Nyx Whisperwind's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

Nyx carried the sealed box back to the frost-cracked stones. The imp answered her now, but the gods still would not name her the greatest. One had told her plainly: no longer ours, but not yet the greatest. She wanted the title. She did not know what won it. The old gods smiled at her the way they always did, like they knew a joke she had never heard. She needed to learn what fooled them before she could fool them. She climbed the mountain to the fortress. Saraphillia sat sorting broken myths into boxes. Her red hair glowed in the dim room. She did not look up. "The gods won't name me," Nyx said. "I don't know what impresses them." "Then you can't trick them." Saraphillia set a cracked box on the shelf. "You trick what you understand." She pointed to the door. "Ask someone who's beaten them." Nyx knew who. Marigold Thistledown had told her once how to break the gods' hold. Marigold ran a hidden trade network against the Guild. She lost her village's funding rather than turn travelers away. She built roads the Guild could not find. Nyx went down to her. Marigold stood at the sunken road, hanging a glowing marigold charm at the entrance. She fixed it straight before she turned. "You kept the imp," she said. "I did. But the gods still smile. I don't know their game." Marigold reached into her belt and drew out a charm. Two grinning faces twisted around each other, one dark, one pale, each biting the other's tail. "The old gods don't want to be fooled by a plan," she said. "They want to be surprised. Show them a trick they can't name." She pressed the charm into Nyx's hand. "They love their own faces best. Give one back to them." Nyx turned the charm over. The two faces mocked each other and refused to settle. That was the answer. The gods watched everything from outside. They had never been the trick. She walked back to the frost-cracked stones. She did not carry the box high this time. She dropped into her cat shape, then her girl shape, then borrowed the face of the god who leaned forward. She wore its own grin back at it. The god reached for its face and found it gone. It patted its own cheeks. The other gods laughed at it, loud and cruel. The robbed god did not notice its shape was missing until it saw Nyx wearing it. "You fooled one of us," a god said. It stopped smiling. "Not all. Not yet." Nyx handed the borrowed face back. She had done it. She had fooled a god directly, and now she knew how. She wore the twin-faced charm at her throat as she left. But the robbed god watched her go, and its smile was gone for good.