GRP Chapter 11

She had thought she was about to be torn apart. He possessed a savage energy that you would rarely encounter even from monsters that had lost all reason.

But contrary to how he seemed—as if all his teeth were bared—he simply sat looking at her without moving. She couldn't run. His large body was perfectly still. Those grey eyes were another matter. They seemed to carry in them all the floating energy around him—as sharp as the edge of something unsheathed. It was like seeing a violent current spinning beneath a calm surface.

Show him her back and her throat would be torn out. Drop her eyes and she would certainly die. Mariaeks's instincts in matters of survival were fairly reliable.

But she couldn't simply go on looking at him. This moment might feel suspended—time was still passing. Before long, the man whose thinking had locked in place at the sudden intrusion would start thinking again. The difference in their power was obvious. The reason he wasn't attacking immediately, she thought, was that he was still reading the situation. She needed to move before he reached a conclusion.

With her retreat cut off, there was only one direction to go.

Watching his body and his eyes, Mariaeks stepped toward him. Her options would shift depending on how he responded. But no matter how close the distance became, the man didn't react. He simply sat.

It seemed to Mariaeks that even this powerful hero might be confined within the ordinary framework of humans. No matter how strong—a human was still a human. As Rhaevydie had said.

She had seen powerful humans defer to very weak gods. Not because of strength—because of species. The hierarchy ran on kind, not power. Mariaeks understood well that most humans regarded gods as beings simply superior to themselves. If he wasn't attacking her because of that—because she was a god—then appearing god-like might be the better approach. A god-like appearance. She had some vague sense of what that meant.

And so Mariaeks moved her body—rigid with tension—and brought the dagger to the man's throat.

She understood her judgment had been wrong the moment she saw him smile—his voice dripping with a cloying, saccharine charm.

'Your eyes are pretty.'

A dagger had been lodged in the chest of the man saying that.

The sensation of cutting through dense muscle, through bone, reaching a heart that was beating hard—it was still in her hands. The smell of blood sharp in her nose. The hot, sticky liquid soaking her hand. And the man's face—smiling with the corner of his mouth curved cleanly up—

As if it were someone else's heart that had been stabbed, not his own.

The memory cut off there.

And coming back to herself now: that same man from last night was lying in the same bed as her.

Mariaeks looked at him with his eyes closed. He didn't look hurt in the slightest—he looked better than he had last night. The image of him bleeding felt like something she'd dreamed.

Frost giants thousands of years old died when their core was shattered. Even gods, as a rule, died when their hearts were torn. Mindless monsters feared death.

But he had not died, and he had not feared. Could something like this really be called human?

Mariaeks set the complicated thoughts aside. A pale predawn light was filling the room. When full daylight came, the humans would wake and begin moving. The time she had to rescue Ullri and Baen was shrinking, even now.

She was squirming to free herself from the sheets wound around her when something made her lift her head. Her breath stopped. She met the man's gaze at close range.

How long had he been awake? There was no tiredness in his eyes at all.

'He wasn't asleep.'

The grey eyes in that composed face regarded her steadily. The predawn light had faintly settled into them—they looked like mist on a rainy day, or like a well-sharpened sword.

A chill came involuntarily. Mariaeks's toes curled.

The fortunate thing was that his gaze held none of last night's killing intent.

The man raised his upper body with deliberate slowness. The sheet slid down the lines of his abdomen. He leaned on one arm and sat loose, looking down at her—the posture of someone beginning in earnest to examine something. Mariaeks couldn't move at all. Like an animal in a trap.

"Hm…"

He exhaled, and his hand closed around Mariaeks's slender throat. He wasn't pressing hard—only holding, wrapping around it—but the color drained entirely from her face.

"What on earth is this…"

There was none of yesterday's savage energy. That did not make her feel safe. He looked like someone who could break a person's neck without any killing intent whatsoever. His hand was large and forceful. Hot and hard. It seemed to Mariaeks less like a hand against her throat than a weapon held to it.

Her body locked up with tension.

"What are you?"

The question that had been circling around her was now aimed directly at her. She swallowed against a dry throat—she'd been breathing shallow and fast.

'What am I?' Mariaeks set aside the unflattering descriptors that had immediately come to mind—things like "half-made"—and tried to think of something that would sound adequate. If she appeared to be a great and august god, she thought, he would not harm her easily.

