The Inheritance Trilogy Omnibus(398)

“We were thinking about what to name this palace,” he said softly. “Shahar and I.”

I shrugged. “Seashell? Water?” I had never been much for creative naming. Deka, who had taste, grimaced at my suggestions.

“Shahar likes ‘Echo.’ She’ll have to run it past Mother, of course.” So fascinating, this conversation. Our mouths moved, speaking about things neither of us cared about, a verbal mask for entirely different words that did not need to be said. “She thinks this will make a good audience chamber.” Another grimace, this one more delicate.

I smiled. “You disagree?”

“It doesn’t feel like an audience chamber. It feels…” He shook his head, turning to face a spot beneath the translucent swirl-wall. I took his meaning. There was a votive atmosphere to this chamber, something difficult to define. There should have been an altar in that spot.

“So tell her,” I said.

He shrugged. “You know how it is. Shahar is still… Shahar.” He smiled, but it faded.

I nodded. I didn’t really want to talk about Shahar.

Deka’s hand brushed mine, tentative. This was something he could have played off as an accident, if I let him. “Perhaps you should bless this place. It’s a trick, of a sort, or it will be. The real home of the Arameri, leaving Sky as a decoy…”

“I can’t bless anything anymore, except in the poetic sense.” I took his hand, growing tired of the game. No semblance of just-friends anymore. “Shall I become a god again, Deka? Is that what you want?”

He flinched, thrown by my directness, his mask cracking. Through it I saw need so raw that it made me ache in sympathy. But he abandoned the game, too, because that was what the moment deserved. “No.”

I smiled. If I had still been a god, my teeth would have been sharp. “Why not? I could still love you, as a god.” I stepped closer, nuzzling his chin. He did not take this bait or the verbal bait I offered next. “Your family would love you better, if I were a god. Your god.”

Deka’s hands gripped my arms, tight. I expected him to thrust me away, but he didn’t. “I don’t care what they want,” he said, his voice suddenly low, rough. “I want an equal. I want to be your equal. When you were a god, I couldn’t be that, so… So help me, yes, some part of me wished you were mortal. It wasn’t deliberate, I didn’t know what would happen, but I don’t regret it. So Shahar’s not the only one who betrayed you.” I flinched, and his hands tightened, to the threshold of pain. He leaned closer, intent. “As a child, I was nothing to you. A game to pass the time.” When I blinked in surprise, he laughed bitterly. “I told you, Sieh. I know everything about you.”

“Deka—” I began, but he cut me off.

“I know why you’ve never taken a mortal lover as more than a passing whim. Even before mortals were created, you’d lived so long, seen so much, that no mortal could be anything but an eyeblink in the eternity of your life. That’s if you were willing to try, and you weren’t. But I will not be nothing to you, Sieh. And if I must change the universe to have you, then so be it.” He smiled again, tight, vicious, beautiful. Terrifying.

Arameri.

“I should kill you,” I whispered.

“Do you think you could?” Unbelievable, his arrogance. Magnificent. He reminded me of Itempas.

“You sleep, Deka. You eat. Not all my tricks need magic.”

His smile grew an edge of sadness. “Do you really want to kill me?” When I didn’t answer—because I didn’t know—he sobered. “What do you want, Sieh?”

And because I was afraid, and because Yeine had asked the same question, and because Deka really did know me too well, I answered with the truth.

“N-not to be alone anymore.” I licked my lips and looked away—at the altar-less floor, at a nearby pillar, at the sun diluted by swirls of white and black and gray. Anywhere but at him. I was so very, very tired. I had been tired for an age of the world. “To have… I want… something that is mine.”

Deka let out a long, shaky sigh, pressing his forehead against mine as if he’d just won some victory. “Is that all?”

“Yes. I want—”

And then there was no repeating what I wanted, because his mouth was on mine and his soul was in me and it was frightening to be invaded—and exhilarating and agonizing. Like racing comets and chasing thoughtwhales and skating along freezing liquid air. It was better than the first time. He still kissed like a god.

Then his mouth was on my throat, his hands tugging open my shirt, his legs pushing us back back back until I stopped against one of the vine-covered pillars. I barely noticed despite the breath being knocked out of me. I was gasping now because he’d bitten me just over my lower rib cage, and that was the most erotic sensation I’d ever felt. I reached out to touch him and found hot mortal skin and humming tattooed magic, free of the encumbering cloth as he stripped himself. There are so many ways to make magic. I tapped a cadence over his shoulders, and hot, raw power seared up my arms in response. I drank it in and moaned. He had made himself strong and wise, a god in mortal flesh, for me, me, me. Was he right? I had always avoided mortals. It made no sense for a being older than the sun to want a creature that would always be less than a child, in relative terms. But I did want him; oh gods, how I wanted him. Was that the solution? It was not my nature to do what was wise; I did what felt good. Why should that not apply to love as well as play?