Chapter 9

Karys

I'd made a mistake.

As I backed away from the shadows full of glowing orbs, an explanation occurred to me.

The cliffs to my right…I'd found myself on them months ago, soon after my mortal self had first started to explore these heavens in earnest. The Death God, Zachar, had cornered me there. His magic had been horrible; I could still imagine the cold claws of his dark power raking against my skin, draining me of all sense of life and hope.

Dravyn had appeared at the last moment, wielded his fire against Zachar and chased him away. It had seemed like an incredible amount of power at the time, but now I understood just how much it had truly been—enough that it had left behind a mark on this spot, a residual pool of magic.

And that pooled magic—and perhaps my memories and feelings of being astonished by his power—had pulled me back to this place.

I stopped backing up as I felt another burst of cold at my back, more intense and concentrated along my spine this time, as though someone had slipped a block of ice down my tunic.

Shadows were closing in on every side. Some of the glowing eyes were coming closer, the beastly creatures they belonged to emerging from the dark, trailing black ribbons behind them as they did.

Then came the Death God himself, a tall figure wrapped in a grey cloak with a pack of shadow cats snarling and spitting at his heels.

He looked more human than I remembered him looking before. His hood was lowered, revealing normal ears where there had once been horned appendages. He wasn't as pale as I recalled, either, his complexion still fair, but far from the ghastly shade of bone it had once been.

Nevertheless, he was still terrifying. His body was still too long, too jagged and uneven, too… something , and it moved with a strange grace just shy of seeming human.

I fought the urge to keep backing up. Instead, I stood taller, meeting his eyes, which were the color of twilight, their glowing pupils like the only stars that had appeared in the sky thus far.

"So here you are again." His voice was a serpent slithering in and out of my head. The words were accompanied by a dark cloud, like breath fogging in the cold—except the breath, like so many things in this territory, was made of shadows. "Once again an uninvited guest in my dominion."

"Uninvited, yes. But also an inadvertent one," I said flatly.

"You mean you weren't dying to come see me? Even though we haven't seen one another since your ascension? I pushed for your divine blessing, you know. If I hadn't helped you, you wouldn't be standing here now, invited or not. I thought perhaps you had come to thank me."

" Thank you?" I should have held my tongue. No good had ever come from provoking this god. But his slithering tone and smug expression had both slipped under my skin. "You didn't help me. And why would I be happy to see you? You betrayed me. You told Dravyn my thoughts, my secrets, my plans—plans that I'd already abandoned, by the way—and you nearly ruined me."

He laughed.

I clenched my teeth. "I don't find any of it funny."

"No? Still essentially a short-sighted mortal, then, even with all you've been given. How disappointing."

"And you are still a traitorous time-waster who talks in riddles and circles. How disappointing ."

His smile crept slowly across his face, beautiful but deadly, like an early frost in spring choking out any chance of life. "I am no traitor, girl," he snarled. "For me to have betrayed you, I would have had to swear allegiance to you, first. I did no such thing."

"True enough," I snarled back. "My mistake for assuming you were decent, like the rest of the Shade Court turned out to be."

"My decent fellow court members forgot themselves in the chaos you brought into this realm. I alone remembered that we are meant to answer to a higher power—in the matter of you as in the matters of all things. And it was me who first suggested to my higher power that you might find a place here in His court. I helped devise the trial Malaphar ultimately offered you, and I set that final trial into motion."

I started to object, but a memory dropped suddenly into my head, snapping my mouth shut as it landed.

Everything that had happened in the Tower of Ascension was a blur…but when I focused, I remembered the powerful, quiet voice of the Shade God speaking over my battered body.

You were dying on the shore of the mortal lake known as Irithyl. I had my servant—you know him as Zachar, I believe—stall your soul's passing long enough to transport it here …

The Death God had clearly been following orders from a higher power then, as he claimed. So was he telling the truth about other things? Had he been helping to arrange my destiny according to his upper-god's wishes the whole time?

Could I trust him?

I didn't know. But I was too tired, and too frustrated from my day of failing at magic, to think about how I might have gotten my opinion about him wrong, too.

