12. Every Promise in Vain
Chapter twelve
Every Promise in Vain
Atlas
Erasmus and Seraphine returned from their nightly walk with Xenobia, swinging their daughter’s hands in between them.
It was nice to see the small family connect in their own special way.
Seeing them together made my heart burn.
I missed when Nicodemus was young enough to do this with Ashlynn and me.
I remembered pulling him upright so he could swing back and forth, letting out loud laughs I wished I could hear one more time spill from him.
The longer I watched the family the harder it became to focus, so I shook my head and went back to fastening my buttons into place.
Ashlynn came into the room and settled against the doorframe, watching me spritz my best cologne over sensitive spots on my neck.
I fixed the cuffs on my sleeves before kneeling to fasten my laces together.
When I came back up, she crossed the room and moved to soften my hair and brush it down my shoulders gently.
“You never know how to style these waves properly,” she complained as she smoothed the mess down.
“That’s what I have you for,” I joked lovingly.
Once I was presentable enough for her liking, she gripped my shoulders tightly and looked me over once more, as if taking in my image for the very last time.
I let her have her moment but interrupted it with a romantic kiss.
She physically relaxed when she felt my lips on hers and hummed when she allowed herself to enjoy the gesture.
My kiss turned desperate, and my hands moved to hold her face to mine.
I couldn’t stop kissing her, worshipping her, and knew if I didn’t try, I'd never make it to Ambermourn’s tonight.
“You need to leave...” she whispered against my lips, breaking the gesture to say this.
I nodded, my eyes still closed, and leaned my forehead down on hers. “Please... do not think for a moment that I am doing this for pleasure. This is purely to find out what he wants with Nick and Pandora.”
“I know, darling, I know.” She smoothed her thumb over my jaw carefully. “I trust you more than you will ever know. I only ask that, if things get too overwhelming, that you come right home and abandon this whole thing.”
“I’ll do my best.” My promise was weak, but it was a promise, nonetheless. She accepted it and allowed me to ghost through a portal I conjured back to the Everglades. Once the portal closed on her saddened expression, I knew my mission had begun, and that I needed to shake off my worries and focus.
The key Ambermourn gave me opened the stairway fluidly, which perfumed incense and sage.
The smell was very familiar, as this was usually how his office smelled back at Chandler, but the smell made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
I descended the steps and crossed the foyer, moving through the hall until I was met with his grand book room once again.
This time, he was nowhere to be found, so I took it upon myself to snoop.
My fingers walked the edge of the archaic tomes he had lovingly sewn, jumping between pages so old that dust collected in their corners.
My gaze gravitated to the desk, where an assortment of notes was splayed across the surface.
I let my fingertips trail the papers until I found one that piqued my interest. “Incantations and spells for Gods and Mortals...?” I whispered to myself.
“This seems like major bad news,” Callaway groaned within my head.
The next page had my name elegantly across the top of the page, along with symbols for each of the Four Horsemen etched in fine black ink.
My eyes widened in astonishment. The page had notes written in languages well before my time, but at the center of it was my name, circled multiple times. “What the fuck...?” I breathed.
“I didn’t hear you come in,” Ambermourn said as he came around the corner.
He wore a much simpler outfit tonight: a pressed white button up, black slacks, and silk socks.
He was drying his hair with a towel, which, to my surprise, was now chin length on him.
He must have taken my complaint over his short cut to heart last time we met, and that made me blush a little.
“Sorry, I was a bit early.” I leaned on the desk casually, nodding to the shelves to cover up my prodding. “You’ve certainly been busy. I haven’t seen this many books in a long time.”
“I have my fixations from time to time. Right now....” he crossed the room to lock his arms around my waist, “I’m very interested in the handsome God of Death.”
“What about me?” I nervously croaked.
He smirked and laid a tepid kiss to the corner of my mouth. “I find your connection to the Four Horsemen fascinating is all. I’ve only read Christian mythologies about it, so I wanted to see what our myths and tales said about such a phenomenon.”
“I see.” I brought my attention back to the desk, where I had covered his notes back up with a set of writing ink. “It’s nothing special, I can assure you.”
