Chapter 14 #3
Calrix’s sword flares and Mal’Thariel’s eyes flicker with an emotion I don’t care to read into. None of them deign to speak further, and none of them stop me as I move to leave, vanishing before they can even blink.
Back in Zeriavoss, I’m pacing.
I don’t pace. Ever. Pacing is for anxious mortals and over-caffeinated scribes.
But I can’t sit still. Daisy’s body lies motionless in that godsdamned bed, her chest rising and falling in a slow, artificial rhythm.
And that tether—that thing—between us won’t shut up.
I can feel it tugging. Anchored deep like a hook caught in my soul.
Low and quiet, with an almost ancient feel surrounding it.
For the life of me, I can’t fucking explain it.
A mortal shouldn’t be able to bond with an immortal one.
That’s not how it works. It shouldn’t be possible, but how this feels, sounds exactly like how people describe soul bonds.
And I hate it. Why does it feel like if she doesn’t wake up, something in the realm, in me, is going to snap?
Maybe this is some residual from the soul bargain that I didn’t remove properly.
A tether from her end for some strange reason.
Yeah, something she did. Definitely not me. Definitely not.
Fuck.
For the rest of the first day, I don’t move.
I sit beside her, hands braced on her bed as my wings twitch in time with the grinding of my jaw.
I keep my head bowed as the healers come in and out, ensuring that she remains in the protective coma.
I zone in on the feeling of her soul flickering—barely tethered, barely there—and all I can think to myself is: If she dies, I’ll burn every fucking plane of existence until there’s nothing left but ash.
The second day, I don’t speak to anyone.
Not even Aran, who hovers nearby like he wants to say something useful and knows better than to try.
The healer brings water to dab her lips, and I glare at her hands the whole time, daring them to shake, daring them to falter.
If they so much as tremble, I’ll break her fingers one by one.
“She’s stable,” the healer says.
Stable. Like that’s supposed to reassure me. I don’t want stable. I want her blazing. Radiating. I want her laughing at something dumb and rolling her ocean eyes like she’s too good for the world. Not this—pale and silent and still.
The third day is no different. I move only when absolutely necessary.
I ignore food, ignore Aran’s updates. I chew on the occasional ashberry when the hunger pangs claw too deep.
Hell can run itself for now. Let the councils argue, let Lucifer keep leaking summoning rituals to idiotic morals.
Fuck, even the world can burn for all I care.
I reach for the dagger on my belt sometime in the late hours, when the silence starts to stretch too long and too loud.
My fingers curl around the hilt, and I draw it across the palm of my hand with clinical precision.
Blood wells up instantly, the crimson fluid grounding me.
The pain helps. It pulls me slightly away from that damn tether, from whatever the fuck it is.
Because it isn’t a bond. It isn’t real. I’m not attached to her.
She’s a mortal. A stubborn, emotional, unpredictable mortal, and I’ve known a thousand like her.
But no soul bargain has ever tethered to me like this, and it’s utterly fucking infuriating.
I wipe the blood on my thighs and press a thumb into the wound until the sting dulls. She’s not special. And yet, I haven’t left her side once.
The fourth day, the Divine Six summoned me again.
Their realm is so sickeningly bright, it hurts my eyes, my bones, and my blackened soul. I’m getting real fucking tired of their obsession with me.
“We have given you a few days to cool down, Korithax. But we cannot ignore that you have brought a mortal girl into Hell twice.” Seraphiel says as I arrive, arms crossed over her silver-plated chest.
“I do what I want,” I growl. “And something that’s mine needed saving.”
My nostrils flare as I meet her gaze. She does not intimidate me. None of them do.
“She is not yours,” Amarithe says softly, with that fake sweetness that curdles my blood.
“You do not own her soul,” Elaron adds, again.
“I did own it. Her father traded it. It was legally signed and sealed.” I am so bored with the same conversation. Why do they care so much about a mortal girl? It's not like she can do them, or anyone in Hell, any harm.
“Yet, her soul is not in your possession now, Korithax.” Calrix rumbles, his grip never leaving the hilt of his sword like he’s afraid I’ll strike him at any moment. Gods, if they carry on questioning me like an insolent child, I just might.
“I told you. I gave it back.” I growl, and the silence that follows feels suffocating.
Velentha finally speaks, her voice quiet and distant, her hooded face turned towards me. “You still avoid the true answer to the question, Child of Ruin.”
Again, with the Child of Ruin. “What do you know?” I snarl. “Why do you always call me that gods forsaken name?”
