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Briefly, I recall the way Raven had pressed his hand against my chest right before the world around me had disappeared.

As if my thought summons him, I turn to see his shadow stretching across the floor. Standing behind me is my patron god, his eyes turned not to me, but toward the Eternal Tree.

And crouched there, freed of the bonds that had shackled him, is Étienne.

No, not exactly him any longer. It is Étienne, except he has left behind his mortality. I am still trembling from the memory of his immortal soul coiling hot and alive in my chest, the silent recognition of his new name.

Étienne—Silk, the new god of Lies—rises from the floor to face Raven. “Lord Raven,” he says, bowing his head carefully before my patron god. A smile appears on his face. “What an honor, meeting you as an equal.”

His voice is different, too—still him, but with a faint echo to it that makes me feel like I can hear him in my mind. A mischievous smile spreads across his face that sends chills of joy through me. I guess some things carry through to immortality.

Raven takes a single step toward me. “New gods are so naive,” he says.

Étienne looks taller now, limbs perfected and skin glowing, his eyes brighter, his features refined and sharpened. Gradually, he starts to circle around me, and Raven follows suit. Trapped in the center, I can merely watch, two hunters stalking the same prey.

As Raven goes, the marble beneath his feet changes, turning darker, colors muting as he gathers his strength. The walls of the atrium take on a gray tone, and the shadows of the room stretch long and black, their edges strange and blurred, like the moments before a total eclipse.

“New gods think they are so powerful,” he says. His boots click faintly against the floor. “Your soul is seduced by immortality, this feeling of possibility. You think you have the capacity to do anything, to change the world at last, to have dominion over all the things you once wished you could have controlled when you were a human.”

Silk watches him carefully as he moves. His hands are folded behind his back, but I can sense him gathering his power, too, for the air around him ripples as if a desert mirage, and in that rippling, I see the floor beneath him shift, changing from marble into wood into grass into ice, the walls behind him crumbling, white stone turning crimson. Silhouettes of people fade in and out of the air around him.

“It bothers you that you must share this dominion with others, doesn’t it?” Silk says. “All your talk of leaving your heart open for the suffering of humankind, your respect and love for the mortal soul. It’s nothing, isn’t it?”

“It’s the only reason I do what I do,” Raven answers.

Silk laughs. It is Étienne’s laugh, with the echo of boundless time behind it. “Do all gods think themselves so noble, too?”

“Do you?”

Silk’s smile broadens so that I can see the glint of his canines. “Ah, that’s the difference between us. I have never thought of myself as noble.”

Raven suddenly halts in his circling. His boot turns against the marble.

A clap of thunder sounds—and then I realize it’s not thunder, but the sound of the floor cracking, a jagged gap hurtling toward Silk. I scramble away from it and huddle in a crouch as the marble breaks in every direction. My mind races frantically. The rearrangement of atoms in death, the breaking of molecular bonds, the cooling caused by a loss of energy. Raven is applying the power of death to the floor, the collapse of an organic thing into the collapse of an inorganic thing.

Silk darts nimbly back, whirls, and claps once. The space around his hands shudders violently—and from them streams black smoke that spreads in every direction, ink spilled into the conduit of air.

The smoke races around the circle they have formed, taking on the shapes of multiple versions of Silk that all stand around us. Illusions, their whispers merging together into a roaring whirlwind.

It is not up to you to save them.

You were never meant to rule over death.

Your Regent is not yours to claim.

You fear her.

Raven starts to circle Silk again. “Lies always crumble,” he calls out. “Sooner or later.”

“Those weren’t lies,” Silk answers. He looks sober now, all traces of amusement gone from his face. “You just don’t want to believe them.”

“And what do you believe in, god of Lies?” he asks.

“I believe in the capacity of the mind,” Silk answers. He shakes his head. “Hope is deception. You wanted to do something good, so good that you were willing to commit terrible acts to make it happen.”

I have seen pain etched across my patron god’s face enough times to recognize the way this pierces his heart. Raven looks away from Silk and up toward the night sky, his jaw tight. When he turns his gaze back, his eyes are dark with fury.

“Someday,” he says, “you, too, will understand.”