Book 2 The Gods of Light and Liars

Chapter 41: Tempting

"Take it," the Shadow whispered. His voice was hoarse, perhaps with wanting. Or maybe horror.

"Why?" she said. She was pretty sure why. She just wanted to hear him say it.

There was silence between them, instead. Silence, and the orb between them. Then his strange, inhuman eyes flicked to Kaiser, who was laying comatose in the little wisteria arbor some gardener—perhaps Mattias, the Light Archon—had created out of this little corner. "Better you take it than him. I've not enough power to fight you or him for it, so better the more interesting of evils, I say."

She hadn't known what it would feel like to be slapped. Now she thought she did. "Do you want me to take it—"

"I don't want you to do anything with it, but—" he made to rise, and failed. "Besides. I've nothing to defeat Argon with, and he is coming."

"Alright," she said, and grabbed the orb. She wrenched it off the makeshift weapon while the Shadow watched her with hooded, haunted eyes. She still didn't get what made him look so haunted...not until she'd gotten the wretched thing off the sword.

"I wasn't even sure he'd have one of these," she was babbling. "I only knew when..." Shut up before Kaiser hears you! Her conscience howled, but he had to know already. He was watching them. He'd been watching when they'd gotten the Ape's Orb, too. "Take it."

"You've earned that." He made no move to go for it. "And you'd be a better god than they."

Oh. There was the reason for all those long looks. He thought she was going to eat it and become an Archetype herself.

And in the realization came the salt-wet lust for it. Suddenly she wanted to know what it tasted like. She wanted to feel that power surging through her. She could reshape the world here, and then move on to out there, where the real problems were. If she had the power of a Nasheth, she wouldn't waste it by turning people into oak trees and lighting them on fire. She would use that power to fix things—heal the broken ecosystems, erase the effects of climate change, mitigate—

She was nearly lost in it, lost to a lust for godhood, and then she saw, not the Shadow, but Kaiser. Godhood was not notably different than being a billionaire. It just took a bit longer to get what you want. She could not imagine what it would be like to be a God. But she didn't have to imagine what it was like to be a Kaiser. She just had to look across the path, where he stood cowering in fear. In a moment he would come out, mask in place, forked tongue weaving elaborate platitudes. But here, now, stripped down to his most basic pattern of self, he was a coward.

She held the Orb out to the Shadow. "I think it should go where it belongs."

It gleamed pearlescent in her hand, her pale palm nearly the same shade. It drew contrast to the rest of her, as did the Shadow's violet hands as he cupped the Orb and paused before removing it from her grasp.

"Do you understand what you're giving up? You could be like them."

"Or like you," she said.

"Me? The God of what? Shadows and mist, there and then gone. Maybe it was once for such as I, but you know the truth of me, misbegotten, god-eaten thing I am. Left only the crust of it, only the rind."

Hawk shook her head. "No, that's not it. That's not you at all."

"You heard 'im. Kali'mar that was," and this got a wry and satisfied smile that was so much like Alex it made her heart hurt. "I only control shadows."

"But shadows aren't a thing," she said, softly.

"Only an absence of a thing," He agreed.

"Which means you have to control the thing to make it absent." She said.