Chapter Twenty-Nine
“An estries?” I reeled. I’d waited until we’d gotten back to the room, but I couldn’t keep it in any longer.
“Love—”
“Do not speak,” came Fenrir’s silencing command.
I looked between the Prince and Ragnarok’s wolf helplessly.
From the way Caliban turned to regard Fenrir, I knew they were speaking. After a long pause, he grabbed my hand.
“Come with me,” Caliban said.
Fenrir padded off to the settee and made himself comfortable while Caliban led me into the washroom. The enormous, black, glassy bath appeared to have no edge. It tumbled off into infinite darkness, disappearing into the onyx on all sides. It was more like a small pool than any tub I’d ever seen.
I was so distracted looking at the bath and admiring how different it was from the comparatively small tub that had been in my and Fauna’s room that I hadn’t noticed Caliban’s hand. He reached for the strap of my dress. I went to brush him off, but wavered slightly as I lost my footing. The shocking turn of events at the day’s end had replaced the hum of alcohol with adrenaline. Now that it was wearing off, I became acutely aware of just how much I’d consumed.
“Are you trying to get me into the bath? Right now? It’s an estries, Caliban! A fucking—”
He snatched the wrist of my hand, which had been pointing in animated fury. “Are you going to be quiet on your own, or do I need to make you?”
I didn’t take the bait. I shoved against him with my free hand while yanking my restrained hand away. I succeeded only in dipping half of my body close to him while the other half jolted away. In doing so, I lost all ground. He wrapped his free arm around my back and pinned me to him.
“Try again,” he dared.
I snarled. “Let me go.”
He crushed me against him. His expression remained indifferent as he said, “You’re drunk, Love. When you misspeak, you won’t be the only one who suffers the consequences.”
“ When ?” I glared against the insult. I struggled to free myself from the hold, but his arms were like quicksand. Every wiggle further constricted me in his powerful grasp. I grunted helplessly as a new panic began to rise. “Let go!”
“Stop,” came his single firm command.
I rammed my bare foot into his instep, but it did nothing. I felt his chest swell with his impatient intake of air. “I’m trying to help… everyone . We aren’t in the mortal realm. If things go poorly, they don’t go poorly for just one human lifetime.”
I went rigid. My jaw fell open at the implication.
He seemed to take it as compliance, for he loosened his grip.
“Because,” I said in horror, taking a step away, “if it were just my human life at risk, that would be fine? If only I die, it’s no problem, right? If I were the one facing an estries, who gives a fuck?” The tendons in his hands flexed in a controlled anger while I backed away. My temper burned hotter as I created more space, backing closer and closer to the door. “That’s it, isn’t it? That my life is so temporary that it doesn’t matter. You just press restart if you lose me. You don’t give a shit if I survive. I’m just—what do you keep saying?—a cycle. I’m just another meat suit in a sequence of Marlows, trapped in a loop of new, shiny versions of myself and fresh starts all the damn time. I’m the reason Astarte’s dead. Maybe I should volunteer myself in Silas’s place. Perhaps if they need blood spilled—”
I didn’t even see him move.
His anger was silver fire. One hand was over my mouth, the other cupping the back of my head as he slammed me into the wall behind me. He pressed into me until the air was forced from my lungs. I squirmed in rage, in fury, in panic, in a flash of pure terror as I fought uselessly against his hold over me.
“Fight me again,” he said through clenched teeth. “I put out a tier-five favor to save this mortal form of yours. I gambled with my life, my realm, our victory in the war just so you wouldn’t suffer. I—”
I threw an elbow in an attempt to scramble away. I couldn’t breathe. Each shallow pant bounced uselessly against his palm and shoved my own hot air back into my mouth. Tears lined my eyes as I buckled against the need to sob.
His lip pulled back in a half snarl as he looked at me. “I’m not asking; I’m telling. I’m going to take my hand away, and you’re going to be silent.”
He was a demon. He was a fucking demon. He was no angel, no imaginary friend, or fairy guardian. He wasn’t a benevolent god. He was—
“Then you’re going to get in the goddamn bath and meet me in the cave.”
