Page 84 of Scourged

It was hard to believe in a goddess who never answered your prayers.

Mariah hardened. Her mouth snapped shut, jaw clenching, fingers balling into fists.

All this time. After everything that had happened. Every bit of abuse and torment she’d endured, and Qhohena hadn’t come once. But now, when Mariah was safely home and healing, of course, the goddess would lift her veil.

Qhohena’s Chosen, her ass.

“Why are you here? Why have you come?” Mariah’s voice was cold, flat. Emotionless.

This may be a goddess, but she’d never groveled once in her life. She didn’t intend to start now.

Qhohena halted, surprise illuminating her too-bright features. “You are … upset?” The goddess sounded confused as if she could not comprehend Mariah’s frustration. Her pain.

Mariah answered with silence. She wasn’t sure she could trust her voice to speak for her.

The goddess stared at her open palms. Her feet were bare, and the grasses of the glade wound their way up her feet as if claiming her back into the earth.

“I am sorry,” the goddess whispered, as gentle as a night breeze. She raised her eyes, and Mariah saw them lined with droplets of gold.

Qhohena was crying.

“It has been many, many millennia since I have interacted with humans. Your lives are so short, and you endure so much pain that I no longer know when I need to interfere. Because if I were to help every time someone cried out for me, I would fade away into the universe, my powers spent.”

Mariah’s brow furrowed. “But … you are a goddess. Your powers are infinite. Are they not?”

Qhohena smiled sadly. “They may seem endless, but I assure you, they are far from it. Like all things in nature, we have our limits. And as the years—centuries—have passed, I find myself wasting away. Especially without the grace I gave away long ago.”

The golden threads, deep in Mariah’s gut, stirred in response. “That grace. It’s the queen’s magic, isn’t it?”

The goddess nodded, hair shifting like molten gold. “It is. I feel it in you. And while I do miss that part of myself … it belongs to you now. To Onita.”

They stood in silence, Mariah’s mind spinning over Qhohena’s confession. She tilted her head to the side, expression softening as she regarded the goddess.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Qhohena smiled again. “You wonder why I am here. Why I have come.” She turned, lifting a golden arm. She spun her hand in a circle, and from it fell golden threads of light. The light settled on the ground and moved, weaving and winding until soon, a great golden boulder rested in the center of the meadow. Qhohena lifted her skirts and settled herself atop the boulder, her movements delicate and graceful. She looked back to Mariah, resting a hand on the stone.

“Sit with me, daughter. Let me try to explain what I can.”

Mariah hesitated before striding through the meadow. She hoisted herself onto the boulder, far less gracefully than Qhohena, nearly sliding off the smooth stone. But the rock was warm, and she was instantly surrounded by the goddess’s scent: honeysuckle and snowdrops and moonlight.

“My little sister,” Qhohena began, “is far more cynical than I am. She always feared for you and how the weakness of your human heart might one day be used against you. Perhapsbecause even she, despite not being human, fell victim to that weakness.” The goddess sighed. “I tried to remind her that love is not always a weakness, but … you have met her. You know how persuasive she can be.”

Mariah remembered a half-forgotten dream, one obscured by exuberant joy and incapacitating pain. “It was Zadione,” she breathed. “Zadione was the one whispering to me all those years. Warning me that love is a weakness.”

“Yes. She wanted to ensure you were warned. That you felt prepared for whatever your life might bring. I told her that no matter what she did, you would still make your own choices, and she could not stop you.”

Mariah soaked in the boulder's warmth. An inky streak of misery wormed its way through her, and it pulled the next words from her throat.

“I should have listened to her.”

“Mariah.” Qhohena’s voice was firmer now, no longer the same melodic softness as before. Mariah looked at the goddess and shrank away from the fire and heat roaring in her golden eyes.

“Your love does not make you weak. It never did. It was always your destiny to feel as you do, and it was wrong of my sister to interfere with that. She will never admit to it, but she knows it now, as well as I do.”

Mariah blanched. “What do you mean, I was always destined to fall in love?”

Qhohena held her stare, eyes blazing. “The stories of our world are always destined to repeat themselves.”

---