Chapter 16 Daesra #2
Isha shakes his head, seemingly incapable of meeting my eyes.
“That wasn’t my intention when I made this place.
But I needed aether, and there were too many souls to sustain.
Humans kept reproducing in greater numbers—dying in greater numbers.
There wasn’t space for them all.” He stares off into the distance.
“It was so beautiful, at first. If only you could have seen it.”
Maybe these overgrown ruins right on the shore are the remnants of it, or even the ruins nearly swallowed by the sea, far more terrible for how grand they must have been. But whatever they once were is gone now. All that’s left is bones and rot.
“So instead of releasing excess souls from the dark bargain they didn’t even choose to make, you decided to consume them instead.” I lean forward with more assurance and fold my arms against the edge of the boat. “No wonder you don’t like to let any soul slip through your grasp.”
Isha’s hand drops like an ax as he turns on me, practically spitting. “I did this for them! So that death was not an end, but a new beginning!”
I flick my wrist dismissively. “A bleak one for most, and which ends much the same.”
“What would you have me do?” With his fists clenched at his sides, his shoulders tense, his glare furious… and genuine frustration in his voice… it almost sounds like he might actually be asking me. “This is what I am. I can be no different.”
“Yes, yes, I’ve heard all about your divine order and our true natures—or maybe those are just the excuses you use to continue being an abhorrent bastard.
” I give him a vicious smile. “You know what I think? I think you truly are jealous of me, because you’re stuck in this shitty realm as its shitty god, while I do whatever I want.
So you try to make me jealous of you. Make me feel threatened, when really it’s you who is threatened by me.
Or at least your precious order is—your grand delusion.
You’re trying to break me before I can break your realm.
” I turn away from him with immense pleasure, ignoring his expression of confounded affront and withdrawing from the edge of the boat to cast about for the oars.
“But I honestly don’t care about you or your realm—I only want Sadaré back.
So don’t ask me for advice. Remember, it was you who dragged me here in the first place, and I don’t play by your rules. ”
“Indeed. You’re an abomination wearing a god’s body.” His voice oddly sounds more barren than self-righteous.
“Better than a god who has made himself into an abomination. At least I’m honest with myself.”
When I glance up a moment later, he’s gone. A smirk slips onto my face as I finally locate the ends of the oars.
Melé lets out an explosive, shuddering breath that startles Pogli off her lap. “My gods, do you have to taunt him?” she cries, throwing up her hands.
I blink in indignation, nearly dropping an oar in the water. “He was taunting me!”
“Hardly, and he’s the god of death!” She seats herself on one of the benches angrily—if carefully—to glare at me over folded arms.
As if that excuses him. As if I need any reminders that he has the upper hand here. “So? And there was no hardly about it! He was torturing me! Did you even see what—” And then I choke off, because no, of course she didn’t see what Isha showed me. And I’m more than fine with that.
At the tone of my voice, Pogli whines worriedly.
I expect him to scramble over to lick me now that he’s free to do so—I even check how much blood might still be on me, but the lake rinsed it all off.
Not that it would do him any harm, but it would be disgusting, and I also wouldn’t want anything else to be tempted to lick it.
But Pogli doesn’t move. He only glances at me with those wide buggy eyes as though he doesn’t want to look at me for long, whimpering, even when I pat my leg for him to come. Instead, he skulks back over to Melé and settles in next to her.
So he’s judging me now as well.
“Try not to ruin my current mood,” I tell them both through gritted teeth, “because it’s rather recently acquired. I thought that went quite well.”
Melé stares at me for a few gentle bobs of the boat. “That went… well?” Her eyes flicker to the rents in my tunic, apparently ignoring the fact that my flesh is no longer shredded.
“I killed the creature, didn’t I?” I say defensively. “And we escaped the shades. And I’m not raving mad as a result. And I got in the last word with Isha.”
She shakes her head in disbelief. “My gods,” she murmurs. “Divine or not, you’re still such a child sometimes.”
“Says the mortal who knows absolutely nothing.” A growl resurfaces in my voice. “Be grateful you’ve led a relatively simple life, even if you ended up on the wrong side of a god once.”
