The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,476

showed its lack of colors to her. “I’m not even a drafter now. Not a satrap—oops, missed that bet, I guess. Not a king. Not, not anything. And don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty much delighted just to be alive, but I don’t really understand doing the whole big-spectacle-wedding thing.”

“It’s not really for you,” Rea Siluz said.

“And if you’re going to get married a second time, don’t you usually go more casual rather than more formal?” Kip asked. The entire island was celebrating the party of a century. “Seven days! Do you know I have to give four speeches, and that was with me winning the argument about how many I had to do!”

“Kip. It’s not for you.”

Kip knew it wasn’t only for Gavin and Karris, and certainly not for the much-lesser-known Kip and Tisis. It was a celebration of victory, and of life. It was as necessary as midwinter festivals amid the chill and death of every year. The people had mourned, and now was time to celebrate.

“So I had this question,” Kip said.

“About me running away when you faced Abaddon,” Rea said.

“Well, I wouldn’t put it that way,” Kip said. He paused, then admitted, “Out loud.”

She laughed. She’d apparently forgotten to tone down the beauty of that sound.

“You said once that you were less than he had been but more than he currently is. I kind of took that to mean you’re more powerful than Abaddon.”

“Kip, our power isn’t measured by numbers in a ledger.”

“But . . . I didn’t really misunderstand, did I?”

“No,” she admitted.

“And you don’t lie, do you?”

“Oh, my little Guile bulldog. Next you’re going to ask—”

“Why did he kick your ass?” Kip said.

“Why indeed?” she asked as if baffled.

Or as if teasing him.

Kip cocked his head as the possibility dawned on him. “You . . . you didn’t.”

She nodded.

“You let him win?” Kip asked, outraged.

“I prefer to put it that I wagered on you, Kip. Yes, I had the power to push him out of your world for a time, but only you could bring him fully into it and thereby make him vulnerable to being banished from this world forever.”

“Well . . . dung,” Kip said. “I mean, well done.”

“Good job, little one. Controlling that tongue will be harder for you than killing ‘gods’ ever was.”

“Hold on. You’re not going to leave now, are you? This feels like goodbye. Before this torture of a wedding, too. You got dressed up and everything!”

“There are . . . oddities to how mortal and immortal time overlap. Every moment I am with you is a moment I cannot be elsewhere in the other realms. My liege has few warriors as gifted as I.”

“Is that an answer, or a dodge?” Kip asked.

“A dodge,” Rea admitted happily. “But don’t worry, my tenacious Turtle-Bear, it is granted to me that I may come to you in your moments of deepest need. You see, Kip, you are the mirror in blood of my own deepest temptation.”

“Huh? That doesn’t sound good.”

“When the Thousand Worlds were young, many of my dear brothers and sisters fell. Much is given to us, as the first created of the Am. But we have no bodies, though we can filter our light such that we put on bodies for a time. But we don’t experience a body as an organizing principle of our selfhood, as you do. We are not given in marriage. We have no children. Thus, even as your kind wish to taste our powers, never realizing the costs therein, so our kind thirst for what you humans have that’s denied to us. The rebels among us promised us that we could have it all, that we could transcend the bounds laid out for us. And in some things, they did not lie, though they knew not all the truth, and spoke less. My great temptation was to be a mother, as you mortals experience such things. Motherhood is a true and good and beautiful thing. How could one impugn such a desire?! I thought. A true and good and beautiful thing—reserved for others? What an outrage! This I longed for: to be a demi-creator, to be all the source of sustenance and love to one utterly dependent on me. To experience the unquestioning love of a babe looking up from the breast, though unknowing, utterly dependent, utterly sated, utterly adoring? It is a true love, a mother’s. It is godly and good—but it is a love and gift and burden meant for mortals,