I was not strictly telling the truth. It was true that Shahar’s feelings toward me had waned, though they grew stronger with every hour I spent in her presence. Deka’s, however, had grown stronger, too, even with no contact between us for half his lifetime. I didn’t quite know how to interpret that, so I didn’t mention it.

Her eyes went wide at my words — and then welled with tears. She made a quick, abortive sound: buh. As soon as she uttered it, she clapped a hand to her mouth, but her hand was trembling.

I sighed and pulled her against me, her face against my chest. It was only when I did this — only when she felt safe from eyes that might look upon her humanity and judge it a weakness — that she let herself break into deep, racking sobs so loud that they echoed from the walls of the apartment. Her tears were hot, though they cooled rapidly on my skin and as they pattered onto the sheets. Her shoulders heaved against my arms, and as the sobs grew worse, her arms went hard around me, squeezing me as if her life depended on my solidity and stillness. So I gave her both, stroking her hair and murmuring soothing things in the language of creation, letting her know that I loved her, too. For I did, fool that I was.

When her tears finally stopped, I kept stroking her, liking the way her curls went flat and sprang up again as my hand passed, and thinking of nothing. I barely noticed when her arms loosened, her hands coming to stroke my sides and back and hip. I kept thinking of nothing when she eased my shirt up and laid the lightest of kisses on my belly. It tickled; I smiled. Then she sat up to look at me, her eyes red-rimmed but dry, a peculiar intent in her eyes.

When she kissed me this time, it was wholly different. She nudged my lips apart and touched my tongue with her own, sweet and wet and sour. When I did not react, she slid her hands under my shirt, exploring the flat strangeness of a body that was not her own. I liked this until one of her hands went farther down, her fingers tickling hair and cloth at the edge of my pants, and then I caught her wrist. “No,” I said.

She closed her eyes and I felt her aching emptiness. It was not lust. Missing her brother had made her feel alone. “I love you,” she said. Not even an admission, this; it was simply a statement of fact, like the moon is pretty or you’re going to die. “I’ve always loved you, since we were children. I tried not to.”

I nodded, stroking her hand. “I know.”

“I want to choose. If I have to sell myself for power, I want to give myself first. For love. For a friend.”

I sigI d tohed, closing my eyes. “Shahar, I told you, it’s not good —”

She scowled and lunged forward and kissed me again. I was stunned silent, the objection dying in my throat. Because this time it was like kissing a god. The quintessence of her came through the opening of my lips and drove itself into my soul before I could stop it. I gasped and inhaled a white shivering sun that pulsed strong and weak but never went out and never blew up. A rocky determination, jumbled but sharp-edged, with the potential to become as solid as bedrock. When I opened my eyes, I was lying back and she was above me, still kissing me, her hands coaxing sighs from me despite my reluctance. I did not stop her because I am supposed to be a child but really I am not and my body was too old to provide me with a child’s defenses against reality. Children do not think about how magnificent it would be to become one with another person. They do not yearn to lose themselves in force and sensation and panting. Children think about consequences, if only to try and avoid them. It takes an adult to abandon such thoughts entirely.

So when her hand slipped into my pants this time, I did not stop her. And I did not protest while she explored me, first with her fingers and then, oh gods, oh yes, her mouth, her mortal husband could have the rest but I would marry her mouth and fingertips. I murmured without thinking and the walls went dark because there was mischief in what we were doing and that gave me strength. Despite this, I lay there helpless in the dark as she learned to make me whimper. She tormented me with this, tasting every part of my body. She even licked En, where it lay on my chest. Greedy thing, it rolled so that she might try its other side, too, but she didn’t notice.

I touched her, too. She liked that lots.

Then she straddled me. There came a moment of lucidity in which I caught her hips and looked up at her and said, “Are you sure —” but she pushed herself down and I cried out because it was so wonderful that it hurt, flesh is not at all a terrible thing, I had forgotten that it could feel good and not just grotesque, it was so nice not to be used. She felt the same as a goddess inside. I whispered this to her and she smiled, rising and falling above me, her mouth open and teeth reflecting the moon, her hair a pale moving shadow. Then we shifted and I was on her, not out of any paltry mortal need on my part to dominate but simply because I liked the sweet mewling sounds she made as I angled my way into her, and also because I was still a god and even a weak god is dangerous to mortals. Matter is such tenuous stuff. So I controlled myself by focusing on her flesh, on her hands stroking my back (inadvertently I purred), on my own clenching tightening quickening excitement, on carrying her only into the good parts of existence and none of the bad ones.