I swallowed. “We’re not alone.”
She relaxed. “It’s a human, Prince. The two of us remain behind the veil. She can’t see us.”
I didn’t meet Nai’s eyes. I watched the darkness become a shape. She approached with footsteps so light I wouldn’t have heard them at all if I hadn’t been looking into the space between buildings. It was a young woman. There was something odd about her shadow. It should be inky in the alleyway, but it had a stark quality that I couldn’t quite articulate.
Nai followed my line of sight. She waved the silhouette away. “That girl comes to the fountain often. As I said: she can’t see us.”
I remained immobile.
“What’s she singing? That song, is it from your people? Do you know it from your pantheon?”
Nai flashed annoyance. “The girl just sings. Pay it no mind.” She reached for my hand again, feeling the uncomfortable tension that stretched between us.
“You haven’t heard the tune? The lullaby isn’t Hellenic?”
“Do you…not like an audience? If her song bothers you, we can go somewhere else.”
Silver moon. Silver buildings. Silver heavenly bodies.
I couldn’t control my tone. My words came out husky. “You said this human comes here often? Why?”
Nai’s irritation was palpable. “Women can’t study beneath the Teacher. Even in Hell, you had to have heard of our great thinkers. Socrates, then Plato, then?—”
“Aristotle,” I finished for her. I was impatient as I said, “Yes, I know of him. He’s giving the humans words for many of the constellations.”
Nai fidgeted impatiently while the human settled onto the fountain’s marble lip. I couldn’t be certain of the woman’s age, but she couldn’t have been more than sixteen. She procured a slim papyrus scroll and began working, looking up at the night sky, then back to her paper every few seconds.
Something was wrong with her skin. Her hair. Her eyes. I couldn’t look away.
“She’s studying the stars…” I wasn’t sure if I’d said the words out loud. It was a night with no breeze, and yet my breath was stolen by the wind.
I didn’t have to turn to see Nai’s expression. She made her feelings clear while I remained glued to the mortal.
“Listen,” she said somewhat curtly, “I’m meant to show you a good time in Athens. Can we at least get on with the tour, or?—”
I didn’t care about whatever she said next.
So what if Nai had been an intentional plant to gain our favor and win us over? Wars and alliances were met in a number of ways, and I wouldn’t fault the Hellenic pantheon for using everything in their arsenal.
“You did well,” I said quietly, and I meant it. She relaxed slightly, some of the irritation slipping from her shoulders. “Trust me. You showed me a...” Could I say it was a very good time? Was that true? Instead, I said, “I’d like to be alone. Thank you, Nai.”
She might have said something in return. I wasn’t listening.
There was a pearly glow to the human’s skin, and I couldn’t look away.
I stayed behind in the veil, staring in slack-jawed amazement at a human woman with an aura that glimmered like tourmaline, who’d snuck out in the middle of the night to look up at the stars.
Five hundred years: wasted.
I was adrift once more. I had no plan. No care for royal duties. No dignity.
I remained behind the veil as I followed her home that night, scouring her home for any other sign thatthiscould be my human.
I fought to manage my expectations.
Even if her soul had returned to the human realm, she wasn’t mine. She wouldn’t be the same. After how many hundreds of years transpired in the mortal kingdom since Shala had passed? I argued with myself thatper chancethis was the same soul.Maybe. But this woman—no, thisgirl—would have lived a different life. She would have a new name, a new culture, a new identity. She wouldn’t worship the same gods, or have the same traumas, or have the same man who’d bent to grant her mercy on the shores of the Dead Sea. She hadn’t spent a night in a cave with me. She hadn’t driven me mad when she’d gone. She was different. She was new.
This girl was wealthy. She’d been born into a good home. She knew little of labor, of strife, of pain. Her parents appeared to treat her well, though I didn’t fully understand humans enough to appreciate certain things that were said or done.
