Goddess by Liv Savell (books for 6 year olds to read themselves txt) 📗

Alphonse smiled ruefully. “You have my heart, even when Enyo is using it. Be careful, Delyth. Promise me.” 

Pain turned her face pale and tight. 

Waking was coming.

“I promise,” Delyth said through broken sobs. “Stay safe. Keep yourself whole in the darkness, and remember who you are. Alphonse, I love you.”

She kissed Alphonse again, pressing her lips hard against the healer’s as though to convey everything she felt in that touch.

༄

When she pulled away, Delyth was lying in her tent, curled around the ragged journal. Outside, the sky was dark, and far off, she could hear birdsong; she had slept nearly to the dawn of the next day.

And in her ears, echoing faintly from far off, she could still hear Alphonse’s voice. “I love you.”

Chapter XV

Tenth Moon, Waning Gibbous: Central Thloegr

Etienne woke slowly to familiar sensations. It was cool out—the mountains always seemed to be colder than they ought— and the smell of Alphonse making porridge was wafting through his tent. He stood up slowly, groggy. He felt as though he had slept way too long. When he stepped through his tent, it was only to be reminded that they weren’t in the mountains at all anymore, and it wasn’t Alphonse cooking.

“When’s the last time you ate something?” Delyth asked, gently like Alphonse would as she stirred the pot of porridge. “You’re always forgetting to take care of yourself.” She poured him a cup of tea and held it out to where he stood, frozen. “Drink some tea. It's not from me.”

Etienne reached for the cup with trembling fingers just as Meirin joined them at the campfire. “How?”

Delyth laughed, a nervous, broken sound. “I don’t know, but I saw her. Spoke to her. She said you would believe me if I did this.”

He took a sip of the tea, wincing slightly. It was still scalding hot.

But it tasted right.

It didn’t seem possible. Dream sharing was not an ability Alphonse had been capable of even before Enyo wrecked her mind and body. But there was no doubt in his mind of who the message had come from. It was too like her. Too Allee.

Sister. Friend.

He swallowed and sipped again, more carefully this time while Delyth ladled out breakfast. “What else did she say?”

“That we were right, Tristan isn’t who we thought he was. He was one of them from the beginning— a God named Va’al, brought back long before Enyo. And that the reason they need the artifacts is so that they can get their bodies back. It’ll take several of them. Can you imagine? A bunch of Mascens running around Thloegr.”

Etienne was dumbstruck, too shocked to be able to form an answer right away. Though, absurdly, his first thought was that he had known Tristan was off all along.

“Wait,” Meirin scoffed, “you’re saying Tristan is a God, and they are going around bringing back the other Gods to...what? Somehow pull their old bodies out of… well! Wherever it is they were?And you know all this because of some vision you had?”

Etienne watched as Delyth fell silent, his certainty suddenly tainted by the clan girl’s accusation. Still, it wasn’t like the warrior to make something up; if Meirin didn’t agree with her, Delyth would just continue on her own, stubborn and unchangeable as the mountains she came from.

“I can’t explain it,” Delyth admitted, shrugging. “It was magic beyond my ken. I would once have said it was a gift from the Gods, but—well— I can’t really see how it’d serve them.” She smiled sardonically and took a sip of her tea. “All I know is that I spoke with Alphonse last night, and she told me what she could about Enyo and her plans.”

“It makes sense, though. Doesn’t it?” Etienne ran his hands back through his hair until it stood up. “Why else would they be collecting the artifacts? And we heard them talking. Mascen called Tristan Father.”

“They could be bringing back the other Old Gods to—I don’t know! Have friends…. So we should go on because Delyth had a dream of her dead lover?”

“She isn’t dead,” Delyth snapped, even as Etienne flinched.

“If you think they’re dead, why did you come in the first place?” he asked, staring at the clanswoman. Tanwen had said that this was a volunteer mission. Meirin hadn’t had to come.

Meirin stilled, watching Delyth’s expression tensely. “When I first agreed, I thought it was a heroic mission. And I hadn’t seen how different Gethin would be after he was infected with Maoz. There was nothing left of him. I spoke to him, you know—When you were being chased by Enyo. He didn’t recognize me. He didn’t know me. Gethin was a friend of mine. But he’s not in there anymore.”

“And so, in a few seconds of conversation, you became more an expert on the Gods and their Vassals than the people who spent moons traveling with one,” Delyth snapped, her face flushed with anger.

Etienne looked between the two women uneasily. “It can appear that way,” he said, “but they are still in there. Two souls in one body, with only one in control at any given time.”

Still, doubt colored his thoughts. Was there any way they could be sure it was Allee? He looked down at his cup, thought of the admonition to take better care of himself. How would Delyth have known if Alphonse had not told her?

⫸

“No!” Meirin snapped. “I am no more an expert than you are because, as you told me, you only traveled with Alphonse and Enyo when they weren’t bound yet. That was why you had to get to the basin in the first place! Once she got her artifact, she was truly incorporated with the body! As Maoz is with Gethin. As—what did you say that other God’s name was?  As with Tristan! You didn’t know he was a God that entire time!”

Frustration and fatigue were coloring her temper, and Meirin struggled to rein it back in. “You’re both being illogical! You know nothing about