My knees hit the stones with bruising force.
I couldn’t watch my human as she lifted her blade.
I called out to the goddess as if I was a mortal, a mere man, a petitioner, desperate, helpless, willing to give anything.
The same word. Beseeching with the same broken, desperate word. I choked on my anguish as I pleaded with the Hellenic deity of wisdom.
“Please.”
She was on Athena’s territory, and the goddess did me one, and only one, favor.
The world tilted on its axis.
The goddess opened my human’s eyes.
Bluish cities, white columns, a silver night, the twirl of stars spun as we both reeled through the twirling nausea of a rip through the veil.
A sharp, strangled gasp escaped her lips. My fingers bit firmly into flesh as I dug them into her forearm. Eleni’s eyes widened with panic, confusion, resistance as she gawked at my hands around her wrist, preventing her from plunging the dagger inward.
I squeezed harder, forcing her to lose control of the tendons in her arm, her hand spasming. The knife clattered to the marble steps.
She lost her breath, and her tears ceased. I saw myself reflected in her eyes: as ivory as the marble surrounding me, my teeth bared, my eyes flashed with a prayer of my own. But my devotion was to no higher being. It had been to her.
I was ready for her to faint. To stumble backward in fear. To scream.
Nothing could have prepared me for what she did instead.
The salt dried upon her cheeks. Her shallow breathing slowed. I released her wrist and her arm dropped limply to her side. Moonlight glinted on her hair, the fallen shift and exposed shoulder, her puffy eyes as she stilled.
“You aren’t Athena,” she said. Her voice was raw from a tear-soaked journey, but unmistakably calm. Distant, but not absent.
“I’m not.”
We were us again. A woman of faith asking a demon if he was an angel.
I’d wanted to speak to her for years, and now that she could see me, caution tied my tongue. I didn’t want to ruin this chance, to destroy our reunion with haste or fear. She knew nothing of my kingdom or realm in this lifetime. She might not have any negative associations with my world, nor the damning word used by the people of Shala’s faith.
“Which god are you?” she asked.
Did you spare her for the sake of a cruel joke?
A useless thought tied to a painful memory of a battered woman in cave, wishing I was someone—something—I’d never be.
“I am…” What would demon mean to her?
Her eyes remained on me as she lowered to one knee in a rigid yet respectful display. My guts twisted at the gesture. “Who among the lords has been carved from the stars?”
I hedged. The word alone set my heart aching.Star. “You don’t…”
There was a curious courage in the move. It was just enough deference to prepare herself for anything; yet there was nothing about her posture or reflection that relayed fear or worship or…anything. Shouldn’t she be feeling something?
“I am…” I repeated the beginning with no thought to the end. I didn’t want to look down on her while we spoke. “Please, stand.”
She hadn’t shed a tear from the moment I’d appeared. Water had carved lines through her dust-stained skin from the barefoot walk to the temple, but her chest was no longer heaving. Breathing still, spine straight, she watched me for an answer.
“Your gods are not alone in this world.” I searched and found the answer that would satisfy her. “There are other kingdoms. Other mountains beyond Olympus. Other deities.”
I had no desire to lecture her on theology. I just wanted her to live.
