Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
KAIROTH
I ’d always been a creature of the night. It made sense as the god of shadows. When I stood in the sun, my shadows shrank, hid behind me, under me, wherever they could hide to get away from the light. The sun didn’t have those effects on me, but without my shadows, I’d always felt bare in a way I didn’t like.
So I slept during the day, turned off my mind, and night was when I got to work. Sending my shadows out searching for the weapons I needed. It had taken me so long to find just three of the gods’ weapons. I had no idea how much longer it would take to find the rest. Four more weapons. That was all I needed and then I could finally right the wrongs of the past.
I stood on my balcony, the moon bright and big in the sky, glinting off the calm water that lapped at the island shores. My shadows swirled around me, and I lifted from the balcony and flew upward toward the terrace. It was where I liked to go on nights like this, when the breeze was gentle and easy, the air not too hot or humid.
But when I landed on the terrace, I didn’t expect to see someone else in my space. Bellamy sat there, holding a basket of those damn briars she wanted so badly. Wesley had told me she’d been poking around the garden, collecting the weeds.
She wrinkled her nose, sweat beading her brow. She used a knife to strip away the rough bark of the stalks, then pulled out long, thin fibers.
My gaze traveled to her hands, inflamed and full of sores and blisters. Why would she use nettles for fibers when there were other plants that wouldn’t cause her this kind of pain?
I had so many questions when it came to this strange woman and so few answers.
I stepped forward into the moonlight, and she startled, straightening in her chair. A scowl settled over her features.
“That’s not a very polite way to greet your host,” I noted.
She set her materials on her lap and signed, her movements slow and jerky. “Good thing I don’t care about being polite.”
She winced with each small sign she made.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked.
Her mouth clamped shut as she picked up the stalks and kept stripping them, breaking them open, extracting the fibers.
After a few minutes, she sighed and looked up at me. “Are you going to stare at me all night?”
“It’s my house, and you’re on my terrace,” I reminded her. “This just so happens to be my thinking place. You’re the one intruding.”
She swiped some hair from her eyes. “I was here first.”
“I could make you leave. I could command my shadows to grab you and carry you away.”
Hatred flashed in her eyes. It was a look I was used to. I’d seen it from mortals so many times in my long life. I’d never cared before, but for some reason, I didn’t like seeing it on her face.
I strode forward and dropped into the chair next to her. She studied me for a moment before moving her attention back to her project. When she looked at me, she didn’t stare at the shadows. It was like she was staring through them. Right at me.
I shifted.
It unnerved me. I wondered what such a mortal had been through to not fear the god of shadows.
She winced again, her palm catching on the thorny stalk before she had a chance to strip it with her knife. I wanted to grab her and shake her, to make her tell me why she was doing this. But instead, I did something that surprised me.
“Do you want to hear a story?”
Her head snapped to me, her brown eyes wide and full of suspicion. “Only if I get to pick the story,” she signed.
“Mortals don’t get to make requests from gods. It’s actually the other way around.”
“And I don’t want a fictional story,” she continued like I hadn’t spoken at all. “I want a real one. About your time as a god.”
No one had ever wanted to hear my stories. Not when they had six other gods that were far more interesting, more likable.
“Fine,” I said slowly, thinking about the story I wanted to tell. It took me a minute, and she waited patiently, continuing her work while I thought. I finally spoke. “In all the books I’ve read from your world, I haven’t found a single one that got the origin story of the gods right. Some of you say we were born from the land, from the magic, that one day we sprouted from thin air. But none of that is true. We weren’t created. We made ourselves into gods.”
She stiffened at that, but kept working, gaze trained on the fibers she pulled from the plant.
“We were once mortal, you know. We had all been on a ship together, along with a hundred other people, fleeing our war- torn land. Our ship wrecked, and the seven of us washed up on the shore of a new land that we’d never seen nor heard of. Almost like it appeared out of thin air, right when we needed it to. We immediately felt something different about this land. It had a power none of us could deny. So we went searching for the source. We didn’t just find one source, but seven. Seven weapons. I don’t know if the land saved us from that shipwreck, chose the seven of us, maybe? All I know was that there were seven weapons for seven people.”
