Chapter 1 Fractured
Chapter one
Fractured
Jaga sits on my throne, staring at nothing with vacant, lifeless eyes.
She’s been like this for a month, only moving from her spot to go through the motions of eating or bathing once every few days.
Her body is skeletal, barely alive. The skin under her eyes is bruised purple. Her cheeks are hollow.
She seems so small, lost and fragile within the enormous confines of my bejeweled stone seat. Her feet don’t reach the ground. They hang limp, soft from disuse.
Her face is impassive. The only time she speaks is to ask for death. Every morning when I bring her a breakfast she ignores, she asks. Every night when I draw her a bath she refuses, she does it again.
She’s more dead than alive, as if to spite the gift of immortality I bestowed upon her. Except, there is no spite left in Jaga. She’s a wraith.
I grimace, turning my gaze away with disgust. I don’t know whom I hate more today: her or myself. It changes regularly, like a pendulum.
She doesn’t hate me anymore. I wish she would.
Already knowing I will be defeated yet again, I rise from my daybed and cross the vast throne room to stop at the foot of the dais.
My steps echo against the far walls, and the prisms from the gemstones adorning every inch of this space reflect in the polished floor and slide down my skin, red, violet, and green.
My throne room is exquisite, a work of art and a labor of love. I built it centuries ago, bedecking the cold cavern walls with flaming jewels I tore from the bowels of the earth myself.
Sapphires, rubies, emeralds, ambers, and others glitter and preen in the light of a dozen fires filling enormous, crystal cauldrons.
The fires never go out. My throne room, though buried deep underground, glitters far more brightly than the sunlit world above.
It’s more luxurious than Perun’s groves and shrines, many as they are.
“And how are you today, my love?” I ask, stopping in front of Jaga. Five tall steps lead up to the dais, and my eyes are level with her shins.
I’d be looking at her belly in my other form. For a moment, I consider shifting, just to be closer to her… but no. Better not risk it.
As always, Jaga ignores me. She remains as still as a statue, straight-backed, indifferent.
I consider touching her, but she never reacts to that, either.
I tried to kiss her at the start of her apathy just to stoke some fire back into her, and she was like a doll in my arms, unresponsive and cold. It was disgusting.
I’d rather she cursed me out. Anything would be better than this.
“Would you like some music today, dearest? I have an excellent fiddle player just waiting outside. Give me a nod, and I’ll tell him to come.”
Jaga doesn’t even sneer at my obvious attempt to get a reaction. She knows as well as I that I could have all the fiddlers, artists, jesters, and bards of Nawie right here in front of her if I wanted. But she must earn her entertainment, if only with a nod.
A nod is a thing so small, so pitiful, and she won’t give me even that.
“No music then.” I strain to keep a cool, polite smile on my face.
I used to rage, scream, even beg and weep. I tore my heart open for her to flay, and she ignored it as if it were a worm, unworthy of her attention.
“What about a special meal today?” I ask again after a minute of silence. Jaga doesn’t blink. She looks dead. “I spoke to someone you hold very dear. She’s agreed to cook for you.”
It was a bloody chore, too. Wiosna didn’t want to speak with me, just like Jaga. She holds me in great contempt. I had to coax, charm, beg, and tempt her to my best ability to finally get her to listen.
For a moment, I think it works. There. The faintest creasing of skin in the corner of Jaga’s eye. A sign of life. She is intrigued, if only barely.
“Come on, poppy girl,” I coax her, a giddy hope filling my chest. “A meal just like dear Wiosna used to make. The taste and smell of home. Imagine all the wonderful, hateful things it will make you feel. All the memories it will unlock. You know you want to.”
She struggles, I can tell. Her jaw tenses, her eyes growing fixed, an echo of her old fire sparking to life. We wait, frozen in the limbo of indecision. Will she cave at last?
Jaga exhales slowly, tension draining out of her. The emotion in her eyes goes out. I swallow the violent curse bursting on the tip of my tongue.
“She will be disappointed. You know, she was so happy when I told her you’re here.
She cried. Begged to see you. That, of course, can’t happen until you give me something.
That’s the deal, remember? A song or a meal from home for a nod.
A tour of Nawie for a few words. And I’ll give you Wiosna or Bogna, your pick, if you finally tell me what the fuck is wrong with you. ”
The final words fall out as a snarl, and for a moment, I sound like my uglier half. Jaga flinches, just barely, but her eyes remain fixed. I stare at her, waiting, hoping, only to be crushed again.
