Chapter 16 Daesra
DAESRA
ISHA HAULS me over the side of the boat and drops me soaking wet on my back as if I weighed nothing—but not before he let me see everything. Hear everything. Feel everything. As if I were him.
It makes me want to peel away every stretch of his skin that touched Sadaré. I know exactly where and how much, since I felt it myself. Each torturous bit. And yet I also wish I were him so badly I want to tear off my own skin and climb inside of him.
Become him.
And yet, all I can seem to do is shudder against the bottom of the boat, curling away like a beaten dog from a kick.
Gods, what is wrong with me? But I know.
The Gentle One inside me is far worse than the hungry ghouls or any mortal pain.
The feeling is so terribly focused, as sharp as a poisoned blade twisting in my gut.
This is the punishment for trying to avoid her punishment—the one I thought I could escape as a god by consuming her.
And Isha was right: He timed his visit perfectly.
Jealousy. Jealousy is what’s wrong with me, but raised to an excruciating degree.
I groan as I drag myself to lean against the bow in a barely more dignified seated position. Isha stands between me and Melé and Pogli like he belongs here, not like he’s some strange, dark apparition that just appeared in our midst—in a small boat out on a lake, no less.
“Enjoy your swim in the Lake of Misery?” he asks casually.
Misery. Of course. If only that were all I was feeling.
“Is it strange that I miss Orseus?” I gasp, still struggling to breathe.
The god of death shrugs. “You also said you missed the ghouls.”
I definitely miss them right now, in comparison to this. But all I say is, “Strange, then.”
“Come now, I saw how you looked at Orseus. You must prefer his face to mine?”
“I wanted to hit it slightly less,” I grit out, but it’s a pathetic attempt at bravado.
“Now, now,” he chides. “Why would you want to hit me? I feel as though you owe me a favor, and yet I’ve told you that’s not how I take my pleasure.” He gives me that dripping, poisonous smile again. “Though it is how Sadaré takes hers, I’ve discovered. Much to my delight.”
Sadaré, Sadaré. Her body tense under his fingers.
Her decadent moans humming through him. The warm wetness of her eager tongue.
The barely controlled shiver in his hips.
I groan again, squeezing my eyes shut and putting my head in my hands—trying to banish the sight, the sound, the feel of her as his—his and not mine.
She’s becoming his, at least. I have no doubt about it now. It doesn’t matter that he seems to be taken with her as well—that only makes it worse. Or is that only the voice of Jealousy still echoing inside me?
Desperately, I wonder how long my state will last. I snapped out of the ghouls’ mindless rage only a few moments after consuming them. But this feeling is obviously as potent as its owner and might have a longer lifespan.
And yet, even if that’s what is tainting my current perspective, it doesn’t change what I saw in the memory.
I haven’t responded to Isha, prompting him to ask coyly, “Perhaps you didn’t like my gift? And yet it’s the reverse of what I usually do—giving memory instead of taking it. You’re so very special, after all. Do you not like your preferential treatment?”
I know he’s trying to goad me, but I can’t help rising to the bait.
I lash out at him, my sword in my hand—only to cut through the air where he’d just been looming over me, making Melé lurch back with a cry, Pogli barking in her arms. All I succeed in doing beyond that is rocking the boat precariously around us.
I take a deep breath through a clenched jaw, forcing myself to fall back and stay still.
I only realize I’ve closed my eyes again when I open them to find Isha standing out over the lake, floating atop the surface as if it were solid.
A useful trick, to be able to mold the elements around you. The element, thanar.
“You burn bright, boy god,” Isha calls, his voice echoing over the water. “Such fire you have within you now, after consuming those shades and my Gentle One. But you need to keep fueling it, alas, if you ever hope to match me.”
I’ll never be any match— I cut off the thought at the knees, like I couldn’t cut him.
“How do you fuel such fire?” I manage to ask, trying to sit up straighter and gather my thoughts into coherence—thoughts beyond Sadaré, that is, to give myself something else to focus on.
“You’re isolated here as much as I am, and yet you’re far stronger.
Yes—” I sneer, interrupting him before he can start.
