Ash chuckled. “You wouldn’t, would you?”
I grinned as I tugged the edges of the throw up to my chin. “I am particularly talented at engaging in bad ideas.” I cleared my throat, searching for something to say. “I met Rhahar and Bele today.”
“I know.”
My brows lifted as I looked over my shoulder at him. “How?”
“I saw you briefly when I returned to check in with the guards. I was busy but still fully aware of where you were. Who you were with. When you left.”
“Well… That sounds creepy.”
“I also talked to Rhahar and Bele.” He shifted forward enough that the starlight caressed his face. There was an amused tilt to his lips.
His lips were so expressive. “I also learned something interesting from them today.”
“About the bets the gods of other Courts are taking?” Ash asked.
I sighed. “Yes.”
“They shouldn’t have told you that. Both Rhahar and Bele often speak before they think.”
“Well, since I am well familiar with that, I can’t hold it against them,” I said. “Where has Bele been? Aios reacted as if she had been gone for a long time.”
“She is a bit of a huntress. Of information. She has a knack for moving about unseen, so she is usually in other Courts, attempting to uncover information that may be useful.”
“Useful for what?”
“You have a lot of questions.”
“You have a lot of answers.” I eyed him. “Is she someone who helps get the Chosen out of Dalos?”
“She is,” he confirmed.
I mulled that over. “Do they know about the deal your father made?”
“They don’t, but I am sure they suspect that not all is as it seems.”
I nodded slowly. I imagined anyone who knew Ash would have questions about him randomly appearing with a mortal Consort. “How did things go at the Pillars? Were there souls you had to judge yourself?”
“There were, and things went both good and bad. It’s never easy making that choice. Life is important, liessa, but what comes after is an eternity. I know many believe that things are black and white. That if you do this or that, you will be rewarded with paradise or punished.” He lifted his hand, brushing back a strand of hair that had fallen against his cheek. “It’s never simple. There are people who do terrible things, but that doesn’t always mean they’re terrible people.”
I twisted toward him, drawing a leg up onto the daybed. “You can say that because you see the soul exposed after death. You would know.”
“I do, but I still see the taint of whatever they did. It overshadows a lot of the good, but some exist in a shade of gray where they are not as easy to judge as the person who prays to the gods to end the lives of others would be.”
My brows lifted. “People pray for that?”
“I have lost count of how many times someone has come to the Shadow Temple, summoning a god to cause death upon another. I…” He exhaled slowly. “There was a time that I would answer those summonses.”
I stilled. Gods often answered summonses, but he must have been like his father.
“I would enter the Shadow Temple and hear the words mortals spoke. Listen to the favors they requested—the lives they wanted to end. I knew immediately that some were bad. Spoiled and rotten to the core,” he told me. “They asked for death for profit or because of some petty slight. Their motives were a pestilence, one I knew I couldn’t allow to spread. They didn’t leave the Temple.”
My fingers loosened on the blanket. I had a feeling I knew why they didn’t leave.
“And then there were others.” His fingers had stilled, but they were stiff. “Those who asked for the death of another because they sought relief from a brutal employer or an abusive father. Some who were pushed to their breaking points and saw no other option because there was none. Even if those people didn’t harm another, the intent was still there. Should they be punished? Should they be treated differently? What of those who kill to protect themselves or another? They are not like the others, but their crimes are the same.”
“How…how do you know what to do?”
“All I can do is look at their life as a whole. And each time I sentence a soul, I always wonder if it was the right choice. Was I punishing someone who didn’t deserve it? Or was I letting someone off too easily? I ask that every time, even though I know I will never have an answer.”
“I can’t imagine making that choice,” I admitted. “What did you do for the ones you answered? Those asking for the death of another because they were being hurt?”
“I did not make a deal with them. I do not ever make deals. But I did grant the favor they sought.” A muscle clenched along his jaw as he stared ahead. “I found the person and ended it. I told myself I didn’t enjoy it. That I was removing evil from the realm.”
“But that wasn’t true?” I asked. “You did, but not in a…perverse way. You enjoyed the justice. The knowledge that they could never hurt another person, and you were the one making sure of that.”
His gaze slid to mine, and he nodded. “An odd thing for you to know.”
The blanket slipped down my arms, gathering at my elbows. “Why did you end up stepping back?”
“Because the deaths stopped leaving a mark,” he answered. “And I started to enjoy it, especially the moment they realized exactly who I was that either answered their summons or visited them in their home. The realization as it dawned in their eyes that not only would I take their life, but I would also have their souls for eternity. That’s when I stopped—when I stepped back and let the gods answer the summonses. Rhahar normally does it now.”
I sucked in a shaky breath. “How…how did you know it was getting to that point?”
He didn’t say anything for a moment, but I felt his gaze on me. “It’s not something you can put into words. It’s something you just know.”
Just something you know. I tugged the halves of the blanket together, words crowding my throat. “Are you reading my emotions now?”
“No,” he answered. “Should I be?”
I shook my head, not even wanting to know what he would pick up off me. I wasn’t even sure what I was feeling. “I’ve killed.”
Ash said nothing, but I felt his stare on me.
“Mostly men. Not good ones.” The words were rough against my throat. “Abusers. Users. Rapists. Murderers. I never set out to do it. Like I didn’t wake up one day and decide to take someone’s life. I helped my stepsister retrieve endangered children, and it would just…happen. Or sometimes my mother—”
“Your mother?” Those two words fell like icy rain between us.
I nodded. “She used me to send messages—the kind that wouldn’t be considered an act of the Crown.” I knew there was no reason to share any of this. I doubted it would help me, but it felt like a seal had been cracked open deep inside me, letting out words I’d never given life before. “I mean, it’s not like I didn’t have control of myself. I did. I know that I sometimes let it escalate to the point where I convinced myself it was necessary.” I thought of Nor. “That it was self-defense. But to be honest, I wanted to end them. To hand out justice.” A curl fell forward, lying against my cheek as I shrugged again. “The funny thing is, I wondered if you knew. Did you?”
“I didn’t,” he told me, and I wasn’t sure if that made me feel better or worse. “Being the Primal of Death doesn’t mean I know who takes a life and doesn’t when they are alive. It doesn’t work that way.”
I nodded slowly. “Sometimes I wonder if something in me enabled me to do it. You know? Because not everyone can. My stepsister wouldn’t be able to. I don’t even think my mother could. And I wonder if that is because of the deal—how I was brought up. Or is there just something wrong with me that is all me—this ability to shut off my emotions and coldly take a life? Was it always in me?”
“What do you mean by how you were brought up?”
“Being trained to defend myself,” I answered smoothly because that wasn’t necessarily a lie. But it was a warning that I could be revealing too much. Still, more words rushed to the tip of my tongue. I couldn’t even blame whiskey for it this time. “I don’t know if I ever felt those marks you spoke of. Sometimes, I think I did, but then I would make myself not think about what I’d done. And it was easy to do that. Maybe too easy. I felt like…I felt a little like a monster.”
