Chapter 14 #2
“I couldn’t do that to him. I couldn’t lose him.
I loved him so much, and for so many years, he was all I had.
But he was growing weaker… I knew my magic was failing me and that someday he was going to leave me too.
And it was driving me mad. Having an animal by your side for nearly two hundred years might not be the same as having another person, but the idea of not even having him?
I loved Quill as much or more than the people I had shared my life with.
How could I not? He’d been by my side for nearly a thousand years.
But what would happen when my magic finally failed and I was left all alone?
“I fell into a severe depression, and it was like any life left in the world diminished even faster. And still, he stayed by my side. Even if I turned into a monster, he would never have left me…”
My hand falls as I bow my head in shame.
“I didn’t know when my magic that kept Quill alive would leave me.
Would it be days, weeks, years… fifty years?
I had no idea how much time I had left with him…
but as the days stretched on, I couldn’t stop thinking about that Door.
About my loneliness. About the fact that when he was gone, I would no longer have the magic to open a Door and no one would be here with me.
As a god, I cannot kill myself, but it got so bad that I tried to research how because I knew I couldn’t do this for another two hundred years without even him.
With nothing. I know you adore Kit and she fills a hole in your life, but can you imagine a world with no humans in it?
Imagine only having an animal for company…
and then realizing that someday, you don’t know when, she would be gone and you’d be completely alone.
“I think… at the end, he understood why I did it. I spent weeks considering it. Weeks hating myself for even contemplating it. Weeks hanging on to him, sobbing into his mane as I realized how much of a monster I’d become.
I knew he would never leave me, but here I was, about to take the life from him so I could open a Door and walk away from my own personal hell.
It was so selfish. It was so horrible of me. ”
Riley shakes his head. “You’re not horrible, Torin. How could you possibly think that?”
“You call this place beautiful, and I once thought it was too, but my hatred for it began to grow as the years went on because this was no longer the paradise I once loved. This was hell. This was a prison. After the humans died, I tried keeping the town beautiful like my townspeople once did, but I found myself unable to even walk the streets… and then I felt shame for letting it come to ruin. I tried to keep the rooms my servants decorated and lived in clean, but after a while, I stopped caring about that as well. I hated this place. I hated what it had become because I couldn’t stop thinking about what it used to be.
I was spiraling, and I knew the only way out was to sacrifice the only thing I had left.
“So I did. I took the life from him because I was greedy. I fucking… hate myself for what I did. For how selfish I was.”
Riley sets a hand on my shoulder, and I’m too ashamed to even look at him.
“You said that you were losing your magic that kept him alive. Do you really think he’d have wanted you to live alone in your hell for the rest of your existence?
This was your only opportunity to ever leave this place.
You had no choice; you had to go. I know how awful it must have made you feel, but you made the only choice you could. ”
“You’d have sacrificed Kit?” I ask, knowing that while their bond hasn’t lasted as long as mine had with Quill, he still shares a strong one with the animal.
He reaches up and strokes Kit. “I don’t know if I could have even been as strong as you were to have made it as long as you did.
I left the Magical Interference Unit three years ago and I feel like my life has just been destroyed…
I can’t fathom being strong enough to go through what you did.
Living here alone with nothing to keep you moving forward was never going to save either of you.
But going through that Door means that you could get some of your magic back.
And maybe that means you could bring him back, right?
He’d never have come back if you’d waited for him to become like this when you lost your power. But now you have a chance, right?”
My fingers fall from Quill’s mane. “I don’t know.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t imagine how hard that must have been.
But we’ll do whatever we can to try to bring him back.
I have magic that has never been identified in another person that we know of.
So if you can’t figure out how to bring him back, then maybe we can find some way for me to do it.
I assume necromancy magic wouldn’t work on him? ”
“No, because he’s not alive or dead in the same sense as an animal would be,” I say.
“Come on. Kit’s going to expire if we don’t feed her soon.
” I set my hand on Quill’s head as I stand before slowly letting it slide off.
I’ve felt nothing but guilt over what I did to him, but talking with Riley has reminded me that this doesn’t have to be the end—that I can keep fighting for Quill even now.
Because now I’m not alone. I have others to fight with me.
“Do you feel bad enough for me for another pity fuck?”
“My ass is waving the white flag. It can’t take any more right this minute,” he mutters.
“I can enjoy you without even touching your ass,” I offer.
Riley swallows hard and then stands there like a statue for a minute. “I…” He trails off and then looks at me through Kit’s eyes. “Stop being so damn tempting. How about I let you flip through books instead?”
“Sounds delightful. What do you want for breakfast?”
“I… uh… get an option?”
“Vegetables or more vegetables.”
“Tough choice… I would say vegetables,” he says as we walk inside before parting. I head toward the kitchen, but when I look back, I find Riley staring out the window at Quill. It makes me wonder if the strange man really could bring Quill back if I cannot.
I turn away and listen to my footsteps echoing down the hallway.
It’s such a lonely sound… one that became worse after Quill was gone, because I couldn’t immediately open the Door.
And then I was terrified that I’d lost Quill for no reason at all when my attempts to open a Door failed again and again.
The state I’d fallen into was not good, and Riley doesn’t need to know about it.
But instead of my mind being filled with the devastation of being all alone, it’s filled with thoughts of Riley. Somehow, I ended up connecting with the world that Riley’s in. Of all the places I could have ended up, it was with him… and now my mind is consumed by him.
And I feel rather concerned by that.