32. PROPHECY
PROPHECY
YSIRA
Dinner that evening was served in a dusty, torchlit banquet hall. Neri sat in a place of honor, Ysira at his side.
The denizens of the Shrouded City brought food and drink to share, mingling and laughing together.
A pair of Telu women played a flute and drum, accompanied by a Dalish fiddler.
Soon enough, people even began to dance.
The promise of change sparked the air, a herald of great things to come.
To Ysira, it felt as good as her first lungful of fresh air after she’d crawled out of the Firstborn’s mass grave.
She wanted to revel in it. But Neri, it seemed, could not.
“You should eat more,” Ysira told him.
He looked up from his plate with an expression just short of alarmed.
Oh. She’d done it again. Speaking to him like a mother. She sounded like her mother.
“I’m fine.” Neri looked back at his food. He picked at the corn, squash, and green chiles as though they were live cockroaches.
Silence stretched between them. A fraying rope, about to snap. “They won’t talk to me,” Neri said suddenly.
Ysira followed his gaze to the tables below their dais, where a gaggle of children about his age linked arms, spinning each other around in time with the music. Two of the younger ones played with their enormous pet spider.
“I’ve tried to talk to them.” Neri hunched forward, pulling on his fingers. “They’re afraid of me.”
“You’re capable of things they never will be, and you’ve seen things they can’t imagine,” Ysira said.
“You’re different. That isn’t a bad thing.
” It was what she would have wanted to hear, but it didn’t seem to help.
At a loss, Ysira asked, “Did you have friends in Zivora?” Then she wished she hadn’t, because she remembered what he’d told her in the canyon.
His closest friends had been victims of the Harvest.
“I spent most of my time with Cas—” Neri’s voice wavered. “My brother and sister. My cats. Seth.” He paused. “I think Seth is afraid of me too.”
Below among the crowd, Seth sat with Mondral and Solai, chatting with the demon priests like they were old friends. He’d been quick to charm even the most suspicious among their hosts, as was his way, but his smile did not reach his eyes. Ysira suspected she only noticed because she knew him.
“He’s adjusting,” she reminded Neri. “Like you. And . . . he lost a parent.”
“I know.” Neri’s tone was worryingly detached.
“He said Father killed him. I suppose it just feels like one more thing that . . .” He trailed off.
He’d been doing that all day, slipping in and out of conversation as though some other voice had distracted him.
Sometimes, Ysira caught him looking off into the distance at something she could not see.
She did her best to conceal how much it unnerved her.
Neri returned to pushing food around his plate.
Ysira grasped for something else to say and came up empty.
What right did she have to begrudge him for keeping her at arm’s length?
She was no longer an ally against danger, no longer a friend of Uncle Seth’s, but Neri’s parent, and his experience with those was nothing if not complicated.
Finally—mercifully—Ysira saw Jacen enter the hall. He looked so odd, and neater than she’d ever seen him, in civilian clothes: trousers, boots, and a sand-colored shirt. He’d shaved, even combed his white-blond hair.
Ysira excused herself—though Neri didn’t seem to hear her—and followed Jacen to a table in a lonely corner, where he posted up with a serving of spiced pork wrapped in cornmeal. His novitiate, the dark-skinned girl who’d left the temple in tears, had joined him.
“I don’t think we’ve officially met,” Ysira said to her.
The girl stared at her with enormous white eyes. She reminded Ysira of a desert owl, the sort that liked to hide inside the giant cacti. She stared a moment longer, then mumbled something about a stomachache and slipped away.
“Don’t take it personally,” Jacen said. “It’s a miracle I convinced her to leave her room.”
He took one bite of his meal and immediately seemed to regret it.
Not for the first time, Ysira felt sorry for him.
Jacen was sweating as he watched the festivities, clenching his utensils in a white-knuckled grip.
Ysira chose a seat that obscured his view of the liquor, but he fixated on Hesaya across the hall.
The erstwhile priest wore red, smiling as she whispered to an unfamiliar woman. Their foreheads touched, then Hesaya kissed her full on the mouth. Jacen’s eyes bulged.