I choked on the words. He lowered his hand just for me to spit out, “What?”
He raised a single finger like a scolding father.
“Fuck—” The second word didn’t have a chance to escape. He held me as I trembled with rage. He absorbed the punches I couldn’t throw. He crushed me against him, hand over my mouth as I struggled through my haze of wine and anger.
Frustrated, helpless tears lined my eyes when it became clear I couldn’t break free. I couldn’t say my piece. I couldn’t scream at him or run away or do anything except look up into the icy fire of his patient, powerful eyes.
I slumped against my powerlessness. My arms slackened. My lids fluttered shut. Caliban lowered his hand and wrapped me in a hug. I was still angry, but not at him. I was angry at my confusion, at my helplessness, at my inability to understand the game of gods and their cavalier attitude toward life and the way they moved about with so much confidence while I was falling apart. I’d wanted to throw fists at the sky, but he’d outlasted my will to scream. When I looked up again, his long-suffering expression was tinged with love, compassion, and the barest edge of amusement.
I looked between him and the overflowing water at the infinity edges of the tub. I flickered to the words he’d said before my failed attempt to curse at him. The cave? He wanted me to…meditate with him? He was slow to step away. He ensured my breathing had steadied, that my feet were firm beneath me, and that I was no longer a flight risk before he released me. He raised an impatient brow.
“Turn around.” I glared, too bitter to undress in front of him.
His lips twitched in amused surprise. “To be clear, I am also getting in the bath.”
“Fine.”
“So, I’ll be naked with you in less than thirty seconds.”
“I get it,” I bit, “but right now, I’m mad at you.”
His broad shoulders softened slightly. His face relaxed in ongoing amusement as he turned away. “Fair enough.”
I grumbled unintelligibly as I slipped the straps off my shoulders and let the dress pool at my feet. I looked down at my body, then planted my hands on my hips defiantly. I had no bodily shame. This body wasn’t just a temple, as they were free to access and open to all. It was a Michelin restaurant, an elite resort, a millionaire’s yacht. Better still—even A-list celebrities could bully their way into coveted places with enough clout. There would be no bullying, no bluffing, no clout when I had full autonomy. I could always say no.
Not even the Prince of Hell could see me if I didn’t want him to.
I continued my muttering as I dipped my toes into the bath. I didn’t miss the subtle shake of his shoulders as he chuckled at my anger.
The tub was far deeper than I anticipated. I nearly tripped as I stepped down, gasping when it came nearly to my breasts. Though the water had looked black from the outside, I could see through the crystalline ripples that it was simply the color of the stone. My pale shape cut through the shadows, offering little coverage.
“Great,” I muttered.
“What was that?” he asked.
I didn’t answer him as I felt around. My toe bumped a submerged ledge, which was precisely what I’d hoped. A tub this deep needed an option to avoid drowning. I slid onto the onyx seat. I eyed the inverted triangle of his shape, his white shock of hair breaking up the darkness of the room. I narrowed my eyes at him.
“Strip for me, Prince,” I said, conjuring as much venom as I could.
His exhale was an amused huff of air. “See? Hellfire runs through your veins.”
A moment later, he reached a single hand over his head and gripped a handful of his shirt. It was off in a flash, revealing the iridescent shimmer beneath his skin, his muscles, his broad, perfect…
Fuck . Was I really such a sucker that my anger dissipated at the sight of him? It seemed impossible. My eyes widened, cheeks flushing as he turned around and caught me staring. The blush spread to my body as confusion pulsed through me. The resentment I’d felt only moments prior was muddled in the water. There was no trace of the anger or power I’d seen flash through him as he’d advanced on me. He gave me a very intentional up-down from where I sat in the glass-clear water.
“Close your eyes,” he said, mocking me with deadpan delivery.
Rage flared through me again, but the emotion was different this time. I turned my face away without closing my eyes, simultaneously obliging while keeping my feet planted firmly in disobedience.
