Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
BELLAMY
“ V isiting someone else’s dream?” Kairoth asked, floating down onto my balcony and sitting in the chair next to me.
“That’s none of your business,” I signed, annoyed that he yanked me out of Aron’s dream, annoyed that he possessed the kind of power to do such a thing.
“It’s my business when it’s happening in my castle. So whose dream do you have reason to be infiltrating? Visiting friends back home? It didn’t sound like you had many of those.”
I glared at him, arms crossed tight.
He just tilted his head, the movement visible beneath all the shadows whirling around him. “I wanted to show you something.”
He snapped his fingers, and on the table between us appeared a game. I gasped. It was the game I’d told Kairoth about just yesterday. The game my brothers and I used to play. Mapora.
I couldn’t believe he’d picked up that detail, that he’d even remembered the name.
I ran my finger around the edge of the X-shaped board. Checkered squares filled the inside of the X, and dice sat in the middle. On my side of the table lay six silver coins, and on Kairoth’s side lay six gold coins.
My gaze trailed up to Kairoth. “Where did you find this?”
He shrugged. “When you mentioned it, it sounded familiar. I did some digging.”
That was a vague answer, but I didn’t even care. I just wanted to play. I hadn’t played this game since before my brothers were trapped.
“We used to have tournaments.” I lifted a coin and set it back down. “Four of us would play. Then another four would play. The two best from each game would play each other in a final game. My father would sit in front of the fire and watch while he read books and smoked his favorite lavender plant from his pipe.”
He loved that plant, said it made him forget the past. I always knew he was talking about my mother. It was the most painful for him when she’d turned into the cat-like creature and left.
“I’ve never played,” Kairoth said. “So teach me.”
I couldn’t understand why he was doing this. Why he was being so nice. In this moment, it was hard to care when all I wanted to do was play this game and get lost in the past. To feel something after so long of feeling nothing.
“Take the die,” I instructed.
A shadow stretched out from his arm and lifted it, dropping it into his hand.
“Was that necessary?” I quirked a brow. “You could have just picked it up instead of using your shadows. Are you going to use them to roll it too? Because I might accuse you of cheating.”
“I don’t need to cheat” was all he said. He ignored the other part, staring at the board, and through his whirling shadows I could see his brows furrowed. He tossed out the die, and it rolled until it landed on a two.
I pointed to a gold coin, then pointed to where he should place it to begin. He placed the gold coin where I directed, then moved it two spots.
“The goal is to get all six of your coins around the X and back to the starting point first.”
“That sounds too easy,” he said.
“Just wait.” I grabbed the die and tossed it. It landed on a three, and I smiled, moving one of my coins forward three spaces, then setting another coin on the board.
“How come I didn’t get to do that?” Kairoth asked.
“Because you didn’t roll a three.” I shot him a smile.
I could feel him studying me behind the swarm of shadows. “You could very easily be making up these rules, and I wouldn’t even know.”
“I could,” I agreed.
His head tilted. “But then I don’t think you’d take as much pleasure in beating me. I don’t think you’re one to cheat. You have more respect for your opponent and the game to do that.”
I didn’t know why, but his words filled me with pride because he was right. I never cheated.
He rolled again and got another two, tsking as he moved his piece forward.
“It was my twin brothers who liked to cheat,” I signed. “Killian and Klaus. We’d finish the game and find spare coins up their sleeves, weighted die. They had a hard time taking anything seriously.”
“They sound fun. They remind me of one of my uncles. He was like that. Always the one you went to if you needed cheering up. Always a joke at the ready. He liked to be the center of attention.”
It was odd hearing him talk about such human things like family, like uncles. Then again, in another way, it wasn’t odd at all. So much of what I’d seen of him since we’d met had felt distinctly human.
I rolled and got a four, moving my second piece. Then I rolled again, a smile already forming on my face because I knew Kairoth would have something to say.
“And why are you rolling a second time?” He leaned forward.
“Bonus turn.” I shrugged. “If you roll a four or a five, you get to go again.”
He grumbled something under his breath, and I thought it sounded like “that’s convenient.”
“Did you and the other gods ever play games like this?”
He snorted. “No. Not games like this. The gods had much more twisted games they liked to play. Games that usually involved mortals as the game pieces.”
He sounded disgusted by it, but I remembered that woman trapped below his castle and bristled.
“How does that just happen? How do you become immortal and lose any sense of morality?”
He paused before he rolled. “Aha,” he said when it landed on a four. “Bonus turn.”
I made a face, and I swore I could see his lips twitch underneath the shadows.
“It happens slowly,” he said. “After we got our powers, learned how to use them, learned our limits, our strengths, our weaknesses, we decided we’d each take a territory of the continent to rule. We started bringing mortals over from different lands, bestowing them with powers. Not immortality but magic. In return, the mortals worshipped us. They were in awe of us and our strength, in awe of our ability to gift them with magic. They built us temples. They threw themselves at us, everyone wanting a piece of us.”
“Sounds awful.” I rolled my die, landing on a two and placing another piece on the board. “If you don’t roll a two soon, you’re only going to have one piece to play with.”
“I’m aware,” he said drily. “It was awful. I didn’t like all the attention. It made me uncomfortable, everyone always staring at me, wanting something from me. The worst was when they wanted something I couldn’t give.”
I stared at him curiously. “Like what?”
