“How old were you when you accepted what you were—when you assumed your role?”
“Nineteen. On a dark and dreary day filled with killing and sin. I’ll never forget it. But, I would say that anyone who has had a horned god cloaked in darkness appear in their room to tell them that they are to rule the Otherworld would not be something one forgets very easily.”
Nymiria tugged the sheet still slung around her bottom half until it covered her completely. Aziel watched her as she tucked the fabric over her breasts and scooted herself over. “Would you like to lie down?”Her heart should not have thundered the way it did when he hesitated, nor should she have felt like she wasbreathing for the first time in her life when she watched him climb into the bed with her. He kicked off his shoes immediately, but his body was still stiff. Too rigid and too far away.
There were so many questions she would have loved to ask him about his godhood, but it seemed as if it physically pained him to do so. Aziel’s head turned in her direction at that moment, a soft smile twitching to life. “It seems as if you were disappointed in becoming the God of Death.” She said, finally.
Aziel only sighed, his thumb grazing over the starched crease in the leg of his trousers. “I was already surrounded by so much death, Nymiria, I believed that I was being punished for the crimes I’d committed in the name of my father.” He went still for a moment, his eyes thoughtful as they lifted to stare at the open room. “Once I forced myself away from the bottle and stopped groveling, I spent quite some time traveling between here and the Otherworld—with Teigh and Greia before they relented to the ether. I learned how to traverse through realms, how to outsource my Grace. I learned that being The God of Death was not always a curse. Death is mercy to the suffering. Whether it is a man riddled with sickness, or a wife praying for her abusive husband to die so that she can finally live… it is merciful. I watched Teigh take the souls of millions to the Otherworld. I watched him deliver justice to the wicked, give hope to the hopeless, and offer refuge for the lost.”
It was beautiful, really. But as Nymiria peered up at him, she could see the crease in his brow, the words that danced on the tip of his tongue that spoke of the darker moments. The ones that he would probably never speak of. Because death was notalwaysmerciful. Sometimes it was just painful.
“The innocent lives that are taken from the world too soon are what haunts me, moonflower. There are people in the Otherworld who never deserved the deaths they were dealt and I cannot do anything to interfere.” He sighed. “Making the transition as painless and welcoming as possible is the only bit of comfort I can offer them.”
“And what of life?” Nymiria muttered. “I don’t know what I am supposed to do—what my purpose is.”
Aziel stared down at her, but he was still deep in thought. She could see the gears in his mind turning, the fleeting emotions that flickered over his face, one after the other until he finally spoke. “Greia was far more strict than her husband in terms of who would take her place when she died. She claimed that she’d hand-selected her heir—a child born of both bloods, who knew the workings of Life and what it represented.”
She’d been a follower of Greia her whole life. Her mother sent her to temple every other day, requiring her to learn about the goddess’s journey and her purpose. Greia and Teigh were below Cadaith, the mother goddess, and each god that worked with Cadaith protected their own realms of power. Greia fed her life into the earth, nurturing the soils, and everything that came from it. She granted people who had been trying for years to conceive a child the ability to produce one, she directed people towards cures for illnesses, she brought rain during droughts, and warmth to bitter cold.
Life was to protect all living things and offer reprieve and protection to those that needed her. But she was not all flowers and sunshine. Greia could be vicious and quick to anger. Nymiria always believed that it was Greia’s one flaw—that she could take away just as quickly as she gave without a single ounce of remorse or understanding. Without even a warning. But Greia did not want people selfishly taking the gifts she bestowed upon the world.If a lowly farmer prayed for help and then gained riches from the crops he produced and the riches turned his heart sour, Greia would take it all away. If a mother who prayed for children was cruel to them, she would find ways to protect the innocent. Even if it meant sending death after the mother.
“How do you do it? How can you be here, but also be a thousand other places at once?” She asked.
Aziel smiled. “The pedestals. Just like The God Stone in my room, the pedestals at the center of the portals work the same way. You offer your blood and it carriesyour blood into the earth, spreading through it like roots to a tree until it pulses into the earth.” He shrugged. “The God Stone is for more…specificthings.”
Nymiria’s body went rigid, the image of her blood flowing through the runes filling her mind. “Like what?”
“It helps people find their heart’s desire, for one. It can also be an anchor for a god, so that a part of them would be attached to the place The God Stone is kept.”
