And I was not afraid. A bad sign.
“You should not wander the palace alone,” said the Nightlord.
I sat up. He sat beside me on the bed, gazing at the window. The moon was high and bright through a smear of cloud; I must have slept for hours. I rubbed my face and said, greatly daring, “I would like to think we have an understanding, Lord Nahadoth.”
My reward was his smile, though he still did not turn to me. “Respect. Yes. But there are more dangers in Sky than me.”
“Some things are worth the risk.” I looked at the bed. The pile of letters lay there, along with other small items I’d taken from the chest: a sachet of dried flowers; a lock of straight black hair that must have been my father’s; a curl of paper that held several crossed-out lines of poetry in my mother’s hand; and a tiny silver pendant on a thin leather cord. The treasures of a woman in love. I picked up the pendant and tried again, unsuccessfully, to determine what it was. It looked like a rough, flattened lump, oblong with pointed ends. Familiar, somehow.
“A fruitstone,” said Nahadoth. He watched me now, sidelong.
Yes, it did look like that—apricot, perhaps, or gingko. I remembered then where I’d seen something similar: in gold, around Ras Onchi’s neck. “Why…?”
“The fruit dies, but within lies the spark of new life. Enefa had power over life and death.”
I frowned in confusion. Perhaps the silver fruitstone was Enefa’s symbol, like Itempas’s white-jade ring. But why would my mother possess a symbol of Enefa? Or rather—why would my father have given it to her?
“She was the strongest of us,” Nahadoth murmured. He was gazing out at the night sky again, though it was clear his thoughts were somewhere else entirely. “If Itempas hadn’t used poison, He could never have slain her outright. But she trusted Him. Loved Him.”
He lowered his eyes, smiling gently, ruefully, to himself. “Then again, so did I.”
I nearly dropped the pendant.
Here is what the priests taught me:
Once upon a time there were three great gods. Bright Itempas, Lord of Day, was the one destined by fate or the Maelstrom or some unfathomable design to rule. All was well until Enefa, His upstart sister, decided that she wanted to rule in Bright Itempas’s place. She convinced their brother Nahadoth to assist her, and together with some of their godling children they attempted a coup. Itempas, mightier than both His siblings combined, defeated them soundly. He slew Enefa, punished Nahadoth and the rebels, and established an even greater peace—for without His dark brother and wild sister to appease, He was free to bring true light and order to all creation.
But—
“P-poison?”
Nahadoth sighed. Behind him his hair shifted restlessly, like curtains wafting in a night breeze. “We created the weapon ourselves in our dalliances with humans, though we did not realize this for some time.”
“Humans made that word an epithet. The demons were as beautiful and perfect as our godborn children—but mortal. Put into our bodies, their blood taught our flesh how to die. It was the only poison that could harm us.”
“We feared they would mingle with mortals, passing on the taint to their descendants, until the entire human race became lethal to us. But Itempas kept one alive, in hiding.”
To murder one’s own children… I shuddered. So the priests’ story was true. And yet I could sense the shame in Nahadoth, the lingering pain. That meant my grandmother’s version of the story was true, too.
“So Lord Itempas used this… poison to subdue Enefa when she attacked Him.”
“She did not attack Him.”
Queasiness. The world was tilting in my head. “Then… why…?”
He lowered his gaze. His hair fell forward to obscure his face, and I was thrown back in time three nights to our first meeting. The smile that curved his lips now was not mad, but held such bitterness that it might as well have been.
“They quarreled,” he said, “over me.”
For half an instant, something changed in me. I looked at Nahadoth and did not see him as the powerful, unpredictable, deadly entity that he was.
I wanted him. To entice him. To control him. I saw myself naked on green grass, my arms and legs wrapped around Nahadoth as he shuddered upon me, trapped and helpless in the pleasure of my flesh. Mine. I saw myself caress his midnight hair, and look up to meet my own eyes, and smile in smug, possessive satisfaction.
I rejected that image, that feeling, almost as soon as it came to my mind. But it was another warning.
“The Maelstrom that begat us was slow,” Nahadoth said. If he sensed my sudden unease, he gave no sign. “I was born first, then Itempas. For uncountable eternities He and I were alone in the universe—first enemies, then beloved. He liked it that way.”
I tried not to think of the priests’ tales. Tried not to wonder if Nahadoth was lying, too—though there was a feel of truth to his words that rang within me on an almost instinctive level. The Three were more than siblings; they were forces of nature, opposed yet inextricably linked. I, an only child and a mortal who had never had a beloved of her own, could not begin to understand their relationship. Yet I felt compelled to try.
“When Enefa came along… Lord Itempas saw her as an interloper?”
“Yes. Even though before her we felt our incompleteness. We were made to be Three, not two. Itempas resented that, as well.”
Then Nahadoth glanced at me sidelong. In the shadow of my body, for just an instant, the uncertain shift of his face resolved into a singular perfection of lines and features that made my breath catch. I had never seen anything so beautiful. At once I understood why Itempas had killed Enefa to have him.
“Does it amuse you to hear that we can be just as selfish and prideful as humankind?” There was an edge to Nahadoth’s voice now. I barely noticed it. I could not look away from his face. “We made you in our image, remember. All our flaws are yours.”
“No,” I said. “A-all that surprises me are… the lies I’ve been told.”
“I would have expected the Darre to do a better job of preserving the truth.” He leaned closer, slow, subtle. Something predatory was in his eyes—and I, entranced, was easy prey. “Not every race of humankind worships Itempas by choice, after all. I would have thought their
