I looked up, startled. Mortal vows—vows between mortals—were only as strong as the people who made them. It hadn’t occurred to me yet that Taran’s vows had been immortal too.
“Would he? Have had to?”
The bird bobbed her head. “Only death breaks immortal vows.”
Why had he bothered to swear betrothal vows? I would have done anything he asked, as besotted as I was.
“Maybe dying and returning to the Summerlands was always his plan,” was all I could come up with. Though that was not very flattering either, that someone would rather die than marry me.
“That’s stupid. He probably planned for you to die instead.”
“Oh. Probably,” I agreed, shoulders slumping before I thought harder about it and stiffened.
He hadn’t wanted me dead. Not by the end, at least. Even setting aside three years of care—little things that made my throat hurt to think of, times he’d slid his dinner into my bowl or warmed my hands in his—all he’d needed to do on that last day on the beach was nothing, and I’d be dead instead of him.
“Maybe that’s what he planned at the beginning, but he changed his mind.” My breath caught with the pain of a hopeful thought to interrupt my very satisfying wallow in anger.
Maybe Taran had changed his mind. Maybe he’d started off with the idea that he’d put the rebellion down, turn us back toward the temples, even asked me to marry him to cement his control over the people propelling the uprising, but at some point he…stopped.
“Stoneborn don’t change their minds,” Awi said, unimpressed.
“You said he has mortal blood. And he was a disappointment to Genna,” I reminded her, speaking more quickly. “Maybe he realized it wasn’t our fault when he got there. We didn’t turn against the gods. They abandoned us, and then Death took everything we had. It was Death’s fault. Maybe he realized that.”
The hope, of course, was that if Taran had changed his mind before, he might do it again. I told myself I was a silly girl who couldn’t accept that I’d been in love with an evil beast, but I couldn’t let go of the possibility. I liked it more than all the alternative explanations.
“That’s the kind of talk that’ll get your limbs displayed at different crossroads for blasphemy,” Awi said.
I made a face at her, then lifted the bottom of the chest. It was full of stone knives—the same rainbow obsidian as my surgical blades, but much more substantial. The bird goddess whistled in slow appreciation at the jumble.
“Enough stone blades to do in the entire pantheon.”
Who areyouplanning on killing, Taran?
I heard bathwater begin to drain next door and hurriedly packed the chest back up before fleeing Taran’s bedroom—minus the smallest of his hidden knives, which I tucked away for safekeeping. I grabbed the clothes he’d brought me off the divan and made it to the solar before he returned to the front room.
“Are you ready to go, darling?” he called. “If you want to live till evening, I suggest you change out of Wesha’s regalia.”
I snarled as I flipped through the options. All were cut for someone taller and much more fond of jeweled embellishments than I was; the pearls on the bodice of a single dress would have paid for the house he’d promised to build me. I picked the one with the highest neckline, deciding that I didn’t need to wonder why he owned so much spare women’s clothing.
Taran, himself resplendent in a sleeveless tunic that showed off the wide golden armbands around his biceps, was all but tapping his foot when I returned, but he stilled to look me up and down.
“What?” I asked. He couldn’t be impressed—the dress was made of fine, sleek ramie, but it covered me from wrists to ankles, and coral pink clashed with my hair and made me look jaundiced. Still, he studied me as though just now realizing that I had physical form.
“If someone asks, say I let you dress yourself today. I don’t think Wesha’s clothes suit you,” he said.
I blinked, looking around the room with some outrage as I realized this dawn-pink-and-gold palace must have been Wesha’s before she married Death. He’d threatened to throw me out? I should throw him out! Didn’t the Maiden’s last priest have a better claim on all this than her estranged younger brother?
Heedless of my frown, Taran opened the door and gestured for me to follow him.
“Time to start earning your keep, little priestess,” he announced. “We’re late for services.”
“What services?”
He favored me with a sunny smile. “Worship services, of course. I’d be very pleased to receive your prayers of gratitude. And I’m particularly fond of hymns, if you can manage those. Feel free to compose on the way there.”
I nodded slowly. I already knew the sacred names I’d call him, and I’d compose in the key of B major, for bastard.
Taran’s long legspropelled him faster than I could ever keep up with, and my foot ached from the effort. I followed him through the same tiled halls as the night before, teeth gritted and limp increasing until he finally slowed his pace to one I could match. When I stumbled at the first set of steps we came to, Taran wordlessly wrapped my arm around his for balance.
