Page 73 of Alien God

“You won’t be able to tell me what to do anymore,” I said. “You won’t be able to bark orders at me or confine me to my room. You can’t do anything that would make the Sionnachans think something is wrong between us. You’re supposed to – what is it? Starburn? So, you have to act like you’re in love with me.”

An elated lightness expanded in my chest. I wasn’t the only one who had to play a part in this ruse – so did he. And in doing so, he stripped himself of so much of his hold on me.

A muscle feathered in his cheek.

“I am aware.”

I decided not to get too smug, not to revel in this fact too obviously. I figured there was a good chance that if I annoyed him too much, he could just send the Sionnachans away and then he’d be able to treat me however he wanted all over this castle without a care for who saw.

“What kind of timeline are we working with? Can we go see this council tomorrow?” Now that I knew freedom, and my friends, were within reach, I couldn’t stand to stay here. But Wylfrael brought my hopes back down to the ground quickly.

“Tomorrow? Certainly not,” he scoffed. “I have to be sure you can succeed in your role before we attempt to go before the council at Heofonraed. Your first real test will be seventeen days hence, at the gathering of the gods.”

“Seventeen days? That long?” I asked, deflated. Almost three weeks as his fake wife, and we wouldn’t even see the council until after that.

Wylfrael gave me an odd look.

“You mortals always astound me with how you perceive time.”

“Yeah, well, when you don’t have much of it, you don’t want to waste it. Especially not with the wrong person.” I glared meaningfully back at him, but he merely smoothed a hand over his hair, unruffled.

“There are many things you do not understand that I must weigh in this,” Wylfrael said, lowering his hand. “Many things that I must balance. I cannot rush this – we must both be ready. But I also cannot wait too long. There are certain signs that could eventually appear and prove that I am not truly mated.” He looked down at his glowing arms and then back at me. “I also do not want to give Rúnwebbe too much of a chance to gather whispers about our plans.”

“Who’s Rúnwebbe?” I frowned, looking around the space, suddenly fighting the feeling we were being watched. “What do you mean by whispers – can she hear us? Is it someone in the castle?”

“That is not exactly how it works,” he said. “She cannot hear us, and no, she is not here.”

“Then how would she learn about our plan?”

“Every action, every word, every whisper of every living being sends out signatures of energy into the cosmos,” Wylfrael explained. “Rúnwebbe catches these echoes of energy in her web, and she constantly sorts through the threads, absorbing all that knowledge. But she has thousands of worlds’ worth of whispers to comb through every moment. She has to find where a whisper is woven to understand it, to learn what has happened somewhere out there. Even if her web catches whispers of what we’re doing, she won’t necessarily find out right away. And even then, she’d have to tell another stone sky god for it to even matter. Most stone sky gods go to her bearing gifts for their own purposes. I doubt any would go to her to press for information about my mate.”

His voice snagged slightly on the word “mate.” A fierce emotion bolted down his face, but it was gone in an instant.

“So, the webbing you put in my ear that allows me to understand you...”

“Yes,” Wylfrael confirmed. “It was from the web of her world. You should now understand anyone who ever speaks to you, no matter the language. As long as the language existed when that bit of webbing was torn away, that is.”

I shook my head slowly and reached up to touch my ear. What he was telling me was more incredible than anything I’d ever learned in my entire career. The fact that there was an alien being out there capable of sorting through every single happening in the universe without leaving her own planet was astonishing. It also proved that there were even more types of alien life out there, capable of things we couldn’t even hope to comprehend. I continued rubbing my ear, amazed and, frankly, fucking humbled, by the fact I would now be able to understand every single language spoken, not just the thousands of human ones out there, but alien ones too.

This was exactly the sort of thing that had led me into studying astrophysics. The desire to come up against the huge, sublime concepts shaping the universe.

I just never thought I’d end up marrying an alien god to get there...

I met Wylfrael’s gaze steadily.

“When you put the web in my ear, it hurt.”

He tensed, wings twitching, but I continued speaking, not wanting him to interrupt.

“I was angry. Really angry. I mean, I still am. About a lot of things. But, I guess I also want to say, ‘Thank you.’ You may have only given me the web to interrogate me and to make sure I understood all your commands, but even so...” I tapped my ear. “This is a gift. I’m grateful for it.”

Wylfrael looked surprised by my words. Then his face softened, which made me feel completely off-balance.

“You’ll be able to understand some animals, too.”

My eyes widened.

“Are you serious?”

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