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Nahadoth and Yeine faced Iteh this meant little, I knew, for they had never needed words to speak Too e was emotion in any case Perhaps that hen Nahadoth spoke, he kept his words brief and his manner cool

"Until sunset," he said "You will have that much parole"

Itempas nodded slowly "I will attend to Sieh at once, of course"

"When sunset comes and you return to mortal flesh, you will be weak," Yeine added "Be sure you prepare"

Iteain

It was an intentional cruelty They had granted him parole for my sake, but we needed his power for only a moment For them to allohole day of freedom beyond that, when they would only snatch it back at the day’s end, was just their way of turning the knife again He deserved it, I reminded myself, deserved it in spades

But I will not pretend it didn’t trouble me

Then there was a shimmer, all thatclean when they stripped thefroh he should have I would have Instead he only shuddered, closing his eyes as his hair turned to an incandescent nilowed as if woven frohed, if this had not been sacred -- his boots turned white Even with my dull mortal senses, I felt the effort he exerted to control the sudden blaze of his true self, the wash of heat that it sent across the surface of reality, tsuna only profound silence

Would I do asou well, when I was a god again? Probably not Most likely I would shout and ju across any planets nearby

Soon, now

When the blaze of Iteer, perhaps co himself I braced myself when he focused on me, as he had promised But then, almost imperceptibly -- I would not have noticed if I hadn’t known him so well -- he frowned

"What is it?" asked Yeine "There is nothing wrong with hiestured at ain thatand had nicked my jaw in the process It still hurt, da?"

Itempas shook his head slowly "It is my nature to perceive pathways," he said An approxi in Senmite out of respect for my delicate mortal flesh "To establish them where none exist and to follow those already laid I can restore you to what you areabout you, Sieh, is wrong What you have become …" He looked at Yeine and Nahadoth He would never have done anything so undignified as throw up his hands, but his frustration was a palpable thing "He is as he should be"

"That cannot be," said Nahadoth, troubled He stepped toward es hi slowly because she was not as practiced as the other two at rendering our concepts into mortal speech, "has meant it?"

They looked at each other, and belatedly I realized the gist of their words I would not be regaining , I turned away froainst it and propped s went very bad, very fast

"This cannot be," Nahadoth said again, and I knew his anger by the way the little chaht filtering through its glass ceiling Only the chamber dimmed, however, rather than the whole sky Clever Yeine, planning for her brothers’ tempers If only I had not been trapped in the chamber with the itself darker and thinner, becolow that no mortal eyes should have been able to see by any law of nature -- but of course he defied such laws, so the blackness was plain to all

"You have always been a coward, Tempa," he said The words skittered around the cha in echoes "You pressed for the dehter You fled this real us to deal with the mess Shall I believe you nohen you say you cannot help my son?"

I waited for the explosion of Iteht, and Yeine would do as Enefa had always done and keep their battle contained, vinand only when they were both exhausted would she try to reason with them