Page 95 of Beyond the Shadowed Earth

With infuriating calm, Tuer picked up the threads of his story. “Raiva made a plan. The gods chose the next Bearer of Souls as she grew in her mother’s womb. In centuries past, the Bearer was given a pendant imbued with Starlight, which she has always used to unlock the doors. But when the doors were sealed, the pendant no longer worked. Raiva planned to draw some of the Starlight from her own soul and put it into the Bearer—into Niren—on the day of her birth.”

The truth was beginning to dawn on Eda with an awful, twisting horror. She thought of the memory she’d seen in the Circle of Time, of Raiva, touching her forehead the instant Eda entered the world. “Raiva didn’t put the Starlight inside of Niren. She put it in me instead.”

“I could see the future, and I knew it must be you who came to me. I sent my Shadow to distract Raiva, to keep her here in the mountain until the day of Niren’s birth had already passed. She went to Evalla on the day ofyourbirth, and she thought—”

“She thought I was Niren.” Eda brushed her fingers across her forehead, and heat pulsed through her. “It was a mistake. All of this was a mistake. I’m not important and I never was. I’m here on the whim of a mad god, who spends centuries weeping over the sorrows of the world instead of getting up andfixing them himself.”

“Child, I told you. I cannot get free. And it wasn’t a mistake. Not really.”

“If Raiva had put the Starlight in Niren, the Circles would be unlocked. The Dead would be free. There would be no tear in the world, no spirits devouring all life. I would be Empress and I would be—”

“Happy?” said Tuer. “But you would not be. Because Niren would not have been free. Unlocking the doors and healing the tear in the world requires something more than merely passing through the Circles, or my Shadow or Raiva would have done it long ago.”

Dread ate away at her. She didn’t want to ask, but she did anyway. “What does it require?”

“Freeing me,” he said heavily.

“And how would one free you?”

The god took a long, long breath. “By taking my place.”

Chapter Forty-Two

“YOU CREATED ME ONLY TO DESTROY ME,” said Eda.

“Little one—”

“You are the spider at the heart of the web, and you lured me here because—and only because—I am so insignificant that my life means nothing to you. It never did. Raiva was too precious. So was Niren. But I don’t matter. I don’t matter atall.I am just a tool. A key. To be used and abandoned and forgotten.”

“Eda.”

Her name in the god’s heavy voice broke her. The knife was hungry in her hand.

“I did not call you here to torment you, but to give you a choice. And so that you may truly choose, I now release you from our deal.”

“Ourdeal,” said Eda viciously. “What deal is it, exactly, that I made?”

Tuer blinked at her. “Your life in service in exchange for being made Empress.”

“I mademyselfEmpress. You didnothing.”

“Perhaps, if you choose to see it that way.”

She looked at the mirrors, and understanding dawned. “My life in service. Mylife.This is what you meant.”

“I have little use for temples.”

She thought of Erris, moldering even now on his throne. She hadn’t specified that she wanted to be Empress for the rest of her life. She thought she’d been so careful. She thought she’d been so wise. “But it wasn’t even you I made a deal with, was it? It was Rudion. It was always Rudion. In the temple, in the ballroom, on the ship, on the mountain. It was never evenyou.”

The god shut his eyes, pain creasing his forehead. “It was me. Always. Because I didn’t have to listen to my Shadow. I didn’t have to let him stroke my ego, make me feel more than mankind, above my duty to them. Everything he has done I am guilty of, from the beginning until now.”

Tuer brushed his fingers along the surface of the mirror before him. “Little one, I would tell you a story. Listen, and understand.

“When the world was young, a god and his Shadow watched as a man stole a seed from the Tree.

“‘How dare he,’ the god’s Shadow whispered in his ear. ‘How dare he stand against the gods, againstyou? He does not deserve to live. He does not deserve to dwell any longer under the Tree.’

“And the god listened to his Shadow, and struck the man down.

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