The pet spider scuttled by, two delighted children in tow. Jacen actually jumped, spilling his cup of water. He let loose a vicious stream of profanity and demanded of Ysira, “Did you know about this?”
“Spiders make very affectionate pets,” Ysira said. “They’re as intelligent as cats and produce beautiful silk when properly cared for.” She stroked the front of her gown, high-collared and sleeveless with a web-like net of tiny rubies draped over her shoulders.
“I’m not talking about the blasted spiders,” Jacen hissed.
“You mean that your holy Sister is a rebel spy?” said Ysira. “Or is it the lack of celibacy that shocks you? You must realize you’re the only member of the Church who takes that particular vow seriously.”
A red flush crept up Jacen’s cheeks. “I’m not—” “You can fuck Seth now. It’s allowed.”
Jacen seemed rather desperately unsure how to respond. He tried to take a drink of water, found the cup empty, and grimaced. “I thought you might, actually.”
“He’s not monogamous. He likes to share—and be shared.” Ysira waved a hand. “I wouldn’t judge you either way. Most sex is overrated.”
“Is it?” Jacen said faintly.
Ysira smirked. “My standards are very, very high.”
Jacen couldn’t even look at her. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, placing his hands flat against the table. That serenity lasted all of a few seconds before a nearby shout made Jacen flinch.
“Who wants to face a legend?” Kanan Var Mondral was rather drunk, strutting around with his arms spread wide. “Come on! A friendly spar!”
Militiamen banged on tables for him, hollering their approval. “What does his demon even do?” Jacen muttered.
Ysira shrugged. “Nobody knows. Maybe it’s something humiliating, like turning him into a peccary.”
“Are there demons that do that?” “You’re the exorcist. You tell me.”
“Semira!” bellowed the grizzled demon priest. “Care to test the best sword in the Citadel against the strongest of the valak?”
“Let me know when he shows up, would you?” Seth called, from where he still sat with Solai.
Mondral roared with laughter and moved on to challenge Commander Teheda.
“He has the eyes, so we know he’s not lying.” Jacen massaged his temples and groaned. “Maybe he can inflict a splitting fucking headache on anyone he speaks to.” He shook his head. “I need to lie down.”
Enough games, then. Ysira angled herself to face him and grabbed him by the arm before he could go.
“Tell me what you saw at the Gate.”
Jacen blinked at her, startled for a moment. “I don’t think I can explain.”
“Try.”
“I saw the Source. The power of Naxal. I helped Neri make sense of it—tried to, anyway. It’ll take time.” He leaned back in his seat, looking up, away from her. “What I saw today was so far beyond anything I ever . . .” He actually shuddered. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I want to know what it meant to you.”
She had to know whether he’d found it—that truth he was searching for—because Jacen Kheris was a man driven by conviction.
Of all the things Ysira knew about him, that was the most unsettling—and perhaps the most useful.
Selfish people were unreliable, easy to sway, but principled people were dangerous.
And no one had conviction like a convert.
“What are you afraid of?” Ysira said softly. Jacen swallowed. “I can’t be wrong again.”
She could not quite read his expression.
He had an ambiguous sort of face—fine, elegant features capable of conveying both cruelty and fragility.
At the moment, she saw the latter, an uncertainty that made him seem younger than his years.
But that steel was never far from the surface.
For a time, Ysira drank it in, captivated despite herself.
The buzz of the hall around them faded to insignificance.
They might as well have been the only two souls present.
“What is faith,” Ysira said, “but a risk you’re willing to take?” She cupped his face, turning him toward her. He went still. “What is a god, but something that can remake a world?”
On this much, Ysira agreed with Tharanoth. Divinity was only a matter of semantics—and she who defined it held ultimate power. Soon, every person in this would have to rewrite their concept of reality, and she was poised to give them answers.
To make her son a god.
She let her hand fall and put the question to Jacen bluntly: “Do you believe?”
Jacen folded his long hands and sighed. His pale eyes never left hers. “You’ve no idea how badly I want to.”
By the time the festivities died down, Neri had gone missing.
Ysira searched for him in the banquet hall, out on the portico, and in the surrounding corridors. Nothing. He couldn’t have left the library; Disciples had been watching every exit. None had seen him leave.
