The Hollow Heart by Marie Rutkoski

THE GOD

I SEE THE TINY NOTE, written in sharp lines, the handwriting deliberate and firm.

Return my daughter to me whole and unharmed, or I will burn your city to the ground.

—Arin

Nirrim witnessed how Herran’s fleet, anchored in her bay, had sent thousands of soldiers into my city, armed with weapons that tear through Ethin’s defenses. Nirrim sends her god-blooded Half Kith to counter them, but once they unleash magic on the Herrani forces, Arin’s sharpshooters target them with rifles. Nirrim watches as guns fire and pierce Half-Kith bodies with bloody holes. She has never seen a weapon like this. Nirrim’s forces fall.

The pantheon watches Sid tumble into her own mind. She is gone from my sight, my daughter’s heart with her, and I am torn: Sid’s success means I will be the god of games’s plaything again, but if Sid fails, my mortal child will remain damaged and not understand her own damage, so that she damages herself further, and then does not understand why she suffers.

What mortals call pity or compassion they also call mercy.

You might well ask why I withdrew from the world after Irenah’s death—why, ruined with grief, I allowed my child to be abandoned in an orphanage by Irenah’s bitter sister. Why I let Nirrim grow without love, which to any mortal infant is the most brutal kind of deprivation. It is a wound that does not heal.

I could say: It was for her own good.

I could say: See how powerful she became in my absence.

I could say many things, but this time I obligate myself not to lie.

The truth is that I, like you, know what it is to lose someone to death. To search always for that person. To look up because I expected to see her there, and feel the loss again when I am reminded she is not. I had lost Irenah, and were I to claim our infant, to raise Nirrim and make her mine, for how long would I be allowed to have her? Not even a full cycle of the pantheon. No mortal lives long.

The truth is that I could not bear it. I gave Nirrim up before I could love her, and watch her grow, and dwindle, and die.

Even gods have their limits.