot.
“So tell her,” I said.
He shrugged. “You know how it is. Shahar is still … Shahar.” He smiled, but it faded.
I nodded. I didn’t really want to talk about Shahar.
Deka’s hand brushed mine, tentative. This was something he could have played off as an accident, if I let him. “Perhaps you should bless this place. It’s a trick, of a sort, or it will be. The real home of the Arameri, leaving Sky as a decoy …”
“I can’t bless anything anymore, except in the poetic sense.” I took his hand, growing tired of the game. No semblance of just-friends anymore. “Shall I become a god again, Deka? Is that what you want?”
He flinched, thrown by my directness, his mask cracking.
Through it I saw need so raw that it made me ache in sympathy. But he abandoned the game, too, because that was what the moment deserved. “No.”
I smiled. If I had still been a god, my teeth would have been sharp. “Why not? I could still love you, as a god.” I stepped closer, nuzzling his chin. He did not take this bait or the verbal bait I offered next. “Your family would love you better, if I were a god.
Your
god.”
Deka’s hands gripped my arms, tight. I expected him to thrust me away, but he didn’t. “I don’t care what they want,” he said, his voice suddenly low, rough. “
I want
an equal. I want to be
your
equal. When you were a god, I couldn’t be that, so … So help me, yes, some part of me wished you were mortal. It wasn’t deliberate, I didn’t know what would happen, but I don’t regret it. So Shahar’s not the only one who betrayed you.” I flinched, and his hands tightened, to the threshold of pain. He leaned closer, intent. “As a child, I was nothing to you. A game to pass the time.” When I blinked in surprise, he laughed bitterly. “I told you, Sieh. I know everything about you.”
“Deka —” I began, but he cut me off.
“I know why you’ve never taken a mortal lover as more than a passing whim. Even before mortals were created, you’d lived so long, seen so much, that no mortal could be anything but an eyeblink in the eternity of your life. That’s if you were willing to try, and you weren’t.
But I will not be nothing to you
, Sieh. And if I must change the universe to have you, then so be it.” He smiled again, tight, vicious, beautiful. Terrifying.
Arameri.
“I should kill you,” I whispered.
“Do you think you could?” Unbelievable, his arrogance. Magnificent. He reminded me of Itempas.
“You sleep, Deka. You eat. Not all my tricks need magic.”
His smile grew an edge of sadness. “Do you really
want
to kill me?” When I didn’t answer — because I didn’t know — he sobered. “What
do
you want, Sieh?”
And because I was afraid, and because Yeine had asked the same question, and because Deka really did know me too well, I answered with the truth.
“N-not to be alone anymore.” I licked my lips and looked away — at the altar-less floor, at a nearby pillar, at the sun diluted by swirls of white and black and gray. Anywhere but at him. I was so very, very tired. I had been tired for an age of the world. “To have … I want … something that is
mine
.”
Deka let out a long, shaky sigh, pressing his forehead against mine as if he’d just won some victory. “Is that all?”
“Yes. I want —”
And then there was no repeating what I wanted, because his mouth was on mine and his soul was in me and it was frightening to be invaded — and exhilarating and agonizing. Like racing comets and chasing thoughtwhales and skating along freezing liquid air. It was better than the first time. He still kissed like a god.
Then his mouth was on my throat, his hands tugging open my shirt, his legs pushing us back back back until I stopped against one of the vine-covered pillars. I barely noticed despite the breath being knocked out of me. I was gasping now because
he’d bitten me just over my lower rib cage, and that was the most erotic sensation I’d ever felt. I reached out to touch him and found hot mortal skin and humming tattooed magic, free of the encumbering cloth as he stripped himself. There are so many ways to make magic. I tapped a cadence over his shoulders, and hot, raw power seared up my arms in response. I drank it in and moaned. He had made himself strong and wise, a god in mortal flesh, for me, me, me. Was he right? I had always avoided mortals. It made no sense for a being older than the sun to want a creature that would always be less than a child, in relative terms. But I did want him; oh gods, how I wanted him. Was that the solution? It was not my nature to do what was wise; I did what felt good. Why should that not apply to love as well as play?
Had I truly been fighting myself all this time?
Movement on the edge of my vision pulled me out of the haze of Deka’s teeth and hands. I focused on reality and saw Shahar, in the entryway of the marbled chamber. She had stopped there, framed by the corridor beyond, illuminated by the swirling sun. Her eyes were wide, her face paler than ever, her lips a flat white line. I remembered those lips soft and open, welcoming, and in spite of everything, I craved her again. I stroked Deka’s straight hair and thought of hers coiling round my fingers and — Gods, no, I would go mad if I kept this up.
Something that was mine. I looked down at Deka, who’d crouched at my feet, licking the bite on my ribs as I shuddered. His hands cupped my waist, as gentle as if I were made of egg-shell.
(I was. It was called mortal flesh.) Beautiful, perfect boy. Mine.
“Prove it,” I whispered. “Show me how much you love me, Deka.”
He looked up at me. I realized he knew Shahar was there. Of course; the bond between us. Perhaps that was why she’d come here, too, at this precise moment, out of the whole vast empty palace. I was lonely. I needed. That need drew them to me now, just as my need had drawn them on a long-ago day in Sky’s underpalace. We had shared something powerful when we took our oath, but the connection had been there even beforehand. That could not be broken by something so paltry as betrayal.