by the way.”
“I wasn’t going to assume it was. You were trying to throw him off the balcony, weren’t you?”
“Yeah,” Raphael admitted softly. “I never thought I would write people off. But you knew it was Wesley, and you were upset for him and how he was going to be hurt. I always knew I misjudged you, but I never realized just how much. Does that make me a bad person?”
“I’m not the person to ask. Look at me. The judgments you’ve made aren’t that far off.” I snorted as I sat up and moved to sit next to him. “I kill people for the ‘greater good.’ I make mistakes sometimes and get other people hurt, or worse, killed. I know my reputation, and I’ve earned it, but I have a job to do and a world to survive in. I’ll take the reputation if it means breathing another day. I’ll pour one out for those I’ve lost, then I have to keep moving.”
“And you’ve lived this way for over a century. I don’t know how you’ve done it.”
“A century isn’t very long when you know you have immortality in front of you. Well, it is for me, because I’m barely older than a century, but I know people who are thousands of years old. They look at me and see a young woman who barely has her footing.” I elbowed him. “I’m closer to your age than Cassius or Sorcha. Those two being fae? Who knows how old they actually are? Who knows how many years they’ve seen pass in the fae lands for it to only be a month or year here? Or maybe they’re there for a day and miss a decade here.”
“Is it ever consistent?” he asked.
“You’d have to ask Cassius. He once told me it depended on the region of that world. Like his homelands are very consistent with this world, but others bend time more extremely and fluctuate in a pattern. It all depends.”
“Ah.” Raphael nodded slowly. “Thanks for listening to me.”
I shrugged, not wanting the conversation to end but unsure how to keep it going. I looked down at my rug and wondered how Raphael would feel if I showed him more, gave him another piece of me.
“I’ve never given you a dossier on nagas, have I?” I asked softly.
“No. I figured you would tell me about your kind or make me figure it out on my own.”
I smirked. “Yeah…I just didn’t think about it. Did you do any research?”
“I did. I read a Wiki article and dug into some of the legends and all of that. Had some interesting questions, but I was never really sure how to ask.”
“Let me guess. You read the legend of Kaliya.” I tried not to sigh. It was unavoidable once people did even a tiny amount of research to realize I was the namesake of a great legend. “Yes, I’m named after him.”
“I figured that much,” Raphael said smartly, a smirk on his face, mirroring my own. “I’m betting you know the truth of the story, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” I murmured. I knew the story well, better than most, probably better than anyone. I was his namesake, after all. “I’ll give you the cliff notes because most accounts get it…mostly right.
“Kaliya was chased away from his home by Garuda, the eagle or the bird man or bird god, however you want to phrase it. He had multiple forms. He was a god or supernatural in his own right, and he hated our kind. So, Kaliya ran from his home to a place where Garuda couldn’t get to him, a region called Vrindavan, and got into a spot of accidental trouble. Kaliya was immensely powerful, but with very little control. He poisoned the Yamunā river with his venom because he was so powerful. When others drew close, he was scared and paranoid, so he hurt them or killed them, thinking he was protecting himself and his family. The god Krishna stumbled on him and saw the plight the locals were having and killed Kaliya.”
“I thought he just sent Kaliya to the um…Shit, there was a place…”
“Pātāla,” I answered, knowing he probably thought Pātāla was a real place. Some underground system of caverns or something. Some made that mistake, not understanding the connotation of what Kaliya’s story was about.
“Yeah, it’s like subterranean—”
“It’s the underworld,” I corrected softly. “Krishna sent Kaliya to hell. He killed him. Kaliya’s mate and his female family members begged for mercy for their powerful male,