Ristriel looked away.
Sighing a great, summery breath, Saiyon said, “He must repay all the time he stole.”
Indigo light flickered across Ristriel’s incorporeal form.
“How?” I pressed.
“In Oblivion,” Ristriel whispered. Eyes on Saiyon, he murmured, “It is the space beyond stars, an otherworld unclaimed. It has been my home since shortly after I was born.”
His prison, he meant.
“That is cruel,” I said.
Saiyon flared brighter; even the godling beside Him had to step away. “I am bound by the laws of the universe. The loss cannot be acquitted, even for you.” Fiery gaze back to Ristriel, He asked, “How much of the time you stole is still in your possession?”
Ristriel tensed, and I knew it was very little. He must have spent a great deal of it before meeting me, trying to displace himself from the heavens. The rest had been leaking out of him in the fortnight since.
Old anger bubbled in my stomach, pushing my starlight outward. Ristriel did not shrink from it, but he became even more transparent in its light.
But Saiyon—in the moment my starlight filtered through my skin, I saw, for an instant, golden threads around Him, connecting Him every which way to the heavens overhead. Bright chords, leading into forever. I blinked, and they were gone.
I understood then how true His statement was. Saiyon was truly and literally bound by celestial law. Ristriel wasn’t the only one who bore chains.
Even the gods were not truly free.
“It still isn’t right.” My voice was barely a whisper. “Had You not chained him—”
Ristriel lifted a hand to stop my argument.
“Perhaps you are right,” Saiyon said, “but I am not the one on trial. You are young, Ceris Wenden, even for a mortal. You have not truly experienced war. The turning of the universe does not hinge on your decisions. What I did was done to spare My people, and yours. You feared for the mortal city, did you not? Would you tell Me with an oath of truth that you would not sacrifice one to save the rest?”
Pain tinged my jaw, I clenched it so tightly. I could not answer Him.
My silence answered for me.
“In My kingdom,” Saiyon went on, “there are many more lives at stake than there are people in Nediah.”
Tearing my eyes from Saiyon, I looked over the godlings around us, armed and ready, cold gazes set on Ristriel. They could capture him, hurt him, given the command. But if the moon came out, Ristriel might be able to fly away. Leave me behind and save himself—
“Spare her, and I will come.”
Ristriel’s voice was hot iron pressed to my heart. “Ris, no.”
He turned to me, reaching for my hands, but in Saiyon’s aura, he could not take them. A sad, heavy smile tugged on his lips. “I knew the laws when I broke them.”
I searched his eyes, blinking back tears. “You were hardly given the chance to follow them.”
He lifted his thumb and wiped it under my eye; I felt only the cool touch of autumn there. Leaning close to me, his cheek hovered at my temple. So quiet no one else could hear, he whispered, “You have taught me what it is to love, Ceris. So long have I watched it from the skies, but I never understood it until now. It is truth, it is promise, and it is sacrifice. I don’t regret any of it, even if my chains become eternal. I will be happy in that dark place, so long as I can watch you thrive.
“I love you, Ceris.”
My heart shattered as he pulled away. My limbs grew so cold I could not move them. Even my starlight had burrowed too deep inside me to surface.
Ristriel turned toward Saiyon. Moonlight peeked and rippled across his back, turning him from a demigod into a ghost, a specter, something unreal and unreachable. My heart bled with his every footstep. Every inch he moved away from me felt like a thousand miles, and my spirit opened up and cracked like the canyons we had almost reached.
Would this be our goodbye? I hadn’t even been able to touch him.
He would repay seven hundred years, alone in the dark. Even with my starlight, I might not live to see the end of his sentence. He would have no one to fight for him, to free him. He would be chained forever. Both of us would be alone.
“Let us be done with it,” Saiyon said.
It is truth.
Ristriel bowed his head, subservient.
It is promise.
Saiyon lifted His sword.
It is sacrifice.
Sacrifice.
“Stop!” I cried, flinging my arm out as though it could stay the Sun God’s blade. “Stop! I will serve the time myself. I will take it. I will serve his seven hundred years!”