Chapter 29
Her words haunted him for days after that. Days after he had found oblivion within her body, but also embarrassed himself to no end. Had he really repeated the Warrior King’s own words to her? He was just as bad as his siblings after all.
Those were the thoughts that haunted him as he walked down the hall to her room. But he was the Deathless God. He had been created to rule these people, and he would be damned if a single mortal woman made him fail for the first time in his life.
Yet still he paused in front of her door, searching the wooden surface for answers that were not there. How did he fix this? How did he mend what he had broken a year ago?
Blowing out a breath, he decided the best thing he could do was just to make it happen. So he opened the door without knocking and just… strode in.
Jessamine was seated at the vanity, unraveling the long coil of her hair. “I don’t want to see you right now.”
“Well, I think we need to talk about this.”
“I’m saying I don’t want to talk about it.”
“If we don’t talk about it, then we’re both just going to get angrier at each other. We have to work through this. Together.”
She picked up a brush, and it looked like she was holding a weapon in her hand. “I think it would be smart of you to stop talking.”
Was that a threat? She shouldn’t try to fight him. It only made him more excited about the entire situation. “Jessamine—”
“Elric. I’m telling you right now that I am very angry with you. I don’t like what you did, and I don’t want to talk about it until I’ve had some time to think. Once I can do that, then I will ask you to have this conversation.”
“How long is that going to take?”
“I do not know.”
“Then that doesn’t work for me. I need to know that we are all right. I need to know that we are not broken.”
“I don’t have an answer for that right now! I deserve the space to think—”
He felt something in him explode. “Space? Jessamine Harmsworth, the last thing I want from you is space! I want to inhale the very air you breathe. I would live inside of your skin if I could. I want you more than anything I have ever wanted.”
Her fingers curled even harder around the brush. “Then you shouldn’t have taken my soul and then lied about it, you stubborn moron!”
“You want to fight? Is that what you want? Fine, then. We can do that, too.”
He only had a second to see her exasperated expression as he approached her before he slapped a hand on her shoulder and dragged her consciousness into his realm of darkness. Neither of them had been back here since he’d acquired a physical body, and it hadn’t changed.
The shadows reached for them, inky hands grabbing on to their ankles until he kicked them away.
And like always, he could feel his emotions leach away from him.
This place wasn’t where he could feel anything important.
Gods could not feel like humans, or they would make poor choices.
Gods were not allowed the luxury of making decisions with their hearts.
She wrenched away from his hand on her shoulder, already spitting mad. “You can’t keep doing whatever you want, Elric! I did not want to come here!”
“You needed to come here.”
“I am so tired of you telling me what I should or should not do. I am not your puppet!”
“I never said you were.”
“And yet here we are, in the realm I did not want to go to because you decided we need to have a conversation I do not want to have!” Jessamine ran her fingers through her hair, tearing at the dark strands he so adored.
“Everything I do, I do for you.”
“No, you don’t, Elric. I cannot tell you how many times you have done something for yourself and pretended that it was for me. Where is my soul? Is it here? You said it was in this realm, so if you brought me here, then surely you are going to give back what is mine.”
He couldn’t, though. Especially now that he knew Leon Bishop was stealing people’s souls to use for some dark spell. He couldn’t risk her.
But if this was what had stuck in her head, then fine.
He waved a hand, and the shattered pieces of her soul appeared beside him.
They were a small, neat stack with the mirror memories facing up.
And with a thunderous voice, he shouted back, “You want to see it? Then fine, Jessamine, here it is. What else do you want me to tell you? Do you need me to admit that I looked through every single one of your memories?”
“You bastard.”
Elric picked up the one on the top and turned the small palm-sized piece to face her.
“Do you need to hear me tell you that in my darkest moments, in the moments when I was the most alone, that I looked at my favorites? That I stared down at the images of your tiny face as Callum taught you it was safe to love dogs again? That I rode with you on horseback as you barreled through your teen years like a storm cloud on the horizon? Do you wish me to tell you how many times I looked at Leon Bishop’s face?
How many times I wanted to bury my fist in his chest so that you would not suffer the pain he caused you ever again? ”
Her expression twisted, though he thought this time it was discomfort rather than anger. “No, I don’t want you to tell me any of that! They aren’t your memories.”
“Because I have no such memories,” he shouted.
“Because I was created as a god, manipulated by magic, and then given to witches for their pleasure and their pleasure alone. But with your soul here, I wasn’t so alone anymore.
I wasn’t stuck with my guilt or my regret.
Instead, when I was forced to return here without your guiding light, I could still seek solace in the silver moonbeams of your memories.
I could still be with you, even when I was not. ”
Something in him felt like it had cracked open. He couldn’t stop saying the words, even though they laid him bare in front of her.
