But one thought pushed up through the desire. It was the thought that had motivated me to do this mad thing, because in spite of everything I was not suicidal. I wanted to live for whatever pittance of time I had left. In the same way I hated the Arameri, yet I sought to understand them; I wanted to prevent a second Gods’ War, yet I also wanted the Enefadeh freed. I wanted so many things, each of them contradictory, all of them together impossible. I wanted them anyway. Perhaps Sieh’s childishness had infected me.
“Once you took many mortal lovers,” I said. My voice was more breathy than it should have been. He leaned close to me and inhaled, as if scenting it. “Once you claimed them by the dozen, and they all lived to tell the tale.”
“That was before centuries of human hatred made me a monster,” said the Nightlord, and for a moment his voice was sad. I had used the same word for him myself, but it felt strange and wrong to hear him say it. “Before my brother stole whatever tenderness there once was in my soul.”
And just like that, my fear faded.
“No,” I said.
His hand paused. I reached up and caught it, my fingers tangling in his.
“Your tenderness isn’t gone, Nahadoth. I’ve seen it. I’ve tasted it.” I pulled his hand up, up, to touch my lips. I felt his fingers twitch, as if in surprise. “You’re right about me; if I must die, I want to die on my own terms. There are so many things I will never do—but this I can have. You.” I kissed his fingers. “Will you show me that tenderness again, Nightlord? Please?”
From the corner of my eye I saw movement. When I turned my head there were black lines, curling and random, etching their way along the walls, the windows, the floor. The lines flowed out from Nahadoth’s feet, spreading, overlapping. I caught a glimpse of strange, airy depths within the lines; a suggestion of drifting mist and deep, endless chasms. He let out a low, soughing breath, and it curled around my tongue.
“I need so much,” he whispered. “It has been so long since I shared that part of myself, Yeine. I hunger—I always hunger. I devour myself with hunger. But Itempas has betrayed me, and you are not Enefa, and I… I am… afraid.”
Tears stung my eyes. Reaching up, I cupped his face in my hands and pulled him down to me. His lips were cool, and this time they tasted of salt. I thought I felt him shiver. “I will give you all I can,” I said, when we parted.
He pressed his forehead against mine; he was breathing hard. “You must say the words. I will try to be what I was, I will try, but—” He groaned softly, desperate. “Say the words!”
I closed my eyes. How many of my Arameri ancestors had said these words and died? I smiled. It would be a death befitting a Darre, if I joined them.
“Do with me as you please, Nightlord,” I whispered.
Hands seized me.
I do not say his hands because there were too many of them, gripping my arms and grasping my hips and tangling in my hair. One even curled ’round my ankle. The room was almost entirely dark. I could see nothing except the window and the sky beyond, where the sun’s light had finally faded completely. Stars spun as I was lifted and lowered until I felt the bed underneath my back.
Then we fed each other’s hunger. Wherever I wanted to be touched, he touched; I don’t know how he knew. Whenever I touched him, there was a delay. I would cup emptiness before it became a smooth muscled arm. I would wrap my legs around nothing and only then find hips settled there, taut with ready energy. In this way I shaped him, making him suit my fantasies; in this way he chose to be shaped. When heavy, thick warmth pushed into me, I had no idea whether this was a penis or some entirely different phallus that only gods possessed. I suspect the latter, since no mere penis can fill a woman’s body the way he filled mine. Size had nothing to do with it. This time he let me scream.
“Yeine…” Through the haze of my own body heat I was aware of few things. The clouds, racing across the stars. The black lines, webbing the room’s ceiling, widening and melding into one great yawning abyss. The rising urgency of Nahadoth’s movements. There was pain now, because I wanted it. “Yeine. Open yourself to me.”
I had no idea what he meant; I could not think. But he gripped my hair and slid a hand under my hips, pulling me tighter against him in a way that sent me spiraling again. “Yeine!”
Such need in him. Such wounds—two of them, raw and unhealing, for two lost lovers. So much more than one mortal girl could ever satisfy.
And yet in my madness, I tried. I couldn’t; I was only human. But for that moment I yearned to be more, give more, because I loved him.