The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,477

not my kind. I was tempted to covetousness, because here was a love denied me. Who could deny me love? If He denied me this love, He must not love me. Was that not the work of a tyrant? Surely the Name above Names was holding out on me.

“Rather than apprehending my pain according to the Love I knew, I apprehended His love according to my pain. Thus misapprehending, my pain threatened to turn His no to anger and thence to rage and thence to rebellion.

“Each of the elohim were tempted thus, according to our station and our weakness. Some weren’t even close to rebelling. I was close, but ultimately did not. I made the right choice, though it has meant sacrifices. I volunteered for you, Kip, but you are so fit for me that I might as well have been assigned. You are . . . so much of what I love about mortals. And my Lord has allowed me to taste as much of human motherhood with you as I can bear. I will be here for parts of today, and I will be there at future moments of great joy for you, and I will be at your end, if it is at all possible.”

“What do you mean, as much as you can bear?” Kip asked. He was tearing up, and he wasn’t sure why.

She stopped as if gut-punched, and her glory dimmed palpably. But when she spoke, it was with a steady, quiet voice. “As human parents do, I got to taste what it means to fail my child.”

“What?” he whispered.

“In that closet . . .” she said, and a grief as potent as all her earlier glory flowed from her, palpably darkening the room.

She didn’t have to say another word. There could be nothing else she was referring to except that lightless, godforsaken closet where Lina had locked him and gone on her binge, blotting out her cares and worries and mind and recollection of her son. The closet where his mother had forgotten him. Abandoned him without food or water to the rats for three days while no one noticed. While no one cared to look for him.

And suddenly, Rea was weeping, too, and he knew that she could see that closet right now. He knew, instantly, that she could see it in the present moment, with an immediacy before her eyes that even he could no longer feel. She was seeing Kip screaming as the rats began biting him, as the blood poured down his back and as he threw himself against the walls, scratching and clawing for an escape that didn’t come. She could see his fear turn to terror, turn to despair, turn to madness. She was watching the pain that would shape and scar his entire life, even now as she spoke.

“I was supposed to be there, Kip.” She could barely breathe the words over her sobs. “I was supposed to save you.”

“What?” he asked as bitter tears spilled down.

“I was elsewhere, fighting, doing good. I knew I could get to you in time. But when I entered your time, Gader’el and Suriel were waiting for me in ambush. For three days I contended with them while you suffered. I want you to know—and I am allowed to say this much—I wasn’t with you. But He was. When I arrived to save you, He was already there.”

“But He did nothing,” Kip said as he wept, the wound opening afresh.

“He spoke to you.”

“No. I was alone.” But Kip could remember it now. A few words only, in the many hours. A few calm words, but they’d kept his sanity.

“Kip. What if, in your darkest moment, He was there, all along, weeping with you?”

“If He saw me, if He cared, He could have saved me. He could have saved me with a word.”

“Indeed. And that’s the problem, isn’t it?”

“What? ‘Indeed’?” Kip asked. “What does that even mean? I don’t understand Orholam at all.”

“If even we could, I don’t think my friends would have rebelled. What I know is this: A tapestry made of only white threads is perfect, but blank. When He starts letting us add our own colors, things get more interesting.”

Kip scoffed. “Color metaphors are a little bitter for me at the moment,” Kip said, holding up the blank color stick again. Then he shrugged as if he didn’t care. “I prayed that He would help me escape that place.”

“And you did.”

“I didn’t pray that He’d get me out after

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