Midnight's Son (Darkling Mage 5)

I recognized some of the gods and goddesses, some from the symbols of their station, others purely based on their appearance. Carver’s library was immense, after all, and when all else failed, I always had online wikis to help nudge me in the right direction. While most of the entities had occupied seats at the massive table, some were still streaming in through archways arranged around the halls, appearing from distant corners of the palace – or, far more likely, arriving from their various domiciles.

One was a man with copper skin and obsidian eyes, his chiseled face partly hidden by a headdress in the shape of a falcon. Khonsu, I thought, the Egyptian god of the moon. Beside him sat a woman who wore opulent silken robes and a stern expression, her skin glowing with the pallor of moonlight, her hair as dark as the night sky. This one was Chang’e, the Chinese goddess of the moon.

Across them a figure sat issuing wisps of black smoke from his very skin, his sunken eyes filled with dormant malice. Chernobog, the Slavic god of darkness, only looked at me in passing, but I swear the flit of his gaze felt like the slash of a dagger across my soul.

Many more I didn’t recognize, like the obvious angel with pale hair, wings of silver, and a halo that shone like the ring of light around a full moon. A horned woman sat a few chairs away. I couldn’t tell if she was a demon. You really never know with entities.

At one end sat a hooded figure, its face and its hands exposed, but as black as midnight, like holes cut out of reality. It had no eyes, no features to mark it as humanoid. And do

wn another way was a man wearing a circlet topped with a crescent moon, a sword that glowed with the soft pulse of moonlight strapped to his belt.

Artemis stopped at the head of the assembly, and I waited behind her as she cleared her throat and banged her hands on the table, calling for order. It took some time, but all the entities of the Midnight Convocation, even the rowdier ones, sat quietly at attention.

“The petitioner has arrived,” she said in a powerful, booming voice that rang across the hall. “This one wishes to wear the Crown of Stars.”

“A boy?” said one of the entities, to the snickers of the others. She locked gazes with me, her eyes twinkling with mirth, her teeth bright. From her headdress and clothing I guessed that it was Metzli, a night goddess of the Aztecs. “We’ve been waiting for a boy all this time?”

“He is so thin, so insubstantial,” said Chernobog, his voice rasping, like great slabs of stone scraping against one another. “Not even fit for a snack.”

Fucking entities, man.

Chapter 21

The hall rang with resounding laughter. I couldn’t stop my cheeks from reddening, so I just toed the ground and scratched the back of my neck. Besides, being a smart-ass with an entity one on one always meant unpleasantness, as I’d learned many, many times in the past. I wasn’t about to flap my mouth in a hall full of – geez, I hadn’t even counted them. Two dozen, maybe?

“Come, let him speak,” a woman said, in a soft, sonorous voice that fell over the table like a cool, soothing mantle.

I stared across the table to find the source of the voice. It was a woman with skin and hair all the same lush shade, like dark indigo, like a deep evening sky, flecked with moving, twinkling stars. Her body was the night itself, every gem that sparkled in her hair another distant star, her eyes like galaxies made of diamond dust. I couldn’t look away.

Metzli tittered. “You always did have a soft spot for the pretty ones, Nyx.”

So this was Nyx?

“Don’t be ridiculous, Metzli.” Nyx rose to her feet. “I know potential when I see it. Now that we’ve assembled, we should begin.” She nodded towards us, towards the head of the table. “Artemis? Brothers and sisters?”

Assent rippled across the table, like the rush of an evening breeze through the reeds on a river bank.

“Then we leave the Lunar Palace for now,” Nyx said.

The entities all stood from their seats. I blinked, and suddenly, the chairs, the table, the entire palace disappeared, leaving only myself, the entities, and the massive, heartless vacuum of the universe.

I glanced around myself, my heart thumping with panic. No moon, no great table, no hall. Only black, empty space, and the distant, alien song of burning stars. It was all I could do not to piss myself. I was doing my sincerest best not to freak the fuck out. I mean the entities had such a low opinion of me already, and I didn’t blame them.

Sure, to the casual onlooker, I might seem scrawny, but they didn’t know about my connection to the Dark Room, or my ownership of a super bad-ass talking sword, or my incredible charm. Or, for that matter, my massively unpublicized talents in the bedroom, not that those would help me in dead space.

But yeah. Space. Holy crap. This wasn’t what I was expecting out of the Midnight Convocation at all. Hecate said it was going to be a meeting, and meetings generally took place in rooms that had normal, logically graspable concepts attached to them, like walls, and furniture, and gravity.

Imagine, if you will, standing in a dark room filled with nothing but black. I realize the similarities are there, but no, this was nothing at all like being in the Dark Room itself. Imagine there’s no floor, no ceiling, that you can, at any moment, hurtle into a random direction and be lost forever, swallowed by the uncaring void of the cosmos.

That was what floating in space felt like. And I had to internalize all this shit because no way in hell was the Convocation about to grant patronage to someone who purported to be comfortable in darkness and night, but started screaming the very moment they were exposed to the truth of the abyss. So I grinned, unnatural as it felt. I grinned, and puffed out my chest, and waited.

“Stop doing that,” Artemis whispered close to my ear. “You’re overcompensating and it looks really weird.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I murmured back through a jaw clenched so tight that I could have shattered my teeth.

“It’ll be fine. You’re tethered to the rest of us. You’re not just going to float away and die.” She tugged on the strap attaching her quiver to her back. “Well, you know, unless you tick off the wrong entity.”

“Thanks. Super encouraging.”