Page 75 of Mortal Things

—but my voice falters at the sight of a newcomer.

It’s Thorn, his shadow stretching long across the floor.

He’s clapping in my direction, the sound echoing through the atrium, but the look on his face is harsh with fury.

“Raven,” he says, although his face is turned toward me. “Perhaps I’ve been too cynical toward your little protégé. She’s much more like you than I thought.” He shrugs. “Of course, it’s a shame we’ll never know how she’ll perform as a god.”

The hairs rise on the back of my neck as he approaches me. Raven, too, seems tense, taking a few steps in my direction as the god of Lies draws near.

“Your Regent is gone,” Raven tells him. “You’re too late.”

Raven’s words are like an arrow to my chest. Gone. Because of me.

“I don’t need him,” Thorn says, casting a look of disgust toward the tree before turning his attention to me. “I told him not to underestimate you during your final test. And he still decided to let you in. Fool.” He shakes his head. “Mortals are always so useless when it comes to love.”

Love. Étienne must have guessed what I would attempt to do—and he had let me do it anyway. He had let me claim his soul, because the alternative would have been to make me fail my test. To hand me over to Thorn.

We had both been pawns for our gods, two immortal beings warring over the power inherent in my soul.

I stare at Raven and try to come to terms with the fact that Laine was his Harbinger. Perhaps she still is. Perhaps she’s watching all this unfold from somewhere I can’t see. Does she care? Did she ever care? How could she have kept such a lie for all those years, laughed with me and linked arms with me and walked with me through the streets, sat with me on the kitchen counter of her home and shared her favorite books with me and sang Christmas carols with me? How could she have gone up to me on that rainy afternoon in front of my old school, her eyes merry and genuine?

Thorn laughs a little at the rage on my face. He stops a few feet away from where I crouch, then nods at Raven. “She’s quite unhappy with you,” he says to my patron god. “I take it that she knows the truth?”

There is a lethal quality to Raven’s movements that I recognize from years of serving him, as if he is preparing to attack. I feel myself tense at the sight. “You are not welcome here,” he says to Thorn.

Thorn’s smile turns menacing. “You think you can play deception with me, of all gods? You think you can take the first light from me and keep it for yourself?”

“And what would you do with the power of the first light?” Raven says. “Eternity for yourself? A consolidation of power?”

Thorn chuckles. “Look at you, still playing at being noble. You are the most dangerous sort of god, the kind who tricks mortals like her.” He glances at me with an almost piteous look. “You tell yourself that humans deserve better, so you manipulate and deceive them, you kill the Regents of other gods so that they cannot become the next immortals. You take their powers for yourself. And you call that benevolent?”

I look quickly at Raven. His expression doesn’t change, but he doesn’t deny Thorn’s accusations.

I blink at him. “You killed them? Terran? Soren?”

Raven meets my stricken gaze. “I spared them,” he replies. “They will never know the anguish of a soul eternally hungering for the mortal world.”

Thorn laughs bitterly. “He devoured their mortal souls, little girl. To strengthen himself, and to frame me in the process.”

That must mean it was Raven who corrupted the Wraiths, had unleashed their hunger upon Terran and Soren.

“But—,” I say, faltering. “That night, when the Wraiths attacked me—”

“The Wraiths’ hunger is its own beast,” Raven says darkly. “I told you to return to me that night, to keep you safe. But you disobeyed me.”

My defiance of Raven’s order had put me in the Wraiths’ paths, and they had attacked me as surely as they were systematically attacking other Regents. Raven had used everything within his power to heal me from the poison of their bite. If I had died, I would have taken the power of my soul with me. I couldn’t have become his Regent, a weapon for him to wield.

I push myself to my feet. When Raven looks my way again, I try desperately to find a glimpse of compassion in him. He couldn’t possibly have betrayed us all like this. Can he sense the anguish in my heart? Does he regret doing any of this to me? Does he know that I’m remembering the way he had saved me from the Wraiths, how he had shown me his past, how he had asked me to become his Regent?

All of it had meant nothing. All of it had been an immortal’s pretense at mortality, some shadow of his former self.

I look at Raven. “Is that it?” I demand. “Why do you want me, anyway? More power?”

“I’m tired of evil being allowed to exist simply because this is the way the world ought to work.” Raven narrows his eyes at me. “What purpose is a god, if not to prevent that?”

I shake my head at him. “You’re supposed to be better than us.”

“Do you even know what that means?” A note of deep rage enters his voice. “Mortals are such contradictions. Every story that comes from your world speaks so poetically about good triumphing over evil, that the wicked will receive justice and that the righteous will prevail. Every lesson you teach yourselves is to be kind to others, to empathize, to love.” He looks down at me in disgust. “You mortals feed yourselves such beautiful stories about your goodness, when in reality you do nothing but disprove them. Why doesn’t your reality match up with your stories?”