Page 22 of Beyond the Shadowed Earth
She just needed to breathe. “Then perhaps you should come closer.”
And then he was kissing her, his mouth wet and warm on hers. He tasted like the wine they’d been drinking. He tasted like the star-streaked sky. Every inch of her was aware of every inch of him, and she pulled him closer, until his heart beat beside her own, a matched set, pulse for pulse. Her foot knocked against the wine bottle and it went clattering across the roof tiles and smashed noisily somewhere far below.
Eda flung her head back, breaking the kiss. Someone would have heard that. Her fingers were still tangled in Ileem’s shirt.
“Your Imperial Majesty?”
She touched his lips. “‘Eda’ will do just fine.”
He smiled. “Eda.”
She heard that musical cadence in his voice again, and she wanted suddenly, desperately, for him to sing for her. “I have to return to my chambers. Someone will come looking.”
“What if that someone were me?”
Heat poured through her at his implication. “You are not Emperor yet, Your Highness.”
Another smile, a little slyer than the first. “I suppose I am not.”
They climbed down the way they’d come, Eda swaying and stumbling and more than a little drunk. For now, Ileem and the wine had driven thoughts of shadows and ghosts from her head.
She’d only just slipped in through her window and brushed the dust from her knees when an attendant rushed in, dark eyes wide with fear.
“What is it?” Eda asked her.
“It’s the Marquess, Your Imperial Majesty. She’s collapsed, and the physician cannot revive her.”
She beat against the stone with her fists until the skin split, and blood burst bright. She screamed into the dim interior of the half-tumbled-down temple, screamed at the altar and the image of a god whose features had been worn away by wind and time. Her blood dripped down into the dust, and the sun slipped through cracks in the stone, making sweat pool at the nape of her neck.
“Show yourself to me!” she screamed, her small voice cracking. “I call upon the most mighty god of all! I call your name: Tuer! Show yourself to me!”
But there was no answer.
She collapsed on the ground in front of the altar, sobbing. It was all for nothing: her escape from the palace, her long journey home on horseback, the climb up to the old family temple. There was nothing here. She was alone, and she always would be.
“Child of the dust,” said a voice behind her.
She yelped and turned.
A figure stood there, clothed in shadow so dark she could barely make it out. There was a pair of shining eyes somewhere in its depths, and shadow rippled and moved around it like water.
“What god are you?” she whispered.
“I am Tuer’s Shadow—the only piece that is left of him in this Circle of the world.” His voice sounded like rain on stone, like wind swirling through dust. “This was my temple, long, long ago. What is your request?”
She squared her shoulders and stared straight into Tuer’s eyes. “I want to be Empress of Enduena.”
The Shadow laughed. “But you’re sosmall.”
Eda felt the fierceness take her, same as it had when her parents died, same as it had when she’d snuck from her palace rooms, stolen a horse from the stables, and ridden all the way here. “Iwillbe Empress.”
“Very well,” said Tuer’s Shadow. “What do you offer the gods in return?”
She thought of the story her father used to tell. Tuer always kept his word, but not always in the way his petitioners wished. She must be careful. “Make me Empress in my lifetime, and I will serve the gods. My life in service, in exchange for ruling the Empire.”
“Stand up,” said Tuer’s Shadow. “Let me look at you.”
Eda stood, dust and blood clinging to the knees of her linen trousers.
