Page 81 of Goddess of Light
I swallow uneasily, not sure what he’s talking about. “Okay…”
“This is important,” he says, his voice slipping from its usual melodic cadence and taking on a sense of urgency. “It’s important to me and to you.” He pauses, his thumb running over my lips. It smells like rain. “Haven’t you wondered what it’s like to become one with the universe?”
My heart skips a beat, heat tightening my skin. “Yes,” I whisper, even though I’ve never wondered that. However,nowI am.
“Good,” he says. He nods at the tent, his hand falling away, leaving my skin feeling bereft. “Now, go inside that tent and wait for me. I’ll appear at nightfall. Try not to fall asleep.”
“No promises,” I tell him, though my voice trembles with nerves. I watch as he turns and walks back between the trees, disappearing from view.
What in the realm was that all about?
Wait for him? In the tent?
Become one with the universe?
My brain is starting to go wild. He can’t possibly mean what I think he means, can he?
So, I stand there for a few minutes, staring at the trees. Night falls slowly, the light beyond the canopy still grey. Around the edges of the plateau, a few troops patrol in a single file, but they don’t pay me much attention. Further inward, soft chatter and the crackle of flames drift from the camp.
Eventually, I start to feel the tiredness seep into my bones. It has been a long day, having woken in the middle of the night when the wards failed, battled, and then walked all the way here. I’ve seen too much death, including a God whom I liked very much, whose lost spirit I still mourn.
I crawl into the tent before night falls, and even though I’m supposed to stay awake, I promptly fall asleep, my body too exhausted to hold on.
My sleep is deep and sound until…
“Loviatar,” a voice whispers. It belongs to the Magician, but I’m hearing it as if he’s speaking from inside me. “Open your eyes.”
I open my eyes to darkness, but it’s not the dark of the tent. It’s black and it stretches on forever. I raise my hand, expecting to reach the sides of the canvas, but there’s nothing there.
“Hello?” I say, slowly sitting up. The darkness hums, and light slowly emerges in pinpricks, looking very far away. Too far away to be inside the tent.
Panic claws up my throat. Where the fuck am I?
“Don’t be alarmed,” the Magician’s voice said, sounding from all around me in echoes. “Everything is as it should be. Just relax.”
“Relax for what?” I say, feeling around me, only to find nothing but inky darkness and sparkling stars. “Where am I? What’s happening?”
“You’re with me,” he says. “Just lie back and open yourself. Let me take care of everything.”
“Wait.” I feel around me with my hands, and that’s when I realize I’m not wearing any clothes. “I’m naked. Why am I naked?”
What the fuck is happening?
Silence stretches on before he says, “I can put your clothes back on if you’d like.”
“You took them off? You undressed me?”
“It’s nothing I haven’t seen before, Lovia. I have seen everything and all. But no, I didn’t physically remove them. I just made them no longer exist. You are in a place where articles like those don’t matter. All that matters is you. You don’t even need a body, but it’s better to experience it with one.”
“Experience what?” I cry out.
“Our union,” he says. “That is what you’ve wanted from me, isn’t it?”
I swallow hard, my heart drumming a beat against my ribs. “I—I don’t know.”
“If it isn’t, then you can tell me. I can end this.”
“No,” I say quietly. “I just… Are you talking sex?”