37. Kalix
Chapter 37
Kalix
R ain falls in a loud sweep over the island as I make my way through the corridors of Ortus. Serpents reach out to touch the edges of my mind—never daring to intrude deeper unless I invite them. I send them slithering away, following up with a few small commands for them to carry out along with the heads of some of the Terra Nubo and Zalika use as their own servants.
Despite naming themselves as head Terra over Ortus, my brothers and I—as well as Kiera—know better. Finding the decapitated heads of two human Terra on their beds should be enough to give them pause—for a time. I feel no regret over severing those humans’ skulls from their bodies. After all, they’ve been dead a long time. No one else seems to scent that.
A crackle of white tears a strip through the clouds, illuminating the figure sitting on a small walkway between two of Ortus’ Academy’s spire-like towers. I count: one … two … three … before I’ve reached the fourth second, a low thunderous rumble follows.
I turn the handle and step out into the rain. My footsteps on the short path are loud. There’s no way she doesn’t hear me as I approach. Still, she doesn’t turn to face me, and it isn’t until I stop at her side and take a seat, throwing my own legs over the ledge between the open spaces of the railing, that she even speaks.
“I’m surprised they sent you to find me,” she murmurs.
“No one sent me.”
I stare at her, taking in the lines of her profile as she grips the railing bars and leans back, tipping her face to meet the rainfall. Like living moonlight, she is a spot of silver against the backdrop of glassy, onyx brimstone.
“Why are you here then?” she asks.
I find it hard to tell what she’s thinking and wonder if this is how she might feel around me. I can’t tell if she’s been crying. Her face is too soaked with the rain for me to know if the water clinging to her lashes is from the sky alone. When I don’t answer her and offer no intention of my own as we sit beneath the pouring rain, Kiera finally sits up and turns to look at me.
“What do you want, Kalix?”
What do I want?
The question sparks an old memory, one I’d thought long forgotten. Of another question I’d struggled to answer.
8 years old…
“Do you love me, Kalix?”
I stare at the woman that is my mother as she lies prone on the couch in one of Azai’s many lounge rooms. Her face is slackened and her lips parted as she reclines against the furniture, one arm draped lazily over the side of the sofa and the other dangling towards the floor with a nearly empty bottle in her hand.
When I don’t offer an answer and continue stroking the snake in my lap, letting the creature curl and constrict around my forearm in practiced movements, she lifts her head.
“Kalix?” Her tone grows whiny—annoying.
I flash her a look from beneath my lashes and ignore her call.
The bottle drops to the floor and a sob fills the air in the room. “You don’t, do you?” she cries, covering her face with her hands. “No one loves me. Not Azai … not even you.” Her weeping grows louder and my hand on the scales of the snake still.
As if sensing my mood, the snake tightens too much and a responding crack echoes into the air. Pain flares bright for a moment, but is too soon overtaken by rage. Gripping the creature by its throat, I rip it free from my arm and slam its head into the floor—once, twice, by the third time I’ve smashed its skull. I let the dead serpent fall to the floor as I look at my now broken wrist.
All the while, my mother’s sobs continue to fill the room. If only I could punish her the same way I do my snakes—that might finally make her stop crying. But no, that wouldn’t do. Azai likes the woman and still comes around often enough to entertain her. If I take away Azai’s entertainment then there will be no one worth watching in this house.
I cradle my limp wrist against my chest and get to my feet. It will heal fast enough, so the pain won’t remain, but I should at least find the housekeeper and ensure that the bone is set properly. I’m halfway to the door, just passing where the woman is lying, still sobbing on the lounge, when her arm snaps out and grabs ahold of me.
Startled by the sudden movement, I freeze as her face—eyes swollen and red-rimmed and lips parted to reveal a pink tongue and the scent of elderberry liquor—is suddenly in front of mine.
“I ruined my body for you, you little shit!” she screams, shaking me. “I gave him a son! A fucking son! All men want sons, even Gods.” Her eyes are an unfocused muddy green color. More tears slip down her cheeks.
I contemplate breaking her hand to get her to release me. Even with my own injured wrist, it wouldn’t be difficult. Humans are weaker than Mortal Gods, after all. Again, though, Azai would be irritated and dealing with him over her is more of a hassle.
