once
The first time Jadis takes a life, she is nine years old, and it is an accident.
(Later, during the war, she will spread the rumor that the first death was cold and calculated and purposeful. This is a lie.)
She is performing sacred rites in the temple and, though she is only nine years old, she is old enough to knows that assassins fear the gods almost as little as does her family. The power rises in her, then, heavy and fast and gods spare me. It is quick and unintentional and when it is over, there is a dead man on the temple floor. His eyes are blank and his face slack and his features unfamiliar.
The first words in her mind are a prayer.
They tumble over and over, words of penitence and sacrifice, offering this soul to the goddess of death if she will only please, please goddess, please…
The second thought she harbors is this: that life should not be so easy to destroy, so effortless to steal away.
(Later, she will call herself the goddess's instrument, and she will sleep peacefully.)
twice
The second time is completely different; she is sixteen and this death is the most carefully planned event she ever performs. It is cold and calculating, the second time, and her tools are not magic and fear but rather sacred steel and her own slender hands.
(Later, during the war, the rumor will circulate that Jadis had nothing to do with the murder of her first lover, that it was the goddess's hands that wielded the blade. This is a lie.)
She slips into his room in the cool of the evening, when the spices are heavy on the air, and she wakes him with a kiss before she drives the blade home. She smiles at the fear in his eyes and stops the first words of the penitent's prayer before they are little more than a whisper in her mind.
It is in this moment, with his blood still warm on her hands, that she decides that she prefers dealing death with steel. There is more power in it, more life, and she laughs softly as she slips from his room.
(Later, she will tell herself that she is the goddess incarnate, and that the blood will never stain her hands.)
thrice
The third life that Jadis takes is the first casualty of the war, and she barely gives it any notice.
(Later, when the war grows desperate and her sister gains ground with each passing day, a rumor will circulate that this first death was a great victory, that Jadis knew the man she casually killed was her sister's confidant. This is a lie.)
She catches him on the palace steps and she kills him for spite, kills him because she cannot kill her sister. He falls without a fight, her sister's name on his lips, and her mind moves on to battle plans and assassins before his blood even has a chance to cool.
He is nothing, and no one, and it is only hours or days later that she realizes that his blood has stained her silken skirts.
(Later, she will order a general to have the skirts scrubbed. When they are returned without a stain, she will burn them anyway.)
deplorable
The last life Jadis takes in her own world is Charn's.
(Later, when she is awoken by two children and her world ends, she will spread the rumor that the life was hers to take. This is the last and greatest lie that Charn will ever hear.)
The Word fills her with power- fills her to the brim so that her mind is full of it, overflowing with it- and she cannot but cry with pain as the power leaves her.
And then the world explodes into death, and she can only think of the sweetness of the Word on her tongue, and how its power filled her, and even as she stands alone on a dead world she contemplates saying it again, so as to taste of its sweetness.
It is, she realizes, the best and most beautiful way to kill.
(Later, she will whisper the Word in her mind, and know she has killed the goddess of death, and there will be no prayer on her lips.)