Page 488 of Kingdoms of Night

“Don’t get angry, please.” I busied myself with the book, flipping back to a chapter on harnessed sunlight. “I have a few theories that may prove risky, but could outdo the terms of the curse.”

“Why would I be angry?”

“Because—because—” I became breathless, unable to explain my panic. The reality of this being a god, who should by all accounts be far worse than my father, and other men along the palatial ladder of power, had me anticipating behavior just as bad. If not unimaginably worse.

The fact that I’d yet to witness it didn’t mean it wasn’t there, lying in wait like a lion in the long grass.

Tamuz reached for me with determined slowness, as if offering me the chance to escape his grasp. I didn’t. I stood there, awaiting his touch with bated breath that I couldn’t name yet. Was it the dread of a cornered animal, or the anticipation of his touch?

Gently squeezing my upper arms, thumbing my shoulders, he whispered, “What can I do to prove that you have nothing to fear from me?”

“I’m not sure that’s possible.”

“You’re underselling yourself, as you are the bravest to share my presence.”

“Bravest of your brides?”

“Of anyone. People who knew me before can’t make eye contact with me now.”

“That’s because we don’t know where your eyes are,” I joked feebly, eliciting a chuckle from him.

“You do. You’re looking into them right now,” he said, soft and fond. “Which tells me that your fear is not directly from myself, but something else. Otherwise you would be shivering under my touch.”

He was right. If anything, I was enjoying the soothing circles his thumbs drew on my flesh and the cooling press of his fingers around my arms. Despite his proximity being terrifying in concept, I felt calmer now.

“Bright light seems to obliterate darkness, so I want to try burning the shadows off you,” I blurted out. “It seems a far more efficient solution than me seeing you in the dark.”

Even though I did see more of him now than I did at the altar.

The awaited outburst of paranoid rage never came, he just hummed pensively. “I can’t be seen in sunlight, it does burn more than my prison.”

“But you were out on yourbashmuwhen I fell.”

“I emerged from my shade when I heard you fall past my window.”

Thoughtless with concern, and aimless gratitude, I mirrored his touch, reaching up the arms I could now perceive the expansive stretch of his shoulders. “Are you burned here?”

What was I doing, feeling for burns? It didn’t seem to matter, as he lowered to allow me further access to his unclear form. In my uncoordinated patting I brushed the bony, leathery tip of something growing out of his back.

“You have wings,” I gasped, feeling the spine-like bones stretching the smooth skin apart. “They’re not in the same place as the others.”

“They’re separate from my arms, yes.”

Could this be how I saw him in the dark, just by feeling all unseen parts of him?

That brought me back to Suzianna’s response, of how she would display her love by bedding the man of her affections. I would first need the love potion for that, just as many an arranged marriage required.

“How come yours are placed differently than the—what do people here call themselves?” I asked. “If I am a human of Earth, then what are they?”

“Nannuri of Mahala.”

“What does that make you then?”

“Something in between, as I was the result of the union between a celestial goddess and an earthly king,” he said, unenthused by that fact. “My wings were a gift from my grandmother when I came to join her here.”

Depictions of his mother always had her with vulture wings, and sometimes their feet as well. I had to wonder how much of it was true.

“You said you’d tell me about their past over dinner,” I reminded him. “Is that offer still open?”

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