Chapter 18 Wrath #2
“No.” I turned to her so she could see my lack of empathy.
“I never mislead or deceive my clients. They’re fully aware of the terms and conditions, but the need for instant gratification is greater than the cost they pay in the end…
until they realize that cost. I’ve rarely taken a person’s soul who was a good human. ”
“But you…you sacrificed your soul for someone.”
“I’m one of the few. Most people care only about themselves, not other people. In the rare times I do face that proposition, I usually refuse to honor their request. Because whomever they love, if they truly loved them in return, wouldn’t want them to make that sacrifice.”
She watched me for a while, her eyes still guarded and pained. “Then by your own words, you shouldn’t be down here.”
“But I am—and that won’t ever change.” I met her gaze with as much calm as I could force.
The Rothschilds were used to having the ability to move mountains to get whatever they wanted, to have gods literally part the seas and rescue souls from the underworld.
But that wouldn’t happen with us. Not while I was the god of the underworld, and Riviana would never risk the Realm of Caelum for her enemy.
“I know it’s hard, Xivin. But the sooner we accept that, the easier this will be in the end—”
“There is no end. Not for me.” She shook her head, her eyes welling up again.
We stood together in front of the funnel that had gone dark, talking about our mountain of feelings without actually talking about them. So much had been shared between us without words, emotions, and declarations.
“You said I could live here with you as a mortal—”
“No.”
“That my soul would still travel to the Realm of Caelum—”
“No.” She’d seen this place with her own eyes, and she even considered suffering it every day…for me.
“Then if you can’t come to me—”
“Xivin.” I pivoted my body to face her, drawing in close so I wouldn’t have to raise my voice to get my point across. “There is no scenario in which you end up down here. I would never allow that to happen. There are no words of persuasion you could utter to make me consider such madness.”
“But you mentioned it before—”
“Because I was delirious and selfish and insane,” I snapped.
“Because I had a moment of weakness since you make me weak every time I look upon you. Because I easily forget what our circumstances really are when we’re together.
Because in the euphoria you give me, I picture a life together…
” I didn’t say the rest, didn’t tell her how I pictured her pregnant belly in my big hands, pictured her as queen while I served as her private guard, not her king.
How I pictured us living together in that little villa with dragons soaring above the sky, having another chance at life.
But those confessions would only hurt her, would only make this unavoidable separation more painful.
Would only torture her, especially when she knew what I’d done.
I didn’t have the right to say anything of that to her. “You need to let this go, Xivin.”
Her eyes flicked back and forth between mine, the tears continuing to grow as my words cut into her heart. “You know me, Callum,” she said with emotion in her throat. “And you know I never let anything go.”
I stepped away from her, feeling her grip me with her words and her heart. All I could do was turn away from her, withdraw my heart from her palm so she couldn’t squeeze it anymore. None of my fellow residents paid attention to me as I passed because they were preoccupied by the newcomer.
Lily followed me, and we walked past the funnel until we moved farther from the castle, the world starting to grow darker as we left the lights of the castle behind. I grabbed a dead branch from the side of the road, and with just a thought, I lit the end and turned it into a flaming torch.
Lily came to my side and eyed the torch before she looked at me again, but she didn’t ask how I’d conjured the flames.
With the torch in my hand farthest away from her, I walked us toward the forest.
“Where are we going?” she asked from my side.
“To show you the beauty I spoke of.”
“In there?” she asked, seeing some of the details of the forest from the flames.
“I know you don’t recognize it, but you’ve been here before.”
Her eyes took in the large trees that loomed over us as we followed the path between the trees. Subtle lights were in the distance, bioluminescent insects that lit up the darkness. It took her moments to figure it out. “Riviana Star…”
I nodded. “This is where the cults choose to live.”
“The cults?” she asked.
“Those that worship Xian…and worship me. Mortals.”
“Those choose to live here willingly?”
“Yes, but they aren’t like other mortals. The kind that don’t belong in a community, that feel no love for family or friends. That will stab you in the back as soon as they finish shaking your hand. Their appearance is easier to digest, but they’re just as vile as the monsters I showed you.”
We moved farther down the dark path into the forest, and after a ten-minute walk spent in silence, we came to a clearing between the trees. A large wooden house was built on a rise, and enormous wood piles were spread in a vast circle, all lit aflame to cast the clearing in a gray light.
I could feel the heat from where I stood, through my uniform and armor.
In the center was a large wooden figure, carefully carved from knives, a dedication to me—the god of the underworld.
In silence, Lily stared at the scene before her, a view completely different from the one in Riviana Star. Instead of fireflies and beautiful music from the heart of the tree, it was devoid of magic and light.
The front door to the house opened, and a woman appeared, standing in a long sleeveless wool dress, the pendant around her throat reflecting the light from the bonfire.
She was a distance away and the specific features of her face were hard to distinguish, but she quickly moved back to the open doorway. “The dark lord is here!”
Voices sounded from deeper in the house, a cacophony of excitement.
“He heard our voice in the flames!”
I nodded back toward the path, silently telling Lily to continue our journey and leave these sycophants behind.
“Why do they worship you?” she asked.
“I couldn’t say.”
“These are the admirers you sleep with?” Her voice wasn’t accusatory because she wasn’t the jealous or insecure type.
