Chapter Thirty-Four
Purple, yellow, and green dotted his skin. Silas was a bruise stitched together in the shape of an angel. Despite his numerous wounds, it was Silas who grabbed me to keep me upright as I stumbled through the ether and into my living room. He stopped me from smacking my shins against my coffee table. After my rather traumatizing experience with Richard and the shattered glass table, I’d replaced it with a minimalist concrete design. While far harder to damage, it was also more likely to crack my bones if I were clumsy enough to run headlong into it. He ensured I was steady on my feet before he groaned, sinking to the floor.
I was so disoriented. I couldn’t tell if it was the realm-hopping, the jarring sense of incongruous time, or the murky purple twilight filtering in through the windows over the river that made it so challenging for me to gather my bearings. The elaborate dress that had seemed so glamorous in the arena was now a mockery of a realm I’d left behind when contrasted against the mundanity of the apartment. I needed to change, but something told me that turning on a lamp would make me nauseous, so I allowed the gloom to overtake me. I’d need to check the date, but I had to wait until the room stopped spinning.
He began moving his hands over his more obvious injuries, a subtle, glittering glow emanating from his palm as they disappeared beneath his touch. I recalled him healing my bruised knees in this very room as I examined him.
“Silas?” I slumped onto the table, shoulders hunched with exhaustion I hadn’t realized I was carrying. I snatched the golden poppet that had escaped with me from Bellfield and rested in my living room as a literal guardian angel. I turned it over in my hands, looking between the figurine and the man as I said, “Your wings are missing.”
He looked up from his task. “Mmm,” came the barest of acknowledgments before he returned to healing the visible wounds. He pressed his hand to his stomach for whatever internal injuries I couldn’t see. While I’d never known him to be particularly chatty, something seemed off.
“Where are the others? Are they okay?” I continued to squirm. I couldn’t stop picturing the panic on Azrames’s face. Fauna had lost all pretense and clawed at Caliban to get him to help. Whatever it was, it was bad.
“There is absolutely nothing you can do to help,” Silas said. “Though I do suspect a few are hoping you might show up, which is exactly why you can’t go.”
“Can’t,” I grumbled, the word sour on my tongue. It was the angst I needed to push off from the table. I felt his eyes on me as I moved through the living room and entered the bedroom, stepping out of the otherworldly gown and grabbing cozy clothes that rested in the everlasting “too clean to wash, but too dirty to hang up” chair near the bed. I wasn’t sure if I was dressing for bed, or for pacing back and forth in my apartment, but the gray sweatpants and loose black crop top would probably suit either need.
Silas ignored me as I reentered the living room, now looking obscenely underdressed compared to the battle-worn heavenly host in my living room, but that was par for the course as of late. I was far too anxious to resume sitting while we waited for word. I’d rather he talk about the weather than leave me alone with my thoughts. Remaining on my feet, I took a stab at eliciting a reaction.
“What’s your favor count now?” I asked. “Caliban called in a tier-five favor, and you cashed it in for Bellfield. You rescued me twice from parasites. You returned to help him fight at the clinic. He worked with Estrid to get you out of the Phoenician realm. Why didn’t you tell the Phoenicians that you didn’t do it? Why did you take the fall for him?”
His mouth twitched, but it wasn’t quite a smile. “You can’t tell me that you genuinely believe in innocent until proven guilty. ”
I cut to the heart of the question lingering between us. “Where do we stand with who owes who what?”
I wasn’t sure if I cared about the answer. The bargains had never seemed important to me, even though I realized I was alone in my line of thought. The torture, the abuse, everything he’d been through in their realm had been because of me. He’d suffered indescribable traumas, and I had no idea how to make it better.
“You never owed me anything, Marlow,” he said quietly, still fixed on his task. “And my wings aren’t missing. You just can’t see them in the mortal realm. Even with your sigil hack, we’re still in human packaging.”
“Because biblically accurate angels are all wheels and eyes and feathers and fire, right? Are you a flaming circle of eyeball wheels?”
