“Take it,” the Shadow whispered. His voice was hoarse, perhaps with wanting. Or maybe horror.

“Why?” she said. She was pretty sure why. She just wanted to hear him say it.

There was silence between them, instead. Silence, and the orb between them. Then his strange, inhuman eyes flicked to Kaiser, who was laying comatose in the little wisteria arbor some gardener—perhaps Mattias, the Light Archon—had created out of this little corner. “Better you take it than him. I’ve not enough power left to fight you or him for it, so better the more interesting of evils, I say.”

She hadn’t known what it would feel like to be slapped. Now she thought she did. “Do you want me to take it—”

“I don’t want you to do anything with it, but—” he made to rise, and failed.

“Alright,” she said, and grabbed the orb. She wrenched it off the makeshift weapon while the Shadow watched her with hooded, haunted eyes. She still didn’t get what made him look so haunted…not until she’d gotten the wretched thing off the sword.

“I wasn’t even sure he’d have one of these,” she was babbling. “I only knew when…” Shut up before Kaiser hears you! Her conscience howled, but he had to know already. He was watching them. He’d been watching when they’d gotten the Ape’s Orb, too. “Take it.”

“You’ve earned that.” He made no move to go for it. “And you’d be a better god than they.”

Oh. There was the reason for all those long looks. He thought she was going to eat it and become an Archetype herself.

And in the realization came the salt-wet lust for it. Suddenly she wanted to know what it tasted like. She wanted to feel that power surging through her. She could reshape the world here, and then move on to out there, where the real problems were. If she had the power of a Nasheth, she wouldn’t waste it by turning people into oak trees and lighting them on fire. She would use that power to fix things—heal the broken ecosystems, erase the effects of climate change, mitigate—

She was nearly lost in it, lost to a lust for godhood, and then she saw, not the Shadow, but Kaiser. Godhood was not notably different than being a billionaire. It just took a bit longer to get what you want. She could not imagine what it would be like to be a God. But she didn’t have to imagine what it was like to be a Kaiser. She just had to look across the path, where he sat cowering in fear. In a moment he would come out, mask in place, forked tongue weaving elaborate platitudes. But here, now, stripped down to his most basic pattern of self, he was a coward.

Wealth and power. Neither were good for a soul.

She held the Orb out to the Shadow. “I think it should go where it belongs.”

It gleamed pearlescent in her hand, her pale palm nearly the same shade. It drew contrast to the rest of her, as did the Shadow’s violet hands as he cupped the Orb and paused before removing it from her grasp.

“Do you understand what you’re giving up? You could be like them.”

“Or like you,” she said.

“Me? The God of what? Shadows and mist, there and then gone. Maybe it was once for such as I, but you know the truth of me, misbegotten, god-eaten thing I am. Left only the crust of it, only the rind.”

Hawk shook her head. “No, that’s not it. That’s not you at all.”

“You heard ‘im. Kali’mar that was,” and this got a wry and satisfied smile that was so much like Alex it made her heart hurt. “I only control shadows.”

“But shadows aren’t a thing,” she said, softly.

“Only an absence of a thing,” He agreed.

“Which means you have to control the thing to make it absent.” She said. “You’re not the master of Shadows. You’re the master of Light.”

Silence in the ruined garden. Silence, as he held Kali’mar’s ruin in his hands. “Do I, now? Well, maybe once…when this thing and its siblings were mine too.”

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“So take it. Make your own power greater. And then you can take on them, and then—”

“—And then I’d have to decide what to do with all that power. You think I control Light, girl?” He said.

“I think you controlled all of it from day one. They just made you doubt what you could do. They needed you to doubt. Otherwise you would have known you could beat them before they were ready.”

“I’m ready now. I’ve been ready for longer than you can imagine.” Said the Shadow. “I don’t see ‘em falling to me and mine any easier for the wanting.”

“Maybe you’ve just needed some help,” she said, and she wanted to draw his hands into hers, the poor broken things, and kiss them until they unclenched. She wanted to hold him until the stiffness left his shoulders, the guarded expression vanished away. To erase the unending nightmare he’d been through. You’re my husband, she wanted to say. You’re safe. You’re home.

