No, I told myself. She didn’t know. And if she did, she wouldn’t have dared approach me so close to where Thaena herself might appear. This was real. Or at least, as real as the Afterlife could be. His green eyes held me, and he smelled of blood and musk and the deep, wide sea.

“Who else would I be?”

“Never mind,” I said and I …

Well, no sense being coy about it. I kissed him.

It was stupid. I’m aware just how stupid. I hadn’t asked his leave; I still held my sword. If he’d decided to take my movement as an impending attack, the fault would have been my own. Even if he hadn’t, it’s uncouth to make such an overture without certain discussions. I had let my desire override my sense.

I felt him flinch. He’d started to reach for his weapons, his instinct to assume a trap. I had no excuse at all. He stopped himself.

“You remember me?” He looked at me as if I were a miracle.

“Of course I remember you. You saved my life.”

He stepped back, looking strangely disappointed.

Then someone cleared their throat behind us.

He inhaled. I turned around and saw …

Thaena.

Thaena, Goddess of Death, stood right behind us.

Like her statues, she was dark-skinned, clad in white silk. Roses and skulls circled her hips, crowned her shimmering hair. Her identity was clear. It’s not just how she looked: beauty personified in obsidian, bone, and crimson. Her aura, her dread demeanor, her aspect proclaiming she endured as the absolute and the inevitable. In her eyes, all found their final judgment, their sins and graces laid bare before her quicksilver gaze.

I went down to my knees and lowered my head, prostrating myself before her. Behind me, I heard the Manol vané man step away. His movements smacked of guilt—the manner of a man caught red-handed—and I found myself wondering if Thaena herself held this man’s thudajé. I’d heard many a joke about Thaena’s marriage bed as a euphemism for dying. It had never occurred to me there might be some reality behind the humor. Had I just been caught taking liberties with Thaena’s lover?

Then I heard a scuff of shoe, a swish of fabric, the hiss of metal slicing through air.

What? No!

A lifetime spent surviving Xaltorath’s unsubtle and abrupt “lessons” had made certain instincts irrevocable.

I rolled to the side as Thaena’s sword slammed down into the ground where I had been.

“Mother, no!” the Manol vané screamed.

“Not a lover, then,” I said as I rolled to the side.

Son wasn’t necessarily an improvement.