I should have heard several sloshing steps. I’d anticipated the slow breaststroke of advance as he crossed from one side of the large, flat tub to the other. Instead, in a moment he was on dry land in the washroom, and in the next, he was beside me. It took my breath away as he slid a hand onto my thigh, rotating me so we were facing one another.
“Why?” I stumbled over the question. I cleared my throat and repeated myself, shocked and angry at the effect the god-like, perfect man before me had on my mental capacity. I rallied for some of the residual anger, but my body had a different reaction to remembering the flash of force and power as he’d shoved his hand over my mouth, protecting my head from the impact. I fought to get my words out. “Why the bath?”
“Water is an effective conduit,” he said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
My brows met in an upturned question.
His evaluating look added to my confusion. “Did you never wonder why I was always pulling you into the shower?”
My mouth dried. “Because it’s sexy as fuck?”
“That it is,” he agreed, fingers kneading my thigh. “But we weren’t in Hell then, and we aren’t in Hell now. Power flows through water more easily even when you’re outside of your own realm.”
“And now?” I asked breathlessly.
“Now,” he said, thumb still grazing my thigh beneath the water, “you’re drunk, and we’re leaching the effects of the alcohol.”
His words stunned me. I was horrified at their implication as I thought once more of the lowest point in my life, when a figment of my imagination—evidence of the very insanity I was attempting to escape—had pulled me under the running water and held me against his chest as he’d forced me to throw up pills over and over again. There had been so many times…
“You make me feel stupid,” I said quietly.
He was horrified at the words. His face crinkled, lips parted in wordless regret.
I shook my head, the ends of my hair dangling in the water and clouding around me as I moved. My gaze dropped to the ripples. “I’m twenty-six and I have to recast every major event in my life. Every trauma, every victory, every psychotic break where you were far too real…” I looked up at him, unable to keep the sorrow from my eyes as I mourned my past. “I’m educated,” I said. “Not just academically, but in global theology. While in the church, I had a robust faith and active spiritual life. I’m socially intelligent—which is a goddamn priceless quality in sex work. But now…with everything…”
I saw his concern transition to understanding.
“Shh.” He attempted to calm me. He removed his hand from my thigh. His palm broke the water and cupped my cheek.
I looked at the naked place his hand had abandoned. “Were you even touching me to touch me? Or is it just…to…what? Access an ability? Sober me up?”
His lips flattened into a line. “You can’t be held accountable for the things you say when drunk, and you had every right to drink until you couldn’t stand. Things changed quickly, and I’m just giving you the same footing that everyone else in the palace has. It’s unfair for you to be at any disadvantage. And I’m not the only one who needs you to be at your sharpest right now, Love.”
He looked at me expectantly.
I frowned. I crossed my arms, tucking them against my chest to cover myself. I was still angry, but it was the sort of rage born of pride and principle, even if the emotional tide had passed. I saw the wisdom in his reasoning, but that didn’t make it any easier for me. I didn’t know how to move forward, but there were things that needed to be discussed.
“So…cave?”
He motioned for me to lean forward so he could tuck his arm behind me. He patted his free hand against his chest, encouraging me to relax against him. I rested my face on the cool skin that felt so nice in contrast to the warm water. I closed my eyes and let everything go dark.
“You’re lucky I have a vibrant imagination.”
“Tell it to the cave,” he murmured into my hair.
So, I did. I looked around to see the textured columns, the stones frozen in drips like water, the wet, rocky walls, and the dark belly into nothingness as I waited for a fox. It was not an animal who appeared from the darkness this time. Caliban strode out from the depths, hands in pockets. He smiled affectionately and outstretched a hand toward me.
“Are you taking me deeper into the cave?” I asked it in my mind this time.
“I’m not taking us anywhere,” he said. “Turn around and lead us out of the cave.”
I wasn’t sure if he was serious. His expectant face wiped away my doubt as I cautiously rotated, expecting to see more cave. Instead, I saw the world. We broke from the mouth of the cave onto the deep red sand of an empty, silent desert. The Milky Way soaked the sky overhead in a concentrated display of brilliance. In the midst of the sand stood a short flight of stairs and a door. No walls. No building. Nothing more.