He stopped long enough to look up at me with a deadpan expression. I cracked a smile, and despite his best efforts, I caught the way his lip turned up at the corner before he controlled it once more.
A thought struck me.
“When your cuff was removed, did you get input from Heaven? The same way Azrames got it from Betty?”
Silas said nothing.
I stiffened. “You did, didn’t you. Silas, is Betty okay? Is Heaven—”
Whether or not he’d finished with his injuries, I’d never know. He got to his feet. From where I sat on the coffee table, he looked seven feet tall standing in the mundane gloom of my living room. He stretched out a hand and waited.
“What?”
There was a sorrow to his slow, deep exhalation. “There’s something you need to know, and this may be my only opportunity to tell you.”
I leaned away from his hand like it was a snake. I glared up at him. “About Betty?”
“No. This is so much bigger than Betty. Her role has everything to do with you. The clock has been ticking from the second they left me alone with you. I have moments to show you the truth, if you want it.”
“Is this…?” I hedged. “Is this a trick?”
“How can you ask that?” Pain darkened his eyes, if only for an instant. “When they get back, I won’t be able to tell you what’s really going on. I just fought a death match to protect…” His sentence trailed off, leaving the barest edges of his thought unspoken.
My hand ached to touch his, to comfort him once more, but I fought the urge as if battling my own estries.
He said, “I fully embraced the consequences of being on your side. Now, before you say something that makes me regret my decision: grab the poppet. Don’t leave it behind again.”
I crossed my arms, hugging myself defensively as I took a half step away. I looked between the golden figurine and the angel. “I haven’t done anything to Betty. You haven’t either, right? Is it what Fauna said? They’re antagonizing the people close to me in order to lure Caliban out?”
He looked down at his hand, crestfallen as he said, “You have no clue why everyone reacts the way they do to hearing that you’re the Prince’s human. You have no idea why everyone wants a piece of you, why they’ve been so receptive to your presence, what role you play. But you should. We all deserve to understand whether we’re the game maker, or the pawn.”
My brows pinched. “I…I understand the power of name -dropping. There’s an upward mobility that comes with dating well. As a human, I’m a no one. Attach me to a royal title, and they lend me their ears.”
He laughed, dropping his hand. “They wouldn’t give a shit if you were a human toy. You’re not dating. You’re not even…”
“I’m not even what?”
He rubbed at his eyes. “When this is over, I will have repaid you for saving my life.”
Every moment that passed, every evasion, every cryptic change of the subject only heightened my wariness. I shifted my weight until I was on my feet. I didn’t want to look defensive, but I also wasn’t willing to play this game sitting down.
“I was already in a life debt. You rescued me—”
“Please,” he said. He reached for me and my breath caught on his nearness. I felt as though he were coming in for an embrace before his hand stretched beyond me, snatching the poppet from the table. He slipped a finger into the band of my sweats, sending a jolt of electricity through me as he pulled me closer in order to force the poppet into my pocket. His gaze burned into mine as he said, “You deserve to know.”
No air remained in my lungs as I asked, “Know what?”
He ran his fingers halfway through his hair, stopping at his crown in frustration. “Why everyone is willing to follow you into battle, Marlow. Why Fauna showed up. Why everyone is so giddy about your fae blood in this cycle. Why people treat you the way they do. You deserve to know why you’re a key player in this war.”
“Because I’m—”
Silas grabbed for me before I could complete my thought. I tried to jerk away, but he maintained his hold as my apartment disappeared. We were no longer inside. The time changed. The very air changed as I drank in humidity. My skin prickled with sweat as Silas and I slammed onto concrete. Once again, he kept me from falling over as my eyes widened. I spun uncertainly as I drank in the skyscrapers, the luxury vehicles, the tropical plants. The signs were in English, but as the distant electronic advertisement swirled, the messaging changed into Spanish. The air was too still for a breeze, but I could taste the roast beef of empanadas in the air, the spices hot on my tongue.
“We’re in Argentina,” I breathed.
“Watch.” He nodded, jerking his chin toward a girl with muddy-brown hair at a bus stop.
