Page 97 of Mortal Things

“You don’t belong in a world of lies,” Raven says to me.

I stare back at him, his presence and command overpowering me, and nod. I kneel before Silk in the dirt and place my hand on his chest.

He says nothing. His heart pulls back from my touch.

What do you believe in, Rose?

I close my eyes and I see the car again, the rainy afternoon, the eyes of my mother through the side mirror.

It is the believing that matters.

It doesn’t matter if you believe in a higher power, in science and logic, in an immortal world. Believe in your mortality, your own capacity for goodness regardless of an immortal guidebook. Believe that there is a story happening in everyone you pass. Believe in your ability to change things with your mortal hands. Believe in humility, that there is beauty in accepting that we may never understand everything. Believe that each of us deserves to be alive, that mortal things are small and insignificant and rare and precious. Believe that a mortal soul is a thing of power, worthy of protection. That, in this sense, all mortals are divine.

Something awakens deep within me—that eternal strangeness, the knot of emotion that I could never quite untangle, the feeling that I don’t belong. Now I know. It is the thread of first light in my soul, the first spark that ever existed, the source of everything, of life itself. It is the reason why Raven had chosen me, why the gods had ever taken an interest in me, why I’m here now.

It is the power that others have always wanted to control.

I feel it loosen now, turn bright, fill the cavity of my chest. It is an unknowable, all-powerful, indescribable feeling, and in this moment, I am detached from my own self, unable to choose the actions that this strange power within me now dictates. It stirs inside me with a life of its own, and for a brief instant, it outshines even the pull of my patron god.

Raven does not speak as I take my hand off Silk’s chest, then push away and stand up. He rises to face me—and this time, his hand comes up to curl around the back of my neck. It is a caress, and a shiver runs through my entire body.

His gray eyes search mine, and for the first time, I see confusion in his gaze. An immortal, witnessing something that he cannot comprehend. He studies me as if I am a treasure that he can never have, with a sense of awe and desire that sets me trembling. My hands shake at my sides, the thread of light in my chest still pulsing, searing me from the inside out, threatening to consume me.

“You can’t have the world, Raven,” I tell him. “It is not yours to claim.”

“I claim you,” he says in a low voice.

Now the light in me is threatening to overpower everything. It pushes against the sheer grip that Raven has on me, and the force of our opposing powers stretches and clashes and breaks against each other like a tide of the universe. I think I will rip apart. I will break. My mortal body cannot withstand this.

It is the believing that matters.

Then, all of a sudden, Raven freezes.

The force of his power against mine wavers, and he blinks, looks at me, through me, at something that does not exist. A scene that he desperately wants to discount but cannot, something so searing that, for a moment, even I believe in it.

He is a young soldier again, back in wartime—except there is no war, no ruined earth of a battlefield. Instead, he’s standing with several other boys, his head thrown back, laughing at one of their stories. He is sitting around a hearth in his own home, listening to his mother read. Beyond their window, there is only gentle countryside and farmers’ flocks, and the sun is starting to set.

Raven releases me and takes a step back. The expression in his eyes now is so yearning that I can barely look at him.

Raven, I’m so sorry. I wish we could remake the world.

And then Silk is here. Étienne. He appears at my side, his eyes narrowed and focused on my patron god. On the illusion he has woven around him.

Silk turns to me. And before I can understand—before I can utter a word—he takes my face in his hands and kisses me.

I lean desperately into it with all my strength. The light in me explodes. Turns into a blanket that shrouds me entirely. I gasp against his lips, unable to bear the sensation, unable to draw a breath. The blanket of light is smothering me, and I don’t know where to go. All I know is the feeling of Silk’s hand on my waist, of his lips against the edge of my mouth.

I open my eyes to catch a final glimpse of Raven, his gaze pained and furious, his jaw set in determination, knowing Silk has tricked him by preying on his greatest weakness. He takes a step toward me, dark with purpose.

But it is too late. The light grows more intense until it drowns everything around us. The forest fades back into the atrium, and then the atrium, too, fades, along with the crimson-streaked Eternal Tree and the spiraling stairs and the night sky overhead. Raven disappears into the light.

All that remains is Silk and me.

“What’s—happening?” I manage to utter.

Silk looks down at me, and in this instant, all I see is Étienne.

An illusion.