'God of Heimdrykze, the Maker of flowers, the great and beautiful and merciful god of the northern spirits.'

She considered. Which version of herself would seem to stand in the highest, most august position?

She looked into the man's eyes to find the answer. Mariaeks was fairly skilled at reading others' emotions and thoughts. It was a particular awareness that only the weak could develop. But nothing was reflected in the man's eyes. The only thing in those blade-grey eyes was Mariaeks herself.

More time passed. The anxiety tightening around her throat—Mariaeks mistook it for the man's hand pressing harder. The answer came out before she knew she was saying it, unable to bear the pressure.

"…Mariaeks."

An answer she herself hadn't expected to give. He couldn't have been asking for her name.

As Mariaeks slowly steadied her breathing, something passed through the man's eyes—which had seemed, consistently, as cold and expressionless as metal. He looked at her with a peculiar expression, raised one eyebrow, and smiled slightly.

"Is that so. Mariaeks…"

Mariaeks stared at him blankly. The name "Mariaeks" from a stranger's mouth felt entirely foreign.

There were very few who called her by name.

The god who had called her name most had been asleep for a hundred years now. Rhaevydie, whom she met occasionally, called her only "half-made" or "you." Ullri and Baen, who were always at her side, went without saying. To them she was a great god. How could they take the name of a divine and august being into their mouths?

So "Master" had long since been fixed as their form of address. They did occasionally mix in "the most beautiful and great master in all the world."

More than a hundred years had passed that way, and even the existence of her name had been growing hazy.

And this man had called her "Mariaeks." She had not expected that a day would come when a human would speak her name.

But this was not the only thing she had not expected. From the moment she had crossed the frozen river, she could no longer see one step ahead of her own fate. This was not the small temple where she repeated the same routine at the same hour.

What was going to happen now? Would this human ultimately kill her? She couldn't even begin to guess at the shape of the misfortune approaching.

For their own separate reasons, neither of them said another word. They looked at each other. Time passed.

The faint darkness painted over the man's face slowly lifted. The sun was rising. The beginning of a day—which she had always greeted from inside her small room—had come here too.

For a moment, Mariaeks forgot the man's overwhelming presence and turned her head. Sunlight struck hard beneath her eyelashes. She closed her eyes quickly and opened them.

A morning she had never seen before.

Beyond the window, a snow-covered mountain range shining brilliantly white met the morning in silence.

"Good morning, Samthyeon."

Garthe came in through the door and offered the greeting. Samthyeon directed the thick tea he had in his mouth back into his cup in a thin trickle.

"Unbecoming."

Both turned his stomach—the smiling face with which this was delivered, and the handkerchief offered alongside it. Samthyeon furrowed his brow and wiped his mouth on his sleeve with a few swipes, glancing sideways at Garthe. The handkerchief, which had failed its appointed function, returned naturally to Garthe's possession.

Samthyeon looked Garthe up and down.

His condition was never good, ordinarily—but today it was off in a slightly different direction. Garthe watched the suspicious gaze scanning him without any apparent interest, sat in someone else's chair, poured from someone else's freshly prepared pot into someone else's clean cup, and drank it.

Samthyeon's eyes narrowed at the ease of him.

The curse coiled inside Garthe was profoundly vicious. From the moment it manifested until now, it had not left him for a single hour—only grown. Its growth had no ceiling. It didn't know how to age. The curse filling every part of him was already more than enough to bear, but it also periodically woke and turned savage. Like venomous fangs were gnawing at his insides—striking here, then there—a chaotic, internal predation that made every inch of his body a theater for agony.

Yesterday had been one of those days. When the irregular cycle came—lasting two or three days on the short end, ten on the long—Garthe allowed no one to approach whatever building he was occupying. The smile that kept his sharpness and violence concealed would disappear, and what remained was something indistinguishable from a monster that had lost all reason. Anything that irritated him he cut, killed, smashed, or burned.

Which was why this was strange.

Yesterday, Samthyeon had felt Garthe's divine power surging with particular instability. Perhaps sixteen-odd hours—or a few more has passed since then. Now Garthe was savoring his tea with a face that suited warm morning sunlight.