For the last ten years, Nymiria felt as if she were being punished for all that she failed to do. She felt that Greia abandoned her, allowed all of those horrible things to happen to her. She felt worthless. Alone. But there was always something rooted deep inside of her that dragged her back to the altar. There was alwayssomethingthat spoke to her and told her to look deeper. In her own turmoil, she neglected to listen and she spent years of her life searching for answers in all of the wrong places.
Nymiria’s heart’s desire was to find her way. Her purpose. The truth. “Why did you have me believe that the Anam wasn’t me?” She questioned. “Why not just tell me?”
“When I first met you, I had no clue what you were. It wasn't until you said that you could smell me in the market that I came to the conclusion that you were who the gods had been looking for. You wouldn't have been able to sense me outright if you weren't. Nonetheless, I was told that I shouldn’t interfere with your journey. An individual, god or not, can plant whatever seed they wish, but you cannot force a flower to bloom. It’s the same reason I debated telling you about who your father was. I hoped that you would start to realize things on your own—the more I took you away from this place, the more I had you in Eadyn—I hoped that it would help and you would be more receptive when I was finally able to tell you.” He smirked. "But as always, you are nosy and impulsive, and went snooping through my things."
Nymiria pushed herself up onto one elbow, her hair falling around her shoulders at the movement. She didn’t fail to notice Aziel’s eyes tracking the path, northe way his fingers twitched as if he wished to run his fingers through it again. “Thorn is a good man. He always cared for me—always made sure that I felt loved. It was confusing, as a child, being told that the Unseelie were people of darkness and corruption by my mother, only for her to keep him as close as possible. True, their methods are…wildwhen it came to business and protecting the things they loved.”
“Thorn’s parents and Inasha’s parents believed that their union would bring peace amongst the warring courts. The Yaarboroughs were plotting destruction throughout The Beyond and they believed that having both courts together would be the key to protecting the Mystics from the greater forces across The Divide.” Aziel explained. “It worked, for the most part. Until…”
“Until my mother went missing?”
Aziel paused, surveying her for a moment. “Until sheran away, Nymiria. She was nottaken. She left willingly.”
“How do you know?”
“Thorn was the closest person to your mother, Nymiria. When Dorid breached The Divide and started heading straight into the heart of Nym, it was an outright slaughter. The Nymirian Militia was underprepared and outmanned, leaving hundreds dead between The Divide and The Beyond. Not just the militia, but civilians, too. Majority of them being the witches that lived in the forest.” Aziel explained. He looked over Nymiria’s face, assessing her emotions before he continued. “When Thorn told your mother of this, she left. Not a note to be found, nor a single explanation as to why—nothing.”
Thorn had been the one to tell her that her mother had been taken. Perhaps he had tried to make her mother seem like less of a coward by doing that, but the lie had left a gaping and nagging hole in her chest for the last ten years.
It all made sense—the anger she received from her mother's people. Their anger and their frustration, their desire to harm her instead of protect her. They felt like they’d been abandoned. And Nymiria was the closest thing to Inasha; perhaps they believed that her mother would come running back the moment she heardof her daughter’s torture. Maybe they believed that Nymiria was teaming with her mother to plot the kingdom’s destruction by having run to Yaar in search of her.Perhaps—
“You didn’t deserve what they did to you, Nymiria. None of it was your fault.” Aziel leaned closer to her, his fingers finally relaxing when he took her hair and brushed it over her shoulder. “You were achild. A scared, lost child whose world had been turned upside down in a matter of days. They should have never blamedyou.”
It was never her fault. And while the fear of facing them again still lingered, she had faith that their hearts had changed. And that, just like her, perhaps they had their own regrets they needed to atone for. “I don’t want the fae to know what I am just yet.” She confessed, her voice so soft that he had to strain to hear. “You might see it as manipulative, but I would like for them to know me as Nymiria first. Not a princess. Not a goddess. Justme.”
Aziel nodded. It was in his nature, in his heart, and his feelings for her that would give her anything she wished. But heunderstoodthis. He knew that feeling of wanting to make sure that people loved you for who you were and not what you could offer them. For so long, he felt the need to prove himself and to slice away at his being in order to gain the love of a father that refused to see him as anything other than baggage or a machined killer. It took him years of being away from Dorid Yaarborough to discover that while love required some giving, it also required the other person to give just as passionately—without complaint or consequence.
Real love was not conditional.
