Chapter 19 Sadaré
SADARé
RATHER, BETWEEN me and gaping jaws about to devour me, Isha appears.
Like other outside forces, the water doesn’t seem to touch him. He almost looks like he’s standing in the sea with his back to me. Not even his black robes drift around him in any current, only hanging in the void as if dry.
Shock, relief, and then fear hit me in quick succession as I realize the giant sea creature is about to swallow both him and me. And yet he only faces our oblivion without moving. Staring it down.
I wonder if he might wave his hand and turn it into a swirling cloud of smoke or even into stone to sink to the bottom of the sea, but no.
He doesn’t have to. At the last second, the monstrosity snaps its jaws shut and swerves around him, peeling away from us in a sinuous curve—but not before I meet the glare of its giant mirror-black eye the size of a shield.
For a brief flash, I see myself reflected in the inky surface, my hair a red blur around my pale face.
And then cold, salty, putrid water floods my mouth, and I can’t see or think or fear anything else, because I’m drowning.
I’m going to die—again, somehow—in this awful sea.
Hard arms come around me from behind, and I only have a moment to fear that one of the floating corpses has me in its grasp before I’m no longer in the water but spewing up water in the arcade.
I only catch a glimpse of those hateful, horrible waves from behind the safety of the windows before I double over, heaving, and fall onto my knees at Isha’s feet.
My hand is a pale, clammy white next to the dark shadow of that other hand, splayed on the floor. The hand that saved me—twice.
And then Isha saved me.
Blearily, I can see his black robes are dry. I’m soaking wet, shivering violently, my hair hanging in dripping clumps around my face as I cough up the rest of the water in my lungs. Once finished, I still wish I could vomit out the taste. It feels like it’s everywhere, staining even my skin.
Isha’s voice comes from above me in one cold, distant word: “Why?”
I don’t care how cold he sounds. How distant. Because he’s nothing like the sea from which he just rescued me. I press off the floor and throw my arms around his waist, clinging to him. Sobbing into his hip.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you.” My throat is raw and rasping, but the words come pouring out as freely as the water had. And I mean them. Because even if he’s the god of death, he feels warm and alive. I’m alive—or whatever I am in this afterlife—because of him.
Eventually, I feel his broad hand rest on my damp hair. That’s something, at least.
I know he’s still waiting for an answer, but I gasp out my own question between shuddering sobs, my mind sluggish and as numb as the rest of my body. I need to think—and think fast. “How did you find me?”
“Your collar. I can sense where it is at all times.”
Gods. That must also be how he found me in the east tower. And that’s why I’ll never escape with it around my neck.
And yet, in this instance, it led him to me when I needed him the most.
I nuzzle my icy cheek deeper into the warmth of his robe, but the path of my thoughts suddenly goes even fuzzier.
There was another reason I wanted to remove the collar beyond escape, but I can’t remember what it was.
The ring, perhaps? The ring is important, but I no longer know why.
Is it mine? Isha’s? Someone else’s? I shiver again, but not entirely from the chill in my flesh.
The water must have affected my memory. Those smoky-black streamers from the fountain were pouring into it, after all. I don’t trust any water here, but I trust that the least. That, and the sea.
I swallowed a bucketful, even if I spit it back out. And I have no more seeds left.
And yet my slipping memory isn’t my biggest worry here. Isha is, unless I can convince him that this was all some unfortunate mistake—that I wasn’t trying to escape. I need to keep him talking, to seize onto any care he might feel for me as tightly as I’m clinging to him now.
“What was that creature?” I ask, coughing weakly, ignoring the pain of my knees pressing into the hard floor. “I don’t mean the one in the sea.” That was obvious enough. “The one that knocked me off the bridge.”
“That’s Bereus. He guards both bridges to and from the fortress. You’re lucky all he did was throw you into the sea. It could have been much worse.” He pauses heavily. “I could have lost you.”
Never mind that I almost lost myself. That I still feel like I’m losing myself. The only perspective that matters to him is his, but at least he sounds like he cares about me, insofar as his own interests are concerned.
Isha’s hand smooths over my plastered hair. His fingers trace along my throat—over the bruises around my collar.
Of course. I knew he would find them immediately. I hiss in a breath at the contact, even though his touch is gentle, while my mind starts spinning faster, awaking to the danger I’m still in.