“Where are we?” I asked, shock rippling through me.
“You tell me,” he responded.
I looked at his fingers interwoven with mine, then up at him. He was admiring the scenery with equal appreciation.
“You’ve never been here?”
“We’re in your head,” he said. “This is your place.”
“But the cave—”
He cut me off. “The cave is a tool, not a location. It allows you to look into nothing and allow something to appear. The cave is not your mind. This”—he gestured to the stars, the blowing, drifting sand, the dunes, and stairs leading to Hell knows where—“is you.”
I led us cautiously forward as we approached the out-of-place wooden door. A set of stairs without rails, without buildings, without suspension or rhyme or reason. It was old. It was neither ominous, nor inviting. It simply was. Through the cracks at its edges, I didn’t miss the bright glow of whatever waited on the other side.
“It looks how I imagined the light at the end of the tunnel,” I said quietly.
“Maybe it is.”
I looked back at him in surprise. “That could be where you go where you die?”
He twisted his mouth in consideration. “I doubt it, but it could be. It goes someplace else, that’s for sure.”
“Where?”
I knew before meeting his eyes that he didn’t have the answer. Embarrassment was a predominant emotion when I realized how patient he had to be with me, followed by a resurgence of frustration that he’d experienced this like the tides. I was an ebb and flow of comprehension and idiocy through my lifetimes. It was humiliating to think I had to start each cycle as an ignorant blob, and infuriating that he’d had to develop monastic patience to endure my cycles.
“Why are we here?” I asked, agitation coloring my words. “Not here in the desert with the cave and door and night. Why am I naked in the water with you out in the real world—or, is their realm even the real world? God, just, help me understand what’s going on.”
“We need to be able to talk. It’s a gift many deities have. You’re at a disadvantage, but you don’t have to be. Especially with your fae blood, your access to your clairabilities is kissing the surface, eager to break through. You resist them. But we might need to talk again, out there. Agree to a signal with me? Something subtle, should we need to meet in the cave while we’re out?”
“Any ideas?”
He smirked. “Bite your lip and hold my eyes for three seconds.”
“Caliban.” I blushed.
He ran a thumb over my heated cheeks. “This is precisely why. You can’t do it naturally. You’re fine when you’re acting. You’d mask excellently if I were a client. You play the role of confident seductress like a star. But you wouldn’t be able to do something so out-of-character with me unless you were slipping into a role. And that role will be to signal me.”
“But I’d look like—”
“A demoness?” He chuckled. “With a demon. It’s perfect, Love. They’ll expect nothing less from someone who’s gotten into bed with Hell.”
My fidgeting only seemed to amuse him.
He dropped the topic of sultry roleplay and tugged me to a slope. We sat on the sand, and he looked at me seriously. “Did you know the Grecians were coming?”
My lips parted. I didn’t even have the time to inhale in surprise.
“So, that’s a yes. Is there anything else I should know?”
I fidgeted. “I suppose you’ve guessed Ella, Estrid, Fenrir, Dorian, and Poppy aren’t here for the party.”
“Are you asking me if I think we’ve collected god-killers on a whim? No, I have more of an eye for strategy than that. So do the Phoenicians. They’re no fools. The Nordes were not well received, though the allowance was reluctantly made. Right now, our only truly hidden asset is Fenrir.”
My entire face crumpled in a frown. “You said they’d know who Fauna was the moment they met her, right? Fenrir told me that he can control who he speaks to and who hears him. Is that how he’s remained hidden?”
He gnawed on his lip for a moment. “Fauna isn’t trying to be anything she’s not, except with you, I suppose.”
“Who is she trying to be with me?”
“She’s a deity. An important one. She’s bent over backward to put you at ease with her humanness. There isn’t a god alive who can’t spot another deity in full force. Fenrir, on the other hand, hasn’t been seen since the earliest age of man. There’s no reason to believe that a mortal would show up with the veritable horseman of the apocalypse, and every reason to believe you’re a mortal traveling with her pet.”
I smirked. “I called him an apocalypse dog once.”
