Chapter 11 Sadaré #3
His gaze snaps back to me, and he abruptly folds his arms—as good as erecting a barrier between us. “I do not love. It’s not in my nature. I wanted someone willing, and she wasn’t. So I cast her out. And that’s the last I’ll ever speak of it.”
His imperious regard makes me feel no bigger than a scrabbling mouse, one that the sated cat aloof on its perch couldn’t be bothered to eat.
If I could have sunk into the floor and vanished, I would have.
Instead I merely flounder in a pool of shame, my shoulders hunching.
At least I now know he’s capable of kindness and caring beyond indifference or obsession.
Perhaps even love, despite his denials, because what god would otherwise let his obsession go?
Why would he preserve this space exactly as she left it, except for letting it wither?
Why would he keep returning to what’s now little more than a grave?
Because he loved her, such that he could.
And yet she was a divine being, while I’m a mere mortal—which he denied even liking. The remembrance tastes as sour as his words did then. She probably had power, leverage that I don’t, to force him to free her, whatever his claims of casting her out.
But then my back straightens as my innate stubbornness rears and rises inside of me, lifting me up. I’ve never before let a lack of power stop me from getting what I want. So I won’t start now.
I already have something she didn’t—willingness, at least as far as he can tell, to join him in his hated realm.
No one ever wants to be here, in death. No one appreciates the god who can and will take everything from them.
He’s the most feared god of them all. And yet it’s not the fear he minds; it’s the disdain.
It’s the lack of recognition for the purpose he serves that gnaws at him, wearying and embittering him over the ages.
And that’s what he craves most: recognition.
Both for the thankless role he must play as the god of death and simply for himself.
He wants to be seen and respected. Even adored.
I saw it in him from the moment we met. And so I made it seem as if coming here was my choice, and have put on an eager face ever since.
As eager as I can manage, which has sufficed. So far.
His wife never gave him that—I can. He still mourns what she once personified for him, and yet I can become that, at least for a time. He loved her for being the mere shadow of what he wanted, and so he let her choose.
If I can get Isha to appreciate me for being far more than a shadow, mortal though I may be—false though I may be—perhaps he’ll let me choose, too.
It’s what I’ve been hoping I could achieve through simple seduction, but that won’t be enough.
I need to ensnare more than his body. I need his heart as well.
I need to own him as much as he thinks he owns me.
Why does that feel so familiar? Once more, I’m nagged by the suspicion that I’m forgetting something important, but I shove the thought away to focus on what’s right in front of me. Who, rather.
Isha. And he isn’t impervious. He merely has defenses so high they might as well seem impenetrable. Even now he’s tense, like a dangerous animal ready to lash out. If I make one false move, he’ll pounce on me, and not in a pleasant way.
And yet, if I know anything, it’s how to wheedle and wriggle my way through such defenses, since I’ve long reinforced the cracks in my own. So I do my best to ignore him, turning back to the coverlet to smooth it.
“Well, the room is lovely,” I say, half to myself. “Spring is my favorite season.” I start humming a song I used to sing while planting seedlings and only continue to tidy the room, blowing dust off surfaces and gathering up the leaves on the floor into a pile.
The opposite of a threat. The paradigm of tame domesticity.
For a long—very long—moment, the god of death merely stands there. I don’t doubt he’s watching me, but I don’t look to make certain.
Finally, he asks, his voice low from behind me, “What is your least favorite?”
He rarely asks me anything about myself in earnest. After such a lag in conversation, I’m tempted to coyly say, Favorite what? or dissemble in some other way. But intuition tells me I should meet this chink in his walls with truth of my own.
Even if I don’t want to.
“Autumn.” The word falls heavy in the already-laden air between us. As I gather up a few more leaves, I keep my back to him, less in an attempt to outmaneuver his defenses and more to protect my own.
“Why? Because that’s when everything dies?” His tone turns cynical, and I glance over my shoulder to find a bitter tilt to his lips. Of course he would assume I would hate it for that reason.
“No. I love winter, when everything is dead.” I trace the outline of a leaf with my finger only hovering so it won’t crumble. “Still. Unchanging. Blanketed in cold.” I smile even though he can’t see me—knowing he’ll at least hear it. “You’re a bit like winter.”
That gives him another pause—but not for as long this time. “You didn’t answer my question. Why is autumn your least favorite?”
My hand freezes. My fingers clench. My entire body tenses.
Tell him, I hiss at myself. Give him the ugly truth, for once.
“I—I was twelve,” I stammer, my voice choked.
“That autumn, men came to my aunt’s island by ship—by accident.
They were hungry, and they found me in the woods alone.
They surrounded me, held me down. They—they almost—” I realize I’ve never spoken of it aloud with anyone.
Not even my aunt, who rescued me from the men before they could get too far—bled them dry, rather.
