The wind howls. The city glitters below, oblivious.
"Elyr." The name comes out broken. Grief flickering through his face before he shuts it down. "Titan of Memory. She was—she was the only one who—"
Nothing. Just his breathing, harsh in the silence.
"They killed her. Used her spine to forge chains." He looks at the blade against the wall. That wrong, pale blade. "The chains they used to bind me."
The blade. White. Jagged.
Titan bone.
My stomach turns over. "That's—"
"What's left of her. Yes." He's not looking at me anymore. "The chains were made from her body. When I escaped, I took what remained. Reforged it." His hand moves toward the blade, then stops. "The only piece of her I could keep."
I should say something. Offer comfort. Do whatever normal people do when someone tells them they carry their dead companion's spine as a weapon. But my mind is static—wind and his voice and things that rewrite everything I thought I knew.
He's not done.
"When I escaped the binding, I killed everyone who remembered what I was. Every god who knew the truth." He's looking at the city now, not at me. "I hunted them for years. When it was over, only the new generation survived. Gods borninto the lie. They think I've always been Discord." His laugh is ugly, short. "I let them believe it."
My legs fold. Right there, on raw stone, a few feet from the edge.
Koshin watches me. Waiting for something. Screaming, maybe. Running.
"You're a Titan." My voice sounds far away. "The Titan of Truth."
"Yes."
"And everyone thinks you're the Mad God of Discord."
"Yes."
"And you've been pretending for—how long?"
"Millennia." … "Longer. I've lost count."
I stare at him. At the sling on his arm. The ash in his hair. The scars on his wrists that suddenly make a different kind of sense—remnants of chains forged from someone he loved.
"Who else knows?"
"One person." He's watching my face, reading something there. "Renan."
"Renan knows you're a Titan?"
"Renan knows everything." Another pause. Longer this time. "There's something else."
Of course there's something else. Why would anything be simple.
"Renan isn't a half-god."
I'm still stuck on Titan, on chains made from her spine. The new words take a second to land.
"What?"
"He's a full god. Has been from the beginning." Koshin's voice is almost gentle now. Almost. "I found him as a child—after the purge, after I finished killing everyone who knew the truth. He was alone. Surrounded by corpses. I asked if he wanted to live." His mouth twitches. "He shrugged."
"That tracks," I hear myself say. "That absolutely tracks."
