“I’m not a god,” I said at last. And as far as she was concerned, this was true. I was nothing like the deities she’dbeen raised to know. “I won’t ask the things of you that were once required. I don’t have priests or holy texts or commandments. I just want you to live.”
Her lips parted, caught on a silent question for a long while. After a quiet eternity, she said, “What can I offer you?”
The corners of my lips tugged up in a smile. “You’ve given me a gift already.”
“Impossible,” she said. “I take. But tell me what I could give you, and it’s yours. From now until the end of my days.”
The damned succubus and her images attacked me once more. Shala’s lips parting as mine drew close. Her shawl slipping off her shoulder. Leaning against the wall, the window, falling backward onto the bed. Her hand guiding mine south as it slipped into something unspeakably beautiful, and curious, and new. Something hers. Something ours.
No, no, no.
Though she’d been poor in her previous village, I’d helped negotiate a marriage with a wealthy suitor. I looked at the three-story mudbrick home that I’d eyed a million times before. The garden beyond the courtyard was still. The gibbous moon filtering through the window was astonishingly bright. The candle flickered its yellow-orange glow, revealing her frown as she waited for my answer.
“You’re my only human,” I said. “Everything we do, everything we say…it’s my first time experiencing these new, perfect moments. I’ve never had the opportunity to worry about anything beyond a cold war between realms and treaties. Caring for your wellbeing is…”
“Tedious?” she asked with a small smile.
Gods almighty, shewasperceptive.
“In a good way,” I replied. “Eternity is monotonous. Through you, for the first time, I’ve been able to experience mortality. The high stakes of eating every meal, of a cough, of bad weather,of everyday life. Anxiety is a new emotion. The responsibility is utterly unique. I’m grateful for the chance to taste it.”
“There has to be something,” she said. “Something you want of me. Some gift beyond my gratitude. Something greater than my heart.”
I watched the sincerity on her face as she spoke and felt an interesting knot in my throat. It was an unfamiliar sensation. It was decidedly unpleasant, but in a way that I cherished, though I understood it for the oxymoron it was. I tucked a loose lock of hair behind her ear and reveled in the way her face softened as she leaned into my touch. There was a tingle somewhere behind my sternum, stuck just below my ribs, as something stirred.
“There is no gift greater than your heart.”
Chapter Three
887 BCE
It was a horror from which I’d never recover.
The frenzied cocktail of rage and helplessness were fiery, unseen flames beneath my skin as I scrambled to make sense of the nightmare from which I’d never wake.
It was as if Heaven had won the war, as if my father had been slain, as if Hell had crumbled and left me without a home.
I knew,Iknew. I. Fucking. Knew. Better.
I’d known time passed differently, erratically, painfully, between realms. I understood the gaps in spaces and the movement of days, months, and years for the mortals. Izi claimed I hovered, but it brought me joy to be close. I was there when my human called. I answered in a way her god never had. Each smile, each glow, each earnest praise and piece of gratitude that tumbled from her lips, set pieces of me ablaze I hadn’t known existed. I loved being around her so ardently that I struggled to remember a time before her and hadn’t bothered to consider a time after her.
I’d been in Hell’s palace for a little more than seven sleeps. I’d hated every night away from my human, but royal duties had called, and I could handle a few miserable moons away if my kingdom demanded it.
Ambassadors visited, and my presence wasn’t negotiable.
I’d told her I’d be away. She expressed immense gratitude that I’d been present for as long as I had, and there wasn’t a hint of disappointment as she urged me to go, to do what must be done, to return when I could.
I’d been topside so long that I’d forgotten how to fidget among gods. There was no skin to pick around my nails, no blood to draw as I clenched my fists until it broke through what would have been my flesh, had I been on the surface.
Dignitaries droned on, plans were made, treaties sworn.
I was here.
This was where I belonged.
The rest didn’t matter.
Shouldn’t matter.
