The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

When I judged the moment right, I let go his hand. Unfastened my blouse, and slipped it off my shoulders. I unhitched the skirt and let it fall, along with my underclothes. Naked, I waited, an offering.

24. If I Ask

—And then—then—

You remember.

No. No, I don’t.

Why are you afraid?

I don’t know.

Did he hurt you?

I don’t remember!

You do. Think, child. I made you stronger than this. What were the sounds? The scents? What do the memories feel like?

Like… like summer.

Yes. Humid, thick, those summertime nights. Did you know—the earth absorbs all the day’s heat, and gives it back in the dark hours. All that energy just hovers in the air, waiting to be used. It slickens the skin. Open your mouth and it curls around your tongue.

I remember. Oh, gods, I remember.

I knew you would.

* * *

The shadows in the room seemed to deepen as the Nightlord rose to his feet. He loomed over me, and for the first time I could not see his eyes in the dark.

“Why?” he asked.

“You never answered my question.”

“Question?”

“Whether you would kill me, if I asked.”

I won’t pretend I wasn’t afraid. That was part of it—my pounding heart, the quickness of my breath. Esui, the thrill of danger. But then he reached out, so slowly that I worried I was dreaming, and trailed his fingertips up my arm. Just that one touch and my fear became something entirely different. Gods. Goddess.

White teeth flashed at me, startling in the darkness. Oh, yes, this was far beyond mere danger.

“Yes,” he said. “If you asked, I would kill you.”

“Just like that?”

“You seek to control your death as you cannot control your life. I… understand this.” So much unspoken meaning in that brief pause. I wondered, suddenly, whether the Nightlord had ever yearned to die.

“I didn’t think you wanted me to control my death.”

“No, little pawn.” I tried to concentrate on his words while his hand continued its slow journey up my arm, but it was difficult. I am only human. “It is Itempas’s way to force his will upon others. I have always preferred willing sacrifices.”

He drew one fingertip along my collarbone now, and I nearly moved away because it felt almost unbearably good. I did not because I had seen his teeth. One did not run from a predator.

“I… I knew you would say yes.” My voice shook. I was babbling. “I don’t know how, but I knew. I knew…” That I was more than a pawn to you. But no, that part I could not say.

“I must be what I am.” He said it as if the words made sense. “Now. Are you asking?”

I licked my lips, hungry. “Not to die. But—for you. Yes. I’m asking for you.”

“To have me is to die,” he warned me, even as he grazed my breast with the backs of his fingers. The knuckles caught on my already-taut nipple and I could not help gasping. The room got darker.

But one thought pushed up through the desire. It was the thought that had motivated me to do this mad thing, because in spite of everything I was not suicidal. I wanted to live for whatever pittance of time I had left. In the same way I hated the Arameri, yet I sought to understand them; I wanted to prevent a second Gods’ War, yet I also wanted the Enefadeh freed. I wanted so many things, each of them contradictory, all of them together impossible. I wanted them anyway. Perhaps Sieh’s childishness had infected me.

“Once you took many mortal lovers,” I said. My voice was more breathy than it should have been. He leaned close to me and inhaled, as if scenting it. “Once you claimed them by the dozen, and they all lived to tell the tale.”

“That was before centuries of human hatred made me a monster,” said the Nightlord, and for a moment his voice was sad. I had used the same word for him myself, but it felt strange and wrong to hear him say it. “Before my brother stole whatever tenderness there once was in my soul.”

And just like that, my fear faded.

“No,” I said.

His hand paused. I reached up and caught it, my fingers tangling in his.

“Your tenderness isn’t gone, Nahadoth. I’ve seen it. I’ve tasted it.” I pulled his hand up, up, to touch my lips. I felt his fingers twitch, as if in surprise. “You’re right about me; if I must die, I want to die on my own terms. There are so many things I will never do—but this I can have. You.” I kissed his fingers. “Will you show me that tenderness again, Nightlord? Please?”

From the corner of my eye I saw movement. When I turned my head there were black lines, curling and random, etching their way along the walls, the windows, the floor. The lines flowed out from Nahadoth’s feet, spreading, overlapping. I caught a glimpse of strange, airy depths within the lines; a suggestion of drifting mist and deep, endless chasms. He let out a low, soughing breath, and it curled around my tongue.

“I need so much,” he whispered. “It has been so long since I shared that part of myself, Yeine. I hunger—I always hunger. I devour myself with hunger. But Itempas has betrayed me, and you are not Enefa, and I… I am… afraid.”

Tears stung my eyes. Reaching up, I cupped his face in my hands and pulled him down to me. His lips were cool, and this time they tasted of salt. I thought I felt him shiver. “I will give you all I can,” I said, when we parted.

He pressed his forehead against mine; he was breathing hard. “You must say the words. I will try to be what I was, I will try, but—” He groaned softly, desperate. “Say the words!”

I closed my eyes. How many of my Arameri ancestors had said these words and died? I smiled. It would be a death befitting a Darre, if I joined them.

“Do with me as you please, Nightlord,” I whispered.

Hands seized me.

I do not say his hands because there were too many of them, gripping my arms and grasping my hips and tangling in my hair. One even curled ’round my ankle. The room was almost entirely dark. I could see nothing except the window and the sky beyond, where the sun’s light had finally faded completely. Stars spun as I was lifted and lowered until I felt the bed underneath my back.

Then we fed each other’s hunger. Wherever I wanted to be touched, he touched; I don’t know how he knew. Whenever I touched him, there was a delay. I would cup emptiness before it became a smooth muscled arm. I would wrap my legs around nothing and only then find hips settled there, taut with ready energy. In this way I shaped him, making him suit my fantasies; in this way he chose to be shaped. When heavy, thick warmth pushed into me, I had no idea whether this was a penis or some entirely different phallus that only gods possessed. I suspect the latter, since no mere penis can fill a woman’s body the way he filled mine. Size had nothing to do with