It was something his sister said to him once, about how she and the other children at the orphanage looked to him as their champion. He was their patron of protection and healing, their bringer of luck and laughter. As long as they were with him, they felt safe. Invincible against the evil that lived in that vile place.
No child was sacred in the eyes of the gods who ran the orphanage. And they were particularly rotten gods, the husband and wife who called themselves their caretakers.Caretakerswas a laughable term;carewas not something they ever took of their charges, nor even their decrepit house.
They saw the children as spoiled goods, undeserving of any love or kindness. Most children came to believe this, seeing the gods’ mistreatment of them as proof they were unwanted. But Cornelius had too stubborn a mind and too big an imagination to accept that this was the life any of them deserved.
He found early on that he could heal those that would come out of the husband’s office bruised and battered. He hated to see anyone hurt, but he reveled in this small sainthood of his. Maybe it was selfish of him, but he liked feeling useful and valued. He knew he would forever chase that feeling.
For someone who fancied himself a saint, he never expected death to find him so quickly.
Gods never expect to die, seeing immortality as their divine right. But Cornelius was not a god, and so death came for him, abrupt and premature. It was, in truth, a heroic death. A martyr’s passing. The uncaring caretakers had been fighting, as they often did. The man drank too much, as he always did, and slipped into a fury he only ever took out on the children. Hewas the most terrifying of the gods because death sang in his blood, and the children lived in constant fear that his Reaper magic might slip during one of his rages.
Cornelius’s sister was his intended victim that night. But Cornelius wouldn’t have it. He stepped in and took the beating for her. The god did not like that. Cornelius was never certain whether it was the god’s fists or his magic that did it, but here he met his end.
Or should have.
Cornelius clung so desperately to life that he managed to claw his way back to it. He found himself forever changed after that, with power that surpassed that of healing. Magic that felt godlike in its own way. Now the gods of the orphanage fearedhim, but they only became viler for it. This, Cornelius thought, could not stand.
With his newfound power, he took the orphanage down. He gave death to its cruel gods, and freedom to the children who had been forced to bow to them. He made the whole thing look like an accident—wielding the man’s own Reaper magic against him and his wife, so that it would look like a marital dispute gone horribly wrong. Cornelius liked the poetic justice of it. He also liked that no one would ever suspect he’d had a hand in it, because the world knew him as a Healer, not a Reaper, and certainly not a Tidecaller. He would do everything he could to keep it that way.
All gods needed secrets.
The children scattered after that, making lives for themselves on the streets or finding places at other orphanages with kinder gods, caretakers who actually cared.
Cornelius and his sister carved their own path. Power belonged to Cornelius now, and he swore he would never again be made to feel helpless or bow to others. He had the ability to speak his way out of trouble, to swindle money and steal food from unsuspecting victims, to make his own fortune with the power of all four Tides at his fingertips.
We make our own luck, dear sister, he told her the day he purchased an estate in their new name.Clover. The four-leafed symbol for good luck and fortune.
It wasn’t the money or the fame or the access to all the prestigious circles that Cornelius was after, but this feeling of making a difference in the world. This feeling of sainthood, of godhood, which only grew and grew the more powerful he became, the more his ideas and his magic expanded, the more he knew he was meant to help those like him who had once felt powerless.
Like many saints, Cornelius was blessed with prophecy. He saw visions of other worlds, of futures that could be his, of people he might help. Always they painted him in a bright light that further proved he was blessed. So whenthisvision first came to him, he couldn’t make sense of its darkness.
His hunger for holiness only deepened as he traveled through worlds, eager to prove this contradictory vision wrong. Cornelius drew followers to him as he always had, disciples who believed he was ushering in their salvation. He believed it too, for a time. Until their salvation started to matter less and less in the face of his own ambition. He gave them hollow promises of power that fell on their ears like burnished prayers. The more adoration he garnered, the more greed chipped away athim, until nothing was ever enough to sate him.
Only godhood would.
Cornelius had defeated gods before—small, cruel, human gods, but gods nonetheless in the eyes of a child. He knew strength and cunning were needed to triumph over them. So he did the unthinkable. He gobbled up the power of those who trusted him most, draining them dry of it, until he carried their life force within him. And he set off to wrest the gods’ power from their greedy hands and take it into his righteous ones.
The thing about godhood was this: one always fancied themselves a god when basking in their own self-importance, until they met a real one and realized they were nothing in comparison. A mere speck of dust next to a great sea of ash.
But ash had a tendency to shift. Power could be taken. Godhood could be created out of that tiny speck, if one only wanted it badly enough.
And Cornelius wanted nothing more.
He was a saint who’d made himself into a god. He was a power-hungry demon who’d let himself become a god-killer. He was a boy grown into a man turned into a monster, all sense of right and wrong long forgotten.
Saint. God. Demon. God-killer.
Tidecaller.
Tidethief.
It mattered not to him what they called him anymore, so long as power remained his.
61EMORY
SIDRAEUS MADE HER STAND ONthe ley line for hours on end, simply listening to the static hum of its power. It was an exercise in trust as she closed her eyes and tuned everything out, knowing this vengeful god was mere feet away from her.
“What am I even listening for?” she asked, her distrust making her annoyed and on edge.
