Chapter 39
IVY
Death is an endless chasm of black.
I am another lost soul tumbling head-over-feet through an infinite void of darkness. The inky abyss is nothing and everything at the same time. I am weightless and heavy. Cold and warm. Alive and dead.
My magic is dormant, completely spent. Only a spark hides somewhere deep within me, a trivial flicker where a great fire once burned.
Not enough to take me back home.
Not enough to take me back to him.
Spots of light appear, tiny sparkling punctures in the obsidian fabric of space and time. The stars grow brighter, morphing into clustered constellations. They’re gorgeous. My hand shoots out in a futile attempt to catch one of the passing orbs before sharp, sudden pain radiates from my right side.
My falling stops as I crash against the cold, polished stone floor. The darkness feels different here. Lighter, thinner, as if there’s only a veil covering my face and if I remove it, I can see again. My eyes adjust, slowly taking in my surroundings.
The room emanates coldness despite its luxurious contents.
Oil paintings and woven tapestries cover most of the walls, depicting headless men, faceless beasts, and women with blood trailing across their bare breasts.
It’s hard to tell if they’re locked in battle or in the throes of carnal pleasure.
Great streaks of white cover the spaces between. Walls made entirely of bone.
I suppress the shiver that tries to run down my spine at the realization, forcing my eyes to the large mahogany desk that sits in the center of the room.
Used parchments, forgotten mugs, and a vase filled with wilted godsbane blooms litter the top, accompanying the black leather chair askew behind—all indicating the occupant’s quick departure.
A massive fireplace crafted of exquisite black marble takes up the long wall behind it. Great onyx serpents with gleaming emerald eyes snake across the golden grate keeping the sweltering fire within. The crackling and popping of flames is the only sound throughout the cavernous space.
The ceiling overhead is made entirely of glass, the sparkling stars of night visibly dancing across the obsidian sky.
But those aren’t stars, not really. The last glimmers of desperate, seeking souls illuminate the room that I now stand in, and I feel their hopelessness in the pit of my stomach calling out for help.
They want to be led and they seek me as their shepherd.
“What are you doing in here?” The voice is pure ice, stinging my ears and freezing the marrow in my bones. The hulking mass of a man steps forward, shadows covering his face. Glowing eyes in a haunting shade of green cut through the darkness, examining me from head to toe.
I am exposed, stripped bare before him as if he can see beyond my skin and is scrutinizing the fabric of my soul.
“Why are you here?”
My tongue feels heavy in my mouth as I try and fail to form words in his language—a language I have only heard spoken once before, yet I somehow understand every word. Ancient syllables and sounds that haven’t been spoken to mortals in a millennia make perfect sense to me.
He moves towards me, stepping into the firelight to reveal a chiseled jaw more appropriate for a statue than a man.
Stark white hair, a perfect match for the bleached bone walls, falls in effortless waves to his shoulders.
He is devastatingly beautiful, so beautiful that a mere mortal might freely give over their life for a chance to look upon him forever.
But it’s his familiar eyes that hold my attention.
“Do you know where you are, girl?” He says it so casually, so lackadaisically. As if I could stand in the presence of my perpetual stalker and not recognize him. He is the source of the call that has beckoned me my entire life. Him I know—but how I ended up in Death’s study is a mystery.
Unlike other souls, I guess I will not be ferried across the blood rivers to the Eternal Meadows after all. I killed a god, and the punishment for such an act is to face the Dark God himself.
The tiny spark of the destructive magic within me awakens in his presence, a single ember of power flickering to life. A shadow of my full power and not nearly enough to kill another god.
I don’t mean for the huff of breath to escape my lips. The scoff was meant for me—for the absurd thought that I could kill the unkillable. Death’s nostrils flare as he takes another step, scenting the blood that still coats my face.
“You smell like her.” His voice is a growl now, his eyes narrowing to snake-like slits. He’s more animal than man. An ethereal sheen coats his perfect porcelain skin.
Another step closer and my eyes catch on the black veins that spider across his forearms. Not veins—tattoos. Scrawling lines of magical ink swirl across his glowing skin, constantly changing shape.
