Had that been it? I laughed hopelessly. “And now I’m the one who won’t last much longer.”
“Sieh —”
“If it was like you say, I would have killed Shahar, Deka. Because she betrayed me. She knew I loved her, and she used me. She …” I paused, then looked up at the reflection in the window. My own face in the foreground, pinched and tired, too big as always, shaped wrong, old. I had never understood why so many mortals found me attractive in this shape. In the background, watching me from the couch on which he sat, Deka. His eyes met mine in the glass.
“I slept with her,” I said, to hurt him. To shut him up. “I was her first, in fact. Little Lady Shar, so perfect, so cute. You should have heard her moan, Deka; it was like hearing the Maelstrom itself sing.”
Deka only smiled, though it seemed forced. “I heard about Mother’s plan.” He paused. “Is that why you didn’t kill Shahar? Because it was Mother’s plan and not hers?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know why I didn’t kill her. There was no why. I do what feels good.” I rubbed my temples, where a headache had begun.
“And you didn’t feel like murdering the girl you loved.”
“Gods, Deka!” I rounded on him, clenching my fists. “Why are we talking about this?”
“So it was just lust? The god of childhood leaps on the first half-grown woman he meets who’s willing?”
“No, of course not!”
He sighed and got to his feet. “She was just another Arameri, then, forcing you into her bed?” The look on his face showed that he didn’t remotely believe that. “You wanted her. You loved her. She broke your heart. And you didn’t kill her because you love her still. Why does that trouble you so?”
“It doesn’t,” I said. Ma?oke your h But it did. It shouldn’t have. Why did it matter to me that some mortal had done precisely what I’d expected her to do? A god should not care about such things. A god …
…should not need a mortal to be happy.
Gods. Gods. What was wrong with me? Gods.
Deka sighed and came over to me. There were many things in his eyes: compassion. Sorrow. Anger, though not at me. Exasperation. And something more. He stopped in front of me, and I was not as surprised as I should have been that he lifted a hand to cup my cheek. I did not pull away, either. As I should have.
“I will not betray you,” he murmured, much too softly. This was not the way a friend spoke to a friend. His fingertips rasped along the edge of my jaw. This was not the touch of a friend. But — I did not think — Oh, gods, was he …
“I’m not going anywhere, either. I have waited so long for you, Sieh.”
I started, confused, remembering. “Wait, where did you hear —”
Then he kissed me, and I fell.
Into him. Or he enveloped me. There are no words for such things, not in any mortal language, but I will try, I will try to encapsulate it, confine it, define it, because my mind does not work the way it once did and I want to understand, too. I want to remember. I want to taste again his mouth, spicy and meaty and a little sweet. He had always been sweet, especially that first day, when he’d looked into my eyes and begged me to help them. I craved his sweetness. His mouth opened and I delved into it, meeting him halfway. I had blessed him that day, hadn’t I? Perhaps that was why, now, the purest of magic surged through him and down my throat, flooding my belly, overflowing my nerves until I gasped and tried to cry out, but he would not let my mouth go. I tried to back away but the window was there. We could not travel to other realms safely. My only choice was to release the magic or be destroyed. So I opened my eyes.
Every lantern in the room flared like a bonfire, then burst in a cloud of sparks. The walls shook, the floor heaved. One of the shelves on a nearby bookcase collapsed, spilling thick tomes to the floor. I heard the window frame rattle ominously at my back, and someone on the floor above cried out in alarm. Then Deka ended the kiss, and the world was still again.
Darkness and damnation and eighth-blooded unknowing Arameri demons.
Deka blinked twice, licked his lips, then flashed me the sort of elated, look-what-I-did grin I’d once been famous for. “That went better than expected.”
I nodded beyond him. “You were expecting this?”
He turned, and his eyes widened at the fallen shelf, the now-smoldering lanterns. One lay on the floor, its glass shattered. As he stared, a scroll that had not dropped with the others fluttered to the shelf below, forlorn.
I touched his shoulder. “You need to send me back to Shadow.” This made him turn around, a protest already on his lips. I gripped his shoulder to make him listen. “No. I won’. M?ly chot do this again, Deka. I can’t. You were right about Shahar. But that’s why … I, with you, I —” I sighed, inexpressibly weary. Why did mortal troubles never wait for convenient times? “Gods, I can’t do this right now.”