Chapter 9 Daesra #3
It’s far more insult than injury, but even so, nothing has hurt so much since becoming a god. My head rings like a struck gong, and for a moment I’m too stunned to react.
“You’ll find my impact here stronger than yours,” he says, reappearing farther up the hillside, rubbing his fingers together as if fondly recalling the feel of them against my cheek.
“Especially if you continue to disrespect me. You might be able to enter my realm, but don’t forget, I’m its master. ”
Even as I massage my jaw with one hand, my sword appears in the other. “I’m going repay you in kind—with this.” I flick my blade, deliberately recalling his words to Sadaré with icy fury.
“Did that sting, boy god?” He’s referring either to the slap or the memory—or both.
He smiles once more, a charged energy in his eyes.
“Unfortunately, that’s not how I take my pleasure, but I look forward to showing you how I do.
And proving to you that I’m not only hell’s master, but hers.
She has no choice but to obey her nature and serve me, just as I have no choice but to rule her as I do my domain.
Even you will bow down to me, eventually.
And I have some idea of what to do with you while you’re on your knees.
” He glances down in an unmistakable direction below his waistline. “Until next time.”
Before I can finally charge him, he makes an efficient if elegant parting gesture, and then he vanishes. He doesn’t reappear, leaving me with an empty hillside and overflowing outrage.
Now that I no longer need to maintain composure in front of him, my first impulse is to scream at the sky.
So I indulge it, heartily, the sound tearing out of my chest and through the open air.
I wish I had something to throw, but the hill is utterly barren—until I recall the sword in my hand and hurl that so far that it vanishes back to wherever it comes from.
I kick at the sand, launching up great plumes while roaring curses and threats.
“I fucking despise him,” I shout. “I’m going to fucking kill him. I’ll find a way—even if I have to discover a new fucking way of killing!”
But first, I remind myself through my red haze, I have to find a way to save Sadaré from him.
As if in support of my rant, Pogli rears back his head and howls, lengthily and mournfully, though he probably has no idea why I’m upset. Both the sight and sound are so absurd and somehow charming that I stop to stare at him, a smile creeping onto my face despite myself.
And then I abruptly remember my mortal mother is sitting nearby, looking not only bewildered now, as she watches me, but also afraid.
I did just throw an outrageous tantrum in front of her—literally throwing my divine birthright sword that she helped me retrieve.
At least I have the grace to feel sheepish.
“Right, yes. Mother, sorry. Hello.” Mother feels just as awkward as Melé on my tongue.
I scrub a hand over my face as I turn to her.
“I’m sorry,” I repeat, since it seems to be the easiest thing to say.
“It’s been a while, and you’re probably confused.
Suffice to say, the situation is… complicated. ”
She only blinks. “I’m your mother?”
So she doesn’t remember me now.
“More like my previous mother,” I explain—rather poorly, I have to admit.
“Or if you’re once a mother, are you always a mother?
” When she doesn’t respond, I crouch down in front of her and ignore the sting as she flinches away from me.
I hold her eyes, seeking some sort of recognition in them.
“Perhaps we need to start with the basics before we get to more complex matters. I was your son. You knew me as Deseus, but now I go by Daesra.”
“Daesra,” she repeats, as if she’s never heard the name.
“Yes, but you just called me Deseus, remember? That’s what kept me from—” Eating your soul along with everyone else’s, I don’t say. “That’s what let me recognize you.”
“Deseus,” she echoes with as little understanding.
I groan in frustration, and Pogli starts licking her arm frantically as if his saliva somehow has healing properties.
Strange as it is, it gives me an idea. Orseus—or rather Isha—told me that his god’s blood is what makes the Blessed Isles such a paradise, where shades can remain forever strong, safe from the waters of hell.
He was also incredibly quick to make his blood disappear almost as soon as I drew it, not only to try to hide the color but to probably also avoid it attracting shades like flies to honey.
Which means I should be very careful where I allow myself to bleed. I glance around the hillside. Neither ghoul nor shade has approached despite my commotion, the latter still gathered on the plain at a distance. Besides, I only need to bleed for a moment to test my theory.
I summon my sword again—making Melé lurch even farther away—but I only keep it around long enough to prick my thumb with the tip.
It’s about the only thing I know of that can make me bleed…
aside from perhaps another god. But even Isha seemed to be careful of that with his condescending, open-hand strike.
Melé doesn’t recoil for long, her reaction almost immediate.
Her eyes alight on the small upwelling of golden blood, and she lunges for it so quickly she might have skewered herself on my blade if I hadn’t already made it vanish.
She latches her mouth around my thumb, which is awkward, but I wasn’t sure how to offer it to her in a way that wasn’t also awkward, so at least she’s made the first move.
A ferocious one.
It’s my turn to recoil as I fall on my backside against the hill, flailing to catch my balance.
She manages to cling to my hand to the point where I feel her teeth gnawing at my skin, digging for more blood.
But she can’t break it, thank the gods—or thanks to my own divinity, I suppose—which means my skin is still at least somewhat invulnerable here. And it still heals almost immediately.
When she finds nothing else to drink—after she even licks my thumb to make sure—she sits back on her haunches and blinks, as if only then realizing what she’s done. Realizing where she is, as she glances around in shock.
Perhaps even who she is.