“Tell me!” The woman shakes me again, jerking me back and forth. I can feel the severed bones of my wrist rubbing and clacking against one another, drawing another swollen bolt of pain from the area.
“Tell you what, Mother?” I force the question out in an attempt to maintain my control. Azai says that control is what separates the Divine from the mundane. I have to control my strength and only use it when I want to … though I want to use it all of the time. Why have strength if it cannot be used? What’s the point?
“Answer me,” the woman cries, her lower lip trembling as her nails sink into my arms. “Answer my question.” What had she asked me? Before I can ask, though, she’s repeating it.
“Do you love me?”
Do I love her?
I suppose … I have to. Don’t I? All of the books Azai’s tutors force me to read say that everyone feels love. The stories that I’ve read describe the sensation as one of all-encompassing affection. But those who feel affection appear to enjoy the time they spend with the objects of that affection. I have never once enjoyed my mother’s presence save for when she amuses me with her obvious obsession with Azai.
When he’s away for long stretches, when she knows he’s been with other women, she drinks herself into a stupor like this. Where she’s half crazed and delirious—she must be to ask me this question. But when Azai sends word of his return, she changes. The rush to pretty her face, to dress herself up, to prepare for his arrival—watching her scurry around, barking orders at the house staff is like watching rats racing through a maze. The very reminder makes my lips twitch.
Rats in a maze…
In the books I’ve read, though, people don’t think of those they have affection for as rats. They don’t laugh at their attempts to seek love from those who will never give it to them. They don’t contemplate snapping their mothers' necks for annoying them.
“No,” I finally surmise, deciding on my answer.
My mother’s face is frozen in shock as she gapes at me. I wrinkle my nose and turn away. She smells sour—almost like something that has ripened too far past its prime and is about to rot.
“No?” she repeats my answer as if she’s not quite sure she heard it.
“Yes,” I say with a nod as I extract myself from her hold. Her fingers loosen, falling away. “I’ve decided that I don’t love you. That’s your answer.”
I turn to leave the room in search of the housekeeper to set my wrist—I can already feel the bone knitting back together and breaking it again will be unpleasant. Just as I reach the doorway, however, my mother says something from behind me.
“Maybe you don’t love me,” she whispers. “Maybe you’re not capable of it—you’re his son after all and after all this time, I wonder if the Gods can feel love at all.” I’m about to respond when she continues. “You don’t even know what love is, Kalix. You were born heartless.”
The memory fades as the sensation of water drips into the back of my tunic, making the fabric cling to my skin. My mother’s long ago words ring in my ears, along with Kiera's question.
Do you love me?
What do you want?
You were born heartless.
“Kalix?” Kiera’s voice compels me to look at her— really look at her. As I face her, I take in all of the details—the components that make up the structure of her face. She is … beautiful to me. Utterly perfect, though I know that’s incorrect.
In the standard of studying anatomy, those who are perfect have even faces, an equal distance between their eyes and a jawline that matches on both sides. Kiera’s eyes are even, but her jawline isn’t. Her nose slants to one side, though the effect gives her that perpetual motion that she’s turning her head to look at you.
Still, she is the most stunning creature I have ever set my eyes upon. In ten years, in a thousand, I feel as if I could look at her and still marvel at the oddities she presents. Fucking her brings me to release far faster and easier than any other. The desire to fuck her again, even now, hasn’t waned as it has in the past. My interest in her is as strong as the first day she looked at me with those gray eyes of hers and laid down a challenge at my feet.
Perhaps this is what my mother was talking about. Perhaps this … is love.
“Kalix, you’re freaking me out,” Kiera says, and I realize I still haven’t answered her.
Shaking my head, I refocus my attention on her face. “I want you to know that no one will harm you,” I tell her. “You are mine and I have no intention of allowing my things to be slaughtered.”
Her lips twitch. “My, that’s…” She bites down on her lower lip, a flash of white teeth appearing as she sinks them into the soft petal pink flesh. A snort erupts from her and she releases her lip once more. “That’s kind of you,” she finishes. “But I don’t think either of us will get the choice of whether or not I’m?—”
“Ruen did not mean to say that you have no emotion when it comes to killing,” I say, cutting her off as I jump to the crux of why I tracked her here.
Her amusement dies in an instant and it’s as if I can see shutters closing over her eyes as she leans away from me. “So you did come here because of him.”
