Page 56 of House of Dusk
“Timeus.” She set down her bowl, gripping her knees instead.
“I thought if the flame accepted me, if I could just be good enough, it would...make things right. But it never will. Saving Timeus won’t balance some set of cosmic scales.
It won’t change the fact that I killed my best friend. That I helped destroy a city.”
“No,” agreed Nilos.
She flinched. What had she expected? That he would argue with her?
“But you’re doing it anyway,” said Nilos. “You could have let your agia burn this all away. Forgotten the pain.”
Like the Maiden. Yet how could it be so wrong to remove pain and suffering?
She felt something building in her, an understanding, as if someone had been showing her bits and pieces of a horse—a hoof, a mane, an ear—but only now was she seeing how they formed a complete creature.
Maybe there was a difference between the pains that were done to you and the ones you inflicted on yourself.
The pain that was pure suffering, and the pain you could learn from.
Fates, if she went on like this, she might as well run off to the flying hills and become a sage. Introspection was all well and good, but unraveling her feelings wasn’t going to save Timeus.
“When we first met, you told me that something—someone—had taken the place of the Serpent. That the skotoi had a new master. Could it be Hierax? The Ember King reborn?”
Nilos shook his head. “I don’t know. The skotoi never speak of him by name. But I have my suspicions.”
“Because of what you remember?”
“In part. But also the stories I gathered, even if most of them had been destroyed by those who wanted us to believe a different history.”
“What sort of stories?” Sephre sat, holding her porridge, waiting.
“An old Scarthian man told me one of his clan legends. He called it the story of Death’s Bride. It starts with a maiden leading her family’s horses to their summer grazing grounds. The sky is just sinking into dusk when she comes upon a stranger—a man with emerald eyes.”
He lifted his gaze from his bowl, his own green eyes holding hers. “The man had been injured by some wild creature. But the woman tended his wounds with healing herbs. And they fell in love and decided to marry.”
“Just like that?” Sephre scoffed. “A few hours together and they’re ready for that sort of commitment?”
“Well, I’m leaving out the parts about how attractive they both were. Apparently she had hair black as night, and lips as red as pomegranates. And you know it’s very hard to resist a man with green eyes.”
His lips quirked teasingly, and she was suddenly far too warm. And not just because of the bowl of hot porridge. Have some dignity , woman. She cleared her throat. “Not in my experience.”
He pressed a hand to his chest, as if wounded, but continued on.
“But there’s a shadow upon their love. The stranger makes his bride promise that she’ll tell no one about him.
He tells her that if anyone discovers their love, he’ll be forced to leave her forever.
She tries to honor the promise, but she wants more than a handful of stolen, secret hours. ”
Nilos lowered his gaze then, stirring his cooling bowl of oats.
“The maiden seeks out a witch, and begs for a way to ensure she and her green-eyed stranger can be together forever. The witch gives her a dagger, and tells the maiden that she need only spill a single drop of her lover’s blood, and it will bind him to her, so that he can never leave her again. ”
“Something tells me that the witch was lying.”
“The witch had guessed the true nature of the green-eyed stranger. When the maiden goes to her lover and spills that single drop of blood, it reveals his true form. He transforms into an enormous serpent, only his emerald-green eyes still holding any echo of the man she’d loved.
The man she’d betrayed. Because of course the witch had placed a spell upon the dagger, to destroy the Serpent-god and steal his power.
And so the Serpent dies, and the Maiden is left to wander the world, weeping for her folly and her loss. ”
Sephre leaned back. “But that can’t be true. It doesn’t match the other story you told me. What you actually remember.”
“No. But I think it holds fragments of the truth.”
Sephre combed through her own thoughts uneasily, wondering if any of them were alien. Tiny snippets of divinity. Perhaps her single shard of the Serpent’s power wasn’t enough. And maybe that was a good thing. What was it like, to carry the memories of a god?
Uncomfortable, to say the least, judging by the tightness around his lips, the shuttering of his eyes.
A strange thing. She could almost see the man he would be, without their weight.
