Chapter 27 Daesra #2
After we pass through the shimmering veil, we end up inside a large stone house I’ve never seen before.
Near us, a long wooden table is heaped with bright fruits and vegetables that look freshly picked, and rich furnishings, tapestries, and rugs line the walls and floors.
It’s at once cozy and roomy, with low ceilings and sprawling space.
We both look around in stark surprise—until my eyes land on Orseus, standing silently in the shadows of one corner with his arms folded.
Warm brown skin, dark ringlets, icy blue eyes, and all.
Sadaré spots him only a moment after I do, and she freezes. I don’t know how she knows it’s him, but she does. Leus has already frozen, staring at him as if ready to pounce—still in his smaller size, thank the gods, or else he would destroy the place, whoever’s this is.
Her voice comes out in a low hiss. “When I said the golden gateway didn’t lead me to you, that wasn’t an invitation to rush to the other side.”
He unfolds his arms to raise his hands in a peaceful gesture. “I only wanted to offer you this home to replace the one I stole from you.” He shrugs. “Or you can refuse it and build another. That is all.”
Gods, it’s Orseus’s voice, but now all I can hear is Isha behind it. He must be all Sadaré can see as well, because she abruptly turns away from him.
“Then that’s all for me. Don’t worry, I can find the way out.” She starts toward what must be the door outside, pausing only to glance back at me. A small smile thaws her stony expression for a brief moment. “And you can make your own choice.”
And then she’s gone, slipping through the door and not quite slamming it behind her.
Leus lets out a whine in Isha’s direction, and then slinks away to follow Sadaré with his wings hunched around him and his spiked tail dragging. When he reaches the door, he simply vanishes right through it.
“Neat trick,” I murmur. Suddenly, I wish I had somewhere else to be. I suppose I could just leave like the rest of them, but I find my feet rooted in place.
Isha stares after Leus. “You even took my dog,” he says with a faint note of disbelief.
“He was a vicious three-headed monster who is now a more amiable chimera, but yes.”
He breathes a laugh that I try not to feel against my skin, even from across the room. “And she left me the burden of raising a perpetual child alone.”
I throw my arm out after Sadaré. “Behold, her path diverging from yours, if it wasn’t clear enough already.” I don’t say it without humor, strained as it is, but I keep my eyes on the doorway and my hands on my hips as if they might reach for my sword—or elsewhere.
For a moment, awkward silence reigns. I resist commenting that the house is lovely or something equally inept just to fill the air. It is lovely, but that’s immaterial next to his presence. Like Sadaré, I didn’t anticipate meeting him again so soon.
But of course I should have expected it. There’s a reason he’s wearing Orseus’s face again—the face to which I made the promise I almost entirely forgot. And yet I’m certainly not going to be the one to bring that up.
“I would say to give her time,” I finally add, “but I honestly don’t know if there’s a way she’ll ever forgive you. Finding a path that convoluted would be her specialty—and her decision.” I put heavy emphasis on the last word.
“All I have is time.” He looks at me, and I try to ignore the jolt those blue eyes send through me. “What about you?”
I raise my hands and let them drop with a sigh.
“I have more practice at forgiveness than she does, since I had to forgive her. Even that took being her. And yet… at this point I know you nearly as well as I know myself.” I’ve been inside of him multiple times and then tried to devour him, after all, but I definitely don’t say that aloud for the many ways it could be mistaken.
When I finally meet his gaze, it’s shining with something like brittle hope—which I’m happy to shatter.
“But I haven’t forgiven you. I haven’t even wanted to consider forgiving you, despite the unwelcome thought flitting involuntarily across my mind.
And I will never forgive you if you ever toy with her ability to make her own choices again.
In fact, I will do my utmost to finally kill you. I could kill you now.”
As his eyes dim, my vehemence subsides, now that my little speech is out of the way.
“Or I could kiss you,” I add with a shrug.
He suddenly stares at me with an intensity that pierces me through. The tension in the room is thick enough to bite.
“You can’t kill me,” he says slowly, each word weighing the air between us. Drawing it tighter. “In point of fact.”
“Well, then.” I don’t break eye contact, either. “I guess there’s the other option.”