“It must be, if you gave your soul to join the pact.”
“I beg to differ, but that’s at my discretion.” I took his hands from behind my back and pulled them before us so I could gently tug him towards the doors. “You promised me some good wine, didn’t you?”
“Only the best.” He led the way to an extravagant all-glass reading room on the opposite side of the hall.
It was a room I spent months in with him when I was younger, more na?ve, more desperate for attention in any way I could get it.
Ambermourn had abused those desires within me many times on the lovely chaise lounge before us and seemed to think he could do so again tonight.
The moon shone through the glass ceiling and fell on his olive skin, which glistened under its harmonizing rays as he fell into the chaise and lounged across it.
“Can you believe I still have this old thing?”
“After what we did on it I’m surprised you do,” I admitted.
He laughed lightly. “I get it cleaned every once in a while.” He patted the seat eagerly.
“Come lay with me. The night is beautiful, and I'd love to enjoy it together.” Reluctantly, I crossed the room and sat on the edge of the chaise, allowing him to lay me back into the circle of his arms. The velvet pillows beneath my head were in fact quite comfortable, and the more I nestled into them, the more the familiarity of this affair washed over me. Gazing into his eyes, I could still see the man I had adored so long ago, who was not only my mentor, but someone I loved in my own odd way. I never loved him the way I did Ashlynn, but there was love for him regardless, love that could not be denied. He let his fingertips trail my chin until he got to my hair, which he spun between his fingertips. “There we are, in my arms once again, as I’ve dreamed about for centuries.”
“Your charm hasn’t failed you yet,” I weakly replied, my tone hoarse.
He took this hoarseness as desire, though it was more from discomfort, and let himself draw closer to me.
I didn’t pull away, so he took advantage of this and laid his lips on mine, letting them sit for a moment before moving them carefully.
It had been years since I'd kissed someone beyond my wife, and to be doing so felt like blasphemy. Each twist of our mouths, of his tongue gliding on my lower lip, waiting for an invitation further, felt like being committing sins against Gods. I knew, for the sake of the mission, to play along as best I could. When his hand shifted to travel down my shirt to the buckle of my belt, I paused our kissing, pushing against his chest slightly. We both panted from the intensity, and though he hadn’t moved his hand, he did stop trying to continue.
“What is it?” he murmured in my ear, biting me teasingly to show his intentions.
I swallowed harshly. “You really just jump into things, you know?”
“Once upon a time, I couldn’t stop you from jumping. Have you grown this uptight?”
“No, I just...” I cleared my throat and gave him a faint smile. “I’d like to talk a little, about you and such. Not everything is about sex.”
He pursed his lips before laying his head on my chest. I was relieved when his hand moved from my buckle to around my waist. “Well, I suppose I could entertain conversation. What do you want to know?” he prompted me.
His question buzzed around my head like angry hornets.
What exactly did I want to know?
“For starters...” I began as he played with the buttons of my shirt. I only had about three done, to expose my chest on purpose, but felt extremely vulnerable in this state, even though I was the one who chose to dress this way. “Have you kept up with anyone from Chandler?”
He answered me in an unamused tone. “No, not particularly. Most of them have died off. Quite a few killed themselves, actually.”
“What? Why?”
“No one could live with the stigma Phillip created.” His expression morphed into deep sadness.
“He really brought down the whole academy with him. As if Seraphine didn’t have enough to deal with, all her professors either high-tailed it out of there or offed themselves.
No one wanted to have loyalty to the McBrides, especially when a God had been so harshly abused. ”
“Would you believe I let him rule a Layer of Gehenna?” I mumbled.
He gasped softly. “You did what?”
“His sentencing aligned with the length needed to be a ruler, and his crimes justified. Ambrose did similar when he was a Human, and Phillip was one of his favorites. He already knew a lot about the ins and outs of the Layer, so it would be foolish not to hire him. I needed a body in the role, at the very least.”
“Why would you want to work with someone who did such awful things to you?” he asked, bewildered.
I tucked my face into his shoulder. “I won’t have to for much longer.”