Chapter 31
Chapter thirty-one
Rubies
An hour passes, and I make the most of it. Filled with Jaga’s pain, I hold her close, breathing in her scent, drinking in her warmth. If she let me, I’d lick her blood right from between her thighs, but I don’t dare suggest it.
When she stirs with a sigh, I murmur soothingly, hoping she’ll go back to sleep. But Jaga sits up, straddling my thighs, and looks at me with a strange, new intensity.
“I don’t know what to think,” she confesses in a hoarse whisper, her face discolored and ghostly in the blue light of the moon.
“You made Bogna’s husband kill her to punish me, yet Bogna is so happy now.
Happier than ever, because she never would have had her children back in the mortal world.
So did you do a good thing or a bad thing? ”
“I did a both thing,” I say with a huff of amusement. “It was bad because it caused her pain and made you suffer. And it was good, because she’s happy now.”
Jaga shakes her head in frustration. “And the baby? Do I just weigh her happiness against the suffering of her relatives who probably still mourn her, cursing my name? Will that determine if what you did was good or bad?”
I shrug. “I did a bad thing toward her relatives and you. A good thing toward the girl. She’s now free, whether you like it or not. Back in the mortal world, she would have been fodder for Perun, nothing more.”
The deep ache throbs harder as Jaga settles more comfortably in my lap, and I carefully control my expression so as not to betray it. It’s pathetic enough that I’m compelled to do this for her. She doesn’t have to know the extent of my humiliation.
Jaga sighs and grabs my shirt, piercing me with her gaze. I swallow and put my hands on her waist, lightly. She doesn’t push them off.
“You still betrayed me and manipulated me in horrible ways. You chained me to the floor. You let Mokosz take me!”
I nod, because it’s all true. “I did.”
She grunts in fury and lets go, pressing her forehead to mine as her hands fist my hair, not gently.
“You will just do it all over again,” she says, ragged and shaky. “You… I will trust you, I will fall, and then you’ll kick me so I fall harder, right into a pile of glass and blades, and it’s always like this with you, always!”
I exhale deeply and cup the back of her head, angling her closer for a kiss. “That is very likely. I am horrible. The worst.”
She kisses me back with a growl of fury, and we wrestle, lips and tongues twisted in wrath, until she pulls back and shakes her head.
“No! I was doing so well.”
“What, resisting me?” I ask in a joke. “You mean to tell me it’s hard? Please. You have no trouble avoiding me while I pine like a fool.”
“No trouble,” she scoffs, grabbing my shirt again. Her eyes glitter in the moonlight, and she licks her lip, watching my face with indecision.
I am so hard, and she must feel it straddling me like that, yet she doesn’t make a move to kiss me again. I force myself to wait, remembering how I wanted her to take me, not the other way round. Oh, and I screwed it up again by kissing her first. Maybe she would have kissed me this time.
“I can’t. Woland, Weles, whatever else you are. I can’t do it. I won’t.”
I want to make a stupid, ill-advised joke that I could make her forget it after she fucks me, but I hold my tongue.
Instead, I drink her in before she inevitably bolts.
I am resigned to treasure this moment, the heat of her body against me, the warmth of her breath, for months to come when she avoids me again.
Jaga looks away, chewing on the inside of her cheek, and she makes frustrated, huffing noises that I find endearing. My abdomen pulses with the worst cramp yet, and I grit my teeth hard.
I swear, I survived having my eyes gouged out and my balls crushed in Perun’s captivity, but this pain is a special kind of torture. I don’t understand how she can survive this every month. I wish she’d let me heal her—or healed herself. She can.
And it makes me hurt even worse to understand exactly why she won’t.
“I should leave you,” Jaga says, sighing with frustration. “It’s the only way. But you made it so I can’t go anywhere, or I’ll end up right back in my grave. Clever Woland.”
I incline my head. “Yes. That was clever of me, even though I wasn’t thinking at all when I revealed your significance to the world. You made me hurt so much. I was mindless because of you.”
She looks back into my eyes, a sort of resolve tightening her face. My heart beats faster. Oh no. What has she decided? Will she leave me, after all?
“You have to win,” Jaga says with conviction. “It’s the only way. Once you win, you’ll have what you’ve always wanted, and I’ll be free to go. It’s decided then. I’ll help you.”
I want to shake my head, because no, nothing is decided, and what does she mean, she will leave me after I win, that’s not what I want, and…
I exhale shakily as my gut tightens in crushing agony. Jaga pushes up to her feet, offering me her hand, and I stare at it, cross-eyed from pain. When she grunts with impatience, I finally grip her palm and let her pull me up, barely catching my balance.