A man who smiled generously, who laughed at the antics of a faithful hound.
Who spent his lean grace in earnest labor, or spinning his partner through the breathless pulse of a village dance.
In another life they might have danced together.
Stop staring. He already thinks far too highly of himself. “So you think that’s why the Ember King sent the Maiden to slay the Serpent,” she said. “He wanted the Serpent’s power for himself? Meaning that it’s Hierax commanding the skotoi now?”
“I think it’s possible.”
“For what purpose, though?” She chewed her lip, thinking.
“If Hierax could call upon an army of skotoi, why not send them to Bassara? And why does he even want the Maiden restored? If he remembers his own past, he must know she’s not really his beloved.
She’s just some girl he used to get power. She’s already served her purpose.”
But Hierax wasn’t the only one who used people like that. And maybe that was her answer. “Unless Hierax isn’t the Ember King reborn?”
The words had felt like a joke inside her own mind.
A ridiculous notion. But now that she had spoken them aloud, they felt heavy enough to crush her.
She despised herself for what she had done in Hierax’s service.
But some small part of her had—not excused, not justified— accepted that he asked those terrible things of her because of who he was.
Not just her king, but the great Heraklion reborn.
If that was a lie, did it make her own crimes worse? Fates, she wanted to throw up. To curl into a lump with a cloak over her head and sleep this all away.
Nilos gave her an inscrutable look. “Who, then?”
She swallowed the ugly lump in her throat.
Get it together. Haven’t you wasted enough time on self-recrimination?
You still have an enemy to fight. One that’s been right in front of you this whole time.
Because of course it was him. It was the only answer that made sense. She took a breath, then spoke his name.
“Lacheron. The king’s spymaster. He’s the one who helped Hierax gain the throne.
He’s the one who commanded the final assault on Bassara.
And he was there in Stara Bron during the attack.
He wanted Halimede out of the way.” Her voice roughened, trying to hold the enormity of what she was suggesting.
“And now he has his own pet agia. Look at what she’s already done for him. Given him the dagger. Tried to...”
Sephre trailed off, remembering the regretful look the man had given her, on the mountaintop. So strangely personal. “He wanted me Embraced. Why? Was it just to keep you from getting my mark?” Her hand strayed, covering the dark ring on her own wrist briefly. “Would the Embrace truly remove it?”
“I don’t know,” said Nilos. “Phoenix-flame burns away all that binds a spirit to mortal life. To prepare it to be reborn. But the mark isn’t a mortal thing. It came from the Serpent. I’m not sure if it can be so easily removed.”
So the Serpent’s mark might have remained fixed to her soul. Stayed with her even if she was reborn. “It doesn’t make sense. It almost felt like it was personal . Is it because I’ve got a piece of the Serpent’s power?”
Nilos tapped his fingers together thoughtfully, and now his green eyes seemed to be looking everywhere but at Sephre. “Possibly. Especially given that...”
“That what?” she prompted, as he continued to avoid her gaze.
“Your fragment is...particularly potent.”
“Why would that be, if none of us is special? Am I just unlucky? Or—” Fates, she felt like a fool to even say it.
But what had that skotos said, about the shattered heart of a dead god?
Do you ev en know that you carry it? And why?
“Or is there a reason? Something I did?” She drew a breath, to steady herself. “Am I the Maiden reborn?”
That made Nilos look at her, finally. A single flash of those green eyes, before he veiled them. He stood, collecting the bowls. “Only you can discover what you are, Sephre.”
“That wasn’t a no.”
“I don’t know for certain what you carry. You might find answers in the labyrinth. Just...be wary of what memories you wake.”
She glimpsed a slice of his expression as he started to step away. So grim. So heavy.
“Nilos?”
He halted, shoulders tensing. Did he know what she was going to ask? She hadn’t known, herself, until just now.
“Have your eyes always been green?”
He drew in a breath. Released it. “No.”
There was another question on her tongue, but she could not bring herself to ask it. And so he left her by the fire, and went to wash the bowls.