“Deseus?” she gasps once more, with so much pained understanding in her eyes that I have no idea how to respond.
Her hands claw at the sand for purchase, and then she launches herself at me again with a fierceness to rival how she tried to devour my finger, but this time she embraces me.
Her body starts to shake against mine, and a violent sob hitches out of her.
All I can do is pat her back in a never-ending state of awkwardness, even if a small, distant part of me wants to embrace her in return. It was just so long ago that I’ve mostly lost or buried that part of myself.
Perhaps because it hurt too much.
She speaks before I can dredge up something to say, crying into my shoulder. “You’re here. How are you here? You were immortal. A demigod, and then… something else, I heard.” She pulls away to stare at me in tear-filled wonder, even as her gaze flickers to my horns.
Maybe she’s too polite to say daemon.
“Yes, well, I’m still immortal. Except now I’m a god, so you can be proud of me again,” I say with bite that she doesn’t deserve.
Her eyes only well with more tears of either joy or gratitude that make me itch under my skin. “My own son—a god.”
I abruptly stand, brushing myself off and avoiding her gaze.
“Yes, if I recall, you were entirely too taken with the gods. One god in particular.” The one who sent me to find her—well, half of the god that sent me to find her, but I’m not about to go into the details concerning Sea, Sky, and Horizon.
“But, like I said, I’m not sure how much of your son is left in me, and whatever the case, don’t start the worshipful nonsense, I beg you. ”
She rises only halfway to her knees—looking far too worshipful—and clasps my hand in hers. “You still found me. You recognized me. Thank you, I—”
I nearly regret giving her back her memory. “I didn’t find you. Pogli did.” I tug my hand away, albeit gently. “And don’t thank me yet, because I’m bringing you back into hell with me.”
“Back—? Ah, I see. But where I came from, it wasn’t terrible.” She shrugs as she finally stands, as if trying to make the best of it.
I really wish she wouldn’t.
“It will get a lot worse before it gets better. I’m sorry… Melé.” That seems to be the simplest thing to call her.
“Why must you?” Somehow, she’s not angry or afraid as she glances across the river. Simply accepting as she only somewhat discreetly takes me in more than the extreme landscape around us. It makes me angry for some reason. Maybe because it’s… motherly… and I don’t deserve that.
Or, worse, devotional, which I really don’t deserve.
“I need to find Sadaré, my…” I hesitate over how to describe her.
My lover? My one true love? The woman I would burn the world for?
The woman I would—and did—go to hell for?
How do I introduce someone like that to the mother I haven’t spoken to in over a century and hardly know myself anymore?
I settle on: “My partner. Isha took her from me.”
Melé’s brow furrows. “There was a woman in Isha’s fortress, where I was. A newly arrived shade. Beautiful. Reddish hair, green eyes. I think she was called Sadaré, though it’s hard to remember.”
“What did she say?” I seize her shoulders like I couldn’t manage before, and yet none of the emotion flooding me is for the woman in front of me. “Is she all right?”
She shakes her head, though not in answer.
“I barely had time to speak with her. She was asking what I remembered—she was probably trying to talk to me about you. She offered me her blood.” Melé raises her fingers to her lips in horror.
“I couldn’t control my thirst, just as I couldn’t with you.
I attacked her, and then I ended up here. ”
Like a trap that Isha set right in my path, just as I suspected. I force my grip on her shoulder to loosen and give her another awkward pat, of all things.
She doesn’t look assuaged by the gesture, wringing her hands fretfully. “How awful of me! I’m sorry, I wasn’t myself. But I think she gave me enough of her blood, however much I forced her, to allow me to remember you for a moment. I still feel terrible.”
That moment, along with Pogli, likely saved her soul. From me.
Thank you, Sadaré, I think. To Melé, I say, “No need to worry about that anymore. I think she’s…
fine.” Sadaré is not fine, but I don’t want to explain her situation right now.
That would lead to exactly how I know, when all I want to do is to forget.
At least it’s true she isn’t injured or bleeding.
She’s only being coerced into doing… other things.
I’m going to kill him.
It was the chant that carried me to the Tower of the Gods after I found Sadaré dead. It faded into the background after I made it my mission to save her, but now it’s roaring at the forefront of my mind once more, ever since I came face-to-face with Isha.
Focus on Sadaré, I remind myself sternly.
I take a deep breath, turning toward the plain expanding from the bottom of the hill, marred by the extensive line of shades stretching across it. “Let’s skip to the front of the line and try to get on this ferry.”
I leave off the questions All right? or What do you think? Because Melé doesn’t have much choice, not if she’s staying with me. And she needs to stay with me, for both her sake and mine. Not that crossing hell will be safe, but she’s already trapped here, and who better at her side than a god?
Her son isn’t even a consideration. He’s gone.
Melé still nods as if I’ve given her a choice, visibly steeling herself at the sight of the open plain and the vast crowds hemmed in by the river, the beach, and the mountains. Pogli, for his part, is simply excited to be moving again, and to perhaps no longer be howling in shared misery with me.
There’s a howl yet caught in my throat, but I swallow it down like a thrashing soul.
“Come on,” I say, starting down the hill. “Time to talk our way into hell.”
“And if that doesn’t work?” Melé asks tentatively.
I shoot her a glance. “Remember I was a strong swimmer?”