37. 36 #2
“I have fallen in love with another.” The words rushed from me. Not giddily and gaily, as they had when I believed I was infatuated with Robar. Not with the solemn worship and eternal longing I had held for Ekris. But something entirely different, and yet more powerful than both of them.
It was the first time I had spoken the words out loud. Fella had suspected the truth; but I had known it for far longer than I wanted to admit. Admitting it now, to the first being I had loved, made me realise just how much I meant it. How much Davian already meant to me.
The humour fell away from his voice. I have heard this before, Annie.
“I know,” I said quickly, with a wince. “But I am not here to ask any favour this time. I wish for no boon.”
A pause. What, then?
I bowed my head and blinked several times. “I wanted to thank you. For all the love you gave me as a child and as a young woman. I wanted to thank you for your guidance. For choosing me. It was by your grace that I had this roof.”
I waited for a moment, but he could tell I wasn’t finished.
I smiled, despite my shaking voice. “I wanted to say goodbye.”
You no longer desire to come home? To reclaim your place at my side in the Garden?
The disappointment in his voice was palpable. Before, that might have been enough to sway me; I hated feeling like I wasn’t good enough for him. Now, the pang had lessened and a spark of resentment had taken its place.
He had kept me so cloistered here, so separated from the joys of being alive, that I could have made no other decision.
I would have lived in those walls forever, until I decided to end my life within them and travel to his side.
He had offered me his particular type of love.
It was a shelter when I needed it as a child, but it also sheltered me from the world as an adult.
It wasn’t my home anymore. He wasn’t my home.
“I have another home now,” I offered, gently. I didn’t want him anymore, but I couldn’t hate the life he had once given me. “Another love.” I reached my hands forwards, and touched my fingers to the edge of his fountain. “But I will always pray for your support.”
So, our deal is over?
I inhaled, surprised by how quickly he had changed the subject. “I did not find Ragnifort.”
Ekris hummed into my head, and I shuddered. You did not discover his identity?
“I—I don’t know.”
Speak, Ekris commanded.
I sucked my cheek, and considered my words carefully. I had thought about it a lot in the past week. Any distraction from the grief, any way to focus on something else long enough to get tired and fall asleep. “I have a suspicion of who it is.”
Tell me.
I opened my mouth, then I paused. He had been in my head before, when I was his devotee. He could read the thoughts I pushed out to him. But now, I was fairly certain my mind was protected from him.
What I chose to tell him could matter.
“What will you do?” I asked.
I am a God of Love, my Annie. I live for secrets. There was a pause. Then he spoke into my mind again. I will not involve myself either way.
He may not hold my life, and my decisions, in his palm as he once had. But I was curious enough to need it confirmed, or at least to have an audience to my theories.
I spoke through it all. “Ragnifort was created from Akaur. Akaur tried to push back the sun and his finger fell down, where it was spat up again by the fires of a mountain, and landed—godly flesh mixed with ash—in an ancient spring.”
It sounded silly, recounting a fable of the Gods to a God himself. But he did not interrupt. He waited for my explanation.
“Granville told me his name was Vasile,” I said. “That is the name of the river to the north of here. I assume it is also the name of that ancient spring that birthed the river from the mountains. Ragnifort’s birthplace.”
Vasile is a common enough name.
“Then, why did he tell me it was a secret?”
It wasn’t a question posed at Ekris, of course, but one I had been asking myself. One I couldn’t quite make sense of.
“He always spoke of himself as if he wasn’t himself,” I continued. “He quoted himself from his diary, as if it wasn’t even his own thoughts. He said that I had the interest of three gods.”
What else?
“His eyes,” I whispered. “They were blue. Like the flame of his blue fire. The portrait of him had darker eyes. They must have changed when Ragnifort possessed him.”
Ekris caressed down my back through our connection, and I bit my lip. Well done, Annie.
I jolted. “You knew, already?”
I know many things. I offered you the mystery, so you might discover my gift to you.
“Your gift?”
I spared you, he said. I let you break from me. I made that ill-meaning man forget you.
My heart froze, and my fingers snatched back into fists. He made Robar forget me, so he didn’t offer me to Granville as the sacrifice. Gods. He knew. He knew it all, even then.
That was why he permitted me to leave his service. He never let his devotees leave. Though, I wasn’t sure anyone had ever tried before me.
He knew what Robar was trying to do. Ill-meaning. Why did he let him visit? Why did he let him—?
“But,” I tried. My voice failed. Only one word made it out. “Jusia.”
Regrettable. But this story needed one of you to die.