Read Online The Kingdom of Gods by N. K. Jemisin - Free Book Online Page B

course she could, because he was in the room with us, taking shape as the glowing walls went suddenly dark and the air trembled and hushed in reverence.
    “Sieh,” said the Lord of Night.
    I closed my eyes and prayed Shahar would stay silent.
    “Here,” I said. An instant later he was beside me, the drifting dark of his cloak settling around him as he knelt. Chilly fingers touched my face, and I fought the urge to laugh at my own obtuseness. I should have realized at once why I was so cold.
    He turned my face from side to side, examining me with more than eyes. I permitted this, because he was my father and it was his right to be concerned, but then I caught his hand. It solidified beneath my touch, and strength flowed into me from the limitless furnace of his soul. I exhaled in relief. “Naha. Tell me.”
    “We found you adrift, like a soul with no home. Damaged. Yeine attempted to heal you and could not. I took you into myself to do the same.”
    And Nahadoth’s womb was a cold, dark place. “I don’t feel healed.”
    “You aren’t. I could not find a cure for your condition, nor could I preserve you.” His voice, usually inflectionless, turned bitter. It was Itempas’s gift to halt the progression of processes that depended on time; Nahadoth lacked this power entirely. “The best I could do was keep you safe while Yeine sought a cure. But you were taken from me. I had no idea where you had gone … at first.”
    And then his dark, dark eyes lifted to settle on Shahar. She flinched, quite reasonably.
    I had no reason to want to save her, other than my own childish sense of honor. I had taken her innocence; I owed her. And however wrong it seemed to have gone, I had taken an oath to be her friend. So I sat up carefully — not into his line of sight, because that was never safe, but enough to get his attention. “Naha, whatever she did, she didn’t do it intentionally.”
    “Her intentions do not matter,” he said very softly. He did not look away from her. “When you were pulled from me, it felt much like the days of our incarceration. A summons that could be neither ignored nor denied.”
    Shahar made a soft sound, not quite a whimper, and Nahadoth’s expression turned sharp and hungry. I did not blame him for his anger, but Shahar was not like the Arameri of old; she had not been raised to know the ways of gods. She did not realize that her fear could spur him to attack, because night was the time of predators and she was acting too much like prey.
    Before I could think of some way to distract him, the worst occurred: she spoke.
    “L-Lord Nahadoth,” she said. Her voice shook, and he leaned closer to her, his breath quickening and the room growing darker. Demonshit. But then, to my surprise, she drew a deep breath and her fear receded. “Lord Nahadoth,” she said again. “I assure you, I did nothing to … to
summon
Lord Sieh here. I was thinking of him, yes. …” She glanced at me, her expression suddenly bleak, which confused me. “I spoke his name. But not because I wanted him here — quite the opposite. I was angry. It was a curse.”
    I stared at her.
A curse?
But her shift of mood had done what I could not; Naha exhaled and sat back.
    “A curse is much like a prayer,” he said, thoughtful. “If you knew his nature well enough …”
    “A prayer wouldn’t have snatched me from your void,” I said, looking down at myself. The length of my limbs was obscene. My palms were half again as large as they had been! I was meant to have small, clever child fingers, not these monstrous paws. “And it couldn’t have done
this
to me. Nothing should have done this.” Now that Naha had renewed my strength, I could correct the error. I willed myself back to normal.
    “Stop.” Nahadoth’s will clamped down on mine like a vise before I could begin the shaping. I froze, startled. “It is no longer safe for you to alter your form.”
    “No longer
safe
?”
    He sighed. “You do not