Chapter 25 Sadaré
SADARé
PAIN. PAIN washes everything away. Scorching. Setting me free.
And eventually it returns me to myself, like it always has. Grounding me, but at such new heights.
I find myself back in my body—at least it feels like my body, even though it sings with sensations that are entirely fresh.
When my lungs take what feels like a first breath, it tastes sweet even though it’s the same oppressive, sulfur-tinged air I was breathing before.
My skin feels scrubbed clean, buzzing with so much energy that I expect to feel a crackle when I rub my fingers together, but there’s no spark between them—on either hand.
The arm Isha gave me is gone, banished back to the shadows, but in its place is one that looks made of liquid silver.
And yet it’s not unfeeling like the shadow hand was; it’s somehow warm and alive, pulsing with my own aether.
My vision is bright in the gloom, while my heart feels a deep oceanic pull… away from here.
Toward… someone.
I’m still standing on the dais next to Isha’s throne—the throne I had just been coveting and that now repulses me because of what I’ve done upon it.
How dark and lonely it looks to me from this new vantage.
I step away from it even as Isha backs away from me with obvious wariness in his cold, distant eyes.
And yet, that wasn’t me before, the one who did those things. I remember. I know who I am.
I take another gasping breath. I’m Sadaré, not Arinae.
And I’m a god.
Never mind that’s what she always wanted, not me—not after I chose Daesra instead—but here I am, thanks to her.
Regretting and resenting Daesra no more changed who I was before I met him than losing my memory would have.
Arinae was already a spiteful, selfish, power-hungry creature.
The bitterness Isha forced down her throat only sharpened her, letting her refocus on what she’d always wanted more than anything, far more than she ever wanted Isha.
Immortality. While I couldn’t remember the significance of the ring whenever I forgot Daesra, she was never forced to forget him. And though her love for him grew twisted, her desire for immortality never wavered.
She did love Isha. But not enough to tell him the truth about the ring. Or—
“The child?” Isha murmurs, bowing his head—almost shrinking away from me.
“A lie,” I say. My voice rises in my chest, both familiar and strangely powerful.
“A monstrous lie to free my ring, but it was you who made me into a monster. I’m something else now.
” I’m myself again, and yet more—not entirely new, but renewed.
Distracted by the thought, I add, “I’m not carrying your child. I never was.”
His pain is evident in the slump of his shoulders, and I feel a stab of pity, despite myself. Gods, Arinae was a bitch. But now that part of me is gone, burned away, and there’s only me left, magnified a thousandfold.
And I’m incandescently furious with Isha, despite how staggered he looks. But he can wait.
He can wait forever.
Daesra. Daesra can no longer wait.
I turn to him standing below me, looking so worn and vulnerable despite his divine strength and beauty, as he watches me with feverish, hopeful eyes.
Those stunning wine-colored eyes. Even though I’ve already seen him here in the throne room, it’s like I’m seeing him anew.
In a way I am, with a god’s vision—and he only shines brighter for it.
The waves of his slate hair might be disheveled, his dark tunic stained with salt and torn in places, and his smoky blue-toned skin dusted in sand and still crusted in flakes of Isha’s golden blood around his wrists and hands, but he’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever beheld.
The sight of him unleashes an ocean of pent-up feeling within me.
Love and fear flood through me, momentarily dousing my anger—love for him, fear that I ruined everything and he no longer loves me back after what I’ve said and done.
My feet start to shift before I can question it, following the inner tide in my chest. Carrying me to him.
But at my first motion, Daesra leaps up the steps faster than a blink, careening into me.
I crash into the warm circle of his arms, his embrace frenzied.
The wall of his chest curves around me as he crushes me to him, his powerful heart pounding beneath my cheek while my tears soak his tunic.
Even through the blood and sweat, he smells like home.
I can hear his own gasps as his hands clutch my back, my shoulders, the back of my neck, as if he can’t believe I’m real, and his fingers burrow in my hair as if he’ll never let me go.
For a moment, we both simply cling to each other as if in a storm at sea.
We were lost, but now we’ve found each other.
I pull away only so my lips can finally find his, but he throws an arm up to shield his face, flinching away from me.
