back in Jekity. “The corestone hurts them so much, you see. They get tired, and then they get sloppy, and then the Earth begins to contaminate them, eating away at their will. They don’t usually last long once that starts. The Earth uses them, or their fellow Guardians use them, until they outlive their usefulness and one side or the other kills them. It’s a testament to your Schaffa’s strength that he lasted so much longer. Or a testament to something else, maybe. What kills the rest, you see, is losing the things that ordinary people need to be happy. Imagine what that’s like, Nassun. Watching everyone you know and care about die. Watching your home die, and having to find a new one—again, and again, and again. Imagine never daring to get close to another person. Never having friends, because you’ll outlive them. Are you lonely, little Nassun?”
She has forgotten her anger. “Yes,” she admits, before she can think not to.
“Imagine being lonely forever.” There’s a very slight smile on his lips, she sees. It’s been there the whole while. “Imagine living here in Corepoint forever, with no one to talk to but me—when I bother to respond. What do you think that will feel like, Nassun?”
“Terrible,” she says. Quietly now.
“Yes. So here is my theory: I believe your Schaffa survived by loving his charges. You, and others like you, soothed his loneliness. He truly does love you; never doubt that about him.” Nassun swallows back a dull ache. “But he also needs you. You keep him happy. You keep him human, where otherwise time would have long since transformed him into something else.”
Then Steel moves again. It’s inhuman because of its steadiness, Nassun finally realizes. People are quick to do big movements and then slower with fine adjustment. Steel does everything at the same pace. Watching him move is like watching a statue melt. But then he stands with arms outstretched as if to say, Take a look at me.
“I am forty thousand years old,” Steel says. “Give or take a few millennia.”
Nassun stares at him. The words are like the gibberish that the vehimal spoke—almost comprehensible, but not really. Not real.
What does that feel like, though?
“You’re going to die when you open the Gate,” Steel says, after giving Nassun a moment to absorb what he’s said. “Or if not then, sometime after. A few decades, a few minutes, it’s all the same. And whatever you do, Schaffa will lose you. He’ll lose the one thing that has kept him human throughout the Earth’s efforts to devour his will. He’ll find no one new to love, either—not here. And he won’t be able to return to the Stillness unless he’s willing to risk the Deep Earth route again. So whether he heals somehow, or you change him into one of my kind, he will have no choice but to go on, alone, endlessly yearning for what he will never again have.” Slowly, Steel’s arms lower to his sides. “You have no idea what that’s like.”
And then, suddenly, shockingly, he is right in front of Nassun. No blurring, no warning, just flick and he is there, bent at the waist to put his face right in front of hers, so close that she feels the wind of the air he’s displaced and smells the whiff of loam and she can even see that the irises of his eyes are striated in layers of gray.
“BUT I DO,” he shouts.
Nassun stumbles back and cries out. Between one blink and the next, however, Steel returns to his former position, upright, arms at his sides, a smile on his lips.
“So think carefully,” Steel says. His voice is conversational again, as if nothing has happened. “Think with something more than the selfishness of a child, little Nassun. And ask yourself: Even if I could help you save that controlling, sadistic sack of shit that currently passes for your adoptive father figure, why would I? Not even my enemy deserves that fate. No one does.”
Nassun’s still shaking. She blurts, bravely, “Sch-Schaffa might want to live.”
“He might. But should he? Should anyone, forever? That is the question.”
She feels the absent weight of countless years, and is obliquely ashamed of being a child. But at her core, she is a kind child, and it’s impossible for her to have heard Steel’s story without feeling something other than her usual anger at him. She looks away twitchily. “I’m … sorry.”
“So am I.” There’s a moment’s silence. In it,