Kalona's Fall (House of Night Novellas #4)(12)

Nyx swallowed another giggle and cocked her head at him. “What one thing are you doing well?”

“I am being intoxicating,” he said, and reached up to brush a patch of lingering wood dust from his chest.

Nyx’s dark eyes were alight with humor. She grinned at him and said, “Good. Then I will continue to beat you in stone skipping and anything else I put my mind to.” The Goddess flicked another rock over the surface of the river and shouted in triumph when it skipped six times before disappearing beneath the surface.

Kalona rubbed his chin. “Perhaps I should work on being less intoxicating.”

Nyx smiled at him. “Please don’t. I prefer you just as you are.”

“So you have spoken. So mote it be.” Kalona caressed her cheek gently with the back of his hand before snatching a flat stone from her pile and flicking it into the river, where it skipped three times before sinking.

Nyx’s cheers joined his and, laughing, Kalona began skipping rocks, one after another, side by side with his Goddess.

At that moment, Kalona was absolutely content.

5.

I MISS YOU THE INSTANT I AM NOT IN YOUR PRESENCE …

“I know I am favoring Kalona,” Nyx said, staring into the mirror of her looking glass as L’ota combed out her silver-blond hair and began braiding it in an impossibly intricate pattern. “I don’t mean to. It isn’t as if I dislike Erebus. On the contrary! Every time I see Erebus he makes me laugh. He is so clever and talented. Did you know he can sing and play the lyre? Actually, it was his voice that yesterday drew me from the Otherworld to Greece. He was playing and singing so beautifully that all of Delos had named him winged Apollo Incarnate. They were placing olive branches at his feet and worshipping him.”

Not to be worshipped. The skeeaed whispered disapprovingly.

“Oh, no, he didn’t allow them to worship him. Even before he knew I was part of the watching crowd he laughed at being called a God and made a big show of missing notes, pretending that he was a traveling musician—and not a very good one at that—and that his wings were part of his costume. With a sleight of hand too swift for mortal eyes to follow, he called Air and mixed it with Divine Energy, and suddenly he was wearing a mask that made him look like a silly bird. Within moments he had the audience laughing and following him in a preening dance, and utterly forgetting how godlike he truly is.” Nyx smiled as she remembered how sweet and silly Erebus had made himself look, just for the benefit of the watching mortals.

She wondered if Kalona would have done the same had she not appeared to intercede between him and the people of the prairie. Her smile faded. He had been denying his godhood, hadn’t he?

You think of the other one, L’ota said.

“I do. I think of him often. Something happened when I first looked into his eyes—something wonderful.”

Must be worthy of you, the skeeaed said, her whispering voice sounding unusually forceful.

Nyx gave her a curious look. “L’ota, they both were created for me—Erebus and Kalona. Mother Earth’s tests are but a formality. She is, after all, acting as mother, which means she is being fondly, but predictably, overprotective.”

The skeeaed didn’t meet her Goddess’s gaze in the looking glass, and Nyx shrugged her shoulders. “No matter. I do not expect you to understand, little L’ota. Erebus and Kalona are not your concern. Now, where are the dryads I summoned?” Nyx stood and walked to the wall of windows that overlooked the exquisite grounds of her palace, not noticing that the skeeaed had gone silent and sulky at the Goddess’s dismissive words. “I asked a group of dryads to gather gardenias from the mortal realm so that you might weave them into my hair. Have you noticed that since I allowed them to visit the earth, the dryads always seem distracted?”

Only notice what you command to notice, L’ota murmured too softly for Nyx to hear.

The Goddess had turned from the window to glance at the skeeaed when her chamber exploded in a flurry of trilling dryads whose arms were filled with fragrant white flowers, shifting to and from dizzying shades of greens and blues and purples in their excitement.

“What are you—” Nyx stopped, realizing what must have caused the Feys’ excitement. “One of them is ready to begin his test!”

The Fey leaped and danced around her, dropping gardenias into her hair, and causing L’ota to scold them as she hastily rearranged her Goddess’s braids.

“Which one is it?” Nyx asked breathlessly, forcing herself to sit still so L’ota could finish her toilette and the overly enlivened dryads could quickly drape her body in the robes she’d chosen, which were the color of a maiden’s blush.

The dryads began trilling again and Nyx shook her head in consternation. They were too excited. Not even the Goddess could understand their high-pitched chatter.

L’ota understood her kin perfectly. She whispered one word to the Goddess: Kalona.

*   *   *

Nyx had no trouble finding Kalona. Over the passing days since his creation, she had learned that all she need do was to think of him—to picture his strong, handsome face in her mind—and she would be drawn to him.

She had tried finding Erebus the same way and had been unsuccessful. Nyx spoke of this failure to no one, especially not to Kalona or Erebus.

That day, the picture in her mind took her back to a familiar place—the grass-filled prairie not far from where Kalona had exploded the Great Spirit Tree. Though, she noted as she smiled and hurried to greet Mother Earth, this time he was not so close to the mortal settlement.