That had to be frustrating—to have the ability to suss out untruths but not enough to discern their nature.
Ysira knew what had to come next. She had been over this in her head again and again, desperate for an alternative. But everything had changed, and now, so must this.
“You’re right,” she said. “And before I ask you to do anything, I owe you the full truth.”
Neri straightened, suddenly alert despite the exhaustion that weighed on his every movement. Ysira wanted to shrink into the storm, let the dust and the shrieking winds erase her from his view. But instead, she spoke. She began by telling him everything Tharanoth had told her, and everything he left out: the true nature of the gods, the Firstborn Empire, the Harvest . . . their place in the universe, one world among thousands. Some of it, Neri had already discerned. Then Ysira told him about his demon and the power inside him that Tharanoth would do anything to control.
“I figured that out, too,” Neri mumbled. “I could see a little when Tharanoth was inside my head. Not very clearly. His mind was . . .” Whatever he’d been about to say, he could not finish.
“What does he want?” Ysira asked.
“He doesn’t rule his empire. There are others, above him. He thinks there shouldn’t be. It’ll be time for them to choose a new emperor soon, and he wants it to be him. He wants”—Neri shuddered—“a weapon.”
“He thinks—” Ysira stopped.Her pulse quickened. “This weapon.
He thinks it’s powerful enough to take over his empire?”
“Maybe.” Neri lifted his shoulders with an air of profound misery. “But it’ll kill me. I overheard that, too. They never said it aloud, but they kept wondering why I wasn’t worse off after I . . . did what I did. They thought it was just a matter of time.”
Ysira said it before she could think twice: “It won’t kill you.”
“How can you know that?” Neri demanded. “Back in the canyon, you tried to stop me.”
“I was wrong.” Ysira wrung her hands together and looked at the ground. “I didn’t know this before, but you’re uniquely resistant to your demon’s power. Because—” Her throatconstricted. She tried again, “There’s something you’re going to have to find out soon. And I want to make sure you hear it from me.”
She was filled with the sense of being caught in an avalanche, hurtling down. No going back now. But if this was what it took, to make Neri understand that he could be and doanything?—
“You’re my mother.”
To Ysira’s shock, Neri said it first. He seemed surprised himself, to hear it aloud. “Aren’t you?”
Try as Ysira might, she could not speak. She could not look up and face him, just for one breath longer, before she had to see the hurt she’d always known was coming.
“Father’s mind always felt familiar to me,” Neri said. “Easier to sense. More than Seth’s, more than anyone’s, even when I wished it weren’t true. Yours is the same.” He paused. “He said my mother was Harvested. When you said you were too and you knew my father . . . I guess I knew.”
Ysira almost laughed, but a tear slipped out instead. She let it fall down her cheek and said, “Yes.”
“I don’t understand.” Neri’s voice trembled. “Why are you telling me now? Why did you leave me with him? Was it the Harvest?”
Him.His father. Her son’s worst fear was not the demon gods who’d held him prisoner and invaded his mind, but the very man who should have protected him from them. Ysira wiped her eyes to no avail. She couldn’t answer. What was there to say?
She struggled to steady herself. “I found out I was expecting you after I returned to Zivora. I knew that if the Church ever discovered what I could do, they would never let me walk free. It wasn’t safe. I couldn’t stay.”
“What did my father do?” Neri tried to make the question a demand, but it came out a plea. “Shouldn’t he have protected you?”
Ysira clenched her fists to still her shaking hands. She did not want to be saying this, and Neri did not want to be hearing it.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “It’s done. What’s important now is that my demon—Iyelekirin—can heal me from anything. It transformed me.” She had to wonder whether somewhere in all that violence, parts of her had gotten lost. If in putting her back together, the demon had left something out. But she could not resent the very thing that kept her heart beating. For better or worse, this was what she was now, and so would it be for Neri.
Enough of these tears. She had a mission, and she would not be distracted from it.
“Iyelekirin transformed you, too,” she told Neri. “They wanted to keep us there on that station, experiment on us, so they could understand how.” She wiped her face again and moved closer to him. His expression held only shock as she touched his sternum, indicating the fading bruises, the gash on his arm that was already scabbing over. “It taught your body to heal faster, made it more resistant to the Source’s energy. I made you, and so Iyelekirin shaped you this way.”
“It didn’t do a very good job,” Neri said bitterly. “Look at me.” He stuck out his bad foot. “I don’t see well, I’m too small, I can’t even breathe right.”
“It must have seen those things as insignificant,” said Ysira. “What is sight to a telepath? What are size and strength to a god?”
Neri stared at her with something bordering on panic.