Horror sinks through me like a stone, and I take a startled step back. Can he not bear the sight of me anymore? But when I glance at Isha, he still can’t seem to look at me, either—and I haven’t even turned my wrath upon him yet.
“What, am I hideous?” I blurt absurdly, holding my hands up in front of my face.
One is silver, of course, but the one made of flesh looks nearly the same as it did, except without a single flaw in my skin.
Another thing has changed, I see, as I glance down at the rest of myself: I’m wearing a gown of liquid silver, no longer bound in shadow or chains.
“No!” Daesra says quickly, still squinting under the awning of his hand. “You’re stunning. Somewhat literally. Your eyes—”
“What about my eyes?” I ask, worry pitching my voice higher.
He winces again as he tries to meet them. “They’re like stars, shining as if through a focusing glass. They’re brilliant, but they’re also… blinding… even for a god.”
“Oh!” I cover them, feeling even more absurd. This is divinity? I can understand Daesra’s seemingly endless complaints about the peculiarities far better now. “Is this permanent? I actually liked my eyes as they were.”
His broad hands find my shoulders, skating lightly down my arms—gently now.
“I did, too. I thought about them a lot.” The quiet, desperate longing in his voice pierces my heart more than any dagger ever could. “I believe I can mask your eyes, if you’d like. Change them back.”
“Yes.” My own desperation turns to painful uncertainty. “Please?”
So much has changed that I can’t help but wonder what else has.
Does he still feel the same as I do?
As if I were a wild animal that might get spooked, he tentatively raises his palm to my cheek—ignoring Isha entirely, as if he weren’t on the dais with us, let alone in the throne room.
As if the two of us weren’t in the throne room anymore.
His touch is so tender, and yet there are so many broken shards between us.
So much pain left unspoken. But there’s no time to say it.
“It’s done,” he says almost reverently, holding my eyes finally. He cups my face in both hands as if I might disappear under his fingers, drawing even closer to me, his body nearly flush with mine. “Hello, you.”
“Hello,” I choke back, swallowing a sob. Tears make his skin glow and his horns waver in my vision. He’s so beautiful it breaks my heart open once more, unleashing that ocean that’s almost too big to contain.
It’s almost like we’re meeting for the first time—again—except now we’re both gods. This would actually be something like the fourth time we’ve met, and yet I somehow blush under the raw force of his open, admiring regard, filled with so much heat and yearning that it scorches through me.
And then I can’t restrain myself any longer.
I move once more, nearly bursting with need for him, my arms flying around his neck, my lips finding his as if they never forgot how.
I kiss him fervently, and he kisses me back, pulling me into his chest and lifting me off my feet to spin us in a slow circle, while our lips and tongues explore each other with a fierce hunger.
Aching, starving, wondering—that’s the language our bodies speak as our hands grasp and our mouths consume each other.
I can’t touch enough of him fast enough.
My palms skim over the firm line of his jaw, his broad shoulders, the hard muscles of his arms, the smooth plane of his chest, wandering lower over familiar territory that I’m yet rediscovering…
Isha’s sharp report interrupts us. “You can both leave now.”
I surface from Daesra as if he were a sea in which I was happily drowning, and hiss at Isha over my shoulder, “But I’m not finished with you.
” My eyes have apparently changed back to green, and yet they must still be livid for him, because his gaze slides away even before I round on him.
“You.” I don’t scream, but the word is filled with every bit of my fury and pain. “You don’t get to tell me anything.”
The worst part is, when I look at him, the love that was beginning to take root for him still aches within me.
And yet it’s a festering wound now, burrowed deep, poisoned by what he’s done.
In this, I also understand Daesra better than I ever have, even more than in the maze when I felt what he had felt at my betrayal.
Because now I’m not merely recalling pain that isn’t mine, even if I thought it belonged to me then; I’m experiencing it firsthand.
Isha violated me down to my very being. Betrayed what it was that made me me. Turned me against myself, not only Daesra. The choices I made were not my own, because they were Isha’s choices, not mine.
It’s not my fault. The burden lifts from my shoulders as I exhale, leaving me lighter than air. It’s that easy to let go, because I can see exactly how I got here. And I can see the path before me.