We move at the same time, both our bodies rushing in a blur across the room. Our lips meet in the middle, crashing together like opposing waves with bruising force. Our kiss is brief, frenzied and furious, fueled as much by anger as desire.
I break it off when I throw him against a low table, nearly toppling him. But Isha ducks under my arm when I try to put him in a choke hold, spinning me around to slam me against the wall with my arms pinned overhead. But he frees one of my hands in order to tug on my tunic with his own.
“You made me a promise, remember?” he growls. “If you ever made it back to this realm from mine.”
“I remember.” I kiss him again, biting his lip hard enough to draw blood on someone not divine, but only to distract him while my hand is otherwise occupied—not with him.
I use parts of myself to form the perfect shape, complete with ridges and a silky-smooth texture.
A master sculptor couldn’t have done better.
Only a god.
“I promised you at least a piece of myself.” I’m breathing hard from the kiss—otherwise I didn’t strain myself in the slightest. One couldn’t even tell part of me is missing. “Here it is.”
I shove him back to slap my creation in his palm. It makes a satisfying, weighty smack. Isha looks down in surprise at what he’s holding.
An exact clay replica of my cock.
I lean forward to whisper in his ear, “Now you can go fuck yourself.”
While he stares at me in disbelief, I give him a wink and walk away, intentionally bumping his shoulder with mine as I pass.
I’m nearly to the threshold when I hear his voice behind me, still across the room, where I left him. Subdued. “That’s all I get?”
I pause. “That’s all.” I glance back. “For now.”
He’s slumped against the table in utter defeat, but then a gleam sparks once more in his eyes at my words. “You took my dog, my queen, and my pride. Are you sure there isn’t anything else you want to strip from me before you leave?”
Sadaré was never mine to take—only ever her own. But I’ve already made that point, and there’s another matter I nearly forgot.
“Now that you mention it,” I say brightly, turning.
“You should let Orseus go. He was a complete and utter fool, but he doesn’t deserve to have his soul worn by you like a second skin for all eternity.
Although I know it’s not in your nature to release souls.
” I snap my fingers, making him flinch. “Ah! But it is in mine.”
I only have to close my eyes for a moment. “Yes, he’s very much done with his afterlife in your involuntary service.”
When I open them again, there’s only Isha’s dark form before me, robed in pale skin and silent black. And yet, as forbidding as he appears, he almost looks naked without his mask. Uncertain, without his freer, cheerier persona.
“If I ever see you again…” I pause meaningfully. “I want it to be you.”
And then I leave him standing there alone, looking completely lost—an expression I never could have imagined on his perfectly untouchable face, his cold iron eyes almost soft with confusion.
Aside from getting back my mortal mother and the immortal love of my life, it almost makes the whole journey to hell worth it.
I walk outside to find Sadaré.
SHE’S SITTING ON A LARGE rock in front of the sloping field spreading away from the house, basking in the warm air, watching the sunset light the sky ablaze.
It’s a field that could grow anything, based on its lush, verdant grass.
Grapes, perhaps. Leus gallops through it, his wings flapping as he leaps and bites at glowing fireflies.
When I sit next to her, she shoots me a wry glance. “Dare I ask what happened between you two?”
“Do you really want to know?”
She smiles. “Not really. So”—she leans her shoulder into me—“is this our home now?”
I lean my head down to nudge her temple, my voice coming out sheepish. “To be honest, Isha didn’t literally steal the old one. I burned it down after he killed you, so the fault is partially mine.”
Sadaré reaches out to thread our fingers together in her lap. Her gown and hand are still silver, glowing orange in the fading light.
It’s a relief to know the sun will return. It’s more than a relief to know she’ll be here.
Forever.
She sighs happily. “You’re my home, and I’m yours. So wherever we are is home.” Her low laugh warms me from head to toe. “You give us the freedom, I find us the path. So, really, the entire world is ours.”
I kiss the top of her head, feeling drunk on her presence. “Let’s hope I don’t burn that down as well.”
“You won’t.” She grins up at me, a glimmer of starlight in her eyes. “But if you do, we’ll build a new one.”