Chapter 5 Sadaré #2
And yet it’s the table beneath that’s even more eye-catching in my current state, a dark slab of silver-streaked marble that would fill the largest room of my house back in the mortal world and is nearly dwarfed here.
But its sheer size isn’t what captivates me.
It’s completely filled with food—overflowing platters of vibrant fruit, crusty loaves of steaming bread, meats dripping with still-sizzling juices in huge pans.
Amidst the spread, bronze pitchers glisten with the dewy sweat of whatever cool beverages they hold.
There are only two seats placed at one end: a high-backed black chair that’s nearly a throne at the head, and a smaller one just off to the side.
I can guess which is for me.
“Hungry?” Isha asks with an undeniable smirk. He drops my arm and moves for the chair that’s obviously his.
I can’t help salivating at the sight, and I barely manage to press my lips together and swallow in time to avoid openly drooling.
My stomach gives an unhelpful growl fit for a ravenous beast. But then I spot what comprises the table’s base: rough gray sculptures of humans, crouched and looking nearly crushed by the weight of the slab on their backs.
Much like the sculptures in the maze, I find them terribly disturbing, as if they were somehow once people.
At least they frighten my appetite away. Mostly.
Luckily he didn’t drag me closer, making the temptation greater. Because as much as I want to dive upon the contents of the table and eat like I never have before, instinct holds me back. If not from grounds with tainted water like the courtyard outside, where did the food come from?
I don’t trust it. And I certainly don’t trust him.
He raises a questioning—no, expectant—brow when he turns and realizes I haven’t followed. He seems to want to impress and intimidate me in equal measure, so I do my best to not look impressed or intimidated. Not to make him angry—not entirely.
He wants a challenge. He seeks amusement. He craves a diversion from the dreariness of ruling the underworld, where everything already lies broken at his bare feet.
He’s bored.
And so he wants something to bend before it breaks. Someone, and at the moment that someone is me, even if I’m no more significant than a servant or even one of the bent stone figures under the table in the end. The more I resist, the more fun it will be for him.
And the more painful for me. Even for someone who enjoys pain, I might well surpass my limits in provoking him. But it will be worth it if I can buy more time to devise an escape.
Right now, he wants me to eat—so much that he’s dangling this irresistible feast before my eyes like a lure for a fish. The massive jaws hanging over the table as if ready to swallow it whole only serve to illuminate the situation. Literally, since the teeth are lined with candles.
“No, I’m not hungry,” I say nonchalantly, as if my stomach weren’t writhing and clawing inside me.
“You won’t join me?” he says with the faintest note of incredulity.
I congratulate myself on thwarting his expectations to even that extent, and only give him a shrug. “I would prefer not to.”
Something darker flashes in his eyes, and I abruptly worry that I’ve pushed him too far.
“Then you’re dismissed,” he says, his voice as hard and blunt as a rock. “Go back to your room. Don’t deviate or dally. Now.”
Oh, he’s angry. I can’t help thrilling at that—the part of me that loves playing with fire, even to the point of getting burned.
I’m not yet sure his anger is a mark in my favor, but at least his dismissal gives me the perfect, unassailable excuse I need to leave—the opportunity I want even more than a sumptuous meal.
I discreetly scan the attendants as I leave but see no sign of Melé.
Good. Now I can go find her.
MIRACULOUSLY, I COME UPON HER in the first place I look: back in the salon, already returned to the harp bench with an obvious stubborn persistence that makes me smile.
Granted, she’s not playing this time, but seated behind a young boy with black curls, her head dipped alongside his, directing his gaze while she points out different strings with her scar-laced hands.
The sight plucks a painful chord in my chest, making my heart ache tenderly. What does music mean to her? What does this boy? Enough to risk defying Isha, that much is certain.
Just as I will risk defying him to speak with her.
Instead of returning to my tower as I was told, I head toward her with slow, careful steps.
Her eyes catch on me, widening slightly, and she whispers something in the boy’s ear that sends him scurrying off, glancing back at me in fear.
I can’t help looking down at myself as Melé stands guardedly to meet me, keeping a safe distance between us and yet putting herself between me and the path the boy took.
She’s wearing a simple white tunic, twined in strips of matching cloth, where I’m wearing whispering black silk bound in silver chains, complete with cuffs and a collar.
