Chapter 14
MORRIGAN
My mother escorted me through the hall, stopping in front of a large pair of doors that I assumed led outside.
“He’s out there,” she said, keeping her voice quiet, “in the courtyard.”
A small fluttering began in my heart as if it had its own set of wings. I turned and placed my hand on one of the doors. Don’t be scared, I told myself. You know him… kind of.
I did. I mean, I felt as though I did, at least. I knew his voice…
his presence… but seeing him in person and having to accept the realism of it all…
well, it changed things. It changed the meaning of everything he had said to me in my dreams. Something connected us, a string we couldn’t quite see, but we both knew it was there.
And it wasn’t the actual bond itself that scared me, but the why of it all.
Before I could even open the door, I felt a soft, cold hand land on my shoulder. I turned back to my mother, whose smile radiated kindness, but weighed too heavily with guilt.
“Promise me you’ll listen to him, okay? What he’s going to say…” she paused for a moment, then dropped her voice down to a whisper. “Count not the stars that shiver and fall. For one lights the path, and one ends it all.”
“What does that mean?” I asked her. A better question would be, why did goosebumps rise on my skin from hearing it?
She didn’t answer me. She just smiled and turned, taking Azrael up the large set of stairs behind us. Once she disappeared into the darkness, I finally opened the door and took my first step outside.
I was instantly greeted with a warm breeze, far different than the cold, brittle air inside the castle.
It carried with it a faint, crisp smell—similar to the scent of burning wood.
I had only been outside for a few seconds when I jumped from the sound of the wisping wind beside me.
I scrambled back until I leaned against the door, hands struggling to find the handle behind me.
But I quickly recognized the black mist, swirling at the end of the steps until it morphed into a large, looming—beautifully handsome—figure.
“Do you…” I gulped loudly. “Do you do that a lot?”
He cocked his head and looked down at himself, as the last tendrils of shadows sunk back into his skin, then looked back up with a half-smile.
“Sorry…” His laugh sounded almost nervous.
“I guess everyone here is just so used to it… I didn’t even think about it.
” He placed one foot on the step in front of him and offered his elbow to me.
“I’d like to show you something, if that’s alright with you. ”
Looking around at the empty space that surrounded us, I turned back to him with a challenging stare. “I don’t seem to have much of a choice, do I?”
I meant for it to come off as more of a joke, but the humor on his face died quickly as his piercing blue eyes sharpened on me.
“If there is one thing you can trust with me, Morrigan, it is that you will always have a choice.”
I’ve definitely heard that before.
I considered saying it out loud, but something in his eyes had me believing his words. He meant them. He had always meant them.
So does Kaiden, I thought. If I can just find a way out of here…
His gaze remained still as he waited, and I thought I noticed his teeth clench a little.
“I have a lot of questions,” I whispered, descending the steps and sliding a hand beneath his arm.
His body seemed to soften a little once I stood beside him, and his face relaxed again. “Let me answer them.”
After turning past the steps, we walked a little ways around the castle. It only took a couple of minutes, but I knew when we had arrived at what he wanted to show me. It was a garden.
A garden of daisies.
He had taken me here when I was close to breaking… He called it his escape.
“Why daisies?” I asked curiously. It’s not that they weren’t beautiful, but an entire garden full of them…
“My mother loved daisies.”
I froze. I was pretty sure the breath had actually frozen in my lungs as a strangled, prickling sensation assaulted the back of my neck, causing the hairs to stand straight. Why did that feel… familiar?
“I was tending to my garden when he approached me with a flower. A daisy. How did he know that those are my favorite?”
The diary.
It was Rosina’s diary, but that didn’t really matter because Rosina wouldn’t be…
Oh, gods…
“They took him. They took my baby. They took my baby.”
I ripped my hand from his arm and backed away as quickly as I could. “No,” I said.
He could see the conclusion in my eyes, and his chest rose with a deep breath. “Morrigan… just listen.”
“You’re… You’re Rosina’s… She’s your…” Am I hyperventilating? I might be hyperventilating. I pressed my palm against my forehead to try and calm myself down. “That means Ryuk was your…”
“Would you just let me speak?” he insisted.
When I turned to face him again, my eyes were wide, and a cold sensation crept along my arms. “S-So you’re… You’re a…”
“Yes.”
I let out a loud laugh that did absolutely nothing to stifle the fear in my voice. A god… He’s a god… And he’s here… Why is he here?
“That’s what I’m trying to explain to you,” he said.
My head whipped toward him, and I felt a deep pressure in my forehead as my brows pulled together. “Excuse me?”
“I can hear you, remember?” he answered, tapping his index finger to his temple as amusement seemed to return to his eyes.
He can hear… “You can hear my thoughts?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest.
The laugh that shook his chest almost had my lips parting. It was as if the sound alone shone around him, illuminating the garden around us. Every time I had seen him, he wore a mask that covered his face. Why? Why mask the unearthly beauty that emanated from him?
“That’s how this weird entanglement had begun,” he explained.
“It’s like our minds are connected. I could feel your nightmares.
Usually, they’d seep into mine, and that’s how I knew it was you.
It only grew stronger as the years passed.
So, yes, I can hear your thoughts. Don’t you remember hearing mine? ”
I had to physically shake my head to pull away from the daze I had fallen into, reminding myself that a literal god stood before me. He could kill me… It would be so easy for him—
“I would never.” His voice darkened into an almost-threatening tone.
“I don’t know if I like that you can do that,” I mumbled, tightening my arms around me, as I suddenly felt completely exposed to him.
With an apologetic smile, he nodded his head.
“I won’t do it without your permission,” he promised, making me feel slightly better, but it didn’t stop the unease that had me feeling nauseous.