An inexplicable dread curdled in Ysira’s chest as she made her way to the residential wing. The demon priests had rooms there, as did Eneva, but the entire third floor had been cleared for Neri. Ysira found the central hall deserted, the wall sconces dark, but . . .
She heard a slick, sickening snap, followed by a soggy crunch.
Wetness splattered against stone. Then another crunch, and a squelch.
Ysira rounded the corner into Neri’s chambers.
He stood there, alone, hands dripping with .
. . something. He turned toward Ysira. His red eyes did not illuminate the darkness.
They seemed to pull all other light inward, where it vanished into the twin black holes of his pupils.
For an instant, Ysira stopped breathing.
She made herself look down—at the dismembered remains of the giant spider. The beloved pet that the children had chased through the banquet hall. Two of its limbs still twitched, barely attached to the brutalized thorax. The rest, Neri had scattered across the floor in varying states of mutilation.
“Neri,” Ysira whispered.
His head snapped up. He looked at his hands. “Oh, no. Oh no no no—” He began to hyperventilate.
“Neri!” Ysira exclaimed, much louder. She ran to him as words tumbled out, too fast to understand.
“I didn’t mean to, it wasn’t my idea, I couldn’t tell—” “Slow down,” Ysira said. “From the beginning.”
Neri stared past her, into some middle distance. His face was wet—not with tears but with spider guts. Bristles stuck between his teeth. Ysira’s stomach lurched.
“I remember being upset with Paco and Yahaira. The spider—” Neri swallowed. “It’s theirs. But this is not what I wanted to do.”
“Then—whose?”
“I’m not sure.” Neri’s voice rose in pitch, bordering on panic. “I can’t tell what’s coming from me and what’s coming from them. I’m not strong enough to tell the difference and keep up my boundaries at the same time.”
He stammered on, and Ysira caught something that sounded like I’m worthless.
“Stop it.” She took him by the shoulders. “You can control this. It’ll take time, but—”
“Do we have time? Do we? It’s so angry and so . . . old. It’s tired of waiting. It wants to kill the gods and free our world, but—it won’t stop.”
The longer Neri was quiet, the deeper the dread in Ysira grew.
“It thinks that maybe this universe doesn’t deserve to exist. It wants to drown the stars in blood.” Neri shuddered. “It wants to devour.”
Ysira gripped his shoulders tighter. Because she had felt that anger, every time she dreamed of the red thing in the desert.
She had felt it because it was her own, too, and countless others’—the sense of all that rage with nowhere to go, now standing before her in a body too small to contain it.
For a long while, she could not speak, struggling to conceal the depth of her horror.
“You told me these people would kill for me,” Neri said. “That they would die for me. And you were right. I can sense it in them, that hope, and I know they would follow me to any end. Maybe even this one.”
Ysira started to deny it but found the words stuck in her throat.
You’ll only know it’s taken root, Ogden had said, when you’ve lost all control.
Neri looked to her, imploring. “What do I do?”
She would not lose control.
“Go clean yourself up,” she said. “I’ll take care of this.” “Should we tell—”
“No.”
What would those children do when they realized their pet was missing? What would their mother think? Solai, the schoolteacher turned demon priest who had been so kind to Neri, endlessly patient with his training despite being so far out of her depth . . .
Ysira severed that train of thought. She could excise the human part of herself like a useless demon, because that was how she survived.
She had clawed her way through dirt and darkness, doing whatever was necessary, refusing to fade into nothing even when it was all she’d ever been promised.
And she had witnessed the horror in their skies.
She knew what awaited them all, should they fail.
No half measures. No other approach would suffice. Regardless of what had happened this night, regardless of what Naxal might be . . . this world had served far crueler masters.
What harm could Ysira possibly bring upon this world that it had not already seen?
“No,” she said again, more sharply. She straightened.
Composing herself. “We’re on the brink of war, and we cannot afford to make them doubt.
Not now, do you understand? If anyone asks about the spider, you never saw it.
If they ask where you’ve been, you lie. This never happened. We will not speak of this again.”