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“Why does it work for me?”
She arched an eyebrow, her expression droll. “Why do you think?”
“I do not know. It would not work for Ray—”
“You do know.” She looked at me impatiently. “Come, come, girl. I’m not going to spoon feed it to you.”
I thought this was exactly the time she should be spoon feeding it to me, while she still could. But it would be impolite to say so. “I’m not a girl,” I said instead. “I am more than five hundred years old—”
“And I am more than five thousand. And you do know.”
I glanced at Efridis, who had yet to move. “You said something about godly experiments. I . . . am one of those?”
“No. You are an accident. Your mother was the experiment.” She sighed and slumped a little more against the rock, to the point that she was almost lying down. “Quarrelsome, backbiting, thieving—we were not sired by the better sort of gods.” Her lips curled. “No, not by half. They were constantly fighting each other, and doing experiments to make armies out of whatever they found, to help give them an advantage.”
“Whatever they found?”
“Whoever, would be more polite. But that’s not how they thought, any more than it was how I did, once. People were commodities, tools, nothing more if they were not mine. Only my people were real; only my people mattered. Classic fallacy. We’re all connected. But that isn’t what you asked.”
I shook my head.
“The armies didn’t work out so well, and not merely due to flaws in the making. But also because they ended up fighting other armies, with nothing to show for it in the end but corpse-strewn battlefields. Eventually, someone asked the obvious question: why were they making armies when what they needed was an assassin? A single being with skills so great, and camouflage so perfect, that he or she could go after the real prey: their rival gods.”
“God-killer,” I whispered, and Nimue smiled.
“And so we come to it. It didn’t work, not entirely. But they’d learned a great deal from their experiments, and they came close enough for Artemis to pull the trigger on her own plan—too early. But she had no choice. She had no doubt who they would have sent their assassins after, once they perfected them.
“Thus, she moved against her fellow gods, kicked them out, slammed a metaphysical door behind them. And, afterwards, destroyed their dangerous new prototypes—all but one.”
“My mother.” I repeated what Nimue had said, but it seemed unreal, a foreign word on my tongue. I had never had a mother.
“She hid out here for a time,” Nimue said. “Blending in with the common sort of fey. Then escaped to Earth. No one knew what had happened to her, much less that she’d had a child. Not until—”
“I battled Efridis,” I said, and suddenly understood.
Nimue nodded. “Efridis was always very good with things of the mind. I do not know what she saw in you, that piqued her curiosity. But at some point, she realized that Earth had perfected what Faerie had begun, and given her the weapon she needed to move against her husband.”
“She means to . . . join with me, as I was joined to Dory?” I asked, shivering a little, because the very idea was repellent.
“If that is what you call your other half, yes. But make no mistake, you will have no say in this union, any more than our stolen power gives us a say over what Aeslinn does with it. She would make herself into a god-killer, using your power, and destroy him. But once she has a taste . . .” Nimue shook her head. “It would truly be like the gods had returned. They couldn’t handle that much power, and neither will she. It corrupted them, ah—”
For a second, I thought that she had broken off once more because she was tired. But then I saw Efridis beside her. I jumped slightly, because Efridis was still across the room—for an instant. Before the illusion that had allowed her to sneak up on us faded.
And only this one remained, holding a knife.
It was covered in blood—Nimue’s. The gods bleed red, I thought blankly, staring at it. And then Nimue laughed, a retching sound, but strangely joyous, too.
“You don’t swim, do you?” she asked her cousin.
“What?” Efridis looked confused.
I suppose that wasn’t the reaction she’d expected.
“No, I don’t suppose you do,” Nimue chuckled. “Not ladylike, when you were growing up. And Aeslinn’s lands are so cold. Pity.”
“There’s no water here for you to manipulated old wi
tch, even assuming you had the strength,” Efridis snarled.