“I can even teach you how to block me out, if you’d like.
But… that’s for another day. Today… I would like to tell you a story—one that you think you’ve heard, but has been twisted in so many different directions that it’s impossible to see the truth on its web.
” He took a step closer to me, and I didn’t move this time.
“After, I’m going to give you a choice… and whatever you choose, I will honor. You have my word, Morrigan."
Morrigan. He kept saying my name with such conviction. I didn’t know I could both despise and crave the sound of someone saying it so equally. He says it like he knows me… but… I suppose he does.
Nervously, I straightened my back and unfolded my arms before whispering, “Okay.”
With one more step, he was in front of me again. He lifted his hands and stopped them just beside each of my temples. I trembled a little as my eyes widened.
“I need you to trust me,” he said calmly. “I have never, and will never, intentionally hurt you. I just need you to see.”
“See wha—” I gasped the moment his fingers brushed my skin, and a blinding white light shot across my vision.
It felt like my soul had been ripped from my body. It wasn’t painful, but it sent a rush through me, twisting my stomach like I was falling from that cliff again. Everything around me turned black, swallowing me in a foreign darkness that I could almost feel slipping through my fingers.
After a couple of moments, a small grey mist began to form. It seemed to float through the air and twirl like the seeds of a maple tree as they fell. The mist clumped together, growing slowly, until it finally started forming figures.
“Rosina and Ryuk did fall in love…” His voice filled the empty silence, but he was nowhere to be seen.
I stood in the center of a void of darkness, with only the mist to keep me company…
but I felt him. I felt the sensation of his fingers against my temples, his chest close to mine.
This should have frightened me, but that strange tether I could sense—like a string wrapped around my very soul—told me I could trust him.
The mist moved, and I saw two figures standing before me. They weren’t completely shaped, but sculpted enough that I could make out a man and a woman side by side.
“Rosina would have done anything for him. So much so, that when Ryuk had asked her if she would tie her soul to his, she said yes without a second thought.”
A soul bond, I thought to myself. I had read about it with Harley.
Only the gods could grant it, though Harley said it was rarely approved.
Soul bonds were for loved ones who couldn’t imagine life without the other.
It would connect them for eternity. If one died, so would the other.
Though, how it connected them changed as the descendants of the gods began requesting them.
They quickly learned that they could share their power with one another as well.
A wind wielder may develop fire abilities.
A water wielder may suddenly manipulate shadows around them.
It was quickly outlawed when the war broke out.
They couldn’t risk losing their greatest warriors, and some bonds were even forcefully broken—an experience I had read was extremely painful.
“But, as you know from my mother’s diary, she and my father had an… unexpected gift.”
The mist danced around before displaying a portrait of a woman, kneeling in, what looked to be, a garden. Her hands covered her belly. Moving in closer, I was able to get a better look and noticed a little light glowing in the center of her stomach, pulsing to the rhythm of a heartbeat.
“Do you want to know the truth, Morrigan?”
The image moved again, this time showing a man. He stood tall, looming with a darkness that reminded me of my first arrival at the holy palace. Even though I couldn’t see everything, the anger in his eyes was perfectly readable.
“Ryuk did tell the others about her, but it wasn’t to seek forgiveness. No…”
The mist swirled, showing the woman once more, now sitting on the floor.
Her back was against the wall, and her hands held a small baby wrapped in a thin sheet.
The child was beautiful. And the smile the woman gave the baby reminded me of the one I grew up seeing on my mother’s face.
The baby’s eyes held a faint glow in them, similar to those of the mother.
Harley had described the gods to me before—it was why the lord’s eyes would glow when they used their powers.
Each of the gods had a circle of light that reflected the color in their irises like a sea of stars.
“He had told them of the child, but it was never their plan to hurt him. Rosina sensed a shift in Ryuk when he first came to see the baby. The way he looked at him…”
I stared at Rosina, who now stood beside Ryuk. She looked at the child lovingly, the way all mothers would, but Ryuk… His lips were twisted in what appeared to be… disgust.
“He sensed something within the child. Something that scared him more than anything else. Death.”
I jumped back when something broke through the mist. It was another figure of Rosina, now holding the baby in her hands as she ran past me into the darkness.
The mist began to swirl around me, showing different figures of the woman running—a look of anguish on her face that made my heart hurt for her.
“It frightened him so much that he decided something must be done to stop it. He planned to kill it.”
The mist dropped to the floor, and lying in front of me was the baby.
I almost forgot that this was all an illusion, and jumped forward to grab the baby, but halted as little black veins cracked through the grey mist. They crawled up the baby’s neck, and the glow in his eyes began to dim.
When the darkness reached his face, the light went out completely.
I wanted to yell, to cry… but I couldn’t make a sound.
“Clearly his plan didn’t work, but he didn’t know that.”
The next scene showed Rosina holding the child, walking through a forest that I thought I recognized. The baby moved again, cooing in her arms.
“In order to keep him safe, she kept the baby in a castle, warded off from Ryuk, so that he could never come for the boy. Trapped the child in a world he could never leave. But she hadn’t planned on losing. And she never made it back to her son.”
The rushing feeling returned, and I suddenly landed back on my feet, surrounded by the garden of daisies once more. I didn’t realize I had been crying until I felt his hand touch my cheek, wiping away the tears that had fallen.
“Y-You’ve… You’ve been here this whole t-time,” I whispered, stumbling through the silent sob that strangled my chest.
But his eyes were calm as they gazed into mine, rooted in a sadness he had too many years to learn how to internalize. We stayed there for a couple of seconds in silence as he continued drying my tears, and I had never felt more selfish in my life.
When he finally spoke, his words were soft and warm. “My name is Tristan. And I’ve been waiting a very long time to meet you, Morrigan.”