“You smell like my wife.”
No. No, no, no, no, no. I stumble back, reeling under the weight of his words.
Moving impossibly fast, a pale hand reaches out to grab my shoulder, hauling me upright effortlessly.
My head smacks against his stone chest, causing fresh blood to leak from the wound on my skull.
Ghostly hair covers my face as Death leans down and swipes his tongue through the blood running from the newly reopened gash on my temple.
As quickly as he grabbed me, he’s gone again, reappearing behind the desk across the room in less than a half a second. Muscles strain throughout his arms as if he’s physically holding himself back. He snaps his fingers and the heaviness of my tongue disappears in an instant.
“I … I … I …”
Full languages flood my brain at once as Death’s magic rushes through me, syntaxes and phonologies forming new synapses. My tongue rolls in my mouth trying to imitate sounds and inflections. Another snap of his long fingers and the lightning speed of linguistic knowledge stills.
“Speak,” Death commands in the language of the gods.
“I can’t be here.”
Wetness threatens to spill from my eyes as the words in this new language leave my lips. Shadows writhe beneath my skin, eager to spring forth from my form if only I dare to whisper acknowledgement of my true parentage.
“Yet here you are, my child.”
My child. The words slam into me with the full force of destiny as the origin of my taintedness is finally said aloud. The darkness that has always hovered right below my surface, the power of destruction within my veins. Growth and decay—balance of my true parents. Light and dark, life and death.
“Sit,” Death commands.
The Dark God’s voice booms through the room, bouncing off the stone floors, the glass ceiling, and the bone walls.
The distinct scent of sulfur fills the room, emanating from the pores of his pallid skin.
Summoned by his magic, the leather chair swings forward as he sits in a single, fluid motion, the flare of his coattails rippling in an icy, magical breeze.
My feet magically move at his command, my movements not my own. A velvet, backless stool appears in front of the desk. I sit without remark, curiosity and dread commingling with the god’s power that stirs within me.
In a blink, he reaches across the desk and swipes another boney finger through the gash on my head. Death lifts the blood-coated digit to his mouth, his all-seeing eyes weighing the truths and lies within my darkened soul.
“You taste of power. Some of it yours, some you took by force. You killed a god.”
A wicked smile tugs up the corners of my lips at the memory of Mikais on his knees, the smell of his burnt flesh mixing with mine as I roasted him alive.
Murder shouldn’t make me happy. I want to believe that it’s not the killing, but the man I saved that makes me smile.
But that’s not entirely true, and Death can sense it.
“The bastard had it coming,” I mumble.
“Do you intend to absorb his power or relinquish it?”
“I can do that?”
The god tilts his head to the side, his knowing eyes snagging on mine. It’s painfully obvious how very little I truly know about the gods. I barely grasp that I am a goddess, and I have no concept of what that entails.
“He may be a traitor, but the Wolf God has—or had, rather—great power. Power that I’m sure Nobus would be glad to have, if you don’t want to keep it. Will you offer it to him? Or do you plan to make an enemy out of your king?”
My king. I don’t hide my scoff at the title. A lifetime of religious indoctrination didn’t make me respect him, and it damn sure didn’t make me love him like the blind masses.
Regardless of the fact that she struck a deal with him, my mother played a role in betraying Nobus.
She participated in Mikais’ rebellion and smuggled Cal from the god realm.
I am already Nobus’ enemy—and if he plans to punish Cal for something he had no control over, I will be a ferocious one.
Whether I choose to keep the Wolf God’s power or not is of no consequence.
“I don’t plan to tell him what I’ve done.”
“The death of a god is felt in every realm,” Death says. “The question is not if Nobus knows that his brother is dead, but rather if he plans to do anything about it. All power must have balance, Godsbane.”
“My name is Ivy Fellows, Governor of the Emerald Region of Corinth.” I square my shoulders, rattling off the inherited title of a life I will likely never return to.
“You choose to lead with your mortal title?” Death scoffs. “You aren’t just the governor of an inconsequential territory in an inconsequential realm. You are the Daughter of Light and Death. You are Ivy, Princess of the Under Realm and Goddess of the Umbra.”