I didn’t think it was possible for him to pale, yet somehow, he managed. “You didn’t.”
“Not to his face.”
“Thank fuck, Love. I know accepting the realms is new to you, but you’ve built a lucrative career being informed on what humans have spent centuries calling mythology. I’m going to need you to abandon mortal concepts and swallow reality whole. Do you know the saying, ‘You can’t write about a concept while looking down your nose at it’?”
A librarian had said the same thing to me not too long ago. She’d watched me page through books on sigils and gods and mythology for days before bluntly stating that I’d never have a breakthrough unless I opened my mind.
“It’s an old expression in journalistic integrity. I thought it might connect with your writer brain. I digress. The point is, a reporter is incapable of being unbiased if they already think something is false, or silly, or wrong. Apply that to anything. You can’t write a good Barbie comic if you think dolls are dumb. You can’t capture an excellent folktale if you think the society is backwater. And you can’t walk with gods and fae and angels and demons if you continue to force everything through human limitations.”
I wrinkled my nose. “I feel like you’re educating me. You’re not my dad. Honestly, I’m not even sure that you’re older than me. How old am I? Two-thousand-some years?”
“Older.” He smiled softly. “But you and I have been bound for just over two millennia. Still, those are thousands of human years. Did you insist you knew more about Colombia than the locals when you arrived?”
I groaned. “I forget that you’ve been goddamn everywhere with me.”
“Good luck shaking me.” He flashed me a smile wide enough to reveal the sharper edges of his teeth.
“Fine. What do I do?”
“Well,” he said carefully, “tomorrow is going to be a rough day.”
“Silas took the fall for you,” I said. It wasn’t an accusation. It was simply fact. “Azrames has been charged as an accomplice because of you. Because of us .”
“They lost a battle so we might win the war.”
“It’s not Silas’s battle!”
“It’s everyone’s battle,” he said, eyes hard. “Azrames knew the risk. Silas gave you his poppet knowing your affiliations with Hell. Everyone in Bellfield knew things could end badly. I haven’t abandoned them. I can’t control everything, Love. We may be allied, but this is not my realm, and these are not my people. I’ve used every drop of my negotiating power to spare Azrames, at the very least. I know these sentences seem barbaric, but you must consider how the gods like to carry out their punishment. The King of Heaven cast my father out forever for requesting equality. Prometheus was chained to a boulder to have his liver eaten out every day for giving humans fire. Fenrir…well, Fenrir’s crime was existing.”
He had a unique quality of explaining things to me without sounding condescending in the least. He was Fauna’s opposite in many ways. The comparative reminders did soothe me, if only slightly.
“Thanks to Poppy and Dorian, Azrames is safe for another day,” I said, pained at the thought. “But he can’t go through with the sentence. He can’t—”
“He was supposed to meet his death, Love. I don’t have authority in this realm.”
“But aren’t you their peer?”
He shook his head. “You know the saying ‘separate but equal’? Baal, Dagon, Anath, Melqart, Dorian, and my father are separate but equal in title. I’m a guest and political ambassador. They will treat me with respect as a figurehead of Hell. They outrank me, Love. I may not be less powerful, but I do understand the pecking order.”
“You’ve already killed a goddess.”
“There’s no evidence to support it, as you’re the only living witness.”
I winced at the flood of gore and blood that savaged my mind. Whippings and cruelties and combat and battles to the death broke the reverie of my beautiful meditative sanctuary. “But Silas…”
“Silas will fight an estries.” I made a sound in protest, but Caliban stopped me. “He will. There is no stopping him from entering the ring, or the events surrounding it.”
“The estries…the vampires…they’re immortal,” I said, filled with defeat.
“So are angels,” he countered. “He’s on more even ground than you think. I believe the Canaanites will unbind his wings. It would be unfair for her to fly and him to die on his feet. They’ll probably allow him a weapon as well. His powers, however, will remain constrained.”
I was aghast. “We’re just going to see if he wins and leave his life to fate?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t.”
Caliban’s look was tense, but not unkind.