I practically tripped backwards when she turned. It was me. I was looking at myself. Her forehead glowed with a subtle sunburn. She adjusted the bag on her shoulder and stepped out of the shade just long enough to see if the bus was on its way, then tucked herself beneath the protective awning once more.
“No one can see you,” he said. “We’re in your memories. We’re in…an unveiled version of your memories.”
“That’s Taylor,” I said, ignoring him. I’d never forget the chunky Louis Vuitton boots that had made her nearly my height. Except Taylor had been alone that day. I didn’t recognize the woman with long black hair who accompanied her. She kept a hand on Taylor’s lower back, guiding her to the bus stop. I gaped at the disturbingly beautiful stranger, noting the arch of her ears, the enormity of her irises, and the waifish way in which she seemed to step without the hindrance of gravity. The woman planted herself firmly in our path, then leaned in to whisper in Taylor’s ear.
“I remember this day. I remember all of this. We were alone,” I said.
“You were, and you weren’t,” he said. “Taylor doesn’t know the woman is there, either. Taylor can’t see the fae influencing her. Most humans have no cognizance of the guides who steer them in the mortal realm.”
The woman pulled away after whispering. She pointed to my hand and waited for Taylor’s face to light in interest at the sight of my sun and moon tattoos. She watched encouragingly as Taylor introduced herself.
“She invited me to her villa in Brazil. She introduced me to…” I looked up at the angel, stopping myself before mentioning my life in sex work. It seemed like it might not be the kind of thing I’d want to speak with an angel about. “You can let me go,” I said, jerking my hand slightly. The sticky, tropical climate had created a sweat-slick discomfort where his palm firmly encircled my wrist.
“No,” he said, “I can’t.”
I understood why in the next instant as the glass and steel of Buenos Aires melted into a swirl of Caribbean blue. The vortex of colors and temperatures and scents made my stomach roll as if I’d been stuck in a blender. We crashed onto the street and I tumbled into him. I struggled to make sense of my surroundings: crowded streets, tin roofs, steep hills, and the shocking turquoise stretch of the ocean just beyond the cliff. I looked for familiarity in the faces, but saw none. I looked for a road sign and spotted a weathered shop hand-painted in careful French.
“What are you doing to me? Where are we?”
“Not just where. When .”
“We’re in…Haiti.” I tried once more to step away from him.
“Two cycles ago. Look.” He gestured through the crowd to a young woman in a blue dress with long, tightly woven braids. There was a golden undertone to her rich, dark skin. She laughed at something said by another—a friend, a sister, a companion. “That’s you.”
I looked up at him and squinted. He blocked the sun, and its rays created a golden halo around his head and shoulders as it backlit him. He was distinctly apologetic as he said, “It’s 1914. One year before the American occupation.”
I wasn’t sure if I was struggling against the statement, or from my utter lack of understanding. The more I tried to fight him, the harder he gripped me.
“Do you know what happens when soldiers invade, Marlow? Do you know how military men have historically treated the women in the countries they colonize?”
“I didn’t even know America invaded Haiti,” I said honestly. I was too stunned to see this as real. This was a horrible, immersive nightmare. It was like stepping into a live-action movie rather than experiencing a past life, though I supposed I didn’t know what that was supposed to feel like. I struggled as I watched her happy laugh. The sky, the sea, the energy were as blue and clear as the bright, beautiful sound of her joy— my joy. I caught a flash of white just beyond the alley and squinted after the shape. Logic told me I’d spied a stray cat, but visions of a sleek white animal scratched at my childhood memories. I wrenched my gaze away from the gaps between textured walls.
“What are you saying?” I asked, horror taking my attention away from the creature.
He forced me to look at her again. “That you were beautiful, Marlow. That U.S. Marines invaded Port-au-Prince and occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934.”
“I don’t—”
The blender swallowed me whole.