Her mouth drops open. “I’m dead.”
“At least your love is immortal.” But the comment is half-hearted, a rising sheepishness threatening to overwhelm my bluster.
“And I don’t know if my love still exists—inside my heart or outside, in this god! What is the matter with you?” I assume she means it in a general, derisive way until she adds, scrutinizing me in a way I appreciate even less, “Why are you acting as if you envy me? This isn’t like you.”
“You don’t know me,” I snap, sounding exactly like the child she accused me of being.
“What did that creature do to you?” she demands.
I put more force into the oars until we’re fairly flying across the lake. At least I have my strength back. “Can you kindly stop mothering me?”
“No. Now tell me what’s wrong!” The command in her tone actually draws me up short.
I stare at her for a moment, tempted to either yell back at her or laugh. I’m not sure which.
Which means there probably is something wrong with me—beyond the jealousy that might still be poisoning me. Perhaps this wrongness has always been inside me. Even Pogli can sense it now.
I sigh and scrub my hands over my face, barely catching one of the oars before it falls into the lake. “I’m sorry, Mo—Melé.” I barely catch my slip of words, as well, with a grimace. “You’re seeing me at my worst.”
And yet, when have I ever been at my best? A few scant months with Sadaré? Because of Sadaré?
You’re an abomination wearing a god’s body.
Cold settles over me. While I might have scoffed at Isha’s words, they stabbed to the heart of what I fear most. Perhaps this is me.
I might be less of a monster with her, but then in that case I very well might not deserve her—because I’m a monster.
She may have been trying to tell me that, with how she’s behaving toward Isha.
She crawled for him. She let him cover over my marks. She knelt for him. She— A soft voice interrupts the spiral of my thoughts.
“You can call me Mother,” Melé murmurs quietly.
I glance up to see her lean in on herself—and yet toward me.
“I think it’s best I don’t,” I say, but I can’t meet her eyes as I do. “You want no part of this.” I nod down at myself and then keep rowing.
“Are you telling me what I want now?” There’s a surprising amount of ire in her tone. I witnessed her anger on the river and after, but this isn’t spiteful. This is more… rueful? Hurt? “You assumed you’ve the right to decide everything else for me, so why not?”
I row for a few more moments without speaking. My own voice surprises me. “I’m afraid—I’m afraid that in looking for Sadaré, she might not be pleased to see me when I finally find her.”
Melé’s expression doesn’t betray much. No judgment, at least not yet. “Why?”
“Because of what I’ve done. What I am.”
“What are you?”
I want to balk at the simplistic line of her questioning, but my frustration is less for her than for me. “A god of… I don’t know. Destruction. Chaos.” I toss my head at her. “You’ve seen it.”
She nods, perching her chin on her fist. “I’ve seen some, and it’s certainly not how I raised you to behave.” Her eyes flash to me. “You forced those people in front of the Temple of Judgment to kill themselves.”
My shrug is lost in my rowing. “I wasn’t myself then. Isha had just killed Sadaré—”
“And you destroyed those shades back there, turning them to dust right in front of me.”
Of course she wasn’t going to let that go. I don’t know if it’s a coincidence, but Pogli decides right then to spin a tight circle and flop down against Melé’s feet with his back to me.
“I needed their aether to fight!” I protest. “You saw what was about to happen to us. We wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t.”
She shrugs now, the motion slight in her forward hunch. “But who knows where we would be. You might not be feeling so badly if you hadn’t.”
“Mo—Me—Mother,” I snarl. If she wants me to call her that, then I will, under my terms. Which aren’t terribly pleasant at the moment. “I had no choice. And I have no choice now.”
“Didn’t you just accuse Isha of using that exact excuse for his terrible actions?”
I brush away her words, even though she’s right. “We’re completely different. Isha is using Sadaré against her will.”
She arches her brows at me, tugging on her delicate web of scars. “And so letting him use you against yours is going to help?”
I growl in frustration, putting more of my back into the rowing. “That’s not—no. Well, maybe. I don’t know.”
She leans back, staring out at the lake as it goes by in bursts. “At least question it. Sometimes that’s the best you can do.” She sighs. “Sometimes that’s all we have.”