He sighed heavily, finally rolling a two and getting another piece on the board. “Everyone looked to us to be the heroes. They expected us to be able to save them. One day, I came across a woman who’d been crushed under the wheel of her wagon. Her entire party waved me down as I flew through the air. They begged me to save her. Her children were crying, grabbing at my cloak. Her husband was crying over her, telling me he’d do anything if I’d save her. And I couldn’t. I didn’t have that kind of power. My power is connected to shadows. That’s it. Many didn’t understand that.”
His voice was full of so much heartache, so much regret.
“What kind of power do you have?” I shifted in my seat. “You can fly. You can disappear, then reappear in another place.”
“The gods can do a lot of things.” He snapped his fingers, and a shadow flew off, then returned within minutes with a piece of bread that it dropped in the middle of the board, scattering my coins.
“Now who’s cheating?” I signed and returned my coins to their place on the board.
He waved his hand, and the shadow snatched the bread, then flew away with it. He pointed a finger at the coin, and one of his shadows lifted into the air and placed it back in its spot. “Our greatest strength comes from the element we control,” he said as one of his shadows stretched forward and caressed my cheek, leaving me breathless from the contact. “But there are limits. We can’t bring back someone who’s already dead.”
“Like the woman,” I guessed as the shadow retreated.
He nodded. “That happened again and again and again. It drained me, constantly disappointing people. The other gods didn’t seem to care as much. They reveled in the attention and the gifts, the fame. The power.” It was his turn again and he rolled the die, getting a six. “What’s a six?” he asked.
“Move your piece forward and see.”
He hesitated but moved his gold coin forward six spaces, landing on the same space as my silver coin. I grabbed my coin and took it off the board.
“Now that’s interesting,” he said.
“Why do you think you cared so much and the other gods didn’t?” I asked, not sure if I entirely believed him. I wanted to, but I also wondered if he was playing a part, telling me stories that would tug at my heart strings and make him look good. To what end, I still didn’t know. Maybe to learn my secrets.
It was his turn to shift in his seat, his shadows flaring out, then coiling back around him. “I didn’t quite fit in with the other gods from the beginning. They could wield fire, air, water, frost, earth, the stars. I had shadows. I had darkness. I think I intimidated them, their shadows constantly stretching out toward me as if they wanted to come to me.”
I’d never thought of that. I straightened in my chair. “Would they lose their powers if you took their shadows?”
“I couldn’t take their shadows, and they knew that. I think it just made them uncomfortable that I could take their followers’ shadows, make their followers lose their magic.” He hesitated. “It wasn’t just shadows I commanded. That’s what I’m known for in your world, but in what you call the Old World, I was associated with death. When elementals died, I got their shadows. Once a body has died, I can keep a shadow. It will stay with me until I release it. You can see how dangerous this makes me. The kind of armies I could create. The kind of fear this elicited in others.”
I rolled again and got a six, moving my piece along the edge of the X. I was halfway around the board with my front piece at this point.
“It wasn’t just the other gods who associated me with death. It was everyone.”
“That must’ve been lonely.” For the first time since we’d met, I felt a kinship with him. I knew what it felt like to be different, to be the outcast. I’d been one in the Wilds since the day I was born.
His throat bobbed behind his shadows. “It was lonely. I learned to keep my distance. Rumors spread about my powers, by the other gods or my own followers, I don’t know. People would see me coming and scream, afraid I was there to kill them. Even though I’d never killed anyone. My presence caused panic everywhere.”
There was such pain in his voice, and I missed his teasing tone, wanted to bring it back. I reached out and lay my hand over his.
He stilled just like he had the other night when we were in that tree. I wondered if anyone had ever offered him a hand. If anyone had ever touched him. I had twice now and both times he acted like I’d kissed him. The image of my lips on his flashed in my mind, making heat coil in my belly.
I took my hand back. “I know what it’s like to feel different too,” I signed.
“It sounds like you had a loving family,” he said. “I doubt you know what it feels like.”
“I did have a loving family. But that doesn’t mean they understood me. I was the only one my mother rejected.”
He sat back in his chair as he rolled again. This time a two. He put another piece on the board. “You haven’t spoken much about your mother. Why did she reject you?”
I immediately regretted that I’d said anything. I hated this part of my past. Hated thinking about it. I’d spent so many years not thinking about her. Focusing on what I had instead of what I didn’t. “She was affected by that curse.” I leaned forward. “She’d turned into a catlike creature. My father had to imprison her long enough for her to give birth to me. Once she did, she wanted nothing to do with me. My father begged her to stay, to be a family. He didn’t care what she’d turned into. But she said she couldn’t stand the sight of me. So she left.”
“I’m sorry,” Kairoth said, and it sounded like he meant it, genuine sorrow filling his voice. “That must have been incredibly painful, Bellamy.”
“My brothers all knew what it was like to have a mother. They all had wonderful, happy memories of her. They knew what it felt like to be loved by her. All I knew was her scorn.” I hesitated, then squeezed my eyes shut. “They never said anything, but sometimes I wonder if they blamed me. She left because of me, because something about me was so reprehensible she didn’t want to be a part of it.”
A tear rolled down my cheek. I’d never said that out loud to anyone. Never admitted it. Not even to my brothers. I didn’t want them to feel sorry for me, not when they were suffering so much from the loss of her.
I felt a finger brush the tear away, and my eyes popped open. Kairoth had reached across the table, his pale hand stretching through his shadows. “They wouldn’t have blamed you,” he said.
Heat seared the place he’d touched as he withdrew his hand and tucked it at his side.
“It was your mother’s choice to leave,” and then he said his next words so quietly I almost missed them. “It was her loss.”
His piercing amber eyes glowed behind the wispy forms of the shadows, and I held his gaze for moment before nodding.
“Your turn,” I signed.