Nimh hasn’t spoken since those low, tortured words she threw at Jezara before she fled.You did this to me, she said—and it’s true. If Jezara hadn’t given up her divinity for her lover, Nimh would be an ordinary girl, a riverstrider with her clan. Able to live her life as she pleased.Withwhomever she pleased.
I move up beside her, keeping my voice low. “Are you … ?” It would sound idiotic to sayall right, so I trail off.
Her reply is soft. “They only threw her out when she was so far-gone with child that they could not help but see it. All those months, she was carrying out the duties of the goddess, and nobody knew. Her powers were not diminished.”
I consider my response as we match strides, carefully not dwelling on what my words mean about my own beliefs. “How do we know she’s telling the truth? She’s the only one who ever lost her divinity, right? So how do we know what that looks like?”
“If she still carried some hint of the divine, and passed it on to her child …”
I frown. “Is that even possible? I thought that this divinity finds someone random, not someone connected by blood.”
Nimh raises her eyes in a helpless gesture. “The living divine cannot be touched. None of them have ever borne a child. None of this has happened before, not in this cycle of the world. It took the priests years to find me after Jezara was banished. What if that was because, somehow, her divinity was passed to her daughter, and I am just a …” Her voice gives out. The word she hasn’t said rings through my mind.
Mistake.
Her face is so stricken that I can’t help but try to fix it, even though I have no idea what I believe.
“Nimh, stop it.” The sharpness of my tone earns me a startled look—but startled is better than devastated. “Youaretheir goddess. You prove it every day.”
“Except I haven’t manifested,” Nimh whispers. “Every other deity in our history did so a year or two after their calling. It has been ten years for me. What if the priests couldn’t find the spark of the divine because it lived in Jezara’s child, and they settled for an ordinary, if powerful, magician instead?”
“Nimh …” I struggle to find words. “Youare the one meant to lead your people. Inshara is insane, you saw her back at the temple. She’s a murderer. Whatever the laws of your magic and your divinity may be, you’re the one your people need. All she’ll do is destroy them.”
Nimh’s eyes are fixed on the path now. “Inshara is more powerful than I.”
“No,” I counter. “She knows how to do things you don’t. That’s not the same thing.”
She turns to me, her eyes suddenly lit with such intensity that I take a step back. “The scroll,” she blurts. “You must read it—find out your role in this.”
I set my pack down and slowly pull out the scroll, my mind racing for some way to stall her. In this moment, I can read her heart in her eyes. Everything she believes is pinned on me being able to read this scroll of hers—to read it and experience some sort of awakening to my destiny.
“We really should keep moving,” I murmur, holding the scroll in both hands, glancing back at the bushes growing around the mouth of the tunnel, still visible in the distance. “If they get past Jezara and find that tunnel …”
“Then we had better be sure they face two gods when they find us,” Nimh retorts. “Please, North.”
It’s that plea that stops me. The window into the desperate girl under the goddess. I let out my breath and, with shaking hands, unroll the crumbling parchment.
Back home, something this ancient would be preserved beneath duraglass and under special lighting, and only scholars with gloves and face masks would be allowed near it. I’m strangely aware of my sweaty palms and my quick breath as I keep my touch as gentle as I can.
The text of their ancient verse spills down across the page. It does include Nimh’s extra verse, the one she dreamed about and believes is referring to me.
The empty one
will keep the star
as a brand against the darkness,
and only in that glow
will the Lightbringer look upon this page
and know himself… .
But no matter how many times I read the words, nothing changes. The scroll doesn’t light up, no sense of purpose settles in my chest, no new stanzas or instructions appear. I realize I’m holding my breath only after the page begins to waver before my eyes—when I let it out, a wave of relief and disappointment together sweep over me.
Did I think something was going to happen?
But when I look up, that relief turns to dread. Nimh’s watching me, her eyes hollow. I don’t have to speak—she can tell from looking at me that nothing has changed. Her face is like that of someone bleeding to death, like the tiniest nudge will send her crumpling to the ground.