“Come on,” she says, shooting me an impatient look. “We have to figure out how to win. Gather the others. And souls. Don’t you have some fearsome warriors in here? Leaders who won battles and wars? Ask their opinion.”
“Mortal wars are nothing like ours,” I enunciate clearly, forcing my jaw to loosen when all it wants is to clench in misery.
“Yes, you’ve said,” Jaga mutters dismissively, snapping her fingers to make a fiery portal. “But they might offer a perspective you haven’t considered. Honestly, you lot marinate in the same old for centuries. No wonder you can’t come up with ideas. Are you coming?”
She grabs my hand and pulls me through her portal. There is a moment of crushing heat and the scent of burnt herbs, and we’re through, the Hall of Fires glittering around us. Nyja is here with Strzybog, both speaking in hushed voices, and they lift their heads when we enter.
“Have you reconciled at last?” Nyja asks, watching our joined hands with narrowed eyes.
“Somewhat,” Jaga says, dropping my palm like it’s a hot coal. “Have you come up with anything? Oh, it’s been a month! What were you even doing in here?”
I sit down heavily at the head of the table, gripping the edge. No one pays me any attention, and I dry my perspiring brow with a spell. No, I don’t want to be here. I want to curl up somewhere dark with Jaga in my arms. Wasn’t this the tradeoff? That I got to hold her for taking her pain?
And now I don’t even have that, yet I refuse to give Jaga back her suffering. This is beyond pathetic, and I will bury myself in the ground never to come out if anyone finds out I did this.
“Where is everyone?” Jaga asks, clapping her hands. “Can we bring Wiosna? She might have good advice. And some warrior souls, please. Or old zercas, people who know the tales? Just bring anyone who might help.”
Nyja folds her arms. “It will be chaos. War council is a serious affair, not a party.”
“Maybe it should be a party,” Jaga says with a shrug, coming over to the table to knock on it with force. “Maybe doing this differently will give you different results? Unless you want more of the same.”
“I’ll get the others,” Strzybog says with a grin, eager for entertainment.
A cool wind blows past, and he’s gone. Jaga walks away, muttering under her breath as she rearranges the refreshments on the table, and Nyja comes over, watching me sharply.
“What’s going on?”
“She figures she can leave me and be free if I win,” I say with a sad smile.
Nyja huffs with impatience, folding her arms. “But I’ve explained about the prophecy! It’s unavoidable. Is she dim-witted, Weles? Have you fallen for an obtuse woman who doesn’t understand what people tell her?”
I shake my head, pulling a cup of wine closer. “No. Just a mortal one, who still has hope and refuses to settle.”
“So now she’s mortal again?”
“In a sense. I’m the dim-witted one, Nyja. I don’t know what to do anymore.”
She looks at the ceiling with an exasperated expression, then back at me. “I’ll get my best nawka generals and one of the old warriors. Czech, maybe. Or Rus. She’s right in one thing—we need to try something new. You, too. Win her over in a way you haven’t tried yet.”
She turns into a flock of birds and disappears with a flutter of wings. I am alone with Jaga, who settles on the opposite short end of the table, watching me across the expanse of obsidian.
“Are you avoiding me again? Coward,” I taunt, glaring at her, because the pain makes me want to be mean.
“I am a coward and accept it,” she says with a shrug. “At least I’m only afraid of two things at this point. How many fears do you have?”
I shiver, images flashing through my head. Mokosz jerking me off while she sticks needles in my eyes. Perun telling me I’ll never win. Chors desiccated and weak every new moon. Jaga buried. Jaga dead. Jaga hating me and holding my heart. Jaga gone. With another man. Having his children.
“Too many to count,” I admit as wind blows through the Hall, making the flames flutter like war banners.
They arrive: all my allies, Wiosna, a couple of older nawka soldiers, and a few souls who are still here and cognizant enough to take part. Most souls choose to depart into an eternal sleep when they tire of existing, usually after a hundred years or so. Not many old ones are still around.
When everyone sits down, they look at me, but I watch Jaga. This is her council, not mine. After a moment, she realizes I’m waiting for her to start and sends me a dirty look.
“What, you want me to do the work for you? Lazy god,” she sneers.
“Yes, please. My obnoxious queen.”
She clears her throat, and when that doesn’t give her the others’ attention since they still look expectantly at me, she stands up, her ruby chair scraping the floor. I grit my teeth against the pain.
“How do we defeat Perun?”