Chapter 19 Sadaré #4
My memories of both of them begin overlapping anew—not Isha’s over Daesra’s this time, but in the opposite direction, like a dark tide receding.
Isha carried me up to my tower to imprison me, while Daesra carried me up a mountain to give me the view of a god.
Isha breathed for me only so he could hold my life in his hands, not so he could save it over and over again like Daesra always has.
Isha feasted upon my body on a table to make me forget my true love, rather than to tell me he loved me for the first time.
Isha marked my back to claim me, not because I asked him for scars to match his own.
He washed me like a prized pet, instead of bathing me like a queen.
He fucked me on his throne to prove his dominance, instead of making love to me on an altar to raise me higher than the gods…
The list goes on.
The similarities are too much to be a coincidence, even if the differences are stark.
He deliberately tried to plaster over my strongest and brightest memories of Daesra with pale, suffocating imitations, just like he covered over Daesra’s marks on my back with images of chains and cold and darkness.
What I had with Daesra was never a lie.
My open-mouthed shock turns to horror as I stare at Isha. “You manipulative bastard. You’re the lie.”
“Who has been manipulating whom?” he snarls, his features twisting as he stands in a towering rush. “Was any of this real? Answer me!”
This was his final test, and I failed it.
I back away from him, clutching my robe tighter around me.
Maybe it’s the thought of Daesra so close that keeps me from admitting that parts of it were real, if only because I’ve been pretending to choose this for so long that I started to believe it.
And yet, soon I won’t be lying anymore. Better to stand up to Isha while I still can—while I’m still myself.
I’ve already given him everything, just shy of my entire being.
If I give him any more, it won’t be me doing the giving.
This is my way of choosing, even if the outcome is still inevitable. I know when to surrender… and when to fight, even if I’m sure to lose.
I choose to fight, here at the end. Even if right now fighting means running away from Isha rather than toward him.
My silent retreat down the rug is answer enough.
“Your feelings were false. All this time.” Isha can’t hide the devastation in his voice as he takes a step toward me on bare feet. “I doubted you entirely at first, and many times since, but you almost had me convinced—playing me like a harp.”
“What choice did you leave me?” I spit. “You took me from the one I loved. You threatened him over and over again. And then treated me like a toy—no better than a pet.”
“I am a god!” His cry thunders through the throne room, enough to shake dust from the ceiling. I’ve never heard him so loud, so angry. “You are a mortal! That is my right!”
“But it’s not.” I give him a vicious smile. “Because I don’t belong to you. I am my own.”
“You’re his,” he hisses, and then his voice drops. “Unless I make you mine.”
I imagine he means to ensure that I forget Daesra entirely this time. But that will be the lie. And he’ll know it, and Daesra will know it when I don’t recognize him, even if I won’t understand what’s happening anymore.
And yet, even if I forget myself as I am now, I won’t forget who I used to be, before I met Daesra. I was ambitious, deceitful, and ruthless. That darkness had already started to rise again inside of me after I rose from that wicked sea.
A vindictive pleasure fills me at the thought. Isha always insisted I was Arinae—now he’ll get to meet her. I wish him the best of luck with that one.
“What, will you force-feed me more fruit?” I sneer, still backing away. “Perhaps the whole godsdamned table this time?”
He shakes his head slowly, taking equally slow steps, and my skin prickles. “It’s not enough for you to forget him. Not enough pain for either of you.”
“Will you turn me into a statue like one of these for him to see?” I toss my head at the stone figure closest to me, even as I slip past it.
Perhaps that would be better than losing myself… and yet I still can’t help wanting to survive.
“Why would I do that?” Isha winces almost as if the thought pains him, but his voice is harsher than ever. “How can a statue move and breathe and speak in order to continue haunting him?”
My brow furrows. “He’ll know you did something to me if—”
He sweeps a broad hand out at me. “He’ll know I had a hand in it if you’ve forgotten him. You don’t think that occurred to me? I intended to keep you hidden from him, but your treachery has forced me to change plans.”
I stop long enough to scoff. “You forced me to show you my true feelings. That wasn’t treachery.”
His tone drops. “Hiding your true feelings from me was.”
“You tried to hide them yourself by taking my memories!” I cry in indignation.
