“Semira!” bellowed the grizzled demon priest. “Care to test the best sword in the Citadel against the strongest of the valak?”
“Let me know when he shows up, would you?” Seth called, from where he still sat with Solai.
Mondral roared with laughter and moved on to challenge Commander Teheda.
“He has the eyes, so we know he’s not lying.” Jacen massaged his temples and groaned. “Maybe he can inflict a splittingfuckingheadache on anyone he speaks to.” He shook his head. “I need to lie down.”
Enough games, then. Ysira angled herself to face him and grabbed him by the arm before he could go.
“Tell me what you saw at the Gate.”
Jacen blinked at her, startled for a moment. “I don’t think I can explain.”
“Try.”
“I saw the Source. The power of Naxal. I helped Neri make sense of it—tried to, anyway. It’ll take time.” He leaned back in his seat, looking up, away from her. “What I saw today was so far beyond anything I ever . . .” He actually shuddered. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I want to know what it meant to you.”
She had to know whether he’d found it—that truth he was searching for—because Jacen Kheris was a man driven by conviction. Of all the things Ysira knew about him, that was the most unsettling—and perhaps the most useful. Selfish people were unreliable, easy to sway, but principled people were dangerous. And no one had conviction like a convert.
“What are you afraid of?” Ysira said softly. Jacen swallowed. “I can’t be wrong again.”
She could not quite read his expression. He had an ambiguous sort of face—fine, elegant features capable of conveying both cruelty and fragility. At the moment, she saw the latter, an uncertainty that made him seem younger than his years. But that steel was never far from the surface. For a time, Ysira drank it in, captivated despite herself. The buzz of the hall around them faded to insignificance. They might as well have been the only two souls present.
“What is faith,” Ysira said, “but a risk you’re willing to take?” She cupped his face, turning him toward her. He went still. “What is a god, but something that can remake a world?”
On this much, Ysira agreed with Tharanoth. Divinity was only a matter of semantics—and she who defined it held ultimate power. Soon, every person in this would have to rewrite their concept of reality, andshewas poised to give them answers.
To make her son a god.
She let her hand fall and put the question to Jacen bluntly: “Do you believe?”
Jacen folded his long hands and sighed. His pale eyes never left hers. “You’ve no idea how badly I want to.”
By the time the festivities died down, Neri had gone missing.
Ysira searched for him in the banquet hall, out on the portico, and in the surrounding corridors. Nothing. He couldn’t have left the library; Disciples had been watching every exit. None had seen him leave.
An inexplicable dread curdled in Ysira’s chest as she made her way to the residential wing. The demon priests had rooms there, as did Eneva, but the entire third floor had been clearedfor Neri. Ysira found the central hall deserted, the wall sconces dark, but . . .
She heard a slick, sickeningsnap,followed by a soggy crunch. Wetness splattered against stone. Then another crunch, and asquelch.Ysira rounded the corner into Neri’s chambers. He stood there, alone, hands dripping with . . . something. He turned toward Ysira. His red eyes did not illuminate the darkness. They seemed to pull all other light inward, where it vanished into the twin black holes of his pupils.
For an instant, Ysira stopped breathing.
She made herself look down—at the dismembered remains of the giant spider. The beloved pet that the children had chased through the banquet hall. Two of its limbs still twitched, barely attached to the brutalized thorax. The rest, Neri had scattered across the floor in varying states of mutilation.
“Neri,” Ysira whispered.
His head snapped up. He looked at his hands. “Oh, no. Oh no no no—” He began to hyperventilate.
“Neri!” Ysira exclaimed, much louder. She ran to him as words tumbled out, too fast to understand.
“I didn’t mean to, it wasn’t my idea, I couldn’t tell—” “Slow down,” Ysira said. “From the beginning.”
Neri stared past her, into some middle distance. His face was wet—not with tears but with spider guts. Bristles stuck between his teeth. Ysira’s stomach lurched.
“I remember being upset with Paco and Yahaira. The spider—” Neri swallowed. “It’s theirs. But this is not what I wanted to do.”
