Page 70 of Daughter of the Dark Sun
“She is a god, Little Cub. She is our Goddess, our Mother. We live in the land of sun and sand, but our hearts lie in the West. We will return one day. I promise, my sweet son.”
“Therat! Therat, you mustwake now! Come, listen to your Little Siren, follow my voice.” The rough, jagged voice of Mireithren cut through the crushing weight of nothing.
Something warm touched Therat. A hand? His hand? Did he have a body? He only existed as a concept, floating through the endless void.
Another touch.
Yes, it was his hand.Hishand. He was alive, somewhere in the world.
With a gasp, Therat opened his eyes, a shudder running the length of his body. Mireithren held him in her arms on the forest floor, her lips pressed against his neck. The warmth of her breath chased away the lingering cold.
“There you are,” she breathed into his ear.
A dull ache spread across his forehead. Therat lifted both tattoo-covered hands and rubbed his temples in an attempt to relieve the growing pressure. The words of the Guide unlocked a memory shuttered away for twenty-one long, torturous years.
He was one of the Eásiri, like Mireithren. Descendants of the gods and the first five Eásiri, the sons and daughters of the Goddesses Aslyren, Ohéna, and Myrniar. And the Siren of Shadows, Eithranren.
The Goddess his Mireithren says she talks to.
The Goddess he cursed thousands of times in his life.
What other memories did his parents’ murder rip away? Therat realized he had no idea what he wanted besidesMireithren. Searching for his identity, his purpose. Anything to make sense of why he was given a strand of life from the First Harmonic. It didn’t seem so crazy now, the idea of Mireithren hearing a Goddess, of healing the world and restoring the gods.
“Mireithren,” he whispered at long last. “I-I, I’m…” He could not find the right words.
She ran one hand through his beard, now thick with curls after their time traveling. Her soft touch helped ease the confusion inside. His world fractured with the Guide’s words, the ground giving out beneath him. But she would be his firm island in the chaos of life, anchoring him to reality and what he knew.
“I always knew there was something divine about you,” she said. “How does it feel, to remember?”
“Overwhelming. Relieving. World-ending. I have never known why I had the curse of walking with shadows.” Therat paused for a breath, letting the crisp forest air linger in his lungs. “The thing I’ve hated the most is a Goddess.MyGoddess. I told myself I hated them and shunned the idea of fate. I would never serve such a power that would let my parents die. What a fool I’ve been. Made a mess of my entire life when my mother told me the only thing I needed to know. Eithranren will guide me true, yet I turned my back on her.”
“I cursed my Lady’s name every night, would look up at the moon and scream and cry and wish for it to fall from the sky and end the world. You’re not a fool, Therat. Don’t you see what the world has done to us? It is their fault, not ours. All of these fucking lies and delusions, thousands of years spent to bury the truth of what they did toourGoddess.” Mireithren’s eyes gleamed as she spoke, rage burning. They glowed in the dim forest light.
“What are we to do?” Therat asked, intoxicated by his lover’s gaze.
“We find our kin, then we make the world pay.”
thirty-three
The Watching Sword
Mireithren couldn’t take hereyes off the slumbering form of Therat. His crown of black curls rested against her hip, eyes twitching throughout the night. Soft moans and half-uttered words reached her ears throughout the night. He was restless. Dreaming of his parents, remembering more as the tangle of shadows obscuring his childhood lifted. It put a smile on Mireithren’s face. He needed to remember.
The voice of the Guide inside her mind lingered.
Once, I remember seeing your face. ‘She will come,’ Sera Aesiri told me with her fading breath before the void closed and her light left our world. Take him, he must remember who he is. The sacrifice must be made, you cannot turn away now. You know this to be true.
Divine blood coursed through Therat’s veins. The blood of Eithranren, who she once cursed and now harbored conflicted emotions for. She had to be missing something. The Eásiri lived as titans after the fallout of the Discordance, blessed with centuries of life and the grace of gods. Why would Eithranren sacrifice one of her children? What did sacrifice even mean?
Mireithren twirled one of Therat’s silky soft curls around her forefinger. They traveled a stranger road than anything she could have imagined. Fated lovers—both Eásiri—one with the blood of the first Goddess, one with the blood of the youngest. Both walking in shadows, scarred and near-broken from a lifetime of rejection and isolation.
Both obsessed with the other. Both unsure if the other would be their doom. Could tainted and broken things ever find their way back to the light?
Why don’t we deserve a chance?
There had to be another way forward. Mireithren could not bring Therat everything he asked for, only to let the shadows tear him apart to restore the world. It was never his fault, nor any of the children of Eithranren. Why should they pay the ultimate price when the world betrayed them first? The Guide spoke true of much, but Mireithren refused to believe everything.
All thought turned to Laisha as the night wore on. The pale woman must have known who Therat was when she sent Mireithren to find him those many years ago. The secret to her long life would be the key to saving Therat. It had to be.