“Only after you hid them first. You told me that you wanted this, wanted me, before I killed you.”
“To protect myself! To protect Daesra!” I’m practically screaming, my words echoing throughout the throne room. “You were going to kill me either way! You can’t deny it!”
His gaze slides away from me. “I won’t. But you didn’t have to pretend you loved me. You didn’t have to take it that far.”
I open my mouth… and close it. Because part of me wasn’t pretending. But I don’t want him to know; I can barely admit it to myself. “I wanted to be free.”
“To be free of me.” He smiles faintly, looking down. “That’s all you’ve ever wanted, all this time.” I don’t correct him, especially not when his metallic gaze snaps up to mine and his next words wash the rest of my thoughts away in fear. “But I’m going to change your mind for you.”
My mouth goes dry. “What do you mean?”
He starts toward me once again on silent feet, his dark, imposing figure more threatening than ever before.
“I can do more than erase the memories of him. I can twist them. Forgetfulness isn’t the only river over which I have dominion.
” He’s the very picture of a stalking predator as I keep backing away.
“You’ll remember him, but only the worst of him.
You won’t remember your love for him—only hatred, regret, and sadness. ”
“I hate you,” I rasp. “I regret you.”
I wish that was all I’ve ever felt for the god of death.
“Not for much longer,” he says.
A silver goblet appears in his raised hand. I know what he means to do. What he means for me to do.
Drink.
I refuse. I turn on my heel and run for the doors to the courtyard. I have no idea where I can go, where I can hide, but I have to try.
A hand grips my throat—and yet it doesn’t exactly halt my momentum. Because it’s not Isha’s hand, but my own—the shadow hand, rather, rising up to strangle me. Only when I stop in my tracks, choking, does it release me.
I no longer have control over it—if I ever had control that wasn’t merely an illusion. As much as it can save me, it can also harm me. Just like Isha. This time, when he approaches me with the goblet raised, it reaches out for it.
“It wasn’t your collar I can sense at all times,” he says with dead eyes and a sardonic smile. “It’s your arm, because it belongs to me. Just like you soon will.”
I try to shove the arm down, wishing I could tear it off. “I’m not the only one lying and keeping secrets, I see,” I snarl as he draws near. “And if you make me hate him and love you, it will still be a lie.”
Isha halts a few paces away. “Without him, you would have loved me.”
“That possibility isn’t dead,” I start, and faint hope glints in his dark eyes until I continue, “it was never born. Because he’ll always be a part of me.
Like the scars on my back, like the past that you let me keep, you can’t just erase him, or it won’t be me.
” I take a deep, shuddering breath. “But there’s a possibility I could still care for you—if you let me go. Please, let me go.”
I have to ask. It’s my last chance.
Something like grief contorts his perfect face. “I shouldn’t have let you keep your memories of him as long as I did.”
“Just like you shouldn’t have let your wife visit the mortal realm?” I ask scathingly. “You should have cut her off entirely, kept her no better than a prisoner here, so you wouldn’t eventually have to let her go?”
His expression turns remote. “I’m not letting you go.”
“Because you want Daesra? Or because you care about me?”
“Come, Arinae,” he says with bitterness, “allow me to possess two desires in one.”
It’s what he said to me when we first met, except this time he uses my old name.
And this time, I shake my head. “If you truly cared about me, you wouldn’t use me to hurt Daesra.
You would let me be free to make my own choices.
If you truly cared about me… I could forgive you.
” My own desperation makes the words keep coming.
I’m not entirely sure if they’re true, but they might be.
There is an undeniable pull between us, one that wasn’t spawned by deceit or demand, but it hasn’t had the freedom to grow on its own.
“If you let me love Daesra, I could love you, too. Otherwise, it will never be real between us—not like this.” I gesture at the goblet.
“And I’ll never forgive you. So don’t do this. Please. I’m begging you.”
His expression only hardens into cold determination once more. And then his other hand lashes out to seize a handful of my hair. He takes a swift mouthful from the goblet, yanking me toward him and pulling my head back at the same time.
And then he crushes me to his chest and kisses me, forcing the liquid between my lips.
My final, blistering thought is: At least he had the balls to do it himself.