The massive shape of the true god in the back of the cavern shifted, a gray haze of huge eyes and the suggestion of a shining fin. The puppet it controlled stood, began a stuttering pacing back and forth across from her.
“When you arrived here,” it said, all business, “you had the ability to pull magic directly from the Shadowlands. Correct?”
“So you get to ask questions, but I don’t?”
“I’m still waiting for you to come up with a good one,” the corpse answered. “And I’ll take that as a yes. Did it hurt?”
Neve pressed her lips closed. Sat still, fighting the urge to cross her arms like a petulant child.
The god, apparently, had little patience for her anyway.
“How much pain were you in, Neverah?” It came out like a roar through all those teeth, and the Leviathan’s skeletal hands slammed onto the table before her.
Neve jerked backward, hand raising—she didn’t realize she’d grabbed the god-bone from her pocket until she saw it gleaming white in her fist.
The Leviathan looked at the bone. Smiled. “Good,” it said softly. “You might need it.”
Before she could process that, the Leviathan picked up its strange line of questioning again. “The pain, dear, tell me how bad it was.”
“Bad.” Neve didn’t answer beyond that. She lowered her hand, nonsensically hiding the bone in the hem of Solmir’s coat, even though the god had already seen it.
The Leviathan nodded, thoughtful. “And now?” The corpse didn’t have eyebrows, but the seaweed-articulated muscles in its rubbery face still seemed to make one raise. “Now that Solmir has made you the vessel for the magic? Is there pain?”
“No.” Her fingers flexed, cold seeping through her bloodstream.
“I see.” The Leviathan’s hands clasped behind its back as it continued to pace back and forth. “I can’t read the future,” it said finally, still not looking at her. “Not like the Oracle, or the Weaver’s lover. But I can feel the currents of it, the ebb and flow.” Its head tipped back, looking at the black, glassy expanse of the ocean suspended over their heads. “It will be you.”
“What will be me?” That question she couldn’t swallow, and the Leviathan grinned to hear it, clearly pleased it had finally drawn one out of her.
“The vessel,” it said simply.
Talking in circles, giving answers that either cleared up nothing at all or told her things she already knew. Gods were a pain in the ass.
“So the things the Kings promised me in exchange for capturing you are, essentially, voided.” The Leviathan shook its head, sounding as irritated as Neve felt. “Not that I expected much else, to be quite honest. One should always be on their guard when bargaining with once-enemies.”
Something clicked in her mind, made her carefully curated stoicism fall away. “If the Kings sent you,” she murmured, “that means they were never coming.”
The Leviathan nodded, like a teacher encouraging a slow student. “They were strong enough to resist the pull of the Heart Tree. Not for long. But they didn’t need long.”
“They knew, then.” A rasping whisper, fear making her throat rough. “They knew what we planned. So why didn’t they try to stop us?”
“Because they didn’t want to. They wanted you to reach the Tree. And they counted on you to come back out. You’ve never been someone to leave a job half done.”
Clammy sweat chilled her back. Neve knotted her hands in her nightgown’s skirt, the bulky silver of Solmir’s ring slipping on her thumb.
“They counted on you,” the Leviathan repeated, “but that will backfire on them, I think. You took to shadow like a fish to water, pardon the saying. But I don’t think you’ll drown, Neverah Valedren.”
It would’ve been comforting, were it not for the nearly sorrowful tone.
Suddenly, the cavern lurched, so violently that Neve nearly tumbled from her seat. The dishes holding the false feast shook, the glasses falling to the floor. They rolled across the ground, wine turning back to murky seawater.
Neve braced her hands on the table until the shuddering subsided. When it did, she shot an alarmed look at the Leviathan. “Another quake?”
“Would that it were so simple.” The god righted its chair, jerky movements directed through the seaweed ropes leading back to the Leviathan’s true shape. It sat down, then held out a hand across the table, palm up. “That wasn’t a quake. That was a spasm.”