The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,478

three fuckin’ days.”

“You asked Him to get you out immediately and He said no. I don’t know why, Kip. But I know that sometimes when He says no to our desires, His no is mercy. I envied mothers, Kip, and now, having loved like one, I see how profoundly I’m not built for that blessing and that burden. For we immortals never forget. You Guiles have a miraculous memory—a gift of a redeemed sin from one of my kind deep in your ancestry—but we immortals carry all our memories before us at all times. I experience it as the present moment, always. My failure and your suffering will never not be before my eyes.”

Her compassion was so genuine and so costly that Kip didn’t shoot back in anger, but he couldn’t keep the bitterness from his tone. “So there’s some greater good that makes it all fine?”

“I didn’t say that,” she said. “I can’t answer every tragedy, but I know my Lord’s character and I know His power. I choose to trust Him, and though I’ve doubted that choice at times, I’ve never regretted it.”

“I suppose I’m the last person who should shake his fist at Orholam,” Kip said. “Sure, I’ve been through some shit, but look at what I have. I should just shut up forever.” On the one hand, he’d saved his friends, his wife, and more thousands than he could know. He had been given his life back, when he should be dead. But on the other hand, he’d lost his best friend and many others, and he’d lost his powers and his claim to being the most important person in history.

Why, in the darkness, in the quiet, did he keep looking at the wrong hand?

Her tone was gentle. “He doesn’t want you to shut up, Kip. I know you’re not thinking just about the closet. You’re scared that you lost your identity when you lost your magic, and even though you chose this, it still hurts. You’re still scared, despite everything.”

Kip scowled. So much for nonchalance. “Stop . . . understanding me and stuff.”

“Kip. It’s okay to be angry.”

“I feel ungrateful,” Kip said. “Greedy. I’m alive! Cruxer’s not. I’ve got it amazingly great, and I did the right thing, and people love me—but sometimes all I can think about is what I’m never going to be.” He must’ve pressed his fingers against that testing stick a hundred times, praying stupidly, blindly.

“I think if your prayer in that closet might have a lesson, it was this: sometimes, Kip, the answer isn’t ‘No.’ It’s ‘Not yet.’ ” She smiled at him and stood. “Now, please excuse me, but you’ve got a wedding to attend, and there’s a young woman in another realm who has a gift for getting in trouble that may rival your own. Not sure if my assignment to her is a reward or a punishment for how I’ve done with you.”

“Bit of both?” Kip said.

She looked up for a moment, and he got the impression again that she was seeking permission for something.

“Don’t blink,” she said, grinning suddenly at him.

Rea Siluz’s figure shimmered, and burst into something other. She didn’t get any bigger, but suddenly the room seemed to strain to contain her essence. To look at her carried a sensation for the eyes like when the ear hears a perfect harmony reverberate with overtones and undertones as the waveforms dance in joy. She was brighter than color, more alive than the sun on green grass. She wore black dragon’s-scale armor etched with designs in fire, and a helm of gleaming gold, and her eyes shone with lavender mischief. Her presence had a physical weight to it, like walking from a cool basement into the anvil of the desert sun. Kip dropped to the floor.

“I told you I love a spectacle,” Rea said, and she smiled fiercely, and that smile was terrifying and sexy and breath-suckingly, knee-weakeningly, eye-blindingly bright; it was a flame that beckoned on a cold night and a fire that burned like a forge.

Kip’s tongue failed him. He averted his eyes. He had to. The very room seemed more alive in the light of her presence. He nodded at the floor.

I remember.

I didn’t take it seriously.

Holy shit.

She flared golden wings out broader than the room; they went right through the walls. There was a hum of gathering energy. Then she beat those enormous wings once and shot out of the world.

Slowly, he stood up and dusted himself off.

Always fooling around with people—people?—he