The Kingdom of Gods

And I, as I should never, ever have done, began to love him back.

Hymn and I stood now in the creature’s large, handsomely furnished office, wreathed in disgusting smoke.

“I’d ask you to sit,” he said, pausing to take another long drag on the burning thing in his mouth, exhaling the smoke with a languid air, “but I doubt you would.” He gestured at the equally handsome leather chairs that faced his desk. He sat in a fine chair across from these.

Hymn, who had been glancing uneasily at me since we’d come upstairs from the parlor, sat. I did not.

“My lord —” she began.

“Lord?” I spat this, folding my arms.

He looked at me with amusement. “Nobility these days has less to do with bloodlines and friendships with the Arameri, and more to do with money. I have plenty of that, so yes, that makes me a lord.” He paused. “And I go by the name ‘Ahad’ now. Do you like it?” ndenes and

I sneered. “You can’t even bother to be original.”

“I have only the name you gave me, lovely Sieh.” He hadn’t changed. His words were still velvet over razors. I ground my teeth, bracing for cuts. “Speaking of loveliness, though, you’re rather lacking at the moment. Did you piss off Zhakkarn again? How is she, by the way? Always liked her.”

“What in the fifty million hells are you doing alive?” I demanded. This earned a little gasp from Hymn, but I ignored her.

Ahad’s smile never flagged. “You know precisely why I’m alive, Sieh. You were there, remember? At the moment of my birth.” I stiffened at this. There was too much knowing in his eyes. He saw my fear. “ ‘Live,’ she said. She was newborn herself; maybe she didn’t know a goddess’s word is law. But I suspect she did.”

I relaxed, realizing that he referred to his rebirth as a whole and separate being. But how many years had passed since then? Ahad should have grown old and died years before, yet here he was, as hale and healthy as he’d been on that day. Better, in fact. He was smug and well dressed now, his fingers heavy with silver rings, his hair long and straight and partially braided like a barbarian’s. I blinked. No, like a Darre’s, which was what he looked like now: a mortal, Darren man. Yeine had remade him to suit her then-tastes.

Remade him. “What are you?” I asked, suspicious.

He shrugged, setting that shining black hair a-ripple over his shoulders. (Something about this movement nagged me with its familiarity.) Then he lifted a hand, casually, and turned it into black mist. My mouth fell open; his smile widened just a touch. His hand returned, still holding the smelly cheroot, which he raised for another long inhalation.

I went forward so swiftly and intently that he rose to face me. An instant later, I stopped against a radiant cushion of his power. It was not a shield; nothing so specific. Just his will given force. He did not want me near him and this became reality. Along with the scent that I’d drawn near him to try and detect, this confirmed my suspicions. To my horror.

“You’re a godling,” I whispered. “She made you a godling.”

Ahad, no longer smiling, said nothing, and I realized I was still closer than he wanted me. His distaste washed against me in little sour-tasting tides. I stepped back, and he relaxed.

I did not understand, you see. What it meant to be mortal — relentlessly, constantly, without recourse to the soothing aethers and rarefied dimensions that are the proper housing for my kind. Years passed before I realized that to be bound to mortal flesh is more than just magical or physical weakness; it is a degradation of the mind and soul. And I did not handle it well, those first few centuries. So easy to endure pain and pass on in turn to those weaker than oneself. So easy to look into the eyes of someone who trusted me to protect him — and hate him, because I could not.

What he has become is my fault. I hpic. So eaave sinned against myself, and there is no redeeming that.

“So it appears,” Ahad said. “I have such peculiar abilities now. And as you’ve noticed, I grow no older.” He paused, looking me up and down. “Which is more than I can say for you. You smell like Sky, Sieh, and you look like some Arameri have been torturing you again. But” — he paused, his eyes narrowing —“it’s more than that, isn’t it? You feel … wrong.”

Even if he had not become a god, he was the last person to whom I would have willingly revealed my condition. Yet there was no hiding it, now that he’d seen me. He knew me better than anyone else in this realm, and he would be that much more vicious if I tried to hide it.