“I thought you died,” I croak, suddenly light-headed.
Jezara’s eyebrows rise a hair, and the smile that quirks the corner of her mouth is the human Jezara again, those divine echoes receding. “Good. I’m hoping that’s what my daughter’s agents will think too.”
She holds out a waterskin by its strap when I cough. After quite a long swallow, I manage, “You destroyed your house on purpose?”
Jezara draws in a long, slow breath, then releases it again. “I wronged you,” she murmurs, gazing at the river beyond me. “You were right to be angry. I railed all my life against my divinity—but casting it off meant it fell to you.”
Her voice is quiet, sincere. And though she doesn’t meet my eyes, I can still see the cost of the admission in the tight set of her shoulders.
When her eyes drift back and meet mine again, her brows lift and her face falls. “Oh, Light forgive me, but I hated you, Nimhara. This perfect, dutiful girl, chosen so young. How proud Daoman must have been. How relieved my people that they could forget me now—a new goddess had come.”
“I blamed you for abandoning our people, for turning against destiny for your own heart,” I whisper. “But I have done the very same thing.”
Jezara’s eyes widen. “The cloudlander,” she murmurs. “I saw the way he … Did you—”
“I let him go,” I whisper. “He is the Last Star, and I need him to fulfill the prophecy. But when he found a way home, I … Icouldhave made him stay. I had that power. But I let him go.”
Jezara’s gaze is troubled. “You wanted him to be safe. You care for him, that much is obvious.”
“But he’s not safe!” I retort, my voice coming out a bit more intently than I wanted. “Insharahas him.”
Too late I remember who Inshara is to Jezara, and I regret the bitter hatred in my voice.
Seeing my face, Jezara gives a tiny shake of her head. “It’s all right. I know what she’s becoming. I’ve always known—I just didn’t want to see.”
“You were too busy believingshewas the Lightbringer.”
Her expression freezes, and for a moment I regret my words—until I see that her eyes are dark with … guilt?
“Forgive me,” she murmurs, gaze falling from mine as she passes a hand over her eyes. “I was so angry—I wanted you to feel what I’d felt, to be as lost as I was.”
My stomach twists, a sickness rising up in my gut. “What are you saying?”
Jezara’s lips press together. “She is not the Lightbringer. I told you the storyshebelieves. I don’t know what voice she hears, but it certainly isn’t a god speaking to her. You must understand, she was so lonely, so unhappy as a child—we lived among such hatred. Everyone we met punishedherfor my misdeeds. When she was a child, she found that scroll, the one with the lost stanza.”
“Why would she think it had anything to do with her?” I demand. “That any of it was about you?”
“Parts of it seemed true,” Jezara murmurs. “The empty one. A journey. And I had my own Star… . I gave up my divinity for him.”
“Your own—but you did not actuallyseea star fall from …” My words stop as my throat squeezes.
“Your North was so surprised that I knew where he was from,” Jezara murmurs. “He reminded me so much ofhim, with that skeptical mind and strange newness to the world. When I first saw you together in the mist-ruined village, I thought I was seeinghim.”
“Your lover … was a cloudlander,” I breathe, the anger knocked out of me by shock.
“He fell, and I healed him, and eventually, he gave me Insha.”
“So she saw herself in the scroll, as I did.” I stare at her, mind spinning. “And you did not correct her.”
“It was a bedtime story!” Jezara blurts, voice begging me to understand. “I told her she was special—I told her she waschosen. That all this pain and loneliness … was because she was destined for something bigger than us, bigger than those who’d cast us out.”
I feel as though I could collapse there in the mud. “You made me think I was delusional.”
Jezara’s eyes are wet. “I’m sorry, Nimhara. You must understand, I lost my faith the moment the only family I had threw me out into the world, pregnant and alone. I believed in nothing—what harm in giving my daughter something to believe?”
My hands curl into fists. “Why are you here, then? Why follow me?”
“Because …” The former goddess sighs and gets slowly to her feet, grimacing as she rubs a hand against her bad leg to work out the stiffness. “Because I know where you must go, what you must do. I understand now what Insha has become. She is my daughter, my responsibility.”
