Tempted

you love your Goddess too much?” I asked automatically, even as the obvious answer came to me. There were different types of love—I was über-aware of that. Kalona’s love for Nyx was obviously the wrong type.
    “I was jealous. I even hated Erebus.”
    I blinked in shock. Erebus was Nyx’s consort, her eternal lover.
    “My love for her made me break my oath. I was so obsessed with her, I couldn’t protect her anymore. I failed as her Warrior.”
    “That’s terrible,” I said, thinking of Stark. He’d only been sworn to me for days, and already I knew it would be like ripping away a part of his soul if he failed to protect me. And how long had Kalona been Nyx’s Warrior? Centuries? How long was a piece of eternity?
    Incredulous, I realized I was feeling sorry for Kalona. I couldn’t be feeling sorry for him! Sure, he’d had his heart broken and fell from the Goddess’s realm, but then he’d turned into a bad guy. He’d become the evil he used to fight.
    He nodded his head and, as if he could hear my thoughts, said, “I did terrible things. I’ve continued to do them. Falling changed me. Then, for so long I was numb inside. I searched and searched, century after century, trying to find something, some
one
to fill the bloody wound Nyx had left within my soul, within my heart. When I found her, I didn’t know she wasn’t real, that she was just an illusion created to entrap me. I went willingly into her arms. Did you know that when she began to shift her form back to the clay from which she’d been made, she wept?”
    My body jerked. I knew what he was talking about. I’d experienced it with her.
    “Yes.” My voice was a rough whisper. “I remember.”
    His eyes widened in shock. “You remember? You have A-ya’s memories?”
    I didn’t want to admit the extent of the A-ya memory, but I knew I couldn’t lie. So I fashioned a small piece of the truth and gave it to him in short, tight words. “Only one. I just remember dissolving. And I remember A-ya crying.”
    “I am glad you don’t remember anything else, because her spirit stayed with me, trapped there in the darkness, for a long time. I couldn’t touch her, but I could sense her presence. I think it was the only thing that kept me sane.” A shiver rippled through his body and I saw his hands begin to lift, as if he would literally try to push away the memory. He was silent for a long time. I thought he might be done with his retelling of the past, and I was trying to sift throughthe shock and disbelief in my mind to find a question to ask him when he began to speak again. “Then A-ya was gone. That is when I began calling. I whispered my need to be free to the world, and the world finally heard me.”
    “Don’t you mean Neferet heard you?”
    “It is true that she heard me, but it wasn’t only the Tsi Sgili who answered my call.”
    I shook my head. “You didn’t call me to the House of Night. Nyx Marked me. That’s why I’m there.”
    “Is it? I must speak only the truth or our dream disappears, so I will not try to persuade you by pretending I know more than I do. I will only say what I believe, and I do believe you heard me, too. Or at least the part of you that was once A-ya heard and recognized my voice.” He hesitated, and then added, “Perhaps Nyx’s hand was guiding your reincarnation. Perhaps the Goddess sent you to—”
    “No!” I couldn’t listen to any more. My heart was beating so hard I thought it would burst from my chest. “Nyx didn’t send me to you, just like I’m not really A-ya. It doesn’t matter that I have some random memory that’s hers. In this lifetime I’m a
real
girl, with free will and a mind of my own.”
    His expression changed again. His eyes soft ened as he smiled at me tenderly. “I know, Zoey, and that is why I have had such a struggle with my feelings for you. I woke from the earth wanting the maiden who had imprisoned me, to find a girl with free will fighting against me.”
    “Why are you doing this? Why do you sound like this? You’re not really this guy!” I shouted at him, trying to yell down the terrible, wonderful way his words were making me feel.
    “It happened when you fell. I saw myself falling again, and in that vision I also saw my heart breaking again. I couldn’t bear it. I swore to myself that if I could draw you to me one more time I would show you the truth.”
    “If this is really true, then you have to know that you’ve become the evil you used