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PROLOGUE
MORNINGSTAR
Apparitions of her torment me nightly.
The woman won’t give me a moment’s peace. It’s by design, of course. She can’t manipulate me if she doesn’t keep me on the edge, desperate for another taste of her.
She was always cruel, but I loved that about her. I love her still, despite her betrayal.
“Can’t you let up for even a night, beloved?” I grumble as she approaches.
She stops yards away, out of my reach, as always, and stares into the middle distance. What remains of Delerood looms out of the haze, the gray skies lightening to orange as the light of many fires punches through in places. The destruction is just a taste of what’s to come. When I am through, there will be nothing left but ash and pulverized stone, a monument to the futility of fighting me and mine. Most of the people have fled to the sea or abandoned the city entirely. Its few defenders are easily thwarted.
“You don’t have to do this,” she whispers. “This is just a twilight vision. A ‘maybe’. It doesn’t have to happen.”
But it will happen in only a few days’ time. Less, if we make quick work of the huntsmen who continue to harass us on the journey.
I hunker down on the beach beside her, and the sand sinks beneath my weight. It is good to resume my true form again after so many exhausting months masquerading as a Guild ally. As I lay down, I realize how much taller I am than she is, even reclining. Her body once belonged to a wisp of a girl named Bowie Bachette, and that body hardly grew in the intervening years. I have to wonder if shoving Asherah into Bowie’s body stunted her growth somehow. Regardless, her hair falls around her face in snowy, windswept curls. There are shadows under her eyes to match mine, the result of endless sleepless nights. She misses having me in her bed. I know it.
“You know better than that, Asherah. You always knew it would end like this. It is our way.”
“Then make a better way,” she snaps. Her eyes are a bright, icy blue that belies her clear exhaustion. “I know you’re clever. Use your brain to find a peaceful solution to this problem.”
I smile faintly. She’s stopped correcting me at last. She is my Asherah, not their Bowie Peep and she’s embraced the truth of that at last. She’ll fight me regardless, but it’s a cold comfort nonetheless.
“There is no peace, only struggle. We were cursed, remember? There is no home for us unless we make that home for ourselves.”
“By displacing others,” she insists, voice rising in irritation.
“I do what I must.” I shrug.
“Will you kill every last one of them, then?”
“If I must.”
She’s silent for a long moment. When she turns to me, her eyes are shining with tears. I ache to brush them aside, but she will only sap me of strength if I try to touch her now. I need all my reserves for the coming confrontation.
“Even me?”
I have no answer to that. It’s been a recurring nightmare of mine, facing her on the field of battle. She’s the most dangerous of all of them, the one prophesied to defeat me in the end. And unlike the others, I can acknowledge her as my equal. Perhaps even my better. Asherah was once a goddess, now my queen. I hate that she diminishes herself for mere mortals, but it appears there is no changing her. If I’m to win, I know I must kill her. Yet... Yet, I’m not sure I can do it.
“I see,” she says quietly when I fail to respond.
She brushes sand and salt spray from her arms and turns to walk away. I watch her go. She’s almost swallowed by the mist when I call after her.
“Asherah.”
She half-turns to face me, expression open and hopeful. “Yes?”
“I love you.”
“I know,” she says with a sad smile. “But it doesn’t change the outcome, does it?”
“No,” I say with a sigh. “It doesn’t.”
“I didn’t think so.”
Then she turns her back on me, striding forward until she’s swallowed by fire and smoke.