I don’t even know how to describe how it felt, but the smell of moldering autumn leaves and woodsmoke has haunted me ever since.
His sudden grip on my upper arm keeps me from continuing. “You don’t have to speak of it.” He turns me gently to face him, even ducking to meet my eyes. Lowering himself to my level. “I didn’t elaborate on my own discomfort, so you don’t owe me yours.”
I don’t feel victorious, even though I’ve succeeded in making him care about me at least a little. I still struggle to get my breathing under control, unable to hold his gaze. The panic is always so close, a cliff waiting for me to fall. He only waits patiently for me to pull myself together.
As I do, the strange realization strikes me: As powerless as I’ve felt with Isha, I still haven’t felt as utterly helpless as I did then.
Maybe because I can still at least try to help myself here…
and maybe because Isha isn’t as threatening to me as those men were, however much I don’t want to acknowledge that for fear of what it might mean.
I’m certainly still scared of him, but perhaps not as much as I should be.
Once I can manage it, I let out a shaky laugh. “So any discomfort you give me, I owe you in return?” I finally look up at him. “Because my backside would like a word with yours.”
“Ah-ah.” He taps me lightly on the nose.
His smile is slight, but it’s real. “That’s not how that works.
I repay your disobedience with punishment, as is my right.
This is different. As you can see now, some things are better forgotten, but I’m allowing you to keep this memory along with the rest, as per our deal.
So let it remain unspoken, if that’s your wish. ”
Relief washes over me, and the panic recedes fully. And yet there’s that itch, like I’m forgetting something, despite what he said about my memories.
Deal… What deal?
But then his hand threads through my hair to rest lightly against my neck.
He leans in close instead of pulling me to him, his breath warm on my cheek, his voice a deep, measured hum in my ear.
“If I could go back in time, I would personally make certain those men were gutted over and over again by daemons in the Pit of Hell before I granted them the luxury of fading away entirely.” He finishes by dropping a soft kiss on my forehead, as if his words were sweet nothings instead of violent wishes.
Even so, warmth blossoms inside of me. Which must make me a terrible person.
As terrible as him.
For the moment I don’t care, because he’s never kissed me before, even as sparingly as that. Under such attention—his heavy gaze, his gentle hold on my neck, his lips that rain both tenderness and threats—I feel like a bloom opening up to sunlight, such that I tilt my face up to him.
His mouth is so close. His glinting eyes hold me captive through dark lashes—the predator interested in the prey once more. I tip onto my toes in only the slightest invitation.
He doesn’t hesitate. His arm comes around me, hard, and the breath forcibly leaves my lungs as he crushes me against his chest, the delicate chains of my gown biting into my straining breasts. But I can’t gasp for air because his mouth is on mine, drinking me in. Devouring me.
The god of death feasts on me like he’s starving. I would know.
Somehow my body responds in equal measure, just as hungry for him as anything else.
My arms wind around his neck, and my hands plunge into his hair at the nape, questing upward to grasp the thick, silken strands between my fingers.
For so long, I’ve wanted to disturb those perfect black locks.
Using them like I would rope, I hoist myself into him, bruising my lips against his teeth, just as his arm lifts me off my feet.
I still can’t breathe—less so now. Even in my frenzy, I try to turn my face aside for air, but he seizes my hair in his fist, holding my head fast.
And then exhales into my mouth. My chest expands, biting deeper into the chains.
And then he sucks all my air back out, leaving me empty and desperate.
Only when my head gets light and the darkness beyond my eyelids begin to sparkle does he breathe back into me—breathing for me, as if he has reached down my throat to grip my lungs, squeezing and loosening as he wills.
He’s inside and all around me, my whole world shrunk to where his mouth meets mine.
My survival is utterly dependent on him—such a terrifyingly vulnerable state to be in, while at the same time terribly intimate.
A sudden flash of lips against mine, breath filling my lungs during one of our many games, makes my eyes fly open and my body go rigid. I even breathed for him once, to save his life in a water-filled tunnel. A single word—a name—shatters my thoughts like a rock through glass.
Daesra.
I’ve forgotten Daesra. And then I’m clawing at Isha, trying to push him away.
I’ve been struggling to remember Daesra this entire time. That was what was scratching at my mind, trying to get in—him. As I wrench my mouth away from Isha’s, a strange bitterness hits the back of my tongue.
The seeds. I can taste the seeds.
Before I can fully grasp what that means, Isha releases me. I stumble back, my hand over my mouth, staring wildly at him.
For a brief moment, his expression is pained. Betrayed, almost. But then his eyes turn from molten silver to cold iron. And he spins on his heel and strides briskly out of the room.
I’m left standing alone, completely lost, both in the dead garden and in the shifting maze of my own memory.