There wasn’t time for me to ask anything further before we slipped out of the island paradise into the biting teeth of winter. I squinted against the bright monochrome wash of snow and ice as I chafed my arms for warmth The twilight gloom had painted the streets, the buildings, the world with its bluish brush, making it difficult to distinguish one shape from the next, but there was something peculiar about the buildings. It was too dark for me to understand what I was seeing, but an enormous honeycomb structure loomed in the distance. There were unfamiliar scoops and curves to the roofs around me. I wished I could see more, but I couldn’t fight the urge to bring my shoulders to my ears, huddling like a turtle into myself against the unbearable temperature.
I gripped myself tightly, fingers burning from the cold, teeth chattering. Silas tried to put his arm around me and I jerked away.
“For warmth,” he said.
“Stay away from me!” I stuttered, jaw clenched. I’d trusted him. I’d rescued him. In return, he was dragging me through incomprehensible terrors. The arctic air burned my throat and lungs going down. I hoped my eyes looked as dark as they felt. I didn’t know why he was doing this to me, but I hated every second of it.
Quick as a cat, he reached out to snatch me. He muttered something under his breath that I couldn’t discern as he pinned me to him. I attempted to skid out of his reach, but my muscles had already seized up from the sub-zero temperatures. I’d been in the snow with boys before. I knew their tricks. There was no warmth in body heat unless we were both naked beneath the sheets. I expected to be annoyed by his touch, and the well-intentioned reach of an unwanted arm. The moment he placed his hand on me, ice melted from my skin. Warm honey replaced my blood as my shivering stopped.
“Well,” I said, “we sure as hell aren’t in Haiti.”
I’d meant for it to come out bitterly, but the warmth took the sting out of my words.
“Well observed,” he said quietly. He began to walk forward, and I had little choice but to follow. As reluctant as I’d been to let him touch me, now I knew what frozen misery awaited me if he left my side. He led us to the top of a flight of stairs just before the stone steps led down into a what may as well have been a dungeon.
I had a guttural aversion to the stairs without understanding why. I shook my head so hard I made myself dizzy. “Don’t make me go down there. I don’t want to go in.”
“We don’t have to,” he said. “You’re about to come out.”
A heavy door at the bottom of the stairs opened, and with it, a new color broke through the night. A warm crimson glow spread from the opening. A hooded figure cast a shadow as they cut through the reddish light. A moment later, the smell hit me.
Tobacco. Ammonia. Acrid, bitter, spicy…
I recognized the scent. I’d smelled it twice before. Once with friends on a backpacking trip through the mountains in Southeast Asia. A second time, in a client’s home. He’d been a collector of rare antiquities and had a certain hyperfixation on mysteries of the orient , as he’d called them. I’d never seen such an extensive personal collection of things that belonged in a museum. He’d passed me a silk robe and lit a bowl.
I’d put on my best Maribelle smile and worked hard for the money that had lined my purse when I’d left.
“It’s opium,” I whispered. I looked up at Silas, but his eyes were still fixed on the figure. She shut the door before her and ascended the stairs. She was a full foot shorter than me, but I couldn’t discern much more from the strange, purple-blue hour until she was right in front of me.
“We’re in China,” he said quietly. “It’s 1850.”
“And I’m…” I watched the figure brush past us in thickly lined robes. “I frequent opium dens?”
“You aren’t a patron,” he said.
My heart twisted and wrenched as I watched the shadow disappear down the road. I wasn’t sure where she was going, but I doubted it was home. No one who worked in the dens went home to kiss their parents good morning. Women in dens were responsible for keeping customers comfortable, happy, and spending their money.
The bitter, tar-like smell lined my nostrils. I inhaled sharply to try to clear them to no avail. Watching the speck of gray disappear down the road, I asked, “Why are you showing me these? Why do they matter?”
“You’ll see in a moment.”
Something in the weight of his words put a heaviness in my gut. My brows puckered, lips parting in a question when I felt the world tip. It was like falling backward only to realize there was no ground to catch me as I spun and spun and spun. Ice and blue and winter melted into a shadowed gloom that smelled of stale hearth and smoke.
No longer under the threat of arctic chill, I tore away. Silas was unable to catch me as I used the movement to break free of him. My knees hit a wooden floor, hands chafing as I slid through the dirt in a small candlelit room. I blinked through vibrant spots that blinded me as my eyes struggled to adjust from the violet hour to the nearly pitch-black darkness of the windowless space.
