Shades in Shadow Read Online Free PDF Page A

that.
    “What I feel,” he says slowly, careful to keep to partial truths because she will sense a lie, “is…curiosity. For what I can do and how much you’ll let me do. I was a slave for centuries, after all. It’s my nature to test the length and quality of my chains.”
    “ That isn’t your nature.” She shrugs. He can see that through his skin, because his eyes are irrelevant now. “I can’t tell what is. But this much I’m sure of: you’re too damned proud to submit to anyone or anything, even your own self-pity. Even when you have no choice.”
    There is always a choice. From the Arameri vaults, he has stolen a powder made from Oree Shoth’s blood for the day of his own choosing. But it is dangerous to think of these things in Yeine’s presence; gods are uncannily perceptive.
    “You could have told me,” he says, to distract both her and himself. “I wasted thirty years trying to be human.”
    “What’s thirty years to you?”
    Nothing, and they both know it. But…“I wouldn’t have spent them here .”
    Here is the palace called Sky, where he has spent thirty years scheming and striving for victory in a dangerous game that in retrospect wasn’t really all that dangerous for him. He has earned wealth and power and one precious name for himself: Hado Arameri, fullblood, third in line to a crownless throne. With only a few judicious poisonings—or a flick of his will—that throne could be his. But doing so now would be like all his other victories, all his other names: hollow.
    “Every child needs a womb,” Yeine says airily. Which makes no sense, because she has never given birth, and she knows full well that he was never born.
    But then…he had known, on some level, that he was not human. Denial made the process of discovery a slow thing, logic fighting its way through reluctance and completely irrational distaste until even he could not deny the truth. Mortals cut themselves but did not heal in moments. Mortals did not hear wind blowing on the other side of the world. Mortals aged, no matter how fit or well fed. Perhaps this is what she means. The past thirty years have been necessary, a safe stasis in which he could feel himself simple and small before discovering the reality that he is vast and strange. And now, when he can no longer deny the truth, when there are no more illusions to nourish his childish hopes…
    He looks down at the world and thinks, again, how easy it would be to destroy. If he can’t have it, neither should they.
    Then he turns and hops down onto the plank of daystone that is the Pier, heading back into the palace. She says nothing as he brushes past.
    *  *  *
    The god without a name walks around the world for the sheer novelty of it. The underwater parts are better than the aboveground. Sea volcanoes and glowing monsters in the dark are interesting. Humans, alas, hold little mystery for him.
    He enjoys it all, regardless. Going wherever he wants, at whatever pace he wants, for as long as he wants. That part will never grow old.
    When he reaches the coast of the Senm continent again, walking up naked from the sea amid crabs and seagulls, he is unsurprised to find Yeine sitting there on a blanket. Her hair is wet, as though she’s been swimming, and he recalls that her mortal life was spent in a landlocked forest nation. She smiles when he sits down beside her.
    “Why do you bother?” he asks, by way of greeting. “I don’t even like you.”
    She laughs. She’s happier as a god than she ever was as a mortal, but he knows better than to point that out to her. “You don’t like anyone. And why do my little visits bother you? If you really don’t care about them.”
    “Maybe I find them annoying.”
    “Lies. Look at this.” She holds out something, and in spite of himself, he is intrigued enough to look. She’s holding a nautilus; it trembles as it lies in her hands, feebly trying to pump water that does not exist through its hyponome.
    “I watch