His smile brightened as he watched me, as though he could hear my warring thoughts and was delighting in my confusion.

"If you are telling the truth," I said, smoothing some of the edge from my voice, "then I suppose you have my thanks. But unless you are going to help me with my current trouble, I'd appreciate it if you'd leave me alone. I didn't mean to come here, anyway, as I told you."

Our gazes remained tensely locked until I worked up the nerve to turn my back on him. I wasn't sure this was a wise move, but I knew I wouldn't be able to even attempt to transfer myself back to my own territory so long as I was near Zachar and the heavy, depressing air that hovered around him.

So I trudged through the dark on foot, putting space between us, vainly trying to rub the chills from my arms as I went.

Though my breath steamed in the air, I wasn't as cold as I'd once been in this dominion—my internal Fire magic was useful even if I couldn't control it very well; I simply ran hotter these days. And though the Death magic was draining me, I still felt strong enough to walk all the way back to Mai and Valas, if necessary.

And luckily, Zachar didn't seem to be following.

I started to chance a glance over my shoulder—just to make sure—when he called out to me.

"You might find it beneficial to let some parts of yourself properly die off."

Against my better judgment, I slowed to a stop. "I'm perfectly content with keeping all my parts intact, thank you." I'd spoken under my breath; I didn't know if he'd even heard me.

He didn't answer for a long moment.

The air grew warmer, almost balmy, and I thought maybe I'd finally vexed or insulted him enough that he'd given up on me and left.

But then he was very suddenly there , a shadow slowly taking on the form of a man right in front me.

He wasted no time continuing his speech; as soon as his mouth took shape—before it even had the company of those cold twilight eyes of his—he said, "Have you ever noticed the way people get shy around the subject of death? And around me ? They forget that rebirth also lies under my rule. And that there can be no rebirth without death."

That last part struck me as strange—wrong. "I thought Valas was the Marr associated with rebirth?"

"The threads of magic within the Marr often intertwine, particularly within their given court. We all carry different shades of a magic that pertains to such—and you could wield your own power of renewal too, if you decide to. But death must come first." His eyes finished forming and blinked several times. "I wonder…could you wield that, too?"

I couldn't think of a response to this.

He didn't seem to really want one.

"You're lost at the moment," he went on, the rest of his features emerging from the shadows and arranging themselves.

I still didn't speak, partly because I was mesmerized by the way he effortlessly put himself back together, and partly by the finished product taking shape; he was so close, and—like most of the divine—a horribly beautiful creature, even when in pieces.

His words were even more hypnotizing, though.

Lost?

I was not lost. At least, not at the moment. I knew exactly where I was and exactly where I wanted to get to—back to the Palace of Fire.

I started to tell him so, but found the words caught in my throat for some reason.

"Physically, you cannot control your new magic," Zachar told me, as though I needed a reminder, "because mentally you are still trapped in a past where you felt powerless. Some part of you still likes being in that past, I suspect." He looked around, his attention lingering the longest on the exact spot on the cliffs where he'd once trapped and threatened me. "So here you are, as before."

I, too, found myself staring at those cliffs. I couldn't recall many times when I'd felt more lost—or powerless—than the moment when I'd been trapped on the edge of those rocks. That much was true.

But I hadn't wanted to return to this moment, or to this place.

That was nonsense.

Almost everything he was saying was ominous nonsense, as per usual.

"Perhaps the reason you cannot move forward is because you cannot heal from what's happened to you," Zachar mused, "and that is because you are trying to return to a person who does not exist anymore. To an old self that is trying desperately to die—a powerless self that you love and thus keep breathing life into."

I glared at him, all my frustrations with the day bubbling to the surface. "I don't want to be powerless. And I don't love that older version of me. At all. I hate her, and I'm happy she's gone —not that it's any business of yours, whether you're the God of Rebirth or anything else."

"You don't seem happy," he remarked.

"You have me all figured out, do you?"