She doesn’t respond.
“I see you haven’t learned anything, Father.”
I whip around, alarmed and furious. Chors saunters out of a dark corner, silvery moonlight scattering around his feet with every step. Behind me, there’s a rustle. Jaga leans forward, her eyes wide and interested, locked on him.
“I forbade you from coming here,” I grind out through clenched teeth as ugly, monstrous waves of jealousy swallow my heart and muddle my brain. “Get out.”
He laughs, soft and beautiful. Usually, looking at him gives me a burst of pride. I made him, and he’s proof that I am capable of perfection. Today, his beauty is odious. He betrayed me, luring the only woman I ever wanted to his bed, and I cannot forgive him.
I can’t kill him, either. Cruel beasts, both of them.
The bane of my existence, my son, stops by my side, his head cocked as he watches her. She looks back, suddenly animated, though not as beautiful as she used to be, no.
Months of being buried underground, deprived of air and food, turned Jaga into a shadow of herself. My blood fixed what it could, healing all the internal and external wounds, but it didn’t bring back the plumpness of her cheeks or the shine of her hair.
She looks old and haggard, a dead bride. And yet, when she smiles, I can’t stop the yearning thudding in my heart. How I missed her smiles.
Anger swallows the feeling, my fists clenching. Her eyes are firmly on Chors. The smile is for him only.
“How have you been?” he asks her, calm and pleasant as if he doesn’t see how much of a wreck she is.
Jaga shrugs, thin, paper-dry skin sliding over her sharp collarbones.
I wonder if they will cut her from within.
There never was anyone like her before, a mortal made immortal, and I don’t know the extent of degeneration her body can reach if uncared for.
She could probably rot for eternity and still be conscious.
“I’ve been asking for delivery from this horrid, immortal life I don’t deserve every day,” she says with a smile that wants to be coy but is ghastly. Something about her gums is eerie. They are too thin, her teeth threatening to fall out of her mouth like shells.
“Ah.” Chors nods with grave understanding as if he knows exactly what she means. Ungrateful knave. “Asking won’t get you anywhere, though. You must know that. Have you tried making him mad enough to kill you in a fit of passion? If death was possible for you, that might work.”
My fists clench harder until they hurt. If I were in my other form, my claws would draw blood.
Jaga watches him impassively, and I sense her mind working. She doesn’t want to acknowledge me in any way. That’s my punishment, and she dishes it out with superb devotion. Yet if she wants to talk to Chors, she should say something.
“I don’t care enough to make him mad.”
I know why she does it, yet it still hurts. That’s the core of her revenge. With every gesture, word, and day filled with indifference, she shows me how little I matter.
Sometimes, I believe her. But I know her, too, just as she knows me. Deep under her cold exterior, Jaga hides an ocean of molten rage. She wants me to suffer. Everything she does is a calculated effort to give me pain.
“Wonderful,” Chors says without inflection. “I came to invite you for a stroll. You haven’t seen most of Nawie yet, and it’s beautiful.”
“Why not?” Carefully, as if she’s aware of every protruding bone, she slides off the throne. “I should tour the beautiful land that was denied me.”
“Denied you?” I spit. “You’d be queen of it if you said you wanted it!”
Chors looks at me with pity, and Jaga, as always, pretends I am not there.
She walks down the steps, holding the hem of her torn, ugly dress that she’s worn for a month.
The dress is badly mended and stained, the white turned gray.
It’s a shroud. I hate seeing it on her, which, of course, is why she wears it.
Chors eyes her with one eyebrow handsomely arched.
“You surprise me, Father. I thought you’d provide our guest with some more comfortable clothing.”
“My guest,” I grit out, loathing him and loving him, and hating it all. “Not ours. And she has a wardrobe full of queenly dresses she refuses to wear. She’s spiteful and stubborn, like a child.”
Jaga doesn’t react. I suppose I’ve trained her for it.
Just last week, I desperately tried to get a rise out of her with insults far worse than this, but no amount of verbal whipping made her react.
She sat still and proud, eyes empty, hands loose in her lap, as I poured all my frustration and despair down her ears.
Being buried alive changed her in horrible ways. She’s stronger. Unaffected.
She doesn’t love me anymore.
Chors extends his arm to her in a gallant gesture. I surprise myself with a short-lived burst of affection. Here he is, comfortable with someone who is not me. At last. My son has made incredible strides.