“Aye.” Hamish’s head drooped. “Call me daft if you want, but I’ve been hoping me mum would come around. Eventually.”
“No doubt she has been thinking the same thing. How old did you say you were?” He had vague memories of what they’d spoken about during his far-too-short-a-time in the man’s room. Most of it had been eclipsed by the mind-wiping pleasure Hamish had offered. “Thirty-five, was it? Six?” Older than himself.
“Seven,” Hamish gently corrected. “I’ve been thirty-seven since the midwinter just gone.”
“Right, of course.” Midwinter? When the land would be enveloped in snow and the very air was rumoured to freeze the lungs. How ever did they manage to keep babies warm enough to withstand such a time without magic to heat the air? “You are that old and she still insists on you marrying a woman? I am sorry, but I do not foresee her changing her mind. Ever.”
Hamish returned to frowning at the land below. He said nothing. Although, judging by the tension running from his squared shoulders to the fist he clenched and unclenched, there was a definite battle raging through his thoughts.
Darshan’s stomach turned leaden at the man’s continued silence. He had come to the same conclusion with his father years ago, and it’d been a hard lesson to swallow, but he hadn’t faced it alone. He sidled up to Hamish. “How long have guards kept a close eye on your door?”
“Dinnae your people worship a divine being?”
Darshan jerked back, momentarily dumbfounded by the sudden swing. Very well. He knew better than to press a topic best left alone. “A?” He chuckled softly, hoping a show of amusement would ease Hamish’s mind. “We have several gods and goddesses. Araasi sits at the top of the pantheon, their queen as well as the Goddess of Home and the Hearth.” One of the more widely-worshipped deities alongside the High Mother.
“Queen?” Hamish echoed. He lifted his head. Those blue eyes, slightly red around the edges, trained on Darshan. “Does she have a king?”
“She does.” Not that anyone took him seriously. Where Araasi was the welcomer of departed souls, he was the doom of anyone found unworthy. Those who found themselves in Jalaane’s embrace faced an eternity of suffering in the icy depths of the Forgotten Place. “And a once-mortal lover,” he added.
Hamish frowned. “How does that work?”
He grimaced. This wasn’t at all the direction he wanted to take. “I feel a little ridiculous reciting a love story I learnt in the fānum to you, but it goes something like this.” Keenly feeling his face warming, he cleared his throat. “Araasi was supposedly intrigued by the beauty of a woman’s artistic craft and she entered the mortal realm in disguise to watch this woman work up close, spending a great deal of time in the woman’s presence and, eventually, they fell in love. And that—”
“All right,” Hamish interrupted as he returned to standing upright. “We’ve similar legends about people falling for demons. They dinnae generally end well for the mortal, though. I cannae imagine your god king was pleased with such an outcome.”
Darshan shook his head. “Jalaane—the ‘god king’ as you put it—is just as powerful as his wife. He caught wind of their affair and, no, he was most definitely not pleased. The priestesses say he chased after the woman, seeking to remove her from existence, but his wife was always one step ahead and would hide her lover from his grasp. The tale goes that the chase continued for years.” Sometimes, the priestesses would insist it was decades, but everyone knew that a mortal life was only so long. “Finally, there was nowhere in the world left for the woman to hide.”
Frowning, Hamish leant back on the parapet, his arms folded. “I dinnae like where this ‘love story’ is going.”
Darshan rolled his eyes. Trust me to find the impatient listener. His sisters were much the same way, wanting to know the end before the story could naturally reach its conclusion. His twin was the worst offender, sometimes going so far as to snatch whatever he was reading from his hands to skip ahead. Only the presence of a magical shield had ever stopped her.
“I’m getting to that.” He cleared his throat and continued, “Unwilling to relinquish her lover, Araasi turned the woman into a ball of fire and mounted it atop her crown. According to the priestesses, she’s still there, hovering above the queen’s brow for all eternity. The first Flame Eternal.”
Hamish stared at him, those stunning blue eyes bulging. “What? How is that a love story? Your goddess had an affair, then when her husband found out, she turned her lover into a ball of fire and then mounted her like some sort of jewel… forever?”
“I—” Darshan gnawed on his bottom lip. “Well…” He’d never thought of it that way before. Everyone had always just accepted it as the priestesses said. The Flame Eternal was seen all over Udynea as a symbol of love and devotion. “I guess so. I do recall the priestesses mentioning that Araasi would see her lover returned to human form whenever it was safe.”
Hamish threw up his arms and paced a few strides across the tower roof. “And that makes everything better.”
“I can think of worse fates than to be the immortal lover of a gentle deity,” Darshan mumbled. Not that he had any experience of anything beyond flings from those who attempted to use him to climb the ranks. He humoured the more attractive ones, using them whilst offering nothing in return.
The tale of Araasi and the Flame Eternal was meant to be something to aspire to. Beyond that, he had no examples to compare against. His mother had died birthing his twin, his father slept with any noblewoman in the hope of siring another son to take the burden off Darshan. Even his wedded half-sisters married
