Goddess by Liv Savell (autobiographies to read txt) 📕

to her tent. Their tent. “Get out, Enyo.” Where was Etienne when she needed him? She couldn’t trap the Goddess alone, not with her watching Delyth’s every move.

“Why?!” Enyo shuffled to her knees and moved to crouch before the warrior, her lips open in a pout.  “You haven’t given me the artifact, you haven’t died, you haven’t given me your body. I see no reason to leave.” Something passed across Enyo’s features, and her pout morphed into a crooked smile. “Lay with me.” She started to pull at the knot at her hip, the only thing keeping her loose sarong on. “Hold me close. Brush your fingers through my hair.”

Delyth paled, her eyes on Enyo’s hand. “I can’t, Taouk,” she whispered, her throat raw. “You aren’t her.” The warrior placed a hand on Enyo’s wrist, stopping her from untying the sarong, from bearing Alphonse’s soft body.

“I am her.” Enyo insisted, tilting her chin up towards Delyth. Inviting a kiss. “It’s the same body. I have her memories. I know what you like…” Her voice had dropped, softer, sweeter. Closer to Alphonse’s own tones. “Let me show you Ba—Delyth.” she turned her hand over, reaching up Delyth’s wrist, tracing the lines towards her elbow.

Alphonse’s fingers were coals leaving behind little lines of fire, and in their wake, Delyth’s belly tightened. Part of her wanted to pretend, so sick with a need to be held and comforted that it made her eyes prick and her throat close. Yet, she would not unbend. It was almost as though she could not. Even with her faith broken and her hopes for a life of duty and acceptance left behind, she found within herself a stone that could not be moved—roots like mountains in her core.

Slowly, Delyth reached out a hand. She cupped Enyo’s cheek in her palm with every ounce of gentleness she could muster and stroked the Goddess’s skin with the pad of her thumb. Enyo leaned into her palm, cheeks reddening. “Tell her I miss her,” Delyth said and swept out of the tent.

❂

Cursed Realms, was she blushing?! But then the bitch was drawing away, leaving. Her. Enyo!

The Goddess lurched to her feet, charging after Delyth, and with a deep growl, she tackled the warrior to the ground, crumpling a wing between their bodies. The warrior didn’t make a sound, not that Enyo could hear above her own snarling. She cursed, raining one-handed punches down on the woman as voices shouted overhead. Some remote part of her mind was aware of the mage and the warrior girl hurrying forward, but none of that mattered. Nothing mattered but teaching the damnable priestess a lesson. Useless. Ugly. Beastly creature! Reject Enyo!?

Something like a fist ran into Enyo’s stomach, and she flew off of Delyth, landing several feet away. She rolled to her side and wretched, vomit coming up her throat and burning her nose and eyes. She heaved again and again and then sat shivering in the pile of sick, waiting for the sensation to dissipate. The mage must have figured out how to unlock his emotions, to administer a blow like that.

Enyo groaned as another piece of her arm hardened to stone, and she flopped onto her back to stare up at the sky. At least here, she could see the stars, unlike in Esha’s overly full city. She could hear the other woman hurrying to Delyth’s side. “Are you alright?”

No one cared that Enyo was sick and dying. No one cared about this sack of bones and skin. Not anymore.

Her heart, blast it, wept at Delyth’s rejection.

༄

Delyth pushed herself up, her cheekbone and a half a dozen other spots smarting in a way that let her know that the necklace of purpling skin around her throat would have plenty of company the next morning. It was no worse than anything she had endured before, not even from the quiet days when she lived the simple life of a warrior priestess in a small mountain valley. Had Enyo held back, even hurt and angry as she was? Or were the Goddess’s injuries more severe than any of them realized?

“Etienne, a rune trap,” Delyth hissed and got to her feet, walking over to Enyo, where she lay, wreathed in the odor of her own vomit. She was still as frail and sunken-eyed as Alphonse had been at the end of their trip, even after being reunited with her artifact, and somehow, Delyth didn’t think it was solely due to her arm. Tristan had seemed hale enough.

Wordlessly, Delyth held out a hand to the Goddess to aid her up, intending to pull her into the waiting trap. If anything, the Goddess’s illness only served to fuel her need to free Alphonse. The warrior felt no pity. It had been burned away by pain weeks prior.

Enyo laughed humorlessly at Delyth’s offered hand, and then faster than humanly possible, she was on her feet again. She looked at Delyth, hate and confusion vying for prominence on her face, and finally, Enyo snarled.

“You had better run Delyth. I give you this night because I am a merciful Goddess, but I will return tomorrow with Va'al, Maoz, and Esha, and we will get Aryus’s artifact from you. And then you will know my displeasure.”

With her final warning, Enyo turned and sprinted into the darkness. She was gone within the blink of an eye. Sick and injured as she might be, she was still more than a mortal.

The clearing was quiet for several seconds, and then Meirin spoke up.

“How does she know about the artifact? And how did she get in? And what does she mean run!?”

Delyth looked from Meirin to Etienne, her face impassive. Enyo’s entrance should have broken his ward, should have alerted him. They both ought to have heard the struggle. The tents were thin, and they slept close together.

Instead of questioning them, she turned away. The ache of being so near Alphonse, of failing to trap Enyo rose within her, a tide that should have swamped