Page 40 of Beasts of Briar
“Well maybe that’s a story for another night.”
She glared at me.“That wasn’t a story.”
“Are you an expert storyteller, then?” I asked, lips twitching.
“My father was. He told the most wondrous stories. He could weave beautiful pictures and paint entire worlds with his words. My brothers and I would listen to him for hours. I miss his stories. I miss stories in general. And yours was lacking.”
We stared at each other for a minute before she looked back down at the stalk, split open, fibers spilling out. Was. She’d said ‘was.’ She’d also said she missed him. So her father had likely died. Maybe her brothers had died too. Maybe she was all alonein this world just like me. For whatever reason, that just made me want to keep talking to her.
“I don’t like to talk about what happened next,” I said slowly. “Ragar, who you know as Spirit Fire, and Uruth, Spirit Frost, got into a fight over their weapons. Whose was most powerful. Ragar drove his hammer straight into Uruth’s head. The rest of us watched, horrified as Uruth’s head split wide open, then melded back together. And that was how we discovered we were immortal. None of us could die.” I swallowed. “After that, things spun out of control very quickly. It turns out immortality changes people.”
“That sounds awful,”she signed.
I raised a brow. “Do you know what people are willing to do to gain that kind of power?”
“I can imagine. But they’re fools.”
“Oh?” I asked.
“Immortality is just another form of being trapped.”She stared out at the stars, lost in her own thoughts, and it felt like she was speaking the words more to herself than to me.
She was right. I’d never felt more trapped, less alive, than I did after I became immortal. But I didn’t know how she could know such a thing.
“You speak as if from experience. What would you know about immortality?”
She quickly shook her head, bending over and grabbing another stalk from her basket.“I don’t. I just can’t imagine not being able to age, being stuck in time for eternity. Never knowing the joy of growing old and experiencing life from new perspectives, appreciating it even more because it’s not forever. It’s something you have to cherish.”
I swallowed. I’d never heard humanity described like that, but suddenly, I wanted it. I wanted to feel the things she was saying.
“The gods always pitied mortals,” I said with a soft laugh. “They thought humanity made mortals weak. I always thought it made them even braver, more courageous. Because they lived so loudly, so vibrantly.”
She turned to me, and the moonlight lit her pale skin with a silver hue.“I think you’re the ones who should be pitied. It sounds like a very lonely, very empty life that you’ve lived.”
It was true. Everything she was saying, but I couldn’t understand why she felt that way. It didn’t align with what I’d learned of these mortals. “What do you have against the gods?” I asked. “Your people revere us. I’ve seen it in your texts, your books, your drawings. Why should you be any different?”
“Not everyone,”she said, gaze still meeting mine.“Some of us see the gods not as something to respect or fear but as something to be wary of.”
Those words, her countenance, it was all so damn familiar. The more I spoke to her, the more I felt like I knew her. But how? It wasn’t possible. I scrubbed a hand down my face, scattering the shadows around me for a moment before they closed around me again.
“Whose shadows are those?”she asked.“The ones always surrounding you?”She reached out and trailed a finger down one of the shadows.
No one had ever asked me that. No one had ever cared to know. They saw the shadows and didn’t want to become one, so they stayed away.
“These shadows were my punishment,” I said, the words coming out before I could stop them.
Her eyebrows pinched together, and the memories flooded me. Memories of screams, terror, blood. So much blood.
I stood, looking down at her now empty basket. “Looks like you’re done for the night.”
Before she could ask any other questions, before she could draw out any more memories too painful for me to face, I flew up into the sky and far away from her.
Chapter Twenty-Four
YEAR 203, ERA OF THE GODS
I’d always heard of the gods’ elaborate parties. They held them in their temples and invited powerful mortals, their most ardent followers, their lovers, and sometimes, they’d even extend an invitation to other mortals who weren’t famous or powerful.
I’ve never been to a party until last night, and it couldn’t have gone worse. Khalasa has managed to hide me from the other gods for two full years. She told me it was important the other gods didn’t know about me, that they used each other’s lovers as pawns in their games. Uruth’s mistress was turned into a cactus by Aetheria simply because she’d supposedly given the goddess of earth a dirty look.