But Kaiser was moving behind her. The shape and taste of this god’s mouth must be left unexplored. She had to let go. She had to. It was too easy to paint the scenarios where she and he walked out together, and the wolves fell upon them. And she wasn’t worried about the leverage they could use with her. She knew she could stand up to anything they brought down to her…as long as Alex was not at risk. She had come here, she had done all of this, she had killed a god in the name of this man.

What would he do for her?

And it was a calculation men like Kaiser were working, already. One that had a vitally easy counter: just convince Kaiser, and the man after that, and the man after him in an unending line, that she did not love Alex.

Alex would understand the game. He would know, without having to be told, that this was the best move they could make. He would become distant as some half-extinguished star, until effort and work and promise made it safe again. But could the Shadow hide his heart as well as Alex could? Had the monsters who had devoured him left him with that much at least?

Her heart was breaking.

I have to do this. I have to hurt him. I have to make him walk away, and I have to make Kaiser watch. Otherwise he will never believe that this isn’t—

This time the Shadow kissed her. And for a handful of seconds, like sand between fingers, it was perfect. His lips were warm and soft and tasted right, like Alex’s lips should taste. And now she wanted to throw her arms around his neck and drink deep of the kiss, store it up inside her. And she didn’t—couldn’t—dare. She allowed herself a handful of seconds, like if she were in shock. And then, feeling as if she were ripping out her own heart, she went stiff. His hands reached for hers. She pulled back with tectonic effort. She was a mountain inviolate. She was Everest before Hillary. She was alone, and broken, and wanted this man more than anything, and it was all she could do when he broke away from her not to sob, to beg his forgiveness.

“Ah,” he said, with a strange, sad smile. “I thought it worth the chance. You are worth the chance, Hawk. And I am sorry I cannot be your shining protector. I am sorry I am this way.”

“I’m sorry too,” she whispered. But not for incompatibility. For deliberately and consciously shattering his heart as cleanly as Kali’Mar’s orb. Speaking of which… “Can you destroy that thing?” She pointed at the orb, cleaved nearly in two.

“Yes,” and he broke his stance, that heartbreaking attempt at romance, and ripped the Orb from the makeshift blade. The pressure he used snapped it in half, giving Hawk a perfect cross-section to examine.

There were two clear parts to it. A clouded outer layer with a texture like solidified velvet, and an inner, crystalline core. This core had shattered beneath the blow, and now looked like so much broken safety glass, trapped inside an apple.

“’Tis the rind that gives you Godhood,” He said, meeting her eyes square. “And it needn’t be bad. Perhaps you could succeed where all of us have failed.”

She shook her head. “To quote a great philosopher, Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” She looked down at the split sphere. “I think I’d rather die.”

“You will, you know. Eventually.” And he stared at her with hunger in his eyes. Hunger for touch. Hunger for her.

“Thank you.” She paused, then peeled the rind off one half of the orb. His eyes flared with intense interest…that died immediately, as she handed the rind back to him. “I just need the center to study. If you survived…what you survived, maybe it was because they didn’t crack the core of your Orb.”

“Aye.” A pause. “Your friends should have made it to the Nexus by now. I’ll take you there myself.”

“Can you destroy the Orb?” She said, and looked very pointedly at Kaiser.

“Ah. Aye.” And he pealed the rind off his half, and clenched both rinds and his core together, hard. Heat seemed to boil out of his hands. When he unclenched, there was nothing more than ash, beige colored and glassy. He followed her gaze. “That’s what stuff turns to, when we’ve drained it of life. It’s one reason the four—ah, three now, how delicious—have always had an advantage over me. I won’t kill to gain more power…and I don’t know what it is we’re killing up there—”

“Everything,” she said, very softly. “If I’m right, when your Archetypes—that’s what we call your gods—pull power from somewhere, they’re draining it from the world I came from.”

“All the more reason to stop them, then. The Nexus was intended to stop it. It seems we only plugged the worst of it. Their innate power, and what they can drain from in here, pales in comparison to what they’d be if they ever rose out of this hole.” He sighed. “Well. Talking won’t fix things, and the fire is gaining. Let’s get you and the baggage home.” He gestured with his thumb at Kaiser.

“Yes. Let’s.” Hawk agreed, and let herself be lead away.