She plucked a new stalk from the basket and made quick work of shaving off the outer layer, head slightly tilted toward me.
“The weapons were all embedded in stone,” I continued. I still remember staring at the weapons in awe. The way they glowed, the way this glittering dust covered them and the stones. “We each instinctively went to one. I was drawn to the dagger. I could hear its whisper. Choose me. So I did. I never realized how much I would come to regret that choice.”
She turned and peered at me now, curiosity filling her gaze. Like she was trying to figure me out as much as I was her.
“And?” she signed. “What happened after you claimed the weapons?”
“Well maybe that’s a story for another night.”
She glared at me. “That wasn’t a story.”
“Are you an expert storyteller, then?” I asked, lips twitching.
“My father was. He told the most wondrous stories. He could weave beautiful pictures and paint entire worlds with his words. My brothers and I would listen to him for hours. I miss his stories. I miss stories in general. And yours was lacking.”
We stared at each other for a minute before she looked back down at the stalk, split open, fibers spilling out. Was. She’d said ‘was.’ She’d also said she missed him. So her father had likely died. Maybe her brothers had died too. Maybe she was all alone in this world just like me. For whatever reason, that just made me want to keep talking to her.
“I don’t like to talk about what happened next,” I said slowly. “Ragar, who you know as Spirit Fire, and Uruth, Spirit Frost, got into a fight over their weapons. Whose was most powerful. Ragar drove his hammer straight into Uruth’s head. The rest of us watched, horrified as Uruth’s head split wide open, then melded back together. And that was how we discovered we were immortal. None of us could die.” I swallowed. “After that, things spun out of control very quickly. It turns out immortality changes people.”
“That sounds awful,” she signed.
I raised a brow. “Do you know what people are willing to do to gain that kind of power?”
“I can imagine. But they’re fools.”
“Oh?” I asked.
“Immortality is just another form of being trapped.” She stared out at the stars, lost in her own thoughts, and it felt like she was speaking the words more to herself than to me.
She was right. I’d never felt more trapped, less alive, than I did after I became immortal. But I didn’t know how she could know such a thing.
“You speak as if from experience. What would you know about immortality?”
She quickly shook her head, bending over and grabbing another stalk from her basket. “I don’t. I just can’t imagine not being able to age, being stuck in time for eternity. Never knowing the joy of growing old and experiencing life from new perspectives, appreciating it even more because it’s not forever. It’s something you have to cherish.”
I swallowed. I’d never heard humanity described like that, but suddenly, I wanted it. I wanted to feel the things she was saying.
“The gods always pitied mortals,” I said with a soft laugh. “They thought humanity made mortals weak. I always thought it made them even braver, more courageous. Because they lived so loudly, so vibrantly.”
She turned to me, and the moonlight lit her pale skin with a silver hue. “I think you’re the ones who should be pitied. It sounds like a very lonely, very empty life that you’ve lived.”
It was true. Everything she was saying, but I couldn’t understand why she felt that way. It didn’t align with what I’d learned of these mortals. “What do you have against the gods?” I asked. “Your people revere us. I’ve seen it in your texts, your books, your drawings. Why should you be any different?”
“Not everyone,” she said, gaze still meeting mine. “Some of us see the gods not as something to respect or fear but as something to be wary of.”
Those words, her countenance, it was all so damn familiar. The more I spoke to her, the more I felt like I knew her. But how? It wasn’t possible. I scrubbed a hand down my face, scattering the shadows around me for a moment before they closed around me again.
“Whose shadows are those?” she asked. “The ones always surrounding you?” She reached out and trailed a finger down one of the shadows.
No one had ever asked me that. No one had ever cared to know. They saw the shadows and didn’t want to become one, so they stayed away.
“These shadows were my punishment,” I said, the words coming out before I could stop them.
Her eyebrows pinched together, and the memories flooded me. Memories of screams, terror, blood. So much blood.
I stood, looking down at her now empty basket. “Looks like you’re done for the night.”
Before she could ask any other questions, before she could draw out any more memories too painful for me to face, I flew up into the sky and far away from her.