“No.” I wipe a hand across my face, removing some of the water dripping into my eyes—not that she seems to notice the same on hers. “I was truthful before; I did not come because I was sent. I came because I was compelled.”
“Listen, Kalix, I really don’t—” As she begins speaking, Kiera leverages her body upward. Gripping ahold of the railing, she starts to rise.
I capture her hand and drag her back down to my side. “Twenty-one years I have lived on Anatol,” I say, holding her hand tight as the rain blankets the air between us. “Twenty-one years I have fucked, bled, and fought. I have amused myself at the whims of the Gods and the only thing that has come close to the feeling of ‘love’ that everyone else seems to understand so well has been the connection I have with my brothers.”
A fat droplet of water falls from Kiera’s lashes and lands on her cheek, sliding down and curving as she tilts her head at me, frowning. That drop collides with her mouth and the wet fabric of my trousers tightens across my groin.
“Ruen did not mean to say that you have no emotion when it comes to killing,” I repeat my earlier words, causing her brows to furrow. I’m sure it must seem to her that I am leaping through subjects with no end in sight, no conclusion, but that’s wrong. I have found my conclusion and it’s simple. “You are not me,” I say. She doesn’t have the same lack of inhibitions or care for life. It will end eventually, after all. What does it matter if I speed up the process? “But Ruen is...” I continue. In this one way, at least. “He would do anything, hurt and kill anyone, to keep you alive.”
Lie. Cheat. Steal. Murder. Whatever it takes.
Kiera’s eyes widen and her lips part. I grind my jaw as my canines lengthen and the tip of one fang juts down into my tongue. Working around the damned shift, I squeeze her hands tighter.
“I would slaughter everyone in this damned mountain—God, Mortal God, or human. It matters not to me who or what I slay. I would do it all for you in an instant, but you should know that I will feel no guilt afterwards. Ruen … will live with his for the rest of his life—and still he, too, would make the same choice.”
Her lips tremble, pressing together and parting several times before she manages to speak again. “I’ve seen too much death, Kalix.” The roar of the storm is so loud it nearly sucks away her words. They reach me as little more than a whisper on the wind. “I’m tired.” Her shoulders slump and her head turns down. Strings of silver hair stick to the sides of her face and neck.
“Danai and Makeda gave you a choice, didn’t they?” I ask, already knowing.
When Kiera lifts her head to meet my eyes again it’s with a dark glare. “Snakes,” she guesses and I merely offer her a grin. Of course my snakes watch her. They always watch her.
She blows out a breath but nods. “Yes,” she admits. “If we win—at the end of this—they have said that they’ll accept any punishment I see fit to give them for their actions.”
Not a choice I would have chosen, but then again—like most people, the Goddesses have proven to be highly emotional creatures.
“I appreciate you putting Ruen’s words into perspective for me,” Kiera says and the feel of her fingers rubbing against my own has my cock going from interested to painfully erect. Clamping my jaw shut and grinding my fangs into my lower teeth, I force myself to focus on her words. “It helps to know that he just cares about me because I care about you too. I never thought it’d happen—definitely not when we first met—but I cannot imagine getting through this without all of you.”
Once, her words might have annoyed me. Once, I might have desired to steal all of her affection and attention for myself. But it is different when those she wishes to share with are also mine. Ruen and Theos are my brothers, my blood, the only equals I have ever known—save for her.
Dragging her forward, I tip Kiera’s head back. Rain soaks into her scalp as I grip the length of her hair where it’s tied at the base of her skull. I tug the leather band loose, freeing the rest of her hair before sinking in deeper.
“No matter what happens tomorrow,” I tell her, my lips hovering just above hers as my cock pounds against the inside of my trousers. “Know this—” I draw one fang along the soft cushion of her lower lip, enjoying her gasp. “I will rip the heads off anyone who thinks to take you from me.”
With that, I give her no more room. My mouth falls upon hers, swallowing a cry of surprise as I flick my tongue against her lips, demanding entry. And just as I knew my sweet Little Thief and liar would, she grants it—taking me inside and letting me have my wicked way.
As our lips collide, I catch sight of the two who followed me here. Their faces remain shadowed, but I don’t care that they watch me with her. They, like the woman in my arms, are mine. My blood. My possessions. My brothers.