“I already know you’re the master of this realm.
That still doesn’t make you the master of much, only tiny mortal souls. ”
The jealousy curdling in my stomach tries to belie the words, but I swallow it down like bile.
Isha’s metallic stare glints at me from across the water. “I am the sun next to a mortal’s flickering candle.”
I don’t even need to try to force a laugh; it simply comes. “How long have you been waiting to deliver that line? I imagine you’ve practiced it a lot. I’ll even bet you’ve used it on Sadaré.” I grin as his expression darkens, confirming my suspicion—but then I pause.
Because it hits me. It’s been right in front of me all along, of course. I seize on to the realization like a lifeline to drag me through this misery.
Isha doesn’t consume souls directly, because he doesn’t have to. It’s the fading that does it for him. And then he merely collects what’s left.
“The water mill.” I laugh again. “I take back what I said about the metaphor being stretched—it’s actually perfect.
Thanar doesn’t coincidentally weigh on a soul until it fades.
Souls are a speck of the divine, after all.
They could probably last forever with enough to sustain them.
” My jovial tone dips to a low growl as I glare at him.
“But your waters erode the shades’ minds or wash away their memories.
On purpose, loosening their grip until they can no longer keep hold of themselves.
When their bodies disperse, so do their souls”—I wave my hand through the air—“that aether free to drift. But your own aether calls to it, yes? And it comes, gathering like golden clouds over the soil you wet with your blood, raining down in that one specific place. While you don’t have a free-flowing source like the other gods, you have a well of power in the Blessed Isles, where both you and the noble shades have a bottomless supply of aether—but only at the expense of everyone else.
” I tip my head grimly. “Because there will always be more dead.”
Think of the overcrowding.
When I glance at Melé, frozen in terror, I’m no longer jealous of the god of death. Picturing her as grain for his mill burns everything else away in fury—even the thought of Sadaré’s eager submissiveness.
Not of Sadaré’s death at his hands, of course. That only fuels my rage.
When Isha doesn’t confirm or deny it, I continue mercilessly.
“I already thought that consuming souls directly was no better than the blood farms—only cleaner. But you don’t have to get your hand dirty in the slightest. You don’t have to choke down souls and deal with the filthy aftertaste.
Your realm does it all for you, grinding them down into a finer, purer substance.
But in the end, it’s still the same. You’re no better than the blood farmers. ”
It’s somewhat of a relief that, despite the terrible things I’ve done, I can no longer recall how I ever wanted to be him, even for a moment.
Isha’s voice floats more quietly over the lake. “I told you they’d re-created the cycle of the underworld in miniature.”
“And yet you hate them for it,” I shout, lurching toward him with a furious gesture—enough to rock the boat, but not tip us, thank the gods. My words still cut across the water like a blade. “Is that why you hate yourself?”
I didn’t miss his self-loathing thoughts in his memory, even though he tried to suppress them—probably so I would be less likely to notice. I was simply too consumed by my own jealousy to find them relevant.
For a moment, he’s silent. A shadow without weight over the lake.
“I never had a choice, unlike those blood farmers. I needed a source of aether after I created this place. You’re right that I’m isolated from the divine source as much as you.
The weakest demigod has more access to it than I do, let alone a mere mortal witch trading in blood.
And it’s been that way since I chose to become Death. ”
“Why did you?” I demand, disgust thick in my voice.
Despite the fact that we’re stuck in the boat and he’s free to move wherever he wishes, he looks more cornered than us for a brief second.
He shrugs, unable to hide his bitterness with the gesture.
“There was no one else. The first humans didn’t want their souls to return to the source when their bodies failed.
They wanted more. More life, of course, but barring that, they wanted more to death.
A place to come after death. So I took pity on them and made them an afterlife.
Instead of forcing their souls to rise, to be forever reused like Breath by gods and mortals alike, I built a realm under theirs, where their souls would sink.
The underworld, where they could carry on. ”
I scoff. “Only for a short while, save a few. And only to feed you and your chosen. You are the divine source in this pathetic little world you’ve built, except the aether doesn’t come from you, at least not since the earliest design. It only returns to you. You steal it.”