Page 81 of Daughter of the Dark Sun
“Hmm?”
“The pendant, around your ankle. It’s your mother’s, isn’t it?”
Therat only nodded.
“It is beautiful. I wish I could have met her.”
“Me too,” he replied in a quiet voice. “She always spoke of returning to our home, one day. She said we belonged here, not in the desert. I wonder if it’s what she expected.”
“Hey, Therat?”
He turned to face Mireithren, tears thick in his eyes. He looked so conflicted, torn apart by the Oracle’s words. Mireithren told herself they had to be true, somehow. She and Therat would have a child in exchange for a sacrifice—her life? His? It did not make sense, but she could see no other way forward.
“Let’s forget what the Oracle said for now, okay?”
“So we forget you and I are supposed to fuck until a Goddess is reborn, then go to a war which neither of us are guaranteed to come back from? I don’t think it’s so easy, Mireithren.”
“The Oracle speaks true, she must! She spent nearlyfive hundred yearswith Eithranren. If anyone understands the fragments and whispers leaking through Her prison, it is Amaren.” She forced the rising lump down, choking on the bitter taste of her torment. “I know this is the whole reason why we came here, but I only now started living for the first time in my life. I’m not sure I’m ready to sacrifice it all right now. Besides, you forget we can’t even have children until our twenty-fifth nameday.”
“So it becomes a problem in four months, instead of right now.”
“It’s something! The Shadow-Queen shared her gift of immortality. You cannot tell me you would shun this blessing. I don’t know what to do, Therat! I wake every night in terror, see the Shadow-weave consuming your body, destroying everything about the man I love. You feel it as much as I do, how the music of the gods pushes back the dread, the weariness of the world. I’m trying to save you!”
“And what’s the hidden price for this gift? We let two souls wander in the Void for this,” he gestured wildly around at them. “We are supposed to save ourselves, remember? Is this how we do it? I came here to take control of my life, not become a pawn in someone else’s game! These people are using you, Mireithren.They do not care about you or me, they only care about what they think they know.” Therat’s eyes blazed with anger.
“And what do you think our fate is? We were both born for a reason, Therat.”
Therat stood and walked away, tendrils of Shadow-weave curling around his fists balled at his side. He paced back and forth before turning back, his eyes dark and stormy.
“What if they are wrong, Mireithren? What if I see something different, feel something different? When I saw you in the moonlight our first morning in Oneriath, my heart knew. You are a Goddess, and the only one I’ll ever need. You said it yourself, the voice of Eithranren might not know all. What if these people only know part of the truth as well? I do not think untangling the lies and sorrows of the past is as easy as having a child. Anyone can have a child.”
Therat strode forward, pulling Mireithren up into his arms. He kissed her forehead and looked deep into her eyes. “But not anyone can be you, Little Siren,” he murmured.
“I-I, what are you saying?” she choked out, unable to breathe. The strange tickle in the back of her mind came back. Faint, but impossible to ignore.
“I’m sayingyouare Eithranren reborn!”
Therat’s words crashed down on Mireithren; she fell into herself, drowning under the truth of his words.
“Don’t you understand?Youare theevranenithborn during a black sun, when the moon took domain even in the light of day.Youare the impossible child of divine blood, of the sun and the moon. You walk with the night and command it as if you were its creator, bend the Shadow-weave until even the malice in my heart calms under your touch. It is you, somehow. It always has been.”
Mireithren sank into the chair behind her. It somehow made perfect sense.
The voice she heard came from the void inside her heart, from her fractured mind. How it faded over the years as her father’s torture set it, her screams mixing with Eithranren’s, seared by the weave of the Sun’s music that he thought would purge her of the moon’s curse. Saiya said Eithranren came to her twice: after Mireithren’s birth and once more, when she lay dying in the Slums of Av Madhira. Mireithren felt like she had been in this land before, had echoes and memories of days long forgotten by the world.
Mireithren clung to her chair, trying to keep the world from falling out from beneath her feet. A sharp, high-pitched ringing sounded in her ears, heart beating faster and faster. She sank into the void, going cold around the edges. Reality blurred, the world an oil painting in her vision.
“No, no,” she whispered. “I am nothing, too broken. It doesn’t make sense, I don’t want it to make sense!”
Her whisper grew into a wail. She felt Therat’s warm hand around her waist, another under her knees. She floated through the pain and tears, the world impossible to focus on. Mireithren opened her eyes, trying to see through the thick tears blurring everything.
“Remember when you told me I deserve love?” Therat whispered in her ear, his breath warm against her neck. “Evil is created by our own hands, not borne in our hearts. Why is the same not true for you?”
“I don’t know what any of this is supposed to mean,” Mireithren choked out through the tears. A shadow swam across her vision, darkening with each sob of her broken heart. The void swimming through her soul began to consume her from the inside, pulling her under until the world became black.
“No, fight it! Eyes on me, Little Siren,” Therat said, his thumb and forefinger pulling her chin up. The shadows melted at histouch; she searched for his eyes, those silvery-gray pools of moonlight that only shone for her.
“Therat,” Mireithren strained, unable to find enough strength to continue.