A sound drew my attention before I was able to discern much more. It was the quiet snap as the busks of a corset were unhooked. I struggled to understand the pale hands, the long, golden hair, the pink, downturned lips of the silent, frowning maiden. It was as if I’d stumbled into a classical painting. The room was too cold to be undressing. She was too sad to be painted. I got to my feet just as she reclined on the low bed.
I didn’t see the second presence until then.
A man stepped out from where he’d lounged in the shadows. He may have been her father, or grandfather, for the age that gapped between them. The barest yellow hint of a smile cut through the gloom as he slipped out of his overcoat. The boards creaked beneath the weight as he approached the bed.
“Get me out of here,” I said, panic and urgency lacing each word. I trusted my gut this time. I had to leave, now.
“Marlow—”
“Get me out of here!”
He grabbed me and jerked me from the horrid painting, but I was not met with relief. I had not escaped the blond, youthful woman. She’d merely relocated. No longer was she in the dark on a bed, but had the fuller, youthful roundness of someone not quite twenty. She had a milkmaid quality, from the blush on her cheeks to the country simplicity of her layered aprons and skirts. A brisk fall breeze wasn’t the only thing sending a chill through me as I searched for understanding. I struggled to soak in the thatched roofs, the wooden homes, the clucking chickens, the rolling hills. Someone called out in a language I didn’t understand. It may have been vaguely German, but I spoke a smattering of German, and nothing registered as quite right.
“Spot the fae,” Silas said softly.
My neck ached as I continued shaking my head. I was pretty sure I hadn’t stopped the dizzying movement since looking down the stairs to the opium den. I didn’t want to play this game. I grabbed on to his arm and yanked it, hoping he’d jolt me somewhere else.
“ Look ,” he pushed. I winced, scarcely able to peek through my squinting eyes as I watched a handsomely dressed older woman assess the milkmaid from across the way. At her side was someone who, compared to the chaste fabrics of the day, may as well have been naked.
I saw her, and I hated it.
“What is she?” I asked, watching the older woman and the willowy entity that accompanied her.
“It doesn’t matter,” Silas sighed. “She’s the entity following your friend in Argentina. She might as well be Fauna, for all intents and purposes. She’s another god or demon or fae about to lead a madame—a human woman who has no clue what role either of you play in this game—to your doorstep so they might steer your path.”
“Steer my path toward…” I flashed to the dissociative sorrow on the milkmaid’s face. “Silas, what the fuck. What the fuck ! Are you telling me that I’ve been a goddamn whore in all of my cycles? Is this why I’m here? Fuck you. Fuck you for doing this to me. Get me the fuck out of here.” I ripped myself free of his grasp despite knowing I needed his help. I tore for the woods near the house, dry leaves crunching underfoot. I needed to put as much space between myself and the milkmaid and whatever fate awaited her as I could. Rough oaks and the browns and reds of brambles promised shelter, calling to me as I rushed from the village. I’d scarcely rounded the house when I stopped short in front of the unmistakable form of a perfectly still arctic fox. The ice-white creature was crisply outlined in autumnal orange, stark and unmistakable.
It didn’t look at me, for I was not there. It had eyes only for the milkmaid.
The statuesque creature’s head dipped slowly, as it looked down at its paws. Inky fear punctured me, filling me with sloshy black horror. First my heart submerged in the chilly waters within, then my lungs. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. I could only stare at the fox.
Brittle leaves broke underfoot as Silas approached. He stopped at my side, joining me as we looked into the past.
“What is this?” I whispered. I swallowed, struggling for volume. “What the hell is this? Are you trying to say Caliban did this?”
He extended a hand to touch my arm, then thought better of it, easing away as if I were little more than a skittish animal. His hand remained extended, though he did not touch me.
The darkness weighed down my feet, my fingers, my very soul. I could scarcely shake my head. “No. I don’t want to go anywhere with you. Not until you tell me what the hell you’re doing. Why would you show me this? Why would you show me this…?” By the second repetition, my demand caught in my throat.