"Not you, specifically. But I have watched mortal beings coming and going for long enough now—one starts to notice patterns after a while." He lifted a hand in front of him, curling a clawed finger. The motion summoned a small shadow to his palm, and he watched it twist into different shapes as he said, "None of them like change, even when it's good change."

"I am not a mortal any longer," I reminded him fiercely.

He breathed in that slow, unsettling way he often did, as if he was inhaling the air and tasting all the unspoken words and emotions within it.

My skin heated with discomfort, tiny flames flickering to life in the space around me.

He eyed those fires with a hungry sort of interest. "You seem frightened, little goddess."

I shook my head, even though it was true—his words had struck a note of terror deep in some buried part of myself I didn't want to examine. I would not give him the satisfaction of knowing that, however.

"I am not afraid of change," I said. "And I am not afraid of you. But I am leaving. Go find someone else to haunt."

This time when I walked away, he didn't stop me. I soon felt his stare at my back, though, and his shadows trailing me, nipping like restless dogs at my heels.

I walked faster.

As it turned out, I hadn't managed to travel as far as I'd thought. Disappointing, but also relieving—because within only a few minutes of walking, I spotted the pond I'd left Zell next to.

I gave a sharp whistle, and soon the selakir was racing to my side once more.

I rode back to the palace with my body pressed flat against Zell's back, my cheek resting on his muscular neck and my hands fisted into his fiery, silky mane, oblivious to the flames that would have burned anyone other than Dravyn and me.

Zell went slower than usual, keeping his gait as smooth as possible so as not to jar me from my troubled thoughts.

I kept replaying my conversation with the Death God over and over, even though I didn't want to. Even though I came to the same conclusion every time.

He was wrong.

I was not afraid of change or power or anything else.

I couldn't be. I had no time to think of the past me, or grieve the loss of her, or wonder what might have become of her if she'd survived taking a knife to her heart. I was not a mortal. Not an elf.

I was—as Zachar had called me—a goddess.

He had said it mockingly, but it still resonated. It was simultaneously like a beautiful song stuck in my head and a splinter under my skin that would not stop aching.

It was the first time someone other than Dravyn had called me a goddess.

Goddess.

Did becoming one require me to burn away all that I'd been before? To starve her of oxygen? Every part of her? Or…how did one decide what was meant to stay, and what was meant to go?

I focused on the rhythmic clipping and clopping of Zell's hooves rather than the questions battering my brain, letting the sound lull me into a restless sort of daze.

On and on we galloped, until Zell suddenly slowed, his head lifting toward the sky.

I knew why he'd slowed. I'd felt it, too: Something powerful crossing overhead, heading in the same direction we were.

"Dravyn is back, isn't he?" Power surged through me as I said the words, my magic rising and stretching as if just awakened from a deep sleep. Magic that felt both certain and wild, capable and unpredictable.

I wanted more than anything to be near him now, wrapped up in his arms. To feel the magic passing between us like a shared breath, a heartbeat I didn't even have to think about.

As I stared at the sky, an idea struck me.

I wanted to be near him. More than anything . Isn't that what Mairu said I needed? A clear vision, a clear feeling about where I wanted to go.

Little else felt clear to me at the moment aside from Dravyn.

He was not a place, but he felt like home, and where could I trust my magic to carry me to, if not home?

"I'm going to try one more time," I warned Zell.

A shudder rippled through the selakir; maybe a touch of concern on my behalf. But he kneeled without protest and let me slide easily from his back, giving me an encouraging nudge with his nose as I found my balance.

I started the same way I had so many times today: deep breaths, letting flames rise around me and swallow me up, beginning with my fingers.

"No panicking," I reminded myself.

Bit by bit and breath by breath, I turned once more to flames, and then to smoke, and then to nothing .

Again I was untethered, terrifyingly light and aimless for what felt like several minutes.

Darkness prevailed once more; I still could not see the path between where I was and where I wanted to go. It still made no sense, all this floating in between nonsense. No way of properly mapping it all out, no way of leaving a trail to find my way back to my starting point…

But maybe, just this once, I didn't need a map.

It felt like stepping off a cliff while wearing a blindfold, but I did it.

I let go.