“The admirers that I slept with, yes. But you’ve seen the options back at the castle. I’m not into bestiality.”
“You don’t have to justify it. I was just wondering.”
I continued down the path, holding the torch away from her so I wouldn’t accidentally burn the beautiful skin around her throat. “I’m ashamed of my past lovers.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re bad people.”
“Then why didn’t you find someone in the mortal world, like you have with me?”
“Because I’m not supposed to interfere with the living.
” Because a relationship with a mortal could compromise my dedication to the underworld—and it absolutely had.
I gifted her my abilities while receiving nothing in return.
I was helping her win a war that I should avoid.
Protecting the Realm of Caelum then asking Riviana to help me save Talon Rothschild.
“But the moment I looked upon your face…I was lost.”
I kept my gaze focused on the dark path before us, ignoring her stare as it punctured the side of my face. I’d never been a man to hide my feelings. I simply felt nothing most of the time. But with Lily Rothschild, I felt things I hadn’t felt in hundreds of years.
Then I felt her hand slide into mine. Her armored gloves were made of dragon scales with spikes behind the knuckles, and they slid against the metal of my own armored gloves, cold to the touch but containing a heat I could feel in my heart.
Hand in hand, we walked through the dark forest in our battle armor with our capes flat against our backs, our blades protruding over our shoulders at opposite angles—her, the queen of the living…and me, the king of the dead.
I returned Lily to her bed, taking her from the mortal world for just an hour, while an entire day had passed in the underworld. She was exhausted by the time I returned her, probably because her body had experienced an entire day of fatigue.
In a flash, I left the Southern Isles and traveled far across the sea, back to the island in the west that the Barbarians temporarily inhabited after their retreat from Riviana Star.
The world was in color now, their bonfires a brilliant mix of orange and red flames.
Despite the late hour, they were hard at work on their ships.
They’d built a forge on land, and I could see them constructing something long and cylindrical, something I didn’t understand on sight.
I approached the edge of the land where their ships were docked and saw the men working to remove one of the golden frescoes mounted on one of the walls of the ship.
The gold that lined the hulls appeared untouched.
I looked back to the forge where they were working on whatever apparatus they were constructing. It wasn’t a sword or a weapon as far as I could tell. My eyes searched the sea of ships until I spotted him—Kennt.
The world disappeared and reappeared instantaneously. Now I stood upon the ship behind Kennt’s back, watching him order his men to secure the golden apparatus to the planks of the ship to keep it in place. With iron nails and enormous hammers, they secured it in place.
The longer I stared at the brilliant gold, the more I understood what I was looking at.
It was a cannon, but it didn’t fire metallic balls of destruction.
Instead, it fired a massive spike with many sharp edges, multiple opportunities to pierce flesh…
and dragon scales. It was meant to impale its targets and remain embedded, based on the little spikes that pointed the opposite way up the blade.
If you tried to tug it free, it would cause more damage, damage that couldn’t be healed.
Kennt flinched, his entire body hardening as his chin rose.
He turned his head like he’d heard something, and then his body completely turned around and he surveyed his surroundings, looking right over me without realizing I was there because I didn’t reveal myself to him.
“I know when I’m in the presence of a god. Reveal yourself.”
Lily had adapted to my presence as well.
She could notice me the second I appeared, searching for me until she spotted me in the corner.
She seemed to know when I was there, even when I didn’t reveal myself either, judging by the way she stiffened even when she was in the middle of a conversation with someone.
I appeared before him, watching his eyes harden on mine once I came into view.
I stepped forward and approached the golden cannon with the lethal spike ready to launch.
I noticed the other spikes they had in their arsenal, stowed on a rack secured to the side of the ship so they could reload and take another shot.
When I looked at the other ships, I realized they were all installing the same cannon on the starboards. An ice-cold chill ran through me as the adrenaline dumped into a heart that no longer beat. “I gave you an army of vampires, so why do you destroy the beautiful golden frescoes on your ship?”
“There’s no gift you can grant me to defeat those dragons. So I’ll defeat them myself.”
Fuck.
“Shoot them out of the sky,” he said with a smile. “They’ll refuse to serve me, but as vampire dragons, they’ll do whatever I say.”
My expression was always stoic, but right now, my features wanted to tighten in angry frustration…
and fear. King Ithaca’s allegiance was questionable, and the Brigandine Empire was impressive but now dwarfed by the weapons that stood before me.
It seemed like there was no gift or foresight I could grant Lily to defeat this enemy.
“We’ll conquer the Empire Colonies and command their fleet to sail with us,” Kennt said.
“They’ll take the damage on the front lines, and we’ll shoot their pretty little birds out of the sky one by one.
And then I’ll fuse with one of these dragons or become a vampire myself…
and never pay your debt.” He gave the most arrogant grin before he turned back to the cannon being constructed, not caring that he spoke to someone whom none of his comrades could see. “This couldn’t have gone any better.”
I held my silence behind my clenched teeth, turmoil exploding inside me that I could never share. I was responsible for all of this, every single event that had come to pass in this developing war, and there was nothing I wouldn’t give to change it.
Even Lily.
But I couldn’t go back and right my wrongs. All I could do was ensure victory for Queen Lily Rothschild.
I wouldn’t stop until that happened.