I look like Isha’s pampered pet. I would be wary of me, too.
“Melé?” I ask tenuously.
When she smiles, she looks so much like Daesra that it almost staggers me.
For a moment I can almost see him as clearly as her, and it leaves me breathless.
His sly grin, his warm winking eyes, are so fresh in my mind—so close and yet so far away.
I have to resist throwing myself into her arms, because of course she wouldn’t understand.
Gods, I miss him so much, and I’ve only just left him. Maybe it’s because I know how great the distance is that separates us. A chasm wider than any land or sea—the difference between life and death.
And he’s an immortal god who can’t die. I’m not sure how I’ll ever see him again… but I’m going to do my damnedest to try.
“I’m sorry?” she says politely, clasping her hands before her. “I don’t know that name.”
“I thought it was yours,” I hedge.
“I don’t remember my name.” She raises her brows in cautious question, tugging at the web of scars down her cheeks. “Can I help you—my lady?”
Shit. She doesn’t even know her name. “How much can you remember?”
She shrugs. “Only this place. It’s the same with all of us who don’t pass to the Blessed Isles.”
“Even that boy…?”
She nods, biting her lip. “He arrived not too long ago… I think. Still, he likes to call me Mother, since he can’t remember his own.” A brief smile flits across her face before it twists away in a pained grimace. “He didn’t do anything wrong. I was only—”
“I know, it’s all right,” I assure her quickly. “I only wanted to ask—do you know what it is about the Blessed Isles that allows shades to keep their memories?”
If I can’t escape, maybe I can find a way to forever remember Daesra. At least until I fade.
She blinks in surprise at my question. “Golden fruit grows there, and golden grasses that the animals feed upon, turning their coats golden. Eating such bounty is what does it. His own golden blood wet the soil long ago to provide for it, though golden rain falls there now to do it for him. You can see the bright clouds if you look north from a high vantage.”
His own golden blood. “Isha’s?”
She nods slowly, as if this were common knowledge.
So his blood restores memory. If the golden sustenance sprouts from it only in the Blessed Isles, then there’s another source of his blood that’s much closer to me. Him.
And that means the food here will make me forget, or at least not help me to remember.
“Have you ever seen him bleed?” I ask.
Her eyes fly wide. “No. He can’t be made to bleed unless he allows it. He is a god.”
Perhaps this is a dead end after all, and why the power of his blood is no secret. It’s not a stretch to imagine his skin would be stronger than iron—like Daesra’s is. And I can’t imagine Isha would ever bleed in front of me, not if he wants me to forget Daesra.
“Have you ever heard of a golden gate in the Blessed Isles?”
Her brows draw together. “Not that I remember.” She smiles wistfully. “But, as I said, I’ve forgotten much.”
So it could exist. She remembers enough about how this place works—about Isha’s blood and the Blessed Isles.
She was the head priestess at a temple of Sea.
She might remember so much more, given the chance.
And, if anything, recalling Daesra might lift some of the sadness from her beautiful, scarred face.
I have a sudden, wild thought: What if my own blood might help? Isha’s is obviously the vessel for his divine aether. What if mine is for my own, as weak and mortal as it is? What if my blood helps her remember, however little?
I’m no stranger to my own blood, and not afraid of drawing it.
I dealt in blood all the time when I was alive, exchanging pain for aether from the gods.
Rather, from one god in particular—Breath, who as good as sacrificed himself at Sky’s hands to allow for this trade between the mortal and the divine to continue.
I haven’t yet tried to reach for aether here, because I’m nearly sure I can’t.
I haven’t felt that hum of power under my skin, waiting for me to tap it.
But I figured I might experiment anyway, and so as soon as I was out from under Isha’s watchful gaze, I discreetly snapped a wicked-looking thorn from a pomegranate tree as I passed through the courtyard.
I no longer have my trusted needles or the ability to hone my nails into blades, after all.
I slide the thorn out from where I held it pinched between my fingers and use my shadow hand to pierce my fleshy palm.
The pain sends a jolt through me—bright, clear energy like a bolt of lightning up my arm.
It does nothing beyond feeling good, grounding me in my body. It doesn’t generate any aether.