Page 481 of Kingdoms of Night

“Not purely for betrayal either.” His hands cupped my elbows, raising my arms, my limp hold on the dagger forgotten. “If I passed seven years without being freed, I would be weakened further, and she can return unchallenged and stake her claim.”

Horror shot through me like lightning, and the dagger fell from my grasp. “Would she return things as they were?”

“That’s the plan, it seems. ‘Defeat’ me in the eyes of all below, and take Mahala’s place as a new savior goddess, gaining thankful cults building greater temples in her honor.” He sighed, thumbing the insides of my elbows. “That’s assuming she would know how to manage this realm, and not destroy it with her arrogance.”

The fleeting thought of killing him, just so things could return as they were, guiltily fled to the far corner of my mind. “What makes you think she can’t?”

“There has to be a good reason why she was passed over for me, why the Evening Star looks the way it does.”

Suddenly, some parts of this mystery began to make sense. “Your mother is Ashtara, the goddess of warfare and bloodshed. They used to sacrifice people to her.”

“That must be part of the reason she hopes to take over this realm. No doubt they will do anything to thank her and maintain her goodwill when she saves them from an eternity of moonless nights,” he said bitterly. “Wouldn’t you?”

I was unknowingly sent here to further her plot. Was King Nabonassar aware of this, and was this dagger the very same that attacked Mahala?

“Is there anything that can be done to stop her?” My hands landed on his shoulders, feeling out what I couldn’t see. Broad, strong and clad in a silky material that urged my palms to keep stroking, just so I could enjoy more of the dichotomy between the hardness of his muscles and the softness of his clothes. “What is it you need me for, exactly, if not to be sacrificed to Mahala or Ashtara?”

“The terms of her curse were vague enough to leave me toiling, and the conditions it damned me to make it harder to achieve.” His hold tightened, frightening me for a fraction of a second until he released me entirely, rising back up. “I feel that this conversation has become uneven.”

“How so?”

Trailing his fingertips over my arms once more, he made gooseflesh spread across my body like a cool breeze on a summer night. “Tell me what happened.”

Coming back to myself, I ripped my arms from his touch, crossing them over my chest. “What does it matter?”

“It matters to me,” he stated with such sincerity, I couldn’t help but unwind. “When I asked how you were convinced, I was worried you were forced into this marriage, like the others were. I explicitly ordered the next bride not only be final, but willing.”

“No, that wasn’t it.” I tried not to cry, wondering how Maia fared now. “I chose to come here in someone else’s stead.”

“Your sister,” he acknowledged.

I wiped my eyes, sniffling. “If anything, my father would have gotten angrier had he known what I planned.”

There was no need for any further detail, he understood. “What reason could your father have for treating you this way?”

“Again, what does it matter? It’s not like you’d understand.”

Tamuz came dangerously close, stepping between my knees. “Given what I just shared with you, believe me when I say I understand a lot more than you’d think.”

It made no sense for a god to know the suffering of mortals, in any aspect. Yet his own mother had possibly doomed him to die for not indulging her, and would blame his failure to defeat her on himself. It sounded like a painfully familiar situation, just expanded to stretch across the world we stood on.

“I’m disrespectful, troublesome, and useless. If only I’d been a boy, then my attitude would be in my favor. Instead, I exist to birth some other man’s sons and procure better connections through it, and I can’t even do that right,” I summarized, a smarting mix of the whip-like words Eleil had subjected me to as he shoved me, pulled my hair and struck me. “So, you see, if I hadn’t cheated my sister out of this arrangement, no one would have married me otherwise.”

“I appreciate the attempt at humor, but neither of us is in the position to joke.”

“I’m just expressing that I was not meant for you.”

“The longer I remain in your presence, the less I believe that.” He reached for me, palms up. “You are, by far, the most fearless and fascinating woman I’ve met, and if I ever believed fate was on my side, I would say it sent you to me.”

Breath fled my lungs in thrilling surprise. “Are you saying I could still do what I came here to do?”

“Instead of killing me to achieve it, you could possibly save my life,” he answered. “But there is no guarantee it could work.”

“Then we must find a way for the curse to break, no matter what.” I slipped my hands over his waiting ones, dwarfed in comparison. “What did she say to you exactly?”

“The Moon is not to be set alight once more until you are seen in the shadows,”he quoted.“To be seen as you are and loved for what you are not, only then will your darkness be vanquished and your claim regained.”

This was why he sought his solution in bride after bride. I wasn’t here to be bled out or eaten or the gods knew what else. I was here to liberate this god from his tenebrous prison, and finally have the night sky shift past the void of the new moon.

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