“He didn’t do this,” Silas said.
“He’s here,” I choked. “He was there in Haiti. He was—”
“You knew as much, right? You’ve known he’s been with you for endless cycles.”
I bristled. I couldn’t sort friend from foe. The prickly anger provided something I could latch onto. I grabbed the fury and pulled myself out of the slippery horror. My gaze darted between the fox and the angel. I gritted my teeth and asked, “Then what? He stood by and watched?”
“Marlow,” he said sadly. “Fae have been pushing you—not other humans, not demons, not everyone, not just some poor girl, but you —toward this path in every cycle. Whenever a pantheon identified the Prince’s human, it was only a matter of time before some fae, demigod, or spirit arrived to flex their persuasion. In some cycles, you were resistant. In one, you were a practicing witch. Your clairsentience was far too strong to fall for another fae’s influence. In fact, the Prince was able to have this conversation with you himself in that life cycle, and you were informed enough to decide it wasn’t something you wanted.”
I hadn’t even realized I was crying. Anger and confusion were a sickening cocktail as they boiled through me, abandoning my eyes and cutting hot lines over each cheek.
“In this cycle, in the one where you’re called Marlow, where you write, where you live in your modern, flashy apartment and run with packs of gods,” Silas said sadly, “everything has happened so fast. You scarcely had time to recognize the world behind the veil as a reality before you were thrust into it. This time, you have fae blood. While Taylor may have had someone else guiding her to you, Fauna was able to show up in a very prominent way—a way in which the pantheons never have before. And they care because…”
“Because I’m the Prince’s human?”
“Gods have loved and lived with humans since the first sunrise. No other pantheon has cared to intervene. None of the Orisha stepped in to watch out for Zeus’s lovers. There are no Shinto deities looking out for women godspoused to Loki. You know why this is different.”
“I don’t.”
Silas looked away. He took a few calming breaths, but when he spoke again, he could barely hold my eyes. “Come on, Marlow. You know this lore. I’ve seen it in your memories. You’ve read it. You’ve heard it. You grew up in the church. You have to understand why fae would flock toward forcing the Prince’s human—the demon Prince—toward sex work, cycle after cycle. Especially now, Marlow. Now that you’re collecting gods. You’re leading a rebellion. You’re planning the toppling of kingdoms.”
“No.” Heat spread through my cheeks.
“Who is Fauna, Marlow? Why did she know where to find Fenrir? How was she able to free him? Who is she, really , and why would that goddess need the Prince’s human ?”
“No!”
“Tell me you understand what role you play as a pawn. Tell me you understand why everyone reacts the way they do when they learn who you are. Why Heaven has sent agents to intercept you. Why they are involving your mother, and trying to lure you out by attacking close to the heart.”
Rage burned through me. My skin was on fire. I could barely see through the blur of furious tears that clouded my vision as I stared defiantly at Silas’s steady, pitying gaze. I looked into the golden halos within his eyes and hated that he was an angel. I hated that he was a servant of Heaven, that I’d grown up in the church, that I’d been raised under the watchful eye of baby Jesus and the Virgin Mary and…
Every thought emptied from my head, draining from my ears and dribbling onto the ground. I went perfectly still, eyes unfocused as the trees around the medieval village rustled in the breeze. Leaf-shaped shadows dappled Silas and I as we remained beneath the shade of the forest rimming the unsuspecting community. I looked over my shoulder, searching for something I knew I’d find, even in a small town.
The only stone building in town had an iron cross anchored to the steeple above its door. And just beyond its walls sat the Prince of Hell and his human.
I was a tin can as Baal’s mysterious amusement clanged through me.
I owe you gratitude, both for what you’ve done, and for what’s to come.
He’d known who Fauna was, and who they all expected me to become.
I understood her true name in that moment, and it broke my heart.
“Because,” I said, voice so disconnected that it felt like it came from someone else entirely. “Jesus was born from a virgin. The lore says the antichrist will be born of a whore.”