She doesn’t reply; she only watches me, unmoving. She knows something. She’s always known something. But she only reveals what she wants to, even to the other five celestial assholes sitting in front of me.
“This is a dangerous situation, Korithax,” Seraphiel says. “You are too close.”
“I was close to a mortal soul I used to own. Yes. However, she is nothing now.”
“You lie poorly,” Amarithe whispers, smirking at me.
I want to rip that smirk straight off her face. Maybe I will. Maybe I will use Calrix’s sword to do it.
“You must not bring a mortal to Hell, Korithax. It contaminates the realm. She contaminates the realm.” Mal’Thariel spits.
This guy and his obsession with contamination.
He acts like everyone is fucking plagued or something.
It’s the only time the asshole ever deigns to speak.
I just flip him off, smirking when he looks shocked at the gesture.
I notice Elaron tilting his head at me and I inwardly groan, knowing I’m not going to enjoy whatever this asshole is going to say next.
“Why does your soul flicker when we speak of her, Korithax?”
I clench my fists. “I owe you no answers.”
“You brought her to Hell,” Seraphiel says, her voice like frost. “You are playing with divine boundaries.”
“I have been dancing around your fucking boundaries for centuries. What’s one more step?” I ask.
“You forget your place, Child of Ruin.” Velentha murmurs.
“And you forget your power.” I snarl. “Or rather, lack of it. You sit on thrones and whisper secrets while the rest of us fight to keep the balance. I’ll bow to you the day you’ve bled for something.”
I turn to walk away when Calrix’s voice rumbles through the air. “Careful,” he warns.
“Or what?” I snarl. “You’ll swing that sword of yours and cry about ‘order’? You think because you erased your queen that you’re anything other than cowards?”
I know I’m crossing a dangerous line. Nobody is allowed to speak of the First Queen.
Every damn thing about her was erased, down to her sigil, but nothing can be hidden when you’re immortal.
Those who lived through the queen’s reign continue to whisper about her legacy, despite the laws.
Despite the lack of respect I have for the Uppers, they do have more power than any leader of any of the realms. The ones I know of, and the ones I do not.
They could strip me of my title, they could kill me.
But they won’t. I am the only one in the line for the throne of Hell, and they know damn well that chaos would reign if they tried to find another.
I watch a flicker of emotion cross all of their faces. A twitch, maybe guilt? Pff, no, never. They say nothing more, and I decide to leave before I let myself burn their perfect little sky realm to ash.
By the fifth day, the healer says Daisy’s vitals are improving. Who gives a shit? She’s still unconscious, still lying there like some pathetic cautionary tale, and I’m still stuck in this fucking room with her like I’ve been cursed by some divine joke.
I sit by the window, my jaw seeming to never unclench, watching the sparkling river beneath the cliffs of Zeriavoss.
Red and white blossoms fall from the trees beyond the glass, so pretty, perfect, and delicate, and I have to resist the urge to tear the curtains closed just to block it all out.
The tether between us hums, low and insistent.
I hate it. I hate the way it pulls at me, the way it aches in my chest. Why her?
I’ve claimed hundreds of souls, thousands even.
Mortals are nothing new. And this one? This broken, messy little sunbeam?
She’s truly nothing special. She’s stubborn, reckless, and so very painfully fragile.
She’s so loud and dramatic and evidently clingy.
She infuriates me so much. And yet, the pull is like nothing I’ve ever known.
It can’t be her soul trying to come to its owner, because I no longer own it.
I couldn’t hold on to it. Not out of mercy—don’t mistake the act for sentimentality—but because the entire thing felt wrong, unclean.
I didn’t want that in my domain. She didn’t belong in Hell, not even in punishment.
And maybe I didn’t tell her because some bitter, unidentifiable part of me wanted to see what she’d do when she thought she was damned.
Maybe I liked watching her squirm. Maybe I wanted her tethered to something she couldn’t escape.
Six days.
Six fucking days and she still hasn’t moved, and I still haven’t slept.
I’ve barely eaten, just consuming a few bites of fruit.
I’m starting to see the walls pulse, the stones themselves thrumming with the same frequency I feel inside my ribcage.
The healers have stopped trying to talk to me. I stare, breathe, and wait.
At nightfall, the chamber is silent. No aides, no footsteps, just the dying crackle of the fire and the infuriating sound of her weak, steady breathing.
“I don’t understand,” I mutter to the empty room. “I do not understand what you are doing to me, little flower. But whatever it is, I want it to stop.”
I flex my hands before curling them into tight fists. I can’t sit here any longer. I need violence, I need pain.