That was it, an answer stolen on the wind that whistled beyond the cave, over desert and sea.
I waited for her to scream, to cry, to run.
She should have been terrified. Humans feared the unknown. They villainized anything beyond their understanding. And she’d lived such a faithful life of servitude, that meeting an immortal being who wasn’t her god had to be horrifying. I braced myself for the onslaught, but she said simply, “I’m Shala.”
My lips parted at the gift. Her name. Such an innocent, powerful offering.
“What shall I call you?” she asked.
I hadn’t been ready for this question. No version of my name had ever crossed a human’s lips. “Whatever name brings you pleasure,” I said.
I counted the space between her heartbeats as she looked up at the sky through the mouth of the cave, then back at me.
“Then, I’ll call you Star,” she said, “not only because you were chipped from the heavens, or because you were the guide that led me from the darkness, but because you burn as bright as the first star in the morning. And like the heavenly bodies, you are too wonderful for any word that belongs on earthly tongues.”
Yet another new emotion in a day of firsts.
There was a tightness in my face, a warmth behind my nose, a sting on the inner corner of my eyes. I’d never felt it before, but I’d seen the faces of men and gods who walked topside as saltwater appeared.
Was I capable of tears?
Today, I would not cry.
I would feel. I would experience. And I would dabble in the risk of a promise.
I made a quiet oath to be worthy of the name she’d given me.
Chapter Two
895 BCE
The realms shared an exhale at the advent of mortal calendars and their passage of time. The nebulous, tingly void that accompanied “forever” was tedious, without structure, lacking in purpose, urgency, momentum. The gods shared a collective, if unspoken, joy when humans evolved to seek the worlds beyond the veil, speak to their gods, and parse out the endless nothing intosomething.
Hell and its palatial ceilings, its vibrance, spices, columns, and costumes. A realm known for parties thrown in honor of truth and liberation was transcendent. Pleasure, power, oblivion, and timeliness spun pantheons and their deities into bliss so monotonous that it began to lose its luster.
With forever on our hands, many of the undying sought something that could only be found among the humans.
Mortals added a ticking clock to the concept of existence, and for that, the realms delighted in a collective newness.
Sleeves pushed to the elbow, hair slicked, posture as princely as I could muster, I sat through the perfunctory briefingson promotions, demotions, titles, and other royal necessities required of any kingdom’s ambassador before my father stopped the meeting. The dukes and counts and elite such-and-suches had departed, leaving the two of us alone in the sparkling marble room. My father and I had moved from round tables and desks and tablets to the tufted cushions near a diamond-white fire while he went on about this and that and things that most certainly mattered, if only I could stop thinking about a salty sea, a cave, a mortal woman who’d asked me to stay…
His pale eyes lit, an unusual crinkle creasing his temples as he smiled.
Hell’s agelessness could have made us brothers. Some pantheons favored beards and wrinkles and elders. Instead, I looked back at the tanned face, raven-dark hair, and thin, kingly circlet of a crown as he smirked at me.
“You’re looking at the door like you have somewhere to be.”
I couldn’t help but steal another glance at the floor-to-ceiling double doors before returning my attention. “I apologize. I have…something on my mind.”
There was a relief to the upward pull of his mouth. “I’m glad you’ve found something to do.”
I straightened. “I’ve always had a purpose. You’ve given me?—”
“A title, a crown, a kingdom.” He waved it away. “You inherited a war. You were born after The Fall, and as such, have been spared encounters with Heaven. I want a better life for my son than I was given, and as such, pray you never meet an angel. Though…”
His thoughts drifted to an unspoken agreement we’d never discuss.
He was an angel, once.
