Page 22 of Laced in Longing

Convenient, that mistake. Especially when the Bright Gods despise our very nature.

Of course Vorin, the God of Gluttony, has already reclaimed his promised one. The bastard always did move faster than the rest of us, consuming everything in his path with insatiable hunger. His counterbalance now sits beside him in his palace of excess as they gorge themselves on pleasures I cannot imagine.

I wonder if Vorin’s other half smiled as brightly in their first mortal life as Maven did in hers.

No matter.

I am done allowing her to run into the next life. I cannot bear to watch her suffer through another cycle of pain and rejection, or witness more slow decay of that brilliant spirit. I will do whatever necessary to claim her and bring her to our home.

To our palace in the Otherworld, where endless twilight soothes eyes too sensitive for the harsh mortal sun. Where she will have everything she desires and the longing that has defined her existence will finally, mercifully, end.

I ache to see her smile again. The real smile that transformed her face in the beginning, so many centuries past. Not these brittle approximations she attempts now, as she forces her lips to widen.

“Are you real?”

Her tattered voice snaps me from reflection. Tear-filled eyes meet the space where mine would be if she could see beyond the illusion that protects her mortal mind from my true form.

Even in her agony, she’s exquisite. Even broken, she’s mine.

I wish I could show her my face. Wish she could see my eyes and know the depth of devotion held within them. But the forms of gods were not designed for mortal perception. Our true visages would shatter fragile human minds, burn through delicate brain tissue and leave nothing but empty shells behind.

So, when we visit the mortal realm, protection manifests. Coverings the mortals perceive while we see clearly. Maven sees me draped in white silk that obscures my features, though I feel nothing on my face. To me, everything appears normal. I see her perfectly—every pore and eyelash, every minute shift of expression.

At least my covering is a simple one. The Nameless God appears to mortals with a whirling darkness where his face should be; a void pulling at the edges of perception. Light bends around him, distorting reality itself. Even other gods find it difficult to look directly at him. It suits his nature as the God of Potential. He exists in the moment between heartbeats, within the tension felt in the silence of an argument.

I consider my response carefully. This version of Maven is what her therapist calls ‘a flight risk.’ She teeters constantly on the edge of running, of self-destruction, or the retreat into the protective numbness of self-inflicted pain.

If I show her too much at once, reveal too much of what waits beyond her understanding, she will flee. She will find a new city, new walls to hide behind. Perhaps even succeed in her attempts to end this life prematurely—something I cannot allow.

Not again.

So I respond with a simple nod, confirming my reality without overwhelming her with speech. Without explaining that I am as real as the blood in her veins, as the air in her desperate lungs. More real, perhaps, than this fleeting mortal existence she clings to despite its constant betrayal.

I will take my time with this Maven. Coax her toward understanding like one might approach a wounded animal—with patience and careful hands and offerings left where she can find them when she feels brave enough to venture forth.

I will not lose her again.

Not when I’ve watched her die a thousand different ways across the centuries. Not when I’ve collected her last breath from each life, cradling it like the precious thing it is before releasing it to find a new body.

I still remember the first time she died. A simple fever that her village healers could not break. I sat beside her bed for three days and nights, invisible to her family’s eyes, watching the flush of illness climb her cheeks. Her parents prayed to gods who were not listening, while I—who would have given anything, everything—could only observe.

When death came for her, I almost broke the cosmic laws that bind even me. Nearly tore her soul from death’s grasp and carried it home, damn any consent. Only the knowledge that she would return stayed my hand.

I did not know then that I would wait through centuries of rejection.

Maven shifts against the wall, her breathing still labored but no longer the desperate gasping of moments before. She swipes at her tears with trembling fingers, smearing mascara across her cheekbones. The zipper of her dress remains half-down, exposing the knobs of her spine to the wall.

I want to re-fasten the dress before brushing the hair from her face with gentle fingers.

Instead, I remain motionless. Watching. Waiting.

“You…you came,” she whispers on a brittle tone. “How did you know I needed…” She trails off, unable to finish the thought, but I understand. How did I know she needed comfort? That she teetered on the precipice of complete collapse?

I have always known.

Years of watching her suffer has attuned me to the frequency of her pain. I feel it across realms—a discordant note in the dark symphony that tethers our souls, pulling me from whatever task occupies me.

Tonight I sat in my palace library when her anguish struck me hard. The sudden, sharp crack of it forced the breath from my lungs. I moved without conscious thought, crossing the veil to find her cowering on the floor, terror eating her alive from within.