Ark(14)

Before the rest of the soldiers could close in, I threw myself in front of Japheth, facing him. “Please, Japheth, don’t do this! I can reason with Father, perhaps get you freed. Don’t throw your life away. Not like this.”

The soldiers hesitated, knowing their orders were to bring both of us alive. Father liked to torture his victims himself, so he would not be best pleased if Japheth was brought to him already dead. But Enkidu was lying slain in the sand, and they couldn’t let that go unrequited.

“Move out of the way, Princess,” one of them said, gesturing with his spear. “Move aside, before you get hurt.”

Japheth stared into my eyes, and I saw desperation in his gaze, something that went deeper. “I won’t be tortured, Aresia . . . not again.” Fear lived there, deep in his soul.

I wondered what he meant . . . not again?

I squeezed his hands in mine. “I won’t let that happen. Just go with them.”

“You can’t stop your father. You know it as well as I.”

“Japheth . . .” I was selfish; I could not watch him die. I should have moved out of the way, let my father’s men hack him to pieces, but I simply could not. “Please. Please.”

He breathed in deeply, steeling himself, and dropped his sappara to the dirt. He moved away from me, and I could see panic warring with determination in his face, and I knew then that whatever we had was more than mere stolen moments of pleasure.

The soldiers stepped forward, grabbed him, and dragged him away. One of them turned back to make sure I was watching, then raised the hilt of his short sword and smashed Japheth on the skull, loosing a ribbon of blood, and my handsome, blue-eyed human slumped in his captor’s arms, unconscious.

The last I saw of Japtheth was his feet trailing in the sand, his Nephilim captors towering over him.

The desperation I felt then went deeper than I had ever expected; sometimes, I think, we do not truly understand the depth of our own feelings toward someone until that person is taken away from us. Now that he was gone, his death imminent, I fully realized he meant far more to me than merely a source of forbidden pleasure. If that was all this was, I should not have cared if Father got his hands on Japheth. I might have argued for his life, of course, but . . . this?

As Father’s personal guards dragged Japheth’s body away, I felt a hollow in the pit of my stomach, a panic in my heart, a blind, unreasoning fear in my brain.

I knew what Father was going to do to Japheth, and the thought had my heart sinking, had everything inside me rebelling.

I couldn’t let that happen. Not to Japheth. He’d done nothing wrong but give me what I wanted; why should he die for that?

I sank back against the wall and prayed to Elohim, begging him to spare Japheth. I prayed to a god I didn’t believe in, but who seemed in that moment more real than any of the gods of my own people.

I hadn’t meant to pray at all, really, the words merely poured out of me, unbidden: “Spare him, Elohim. Spare him.” The words were whispered aloud. “I do not worship you, because I do not know you. Perhaps you cannot hear my prayers because I am a Nephilim, but if you can, please . . . spare him. If you let him live, I swear to you I will worship you and you alone. Please.”

I did not feel an answer, did not hear His Voice speaking to me. All I heard was the beating of my own heart, the scuffling feet of passersby, the harsh cry of ravens and twittering of sparrows. Did He hear me, The One God? Do the prayers of one such as I matter to Him?

A hand grasped my arm and pulled me into a walk. It was a soldier, barely more than a boy, his thin beard still scraggly and sprouting, his hand trembling. “You must come with me, Princess. Please.”

Ha! A scared boy this was, afraid to lay hands on the princess. I snatched my arm from him, spat at his feet in contempt.

“Do not dare touch me, you filthy pig. I will walk alone.” The boy just trembled harder, swallowed, and fell into step behind me.



My father was furious, of course; I had not expected anything else. The boy-soldier led me through the gate into the palace, and I looked up, as was my habit, at the heads impaled there. Gruesome reminders of my father’s rage, those rotting skulls. Would Japheth’s skull soon adorn the gate next to the thieves and worshippers of Elohim? Ravens and crows fluttered in perpetual flocks, fighting for morsels, cawing for eyeballs and batting at each other with wings for strips of flesh. I had a vision of Japheth, one blue eye lifeless and still vivid, the other pecked clean, flesh cut ragged at the neck and bones showing in patches on his skull. My stomach turned at the vision, and I had to breathe deeply and swallow quickly to douse the urge to vomit.

I could not, would not, let that happen.

“Damn you, daughter!” My father’s voice rang out, the harsh boom echoing in the throne room, sending chills down my spine. “I’ve not asked much of you, Aresia. I did not marry you off when it would have benefited the kingdom. I have left you to your own devices, thinking you knew better than . . . than this.” He was no longer yelling, but hissing, whispering, which sent needles of fear spiking through me more than any bellowing.

“I’m sorry, Father.” Short answers, I reminded myself. Don’t argue with him.

“Sorry is not nearly enough. Not only do I discover that you’ve been sneaking out of the palace and crawling around among those vermin . . . those humans . . . but you’ve been consorting with an Elohim worshipper? What else have you been doing? Prostituting yourself with the whores of Inanna perhaps?”