Then he stepped back, and as his hands fell away, Nahadoth’s face resumed its ordinary, shifting nature. With this, Naha turned his back on all of us, his cloak retracting sharply to form a tight, dark sheath around him. Itempas might as well not have been there anymore.
But he did not look up at the sky again.
When Itempas mastered himself, he glanced at Yeine and nodded. She regarded him for a long, weighted moment, then finally nodded in return. I let out a breath, and Deka did, too. I thought perhaps even the Maelstrom grew quieter for a moment, but that was probably my imagination.
But before I could digest my own relief and sorrow, Nahadoth’s head jerked sharply upward—but not toward the Maelstrom, this time. The blackness of his aura blazed darker.
“Kahl,” he breathed.
High above—the same place from which he’d struck down the World Tree—a tiny figure appeared, wreathed in magic that trembled and wavered like the Maelstrom.
Before I could think, however, I was nearly floored by the furnace blast of Yeine’s rage. She wasted no time in deciding to act; the air simply rippled with negation of life. I flinched, in spite of myself, as death struck Kahl, my son—
—my unknown, unwanted, unlamented son, whom I would have mentored and protected if I had been able, whose love I would have welcomed if I’d been given the choice—
—did not die. Nothing happened.
Nahadoth hissed, his face twitching reptilian. “The mask protects him. He stands outside this reality.”
“Death is reality everywhere,” Yeine said. I had never heard such murderousness in her voice.
There was a shudder beneath us, around us. The townsfolk cried out in alarm, fearing another cataclysm. I thought I knew what was happening, though I could no longer sense it: the earth beneath us had shifted in response to Yeine’s hate, the whole planet turning like some massive, furious bodyguard to face her enemy. She spread her hands, crouching, the loose curls of her hair whipping in a gale that no one else felt, and her eyes were as cold as long-dead things as they fixed on Kahl.
On my son. But—
Nahadoth, his face alight, laughed as her power rose, even as the inimical nature of it forced him to step back. Even Itempas stared at her, pride warring with longing in his gaze.
This was as it should be. It was what I had wanted all along, really, for the Three to reconcile. But—
—to kill my son!
No. That I hadn’t wanted.
Deka glanced at me and caught my hand suddenly, alarmed. “Sieh!” I frowned, and he lifted a hank of my hair for me to see. It had been brown streaked thickly with white; now the white predominated. The few remaining brown strands faded to colorlessness as I watched. It was longer, too.
I looked up at Deka and saw the fear in his eyes. “I’m sorry,” I said. And I truly was, but…“I never wanted to be a poor father, Deka. I—”
“Stop it.” He gripped my arm. “Stop speaking, stop thinking about him. You’re killing yourself, Sieh.”
So I was. But it would have happened anyway. Damn Enefa; I would think what I liked, mourn as I wished for the son I had never known. I remembered his fingers on the back of my neck. He would have forgiven me if he could have, I think, if forgiveness had not been counter to his nature. If my weakness had not left him to suffer so much. Everything he’d become was my fault.
There was a crack of displaced air as Yeine vanished. I could not see what followed—my eyes were not what they had been, and I seemed to be developing cataracts. But there was another crack from high above, a thunder of echoes, and then Nahadoth tensed, his smile fading. Itempas stepped up beside him quickly, his fists clenched. “No,” he breathed.
“No,” Nahadoth echoed, and then he, too, was gone, a flicker of shadow.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
Deka squinted above us, shaking his head. “Kahl. It isn’t possible. Dear gods, how is he—” He caught his breath. “Yeine has fallen. Now Nahadoth—”
“What?”
But there was no time to consider this, because suddenly the space where Nahadoth and Yeine had been was filled again, and we all fell to our knees.
Kahl wore the God Mask, and the power that it radiated was the worst thing I had ever felt in my life. Worse, even, than the day Itempas forced me into mortal flesh, and that had been like having all my limbs broken so that I could be stuffed into a pipe. Worse than seeing my mother’s body, or Yeine’s when she died her mortal death. My skin crawled; my bones ached. All around me I heard others falling, crying out. The mask was wrong—the emulation of a god, extraneous and offensive to existence itself. In its incomplete form, only godlings had been able to feel the wrongness, but now the God Mask radiated its hideousness to all children of the Maelstrom, mortal and immortal alike.
Deka moaned beside me, trying to speak magic, but he kept stuttering. I struggled to stay on my knees. It would have been easier to just lie down and die. But I forced my head up, trembling with the effort, as Kahl took a step toward Itempas.
“You’re not the one I would have chosen,” he said, his voice shivering. “Enefa was the original target of my vengeance. I would thank you for killing her, in fact, but here and now, you are the easiest of the Three to kill.” He stepped closer, raising a hand toward Itempas’s face. “I’m sorry.”
Itempas did not back up or drop to the ground, though I saw how the ripple of power around Kahl pressed at him. It likely took everything he had to stay upright, but that was my bright father. If pride alone had been his nature, no force in the universe could ever have stopped him.
“Stop,” I whispered, but no one heard me.
“Stop,” said another voice, loud and sharp and furious.
Glee.
Even with my failing eyesight, I could see her. She was on her feet as well, and it was not a trick of the light: a pale, faint nimbus surrounded her. It was easier to see this because the sky had grown overcast, stormclouds boiling up from the south as a brisk wind began to blow. We could no longer see the Maelstrom, except in snatches when the clouds parted, but we could hear It: a hollow, faint roar that would only grow louder. We could feel It, too, a vibration deeper than the earth that Yeine had shaken. A few hours, a few minutes; no telling when It would arrive. We would know when It killed us.
Itempas, who had not stepped away from Kahl, stumbled now as he turned to stare at his daughter. There were many things in Glee’s eyes in that moment, but I did not notice them for staring at her eyes themselves, which had gone the deep, baleful ember of a lowering sun.
Kahl paused, the God Mask turning slightly as he peered at her. “What is it that you want, mortal?”
“To kill you,” she replied. Then she burst into white-hot flame.
All the mortals nearby screamed, some of them fleeing for the stairs. Itempas threw up an arm as he was flung farther back. Ahad, beside her, cried out and vanished, reappearing near me. Even Kahl staggered, the blur around him bending away from the sheer blazing force of her. I could feel the heat of her fire tightening my skin from where I was, ten feet away. Anyone closer was probably risking burns. And Glee herself…
When the flames died, I marveled, for she stood clad all in white. Her skirt, her jacket—dear gods, even her hair. The light that surrounded her was almost too bright to look at. I had to squint through watering eyes and the shield of my hand. For an instant I thought I saw rings, words marching in the air, and in her hands… no. It could not be.