His words were gibberish strung together without meaning. Others? Naha? Calm?
He laughed at me again. “I especially like your face. You don’t show much emotion—is that a Darre thing, or your mother’s training?—but when you do, all the world can read it.”
My mother had warned me of the same thing long ago. “Sieh—” I had a thousand questions and couldn’t decide where to begin. One of the balls, a plain green one with bright white poles, went past us, tumbling end over end. I didn’t register it as an anomaly until Sieh saw it and stiffened. That was when my own instincts belatedly sent a warning.
I turned to find that Nahadoth stood behind us.
In the instant that my mind and body froze, he could have had me. He was only a few paces away. But he did not move or speak, and so we stared at each other. Face like the moon, pale and somehow wavering. I could get the gist of his features, but none of it stuck in my mind beyond an impression of astonishing beauty. His long, long hair wafted around him like black smoke, its tendrils curling and moving of their own volition. His cloak—or perhaps that was hair, too—shifted as if in an unfelt wind. I could not recall him wearing a cloak before, on the balcony.
The madness still lurked in his face, but it was a quieter madness now, not the rabid-animal savagery of before. Something else—I could not bring myself to call it humanity—stirred underneath the gleam.
Sieh stepped forward, careful not to move in front of me. “Are you with us yet, Naha?”
Nahadoth did not answer, did not even seem to see Sieh. Sieh’s toys, I noticed with the fragment of my mind that wasn’t frozen, went wild when they came near him. Their slow, graceful orbits changed: some drifted in a different direction, some froze in place, some sped up. One split in half and fell broken to the floor as I watched. He took a step forward, sending more of the colored balls spinning out of control.
That one step was enough to jar me out of my paralysis. I stumbled back and would have fled screaming if I’d known how to make the walls open.
“Don’t run!” Sieh’s voice snapped at me like a whip. I froze.
Nahadoth stepped forward again, close enough that I could see a minute shiver pass through him. His hands flexed. He opened his mouth; struggled a moment; spoke. “P-predictable, Sieh.” His voice was deep, but shockingly human. I had expected a bestial growl.
Sieh hunched, a sulky little boy again. “Didn’t think you’d catch up that fast.” He cocked his head, studying Nahadoth’s face, and spoke slowly, as if to a simpleton. “You are here, aren’t you?”
“I can see it,” whispered the Nightlord. His eyes were fixed on my face.
To my surprise, Sieh nodded as if he knew what such ravings meant. “I wasn’t expecting that, either,” he said softly. “But perhaps you remember now—we need this one. Do you remember?” Sieh stepped forward, reaching for his hand.
I did not see that hand move. I was watching Nahadoth’s face. All I saw was the flash of blind, murderous rage that crossed his features, and then one of his hands was ’round Sieh’s throat. Sieh had no chance to cry out before he was lifted off the ground, gagging and kicking.
For a breath I was too shocked to react.
Then I got angry.
I burned with anger—and madness, too, which is the only possible explanation for what I did then. I drew my knife and cried, “Leave him alone!”
As well a rabbit threaten a wolf. But to my utter shock, the Nightlord looked at me. He did not lower Sieh, but he blinked. Just that quickly, the madness left him, replaced by a look of astonishment and dawning wonder. It was the look of a man who has just discovered treasure beneath a pile of offal. But he was still choking the life out of Sieh.
“Let him go!” I crouched, shifting my stance the way my Darren grandmother had taught me. My hands shook—not with fear, but with that mad, wild, righteous fury. Sieh was a child. “Stop it!”
Nahadoth smiled.
I lunged. The knife went into his chest, going deep before lodging in bone with such a sudden impact that my hand was jarred free of the hilt. There was an instant in which I braced myself against his chest, trying to push away. I marveled that he was solid, warm, flesh and blood despite the power writhing about him. I marveled even more when his free hand wrapped around my wrist like a vise. So fast, despite the knife in his heart.
With the strength in that hand, he could have crushed my wrist. Instead he held me in place. His blood coated my hand, hotter than my rage. I looked up; his eyes were warm, gentle, desperate. Human.
“I have waited so long for you,” the god breathed. Then he kissed me.