Shades in Shadow Read Free Page B

Sieh says that together we can survive this incarceration; that is how mortals endure. But how can we, when we are only three?”
    We were only Three, and we did well enough, he thinks. But this is uncharitable, because at least he had the totality of himself when he was free. And he understands that for these lesser ones of his kind, these children, three is not enough. It wasn’t for the Three, either, in the end. That was why Enefa came, and why she made them into a multitude, because Three is strong but family is stronger and without her Nahadoth is lost, lost, lost as he never wanted to be again.
    “Enefa,” he whispers for the umpteenth time. Above him, seen through the tendrils of his substance, Kurue flinches. Lost in grief, he realizes only belatedly what this means. It is something Itempas often chided him for: he thinks only of himself at times when he should consider the needs of others. Now he’s hurt her. But Kurue is wise; she knows of the aeons that he spent alone, screaming his loneliness into the empty nothing. Surely she understands that it is not his nature to be considerate? Though he tries. And fails, often.
    He opens his mouth to speak to her again, to try and be a better father, but it’s too late. Time has passed. She’s long gone.
    *  *  *
    “A mistake,” says the boy, who is now an old man. “Inevitable, really. I’m careful, but not perfect. Now it’s only a matter of time.” He’s sitting on the lip of the well, his back to the contained puddle of Nahadoth. He speaks quietly, without inflection, but the room reverberates with his tension.
    “Twelve,” Haan says when Nahadoth says nothing. “Twelve of those so-high are dead at my hands, and the last—my prize—was Lord Arameri’s heir. Lord Arameri thinks it was the girl’s rival that did her in, but it was me. Me .” Haan strokes a hand over his hair, a habit of preening left over from his beautiful boyhood. It’s still beautiful because he has the pride to do it well. “They’ll never find some of the bodies. They don’t even realize some of the deaths are murders yet. But the clues are out there now, and eventually someone will put them together.”
    As such things go. Nahadoth yawns, disinterested, but Haan does not hear.
    “But I’ve left them my grandson.” Nahadoth sees Haan’s smile from a shadowed corner. “He’s beautiful like I was, and such clever coldness! Ah, he’s a fullblood and he knows how to use it. He’s everything I could have wanted, though he doesn’t know who I am, of course. My big boy. I wish I could watch him destroy them all from within.”
    Nahadoth touches his belly, thinking of the children he’s borne. All were difficult. He is creation, generation, but there is something unpleasantly ordered about the production of new life. It must proceed in certain ways, or things go wrong. Enefa was the most skilled at it, and even she made mistakes sometimes; Nahadoth never came close to mastering the art. The only children that survived his bearing were those as disordered as himself. All beautiful in their varied twists and misshapes and misthoughts.
    How terrible, though, to continue only through one’s offspring. Mortals must exist in a constant state of frustration with their own fragility and ephemerality, even within the heavens and hells that they occupy after death.
    (Is Enefa there now? Is she anywhere?)
    And despite the banality of it all, despite the fact that this boy is a petty mortal with petty mortal motivations, Nahadoth thinks, I understand . Perhaps he says it aloud. The boy—Nahadoth’s boy, this man with a wild princess’s soul—seems to hear it. He straightens and abruptly hops off the lip of the well, turning to gaze into it.
    “Nahadoth, I want,” Haan says.
    Nahadoth shivers. It is not a prayer, he reminds himself, so the chains will not tighten. The mortal has simply expressed a desire. He is Arameri. Should Nahadoth not obey? The chains remain