“Bereus caught the collar instead of my neck when I ducked. I’m so grateful it was there.
Not only did you find me because of it, but it kept his claws from digging into my skin, even if it’s what pulled me off the bridge.
” A lie, but close enough to the truth to be plausible.
Bereus actually snagged the shadow hand after it shielded me faster than I could—yet another unbreakable gift from Isha.
His tone is gentle now as well. Coaxing. “Why were you on the bridge in the first place?”
He’s not letting me stall any longer.
The lie comes to me in flash, flooding out as desperately as my thanks did.
“I wanted to find my brother, Andreus. He was killed in a war against my father’s kingdom.
We mourned him so much. Even my father didn’t allow music to be heard at festivals for years.
” I have no trouble remembering my past, at least, even though I know I’m forgetting something else.
My arms clench harder around his waist as I look up at him, pleading, with tears in my eyes.
“I—I only wanted to see him again. Just tell me if he’s in the Blessed Isles.
That will be enough for me to never attempt to go there again. Please, I beg you.”
Isha stares at me for a long, hard moment, and then he sighs. “No, he’s not there. He served among my guard here until he faded.”
I press my face back into his thigh in what I hope looks like the throes of anguish, so he can’t spot the lack of grief in my eyes. Inside, I’m still begging him, Please, please, please believe me.
“At the time I didn’t anticipate that he would ever be of any significance,” Isha continues, “because I didn’t know you then. I wish I had known… what he would mean to you.”
It’s similar to when he said he would have guaranteed that my childhood attackers were gutted over and over again in the Pit of Hell had he known what they’d done, except this isn’t a violent wish.
It’s tender, because I can almost hear the sentiment underlying his words: I wish I had known you then.
I wish to know you now. I’m surprised at the real consideration in his voice, but I still don’t look up at him, since I can also hear his lurking suspicion, trying to tease out the lie.
And yet he at least somewhat believes me, despite the fact that I already mourned what little I knew of my brother long ago.
Isha wants to trust me, if he doesn’t already.
And I desperately need his trust. But why do I feel a stab of pain at the thought of breaking it?
“It’s not your fault,” I murmur into his robes, sniffing loudly. “Thank you for telling me of his fate.”
“Don’t thank me yet.”
Very real fear trickles down my spine at his cool words. But before I can think of how to respond, a small figure breaks loose from the wall and careens into me with enough force to knock me away from Isha.
The boy.
“You’re back!” he cries. “You’re sad and wet, but you’re all right! You saved her, Isha,” he says fervently up at the god of death. “Thank you, thank you!”
While I have a new embrace to hide behind, my fear only doubles as I bury my face in the boy’s neck. Isha can’t find out that he helped me try to escape, whether knowingly or not.
“This little one likes to follow me,” I say shakily, digging my hand in his curls, clenching my fingers in silent warning. When he still starts to protest, I speak over him. “He’s looking for his mother. Do you know where she is?”
Finally, I glance up at Isha—to find him studying me yet again. He shakes his head minutely just before the boy turns to him eagerly, clamping his mouth shut in anticipation.
Wincing, I ask quickly, “Do you know what his name is?” Maybe I can give the boy something, anything, to distract him. He’s still looking at Isha with hope, probably because he didn’t see the answer regarding his mother’s whereabouts.
“No,” Isha says quietly. “He’d already lost it before I found him.”
The boy wilts in my arms, and I hug him to me again.
“Can you give him a name?” I ask. Care about him, I plead in desperate silence. Care about him, and care about me.
Isha’s eyes narrow shrewdly. “Andreus, perhaps, after your brother? Or”—he purses his lips—“what about Deseus?” He stares at me so intensely after his suggestion that I know this is a test.
But I don’t recognize the name. I likely should, based on the look he’s giving me. But the only familiar thing about it is that it starts with the same consonant as… I blink.
Suddenly, I can’t remember that other name, either, even though it was important to me. Maybe the most important name in the world to me.
My expression of blank confusion is entirely genuine, even as it masks my panic.
Isha relaxes suddenly, no longer regarding either of us in suspicion. He looks softer, almost moved by the sight of me holding the boy, when nothing else seems to move him.