Twice Born excerpt:

Tharril did not remember what it felt like to be dead.

The ordeal that led to his death—the beating that shattered his jaw and broke his body, the knives that cut his face and then his hands when he lifted them to defend himself, even the cold air scouring his tattered flesh moments before his tormentors flung him into the sea—those things he remembered. But the sting of the blade as it opened his throat, the shock of the water slamming into him, or his life bleeding out into the ocean—his imagination supplied what he could not recall, until those details became a kind of truth.

One day, his body rolled onto shore with the morning mist, and those who came to gape at his white hair and mortal wounds recoiled in horror when he suddenly drew breath. Color flooded into bloodless limbs as they began to twitch, the wounds closed, leaving no trace, and the people flung themselves down beside him, covering him in warm cloaks, touching his damp hair, his fingers, any part of him that could bestow the Lady’s blessing.

Shumadi, they whispered. Soon he learned what the word meant: twice-born, first among the talevé, the Lady’s mortal consorts.

Born, dead, and reborn. And still, he did not remember what it was to die. In time, the other talevé in the Blue House of Sirilon realized he could not answer their questions about the hereafter. Even the curiosity in their eyes faded, as he was no different than they, and took no pains to remind them of things better left forgotten.

Ritual would not let him forget. A shumadi walked before the other talevé, crowned like a prince, bearing the Lady’s triple wave Water rune on his mantle, dispensing the blessings expected of Her most holy consort. Questions brimmed on a thousand lips, brightening a thousand eyes that believed he possessed the key to the great mysteries of life and death that held them in terrified awe.

My touch cannot cure anyone. I cannot restore your dead or dying, he wanted to tell them. Better you hire a physician than ask for my prayers.

Death should leave visible signs. But the face in the looking glass was flawless, not the tattered ruin it had been before he went into the sea, and was crowned by a talevé’s foam-white hair. Ordinary folk called him beautiful, a word he hardly would have used to describe himself. In his mind, he remained the thin, sandy-haired farmer’s son from Entippé whose parents despaired of ever finding him a proper bride.

His mind rejected certain memories. Apart from a few recollections of his family, whom he not seen or contacted in a decade, and brief, stolen moments of joy with his lover in the slave quarters of Tajhaan, his life had begun on the shores of Sirilon. The Lady of the Waters was his mother and his consort, though not his greatest love, and to reach for anything beyond the moment She entered his life was to invite pain, and rage he could not answer.