“I couldn’t be with you, because I wasn’t gifted a body.
Do you know how hard it is to see other people living their lives and knowing that you will never experience that?
Do you know how hard it is to see someone like you, someone I so deeply wanted and desired, and to know that I could not touch you? ”
He brought the shard to her, handing it over even as he grabbed the back of her neck with the other.
Her fingers curled around it, the shards slicing through her flesh, and vivid red stained his black-and-white world.
She stared up at him with those big, dark eyes that saw far too much, and he could feel himself breaking.
Elric’s voice lowered into almost a whisper. “It was torture knowing you were so close and yet so far. I drowned in your memories so that I did not have to suffer as mine started to return, my nightmare. You were a balm for my wounded soul, and I will not apologize for that.”
“You should apologize for taking it without my permission. You should apologize for not telling me that you even had it.” But her words were a little softer, her lips less pressed together in a white line.
“I cannot just forgive you every time you make some grave mistake, Elric. You are a god, I know that. I know there are things that I will never understand. But I need to know I can trust you.”
“Why could you not?”
“Because you took my soul!” she shouted. Her words echoed in the dark place around them, like tens of voices were repeating her words. The other gravesingers, furious at him for what he had done.
“I took your soul as payment for your life,” he whispered, his thumb pressing down a little too hard on her neck.
He could lie. He could tell her that she had given it to him and just didn’t remember. He could tell her a hundred other lies that would last throughout her lifetime, however long he wanted her to live.
Instead, Elric sank to his knees before her. He kept his eyes on hers, knowing that she watched his every single movement. And while on his knees, he conjured a wicked blade.
It manifested in his hand, black metal glinting in the dim light. The handle fit his grasp perfectly, and it was not a pretty thing. Such a beast required no adornments. Plain, but efficient and wickedly sharp.
“Take it,” he said, holding it by the blade.
Jessamine wrapped her long fingers around the hilt.
“Nightmare, I have stolen your soul from you, and I know that means much. I know you suffer now with the knowledge that you lack a soul, and for that, I will never be able to apologize enough. Your suffering was at my hands. It is an act even I cannot forgive.”
“Elric, what is this—?”
“Take my heart,” he interrupted when she would have gone on a rant of her own. “Take my heart, nightmare, because you already own it.”
Her eyes widened. He could see the shock in those depths, but also knew without a doubt that she didn’t believe him. “This is far too dramatic, Elric. Get up off your knees.”
“Did you hear me?” he asked, his voice low and meaningful. “I have your soul, Jessamine Harmsworth. Now I wish for you to have my heart. A trade, if you will. Because I have no intent of returning your soul to you in such a dangerous time.”
There was a small pause. A moment where her lips parted and showed the lovely pink tip of her tongue before she shook her head. “This is insane.”
“I will keep my heart here, along with your soul. Safe. It will be yours, though. Should you die under my watch or choose to go to the afterlife, I will send it with you.” He wrapped his hand around hers and drew the tip of the knife to his breast. “Take it, Jessamine. It’s been yours far longer than either of us has realized. ”
She pressed the tip forward, sinking it into the pale skin of his chest, and he tilted his head back in ecstasy.
If there was such a thing as exquisite pain, this was it.
The parting of flesh. The sensation of white-hot heat and the warmth dripping down the planes of his chest as she continued pushing the blade forward.
It sank through his skin, moving forward, searching, slicing, aching.
Then he reached to help her, grabbing either end of the narrow wound, sliding his fingers into his own flesh and pulling.
His ribs cracked, more blood poured out, but in this place it wasn’t death that leaked out of him, but magic.
The raw, visceral parts of who he was. Magic that spilled out and pooled at her feet, coiling up her legs in a caress, because even that part of his godhood loved her.
Because she was stunning, standing above him with a knife as so many witches had done before. But this one he had begged. This one he had pleaded to do what she had done, and when he had made enough of a gap between his ribs, she reached inside and pulled out his black still-beating heart.
She held it up between the two of them, and he felt the feral grin on his face.
“You, my darling, deserve every bleeding bit of it. I am your god, but I worship at your feet. I promised the shards of your soul that I would keep it safe in return for a throne of bloody bones, and I will uphold that promise. But along the way, somehow, this heart became yours.”
“This is too much,” she whispered, but her fingers curled around his heart a little harder.
“It is not enough. But your name was the prayer that dripped from my lips on the evenings when I felt like my own world had shattered around me. You are the most divine creature I have ever met, Jessamine Harmsworth. A life without you lacks all reason for living.”
And with that, he saw her resolve bend, and then slowly break.
“Elric,” she sighed. A stream of blood welled between her fingers and then dropped into the darkness between them. “You make it so hard to stay angry with you.”