Page 39 of Beasts of Briar
She wrinkled her nose, sweat beading her brow. She used a knife to strip away the rough bark of the stalks, then pulled out long, thin fibers.
My gaze traveled to her hands, inflamed and full of sores and blisters. Why would she use nettles for fibers when there were other plants that wouldn’t cause her this kind of pain?
I had so many questions when it came to this strange woman and so few answers.
I stepped forward into the moonlight, and she startled, straightening in her chair. A scowl settled over her features.
“That’s not a very polite way to greet your host,” I noted.
She set her materials on her lap and signed, her movements slow and jerky.“Good thing I don’t care about being polite.”
She winced with each small sign she made.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked.
Her mouth clamped shut as she picked up the stalks and kept stripping them, breaking them open, extracting the fibers.
After a few minutes, she sighed and looked up at me.“Are you going to stare at me all night?”
“It’s my house, and you’re on my terrace,” I reminded her. “This just so happens to be my thinking place. You’re the one intruding.”
She swiped some hair from her eyes.“I was here first.”
“I could make you leave. I could command my shadows to grab you and carry you away.”
Hatred flashed in her eyes. It was a look I was used to. I’d seen it from mortals so many times in my long life. I’d never cared before, but for some reason, I didn’t like seeing it on her face.
I strode forward and dropped into the chair next to her. She studied me for a moment before moving her attention back to her project. When she looked at me, she didn’t stare at the shadows. It was like she was staringthroughthem. Right at me.
I shifted.
It unnerved me. I wondered what such a mortal had been through to not fear the god of shadows.
She winced again, her palm catching on the thorny stalk before she had a chance to strip it with her knife. I wanted to grab her and shake her, to make her tell me why she was doing this. But instead, I did something that surprised me.
“Do you want to hear a story?”
Her head snapped to me, her brown eyes wide and full of suspicion.“Only if I get to pick the story,”she signed.
“Mortals don’t get to make requests from gods. It’s actually the other way around.”
“And I don’t want a fictional story,”she continued like I hadn’t spoken at all.“I want a real one. About your time as a god.”
No one had ever wanted to hear my stories. Not when they had six other gods that were far more interesting, more likable.
“Fine,” I said slowly, thinking about the story I wanted to tell. It took me a minute, and she waited patiently, continuing her work while I thought. I finally spoke. “In all the books I’ve read from your world, I haven’t found a single one that got the origin story of the gods right. Some of you say we were born from the land, from the magic, that one day we sprouted from thin air. But none of that is true. We weren’t created. We made ourselves into gods.”
She stiffened at that, but kept working, gaze trained on the fibers she pulled from the plant.
“We were once mortal, you know. We had all been on a ship together, along with a hundred other people, fleeing our war-torn land. Our ship wrecked, and the seven of us washed up on the shore of a new land that we’d never seen nor heard of. Almost like it appeared out of thin air, right when we needed it to. We immediately felt something different about this land. It had a power none of us could deny. So we went searching for the source. We didn’t just find one source, but seven. Seven weapons. I don’t know if the land saved us from that shipwreck, chose the seven of us, maybe? All I know was that there were seven weapons for seven people.”
She plucked a new stalk from the basket and made quick work of shaving off the outer layer, head slightly tilted toward me.
“The weapons were all embedded in stone,” I continued. I still remember staring at the weapons in awe. The way they glowed, the way this glittering dust covered them and the stones. “We each instinctively went to one. I was drawn to the dagger. I could hear its whisper.Choose me.So I did. I never realized how much I would come to regret that choice.”
She turned and peered at me now, curiosity filling her gaze. Like she was trying to figure me out as much as I was her.
“And?”she signed.“What happened after you claimed the weapons?”