“He’s not a citizen of Hell. Fuck, I know angels are your sworn enemy. But Richard would have killed me if Silas hadn’t slain him.”
“That favor was called in.”
I lifted a hand to carry on. “Silas returned when I was caught in Richard’s basement with a parasite. I would have starved to death in the soundproof basement of a serial killer without him. He didn’t just fly into harm’s way to get me out of Bellfield. He went back to help you and Azrames. And now he’s taking the fall for Astarte’s death.”
“Love—” His brows pinched, eyes pleading, lips pulled back in an expression I’d never seen before—something between anger and pain. Was it helplessness? Frustration over my stubbornness? He couldn’t be jealous that I was arguing for the life of an angel, could he?
Fire bubbled in my veins. “I should hate Heaven and its angels as much as any citizen of Hell. But I don’t hate him. And I won’t let him die tomorrow. Not for me. Not for this.”
I stared into Caliban’s diamond-chipped eyes, struggling to read his indiscernible emotion. He wasn’t happy. He wasn’t angry, either. I didn’t need him to understand the underlying feelings motivating my position. Only that I was standing my ground, no matter what.
I thought of the metallic glint of Azrames’s cuff. Of course, they wouldn’t want Silas to access whatever Heavenly power might aid him in his final hour.
“Could he win?” I asked.
I couldn’t quite distinguish the expression on Caliban’s face, but I thought I saw a flash of jealousy. His eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly.
“How it ends is entirely contingent on what you ask of me. I can save the angel. I do owe Silas more than I care to admit. But intervening will cost Hell greatly. Letting him die, on the other hand, will mean the favors go away. The debts he holds will vanish.”
“No,” I said, quiet but firm. “He cashed in his formal favor to you. His debts are mine. He showed up when I was trapped in a serial killer’s basement with a parasite. He came to the clinic when I called out for him just as everything went to shit.”
“I know,” he said. “I don’t want him to have that hold over you.”
“It’s my call whether or not to feel responsible for him, and I do. You can’t take that from me.”
The look was more prominent this time. He set his jaw as he said, “If you want me to start a war, I need you to be fully aware of what you’re asking.”
“He can’t die.”
“Love—”
“I won’t let it happen. You think he stands a chance in the battle? Fine. We’ll let him fight. But if things start to turn…”
Caliban’s pause stretched the width of the Grand Canyon. “If you’re asking me to start a war, I need to know it isn’t over…I’ll do anything for you. I’ll be anyone you need me to be. I’ll burn the world to the ground for you . But for Silas?”
I chewed on my lip. “This isn’t about the Phoenicians,” I said finally. “It isn’t about how we fucked over Astarte or the repercussions of some contract. I want to save you, and Azrames, and Silas. I don’t care about tradition. I don’t care that this is the way things have been done for eternity. The fissure between the Vanir and Aesir is why Ella and Estrid agreed to fight. Fenrir is here because of what Odin did. Poppy and Dorian are here because of centuries of slights from Olympus. None of it has anything to do with Heaven, or Hell, or the Canaanites.”
He remained expressionless as he held my gaze. “And yet…”
“And yet,” I pressed, “it’s all interconnected. I might not be part of their grand godly movement, but something’s happening that’s bigger than all of us. And personally speaking? I don’t care about the bigger picture. What matters to me is that I can get my friends out. I came for you, Caliban, but I’m not going to let Azrames be whipped until he’s little more than pulp. He’s my friend. I’m not going to sit by and watch Silas be drained by a horror movie monster. I’ll stop it.”
He was quiet. “There will be repercussions if you intervene.”
“I know.”
Caliban stared off at the galaxy.
The hush of the desert night rushed around us. There was no wind in my meditative space. The silence had an airy, cleansing quality. Desert was utterly still. There were no biting bugs. There was only the glow of the peculiar door, and the lingering question as I waited for Caliban to react. At one point, I inhaled, and kept it in. I wasn’t sure if I’d breathe again until I knew how tomorrow might look.
When he looked at me, it was with an expression I’d never seen before. With cold gravity, at long last, he answered.
“So, we start a war.”