Chapter 1 #2
Suggesting those abilities—which had made her one of the preeminent relic hunters in the UK—had factored into his seduction.
Though if I knew Mom, she’d probably been aware of his plans.
After all, she’d worked with the hags for a very long time, was familiar with their very different energies, and likely would have known who and what Ambisagrus was the minute he’d come to her.
If she’d allowed the pregnancy—could you actually stop a god impregnating you?
—perhaps she’d foreseen that the daughter she’d give birth to would one day walk amongst the gods and do their bidding.
And yet, if that was the case, then why hadn’t she done all she could to prepare me?
Why had she refused to train me until it was all too late?
There were so many damn things I just didn’t know. So many answers I would never get, at least not from her.
“And the darkness you mentioned?” I growled. “How did that play into your first child’s death?”
“In the end, it did not, because she failed to embrace it.”
“Which is why you’re trying to force its emergence in me.”
“It already emerges in you, as you are well aware.”
“Then why does your power still run through me? What lies behind it, if not an effort to bring the darkness to the fore?”
“That, I cannot say.”
Frustration sharpened, once again overriding caution. “Seriously, what is it with you gods avoiding direct answers? Is that part of the game’s rules or something?”
“If the road is without obstacles, where is the fun?” He held up a hand to stop my retort. “There are rules that cannot be broken. However, they can be bent, which is why I am here. Please, let us sit.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to say “let us not” but I resisted the urge.
The clouds still lurked, and while the dangerous energy had retreated, lightning still flickered around his body, a sharp reminder of what he was, what he could do.
I’d been told that as a godling, I could not be undone or otherwise altered, but did that statement apply when the undoer was my father?
I seriously hoped I never got an answer to that particular question.
I turned and discovered two rather plush-looking chairs now sitting where seconds ago there had been only emptiness. I walked over to the nearest one and sat. I might as well have been sitting on a cloud rather than anything resembling a common old chair.
He sat opposite me and crossed one leg over the other, the movement elegance itself.
“To answer one of your questions, Beira was right in that I am generally not a player of these games. Aside from the fact I am a curmudgeon, which makes participation a trifle harder, I find them tedious. In fact, the only other time I participated was the last time Ninkil attempted to rise.”
“You’re not a fan of the chaos he creates?”
“Indeed no, though if that was all he brought to the table, I would let him be. He is not, after all, the only god who delights in the taste of chaos—the games are proof enough of that. It is his insistence that our artifacts be released unfettered into this world that I and others oppose. Humanity was never meant for such objects, and few can truly understand or control them.”
“And yet they do find their way into our hands.”
“Only those whose destructive nature is not world destroying.”
“Agrona’s claws could have destroyed our world.”
Thankfully, the man who’d claimed those claws had wanted to destroy Annwfyn—a world that exists alongside and yet apart from ours, accessible by bridges of darkness and inhabited by an elf-like people who considered humans and fae damn fine eating—in retribution for their attack and erasure of his entire family.
“Indeed,” my father was saying, “though I doubt it was Ninkil or his followers who unleashed those particular artifacts. It would be pointless rising into a world in which chaos and destruction has already been unleashed.”
“But he was behind the theft of the hoard from the Ljósálfar?”
There were two elven lines in the United Kingdom—the Ljósálfar, otherwise known as light elves, and the Myrkálfar, who were dark elves.
Most humans believed Myrkálfar to be the more dangerous of the two, and while it was true they ruled the black market with an iron fist, the wise knew it was the golden-haired, golden-skinned Ljósálfar you truly had to fear.
“His earthly followers were, that is a certainty. And before you ask, no, I can provide no names. That would break rather than bend the rules and be dangerous for us both.”
“Because the game itself doesn’t hold any danger to me at all, does it?”
My tone was dry, and a smile flirted with his lips again before receding back into coldness. “You have already foreseen one possible end this quest holds, as that fate is the same as the one that claimed my first seed’s life.”
His words had the vision I’d had via Castell—the blind light elf oracle who sent me a message from him—rising.
It had started with shadows and fire that gave way to a cowled figure standing over a sacrificial stone darkly stained with eons of bloodshed, and a knife that gleamed with an unearthly light raised high.
Words had filled the air with darkness and intent.
Words meant to take life and gift it to another.
Words designed to restore Ninkil’s place in this world.
The knife had flashed down, finally revealing the sacrifice—a red-haired and green-eyed woman whose features could not be seen.
“If your first child was sacrificed on Ninkil’s altar, how did she stop his rise?”
“I’m afraid—”
“It’s not within the rules to tell me,” I finished for him. “But if you’re hoping I’ll willingly sacrifice my life for the greater good of the world, I’m afraid you will be disappointed.”
“I would hope so. Sacrifice worked once, but it will not do so again. Ninkil is many things, but he is not stupid.”
“Then why say sacrifice might yet be my future?”
“Because it is a possibility that remains in play. Your bloodline—that of a god and a seeress of extraordinary strength—holds the necessary power to bring forth a banished god.”
Suggesting his first daughter had been powerful in her own right—and that Liadon had been right. The darkness he was still attempting to bring to the fore in me was very much a part of his line.
“Then how do I stop him without ending up as a sacrifice?”
“He has a relic—”
“The Harpē? Yeah, we know.”
“Find it and destroy it.”
“You don’t think we’ve been trying?”
“To the degree that’s necessary, no, and it emboldens our enemies.”
“Those enemies watch every step I take, and until I can uncover how, slow progress is the better option.” The clouds in his eyes darkened, an obvious indication he disagreed. Tough, I wanted to say, but resisted. “Once I do find it, what am I meant to do with it?”
“Destroy it, of course.”
“In the forge of the gods?”
“For normal artifacts that is an ideal solution, but the Ninkilim will feel the moment you lay a hand—be it flesh or wind—on the Harpē, and they will swarm your location to claim it. You must destroy it with the power my blood has given you.”
“Drawing down that much lightning could kill me.”
“Indeed.” He paused. “In fact, your death is a necessity for the game to be won.”