RESURRECTION #2
“I knew some of it. Not everything.” Ysira hesitated. “We need to talk about your demon.”
Neri’s narrow shoulders hunched. He shifted in the sand and hugged his knees to his chest.
“On the station, before I found you,” Ysira went on, “why didn’t you use it against them?”
It took him too long to answer. “I did. I—I think I killed some of them. But I didn’t decide to, and it was hard to stop. The more power I used, the deeper I went, and the closer I came to . . .” He struggled to describe it. “A door. And if I opened the door—if I let it in—”
“The point of no return,” Ysira inferred. “Integration.” “Is it like that with yours?”
“It’s different for me,” Ysira admitted. “I’m not a telepath. I may not be capable of integration.”
“I don’t want to do it,” Neri said.
Ysira’s stomach tightened. Now that she’d seen the true nature of the enemy they faced . . . Without plumbing the depths of this demon’s power, would they stand a chance?
“You said we would find an exorcist.” Neri’s tone bordered on frantic. “You said—”
“No one will force you,” Ysira said. “This is your decision. But before, there was so much we didn’t know. And now—”
Neri didn’t let her finish. “I’m not stupid.
I know I might be the only one who can hurt them.
But I don’t even know if I could integrate, because it’s all so hard to make sense of.
I’m not strong enough.” His face contorted.
“I am strong enough to know there’s a lot you still haven’t told me, and you know I’m a telepath, so I don’t have to pretend I don’t realize it. ”
That had to be frustrating—to have the ability to suss out untruths but not enough to discern their nature.
Ysira knew what had to come next. She had been over this in her head again and again, desperate for an alternative. But everything had changed, and now, so must this.
“You’re right,” she said. “And before I ask you to do anything, I owe you the full truth.”
Neri straightened, suddenly alert despite the exhaustion that weighed on his every movement.
Ysira wanted to shrink into the storm, let the dust and the shrieking winds erase her from his view.
But instead, she spoke. She began by telling him everything Tharanoth had told her, and everything he left out: the true nature of the gods, the Firstborn Empire, the Harvest .
. . their place in the universe, one world among thousands.
Some of it, Neri had already discerned. Then Ysira told him about his demon and the power inside him that Tharanoth would do anything to control.
“I figured that out, too,” Neri mumbled. “I could see a little when Tharanoth was inside my head. Not very clearly. His mind was . . .” Whatever he’d been about to say, he could not finish.
“What does he want?” Ysira asked.
“He doesn’t rule his empire. There are others, above him. He thinks there shouldn’t be. It’ll be time for them to choose a new emperor soon, and he wants it to be him. He wants”—Neri shuddered—“a weapon.”
“He thinks—” Ysira stopped. Her pulse quickened. “This weapon.
He thinks it’s powerful enough to take over his empire?”
“Maybe.” Neri lifted his shoulders with an air of profound misery. “But it’ll kill me. I overheard that, too. They never said it aloud, but they kept wondering why I wasn’t worse off after I . . . did what I did. They thought it was just a matter of time.”
Ysira said it before she could think twice: “It won’t kill you.”
“How can you know that?” Neri demanded. “Back in the canyon, you tried to stop me.”
“I was wrong.” Ysira wrung her hands together and looked at the ground.
“I didn’t know this before, but you’re uniquely resistant to your demon’s power.
Because—” Her throat constricted. She tried again, “There’s something you’re going to have to find out soon.
And I want to make sure you hear it from me. ”
She was filled with the sense of being caught in an avalanche, hurtling down. No going back now. But if this was what it took, to make Neri understand that he could be and do anything—
“You’re my mother.”
To Ysira’s shock, Neri said it first. He seemed surprised himself, to hear it aloud. “Aren’t you?”
Try as Ysira might, she could not speak. She could not look up and face him, just for one breath longer, before she had to see the hurt she’d always known was coming.
“Father’s mind always felt familiar to me,” Neri said. “Easier to sense. More than Seth’s, more than anyone’s, even when I wished it weren’t true. Yours is the same.” He paused. “He said my mother was Harvested. When you said you were too and you knew my father . . . I guess I knew.”
Ysira almost laughed, but a tear slipped out instead. She let it fall down her cheek and said, “Yes.”
“I don’t understand.” Neri’s voice trembled. “Why are you telling me now? Why did you leave me with him? Was it the Harvest?”
Him. His father. Her son’s worst fear was not the demon gods who’d held him prisoner and invaded his mind, but the very man who should have protected him from them. Ysira wiped her eyes to no avail. She couldn’t answer. What was there to say?
She struggled to steady herself. “I found out I was expecting you after I returned to Zivora. I knew that if the Church ever discovered what I could do, they would never let me walk free. It wasn’t safe. I couldn’t stay.”
“What did my father do?” Neri tried to make the question a demand, but it came out a plea. “Shouldn’t he have protected you?”