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“An abomination you would absorb into yourself.” I made a small sound, and Nimue looked at me again. “Yes, child. That is what she plans for you.”
“Enough of thissssssssssssss—” Efridis’ voice began normally, then trailed off, yet it didn’t stop. The last syllable was stretched into seeming infinity, something that . . . was a great deal more disturbing than I would have expected.
“I cannot hold her for long,” Nimue said. “But you must know what she has planned for you—”
“I don’t understand,” I whispered, frightened and confused.
“I know that you don’t! Something that will not change if you do not listen!”
I nodded, and bit my lip to stay silent.
“That device that broke you apart from your more human half?” Nimue said. “That is what she’ll use to weld your soul to what remains of her own.”
“What . . . remains?”
“She has already split her soul, with the same device she used on you, shaving off a small piece of it to take solid form—”
“How?”
“Our souls are not like human’s. They cannot exist separately from a body, to which they are fundamentally joined. Humans leave ghosts; we do not, as soul and body are one. Shaving off a piece of our soul, therefore, regenerates a body. Thus allowing Efridis to die ostentatiously on your world, yet still live here.”
“But . . . why?”
“She wanted everyone to believe that she was dead, so that her brother, Caedmon, would not search for her. She had kidnapped and tried to kill him, hoping that her son could take his throne and that she could use her brother’s armies against Aeslinn. She hates and fears her husband—she told you that true enough—and with Caedmon’s forces at her back, she would have a chance to destroy him.
“But her attempt to take his throne failed, and she knew he would be hunting her. She therefore staged her death, gambling that, as distracted by the current war as he was, he might accept that story for the moment, leaving her time to do this.”
“And what is this?” I asked, my head spinning. I did not know if Nimue was telling this badly, or if I was simply too tired to take it in. But I did not understand anything! Something she seemed to realize.
“Calm down, girl, and I’ll explain. I forget: things that are common knowledge to us are unknown on your world. I—” She cut off abruptly, and her hand clutched her abdomen for a moment.
“Is something wrong?” I asked, putting a hand on her arm.
“Of course, something’s wrong!” The blue-gray eyes glared up at me. “I’m dying.”
Chapter Forty-Two
Dorina, Faerie
“Dying?” That did not make sense to me. How could such a being die? But then, how could such a being age, and in such ways?
I remembered the amazing creature I had seen on the river, and for some reason, I felt like weeping.
“Save your tears; you’ll need them for yourself,” Nimue said. “What Aeslinn did to me, his bitch of a wife wants to do to you.”
“What did he do?”
She thought about it for a moment, as if trying to come up with words that I would understand. “The gods were energy beings,” she finally said. “They battled other species and absorbed their energy into their own. What the old legends often forget to mention is that
they didn’t merely do it to outsiders, demon lords and such. But that they cannibalized each other, as well.”
“They . . . cannibalized . . .”
“In war, when a god was overcome, he could expect to have his essence torn apart and absorbed by the victor. Energy was too precious to waste, it was thought, and they could often absorb another’s abilities along with their essence, thereby making themselves stronger.
“But when they came here, to Faerie, and began to experiment with our people, they discovered that we did not work the same way. We were restricted by our bodies, whereas they could take any form they wished—”
“Zeus and the shower of gold,” I said, remembering a strange story I had heard once.
