I stood there, shocked to numbness. Believing him, for a long, horrifying moment. Shiny had been—still was, diminished or not—the god I had revered all my life. Of course he was right. Had I not hesitated at Madding’s offer? My god had judged me and found me wanting, and it hurt.
Then sense reasserted itself, and with it came pure fury.
I was still backed against the cistern strut, which gave me perfect leverage as I planted my hands on Shiny’s chest and shoved him back with all my strength. He stumbled back, making a sound of surprise. I followed, all my fear and confusion forgotten amid red-hot rage.
“That’s your proof?” My hands found his chest and I shoved him again, throwing all my weight into it just for the satisfaction of hearing him grunt as I did so. “That’s what makes you think I don’t love Mad? You’re a damned good kisser, Shiny, but do you honestly think you hold a candle to Madding in my heart?” I laughed, my own voice echoing harshly in my ears. “My gods, he was right! You really don’t know anything about love.”
I turned, muttering to myself, and began making my way back to the roof door.
“Wait,” Shiny said.
I ignored him, sweeping my stick in a tight angry arc ahead of me. His hand caught my arm again, and this time I tried to shake him off, cursing.
“Wait,” he said, not letting go. He turned away from me, barely noticing my rage. “Someone’s here.”
“What are you—” But I heard it, too, now, and froze. Footsteps, chuffing on the rooftop gravel, beside the door hatch.
“Oree Shoth?” The voice was male, cool and dark like the late-winter night. Familiar, though I could not place it.
“Y-yes,” I said, wondering if this was some customer of Madding’s, and what he was doing on the roof if that was the case. And how did he know my name? Maybe he’d overheard some of Madding’s people gossiping. “Were you looking for me?”
“Yes. Though I had hoped you’d be alone.”
Shiny shifted suddenly, moving in front of me, and I found myself trying to hear the man through his rather intimidating bulk. I opened my mouth to shout at him, too angry for politeness or respect—and then I stopped.
It was faint. I had to squint. But Shiny had begun to glow.
“Oree,” he said. Calm, as always. “Go into the house.”
Fear stopped anything else I might have said. “H-he’s between me and the door.”
“I will remove him.”
“I wouldn’t advise that,” said the man, unruffled. “You aren’t a godling.”
Shiny sighed, and under other circumstances, I would have been amused by his annoyance. “No,” he snapped, “I’m not.”
And before I could speak again, he was gone, the space in front of me cold in his absence. There was a glimmer of magic—something occluded by the hazy shimmer of Shiny’s body. Then a flurry of movement, cloth tearing, the struggle of flesh against flesh. A spray of wetness across my face, making me flinch.
And then silence.
I held still for a moment, my own breath loud and fast in my ears as I strained to hear the sound that I knew and feared would come: bodies, hitting the cobblestones of the street three stories below. But there was only that terrible silence.
My nerves snapped. I ran to the roof door, clawed it open, and flung myself into the house, screaming.
“A Window Opens” (chalk on concrete)
THERE ARE THINGS he told me about himself. Not all of it, of course—some things I heard from other gods or remember from old stories of my childhood. But mostly he just told me. It was not his nature to lie.
In the time of the Three, things were very different. There were many temples but few holy texts, and no persecution of those with differing beliefs. Mortals loved whatever gods they wished—often several at once—and it was not called heresy. If there were disputes about a particular bit of lore or magic, it was simple enough to call on a local godling and ask about it. No point in getting possessive about one god or another when there were plenty to go around.
It was during this time that the first demons were born: offspring of mortal humans and immortal gods, neither one nor the other, possessing the greatest gifts of both. One of those gifts was mortality—a strange thing to call a gift, by my thinking, but people back then thought differently. Anyhow, all the demons possessed it.
But consider what this means: all the demons died. Doesn’t make sense, does it? Children rarely take after just one of their parents. Shouldn’t a few of the demons have inherited immortality? They certainly got the magic, in plenty—so much that they passed it on to us, when they mated with us. Scrivening and bonebending and prophecy and shadow-sending, all of this came to mortalkind through the demons. But even when the demons took godly lovers and had children with them, those children grew old and died, too.