Page 97 of Beyond the Shadowed Earth

The third way is to kill the god.

Eda grimaced. “Watch me.”

And she leapt at Tuer, driving the godkiller upward, toward his heart.

Pain burst inside of her, and she gasped and fell to her knees.

Somehow, the godkiller had missed its mark.

Somehow, it had pierced her own heart instead of Tuer’s.

Dimly, she was aware of blood pouring from her chest onto the ground. She couldn’t stop staring at the knife hilt, protruding from her own body.

How strange to see her life spill out of her, so red and hot.

And yet how cold she was.

Darkness crept in at the edges of her vision. She couldn’t feel anything now, not even pain.

I’ve given my life to Tuer after all,she thought.

And then the world shifted sideways, and shadows swallowed her whole.

She was standing in a low room in the hull of a ship. The vessel rocked gently beneath her feet, but the motion didn’t bother her. The scarred man sat at a little table writing in his book, his pen scratching rhythmically across the page. He looked up at her, and smiled sadly.

“Oh, little one. I am sorry that you have come here. This is not the story I wanted for you.”

She was clothed in a gown of white and gray, and when she lifted her hands before her eyes, she could see through them. “Am I dead?”

“In a manner of speaking.” He wrote a few more words in his book, then closed it and stood, pacing to a porthole in the side of the ship.

Eda went to stand beside him. She peered through the porthole, up into a circle of starry sky. She remembered the feel of a knife in her hand, then pain, her life dripping red on the ground. “The godkiller. It didn’t work.”

“It could not pierce the chains of sorrow that bound the god of the mountain, but it thirsted for life, and so it took yours.”

“Then it has all been for nothing. My life. My death. It’s fitting, that I end this way—I made myself. And I’ve unmade myself, too.”

His eyebrows lifted. “Do you truly think you shaped your own life?”

“Tuer, then,” she said bitterly. “Tuer and his Shadow have been toying with me since the moment I was born. Perhaps it’s better this way, that my death has deprived him of the thing he’s been striving for so long.”

“You blame Tuer, then, for everything that’s happened to you?”

She looked at him, trulylooked, and something stirred deep inside of her. “Who are you?”

“Do you truly not know me, little Empress? I was there from the beginning, watching over you. Who do you think stayed the hand of the plague that took the lives of your parents? Who do you think protected you at the palace, allowed you to ascend to the throne and rule an Empire? Who do you think turned the gaze of the Denlahn soldiers, allowing you to escape the revenge of their prince? Who do you think unlocked the door to your holding cell, and watched over you on your voyage and your long journey? Who do you think called the spirits away on the mountain and brought you to Erris on his throne?”

“Not Tuer,” she said.

He smiled. “Not Tuer.”

“You dwell outside the Circles,” said Eda. “You must, or you could not reach me here. You are not one of the dead, and you are not a Bearer of Souls.”

He studied her, waiting for her to parcel it out.

Her shadowy body began to shake. “You are the One above the gods. You have come to destroy me.”

“No, dear one. I have come to offer you peace, rest. To bring you to my dwelling place beyond the Circles of Endahr, if that is what you wish.”