Page 479 of Kingdoms of Night

I swallowed, throat parched. “Yes.”

“There is no need to lie to me.” He sighed, setting his large, pale-grey hands on what I rested on. An altar? “You can say you jumped.”

“But I didn’t.” I tried sitting up, but my muscles felt too weak to even attempt it.

Tamuz must have noticed, slipping his hands under my arms to raise me to a seated position. “I’m finding that hard to believe, considering this wouldn’t be the first time a bride didn’t last the night.”

Chills coated me once the implication landed. “Is that what happened to the first two?”

He nodded. “I have tried for years to understand what influenced their actions, to make things more…welcoming to the next, but failure after failure has me facing the unfortunate truth.”

“That they don’t want to be forcefully wed to an unseen groom with no explanation as to why?”

“They couldn’t stand the sight of me.” He moved his hands to my back, helping me remain upright against the urge to slouch and slam back down. “None of them could, except you, it seems.”

“I… You don’t seem hostile so far.” I peered harder at him, trying to see if there was anything at all past his mask. “I thought you were the proxy, that all the Shadow King’s courtiers were beings of darkness, like the fiery jinn are to the god of lightning.”

“I forwent the proxy this once, hoping earlier exposure would lessen the shock of seeing me, or the risk of bigamy.”

“Bigamy?” I squeaked, confused. “You have five living brides.”

“Except I don’t. Each bride was, in actuality, bound to the proxy I sent to peacefully retrieve her,” he said with a hint of amusement. “I didn’t become privy to this fact until I retraced every marriage that took place on the Cedar Altar, and found that no representative was ever used. They must have had a reason that was lost to time.”

“Isn’t time irrelevant to gods?”

“Not in my case,” he said. “I’m running out of time.”

At that, the lulling exhaustion that weighed me down was burned off my head. I was wide-eyed with focus. “Are you going to tell me the truth of why I’m here, or will I be told to rest again.”

“Had you rested, you wouldn’t have gotten so weak,” he bit out grouchily. “Those who come from the Earth take a while to adjust to the atmosphere here.”

“Why didn’t you say so?”

His fingers twitched against my back, sparking a trail of shivers down my spine. “Would you have believed me?”

I regained some feeling in my arms and used my hands to sit up better, allowing him to retreat slightly. My staring silence must have been enough of an answer, as he chuckled tiredly, the bass of his voice reverberating through the room.

We were in a small, sparsely-decorated space, the walls covered in symmetrical and geometric patterns in shades of the sea from its foam to its changing waters, and the floors in a shimmering tile of grass-green marble. I sat on what appeared to be an altar, and between the tinted windows to my left was an extruding sculpture of a woman.

Made of a gleaming, almost metallic stone, she had horns like a crescent and held a jug and the basin it aimed to pour in. “Why hasn’t Mahala stopped you from hiding the Moon?”

“Because neither her nor I have any control over the phase it has been locked into.”

“How?” I used my hands to shove my numb legs over the altar, so I could sit properly, backs of my knees against the edge. “How have two gods lost control of what they reside on?”

“Usurpation.”

A thousand questions exploded at that single word, but none in an order better than an echo. “How?”

Tamuz approached one of the tinted windows, his edges fading like smoke, showing hints of what laid underneath. I glimpsed his own shape, the breadth of his shoulders, even the still outline of his hair framing his head.

A mysterious yet mystical sight, a being of shadows that longed to be seen, and I ached to see more.

“Mahala has been cast into the void. She clings on as the halo now guarding the Moon from those who seek to take it by force,” he explained, tone tight with rising anger. “Her barrier won’t hold, not for long. Not unless I am freed from the curse that binds me to the phase I was in when the usurper attacked.”

Like dumping water onto a hearth, my curiosity had been swiftly dampened. “That was what happened seven years ago?”

“It’s due to happen again, and this time I won’t be able to fight her off.”

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