“Until then – ” River held his face, brushed his thumbs across Kai’s cheekbones.As always, he brought Kai back down to earth.“ – we can at least be thankful to have been given time.You have to admit it’s good of Menon and Sowelan to watch over things until we can assure some level of peace.And not walk you into the hypothetical volcano you keep mentioning.”
Kai swallowed another complaint, granting him that.“Charitable of them,” he said, kissing him.“Itwouldbe awkward having to save humanity twice.”
Although Menon hated to be called to intervene, She had done him a good turn once or twice – most notably in the beginning, when priests from both sects demanded his death.He is dangerous, they’d declared, like half of them hadn’t just been rooting for him.He is poisoned by Saros’s madness.Let us release the Celestial Pearl from his accursed form.
Sowelan stood up for him first – as such, he liked Sowelan much more than fucking Menon – and perhaps grudgingly, Menon awoke then to stave Her attackers off.When it is time,She had said to them, icy resentment glittering,I will return to my sphere.Until then, this human is just as divine as I and will not suffer your censure.
Sowelan sounded kinder, tranquil, as She added,One more needless death will solve nothing.We ask for your support, your tolerance.She smiled, unreadable, Her mild voice laced with a thinly-veiled threat:And that you do not let your old prejudices destroy you.
So they were all locked together until Menon and Sowelan believed that the two sects were over their generations-long desires to annihilate each other.In other words, until Kai and Lina died naturally, in all likelihood.Bastards.
A knock on his door made them both jolt apart, don their respective facades.River, a guardian in regal indigo and silver, his expression aloof; Kai, shoulders squared, less than pleased for this increasingly-rare moment of quiet to be disrupted.
He opened the ward a fraction, allowing in a nervous high priest, young and newly-appointed – and someone Kai had guaranteed had no involvement with his or Ione’s suffering.“Your Holiness,” he greeted him, bowing almost in half and missing Kai gesturing at him to hurry it up; River laid his fingertips over Kai’s wrist, lowering his arm.“Her Holiness Lina Almenara, vessel to the Sun Goddess Sowelan, requests an audience.”
“Next time,” Kai said sullenly, “you can just let them in.”
Lina had taken to her new station far better than Kai had.She smiled at the priest as she glided past him, her head high, unafraid now to meet Kai’s gaze.She was the warmth of the sun itself in a gold-threaded dress embroidered with flowers, her curls woven into a simple coronet.On her right, Ione gleamed like a moonbeam in a heliade’s attire, part dress, part armour, with gilded accents decorating her shoulders and waist and a ceremonial dagger at her side that she liked pointing at Kai.
Kai waited for the priest to shut the door again to relax fully, to let his true self be seen.“Sowelan, Ex-Wife,” he greeted them facetiously.“What brings you all the way up my mountain?”
“And just in time to watch Kai get his ass handed to him by Polaros’s councillors,” River added, smirking when Kai shoved him.
“A coastline was badly damaged, you see,” Kai said, hand over heart.
“A generation of seals, lost.”
Kai started, aghast.“Oh, fight me, River, they canswim.”
“Tell Polaros that.”
Sighing at the prospect of that conversation, Kai hastily cleared his worktable so that Lina and Ione could sit, unsure of what to serve them.He hadn’t had the stomach for tea since he’d got Saros’s binding ward out of his system.
Lina glided over to the table, lifting a piece of parchment and giving it a cursory scan; she scowled (it was an excerpt from Saros’s tumultuous adolescence, a classic) and flicked it back into the pile.“We were going to visit next week,” she said, pulling Ione to her.“But Sowelan has been impatient.”
“We keep telling Sowelan She shouldn’t associate with such vile gods.”Ione combed a lock of hair behind her ear; unsubtly, a band on her ring finger crowned with a stone of the faintest pink glimmered in the afternoon light.“But She is a hopeless romantic.”
“Menon, too, it seems.”Kai hoisted himself up to sit on the edge of the worktable.“She’s already had a fit this morning.”
“It makes me think we should give Kai’s idea more thought,” River said, leaning beside him.“At least until he can untangle Saros’s mess of treatises, it would serve us all to agree on some terms.”
Lina traced the woodgrain on the table with her fingertip, looking pensive.“We’ve thought about it,” she mused.“Sowelan gets pretty bad if She goes too long without seeing Menon.It feels like She’s pushing against my skin from the inside, like She’s trying to escape.”She mustered a smile, embarrassed.“Just this morning She accidentally knocked me into a statue in Soliz.”
“It broke,” Ione supplied.“Ami and Cynthia thought it was hilarious.I did, too, but quietly.”
Lina nudged her, her nose wrinkling.“The priests weren’t as amused, unfortunately.Anyway – ” she went on, “We agree.We should come up with some visitation rights for them.”
Ione hung her head back.“Pleasedon’t call it visitation rights.This isn’t a custody battle.”
“It kind of is,” River said, shrugging.
“Look, anything to keep me in one piece,” Kai cut in.“All the better if it keeps our children happy.And less volatile.”
Ione restrained a world-weary sigh.“We’ll work out a schedule, then.Make a family holiday of it.”She carried herself well alongside her mistress, as prideful and holy as ever, but there was affection in her voice as she turned and said, “First, we’ll get you through this meeting.”
“Oh, aye?”Kai grinned and followed them, River beside him, towards the door.“Is Sowelan Herself taking pity on this pathetic excuse for a god?”
“Lina is,” Lina said, flashing them a grin.“Lina also happens to think that your chat with Polaros will go much faster with an extra god in attendance.”
