Chapter Thirty-One
I screamed until my throat was raw.
“Fauna!”
I wailed. I clawed. I wept.
The sound bounced off the windows, echoing over the obsidian marble floor, filling every inch of my home with primal, animal torture.
I thrashed against any attempts to hold me, throwing hands and breaking anything in arm’s reach.
I begged to go back. I pleaded with Caliban to take me to álfheimr. I balled my hands into fists and beat his chest when he remained stoic.
I tried to push him, to hurt him, to make him stand aside while I marched out the front door, but he was immovable, and I was powerless.
We were here on Earth. We were in my fucking apartment when I needed to be in álfheimr. I needed to be there for her. I needed to help. I couldn’t let her die. Not because of me. I had to go get her. Caliban had to heal her. We had to help. We couldn’t just let her lie there. I had to do something.
I picked up a lamp and threw it across the room.
I pounded my fists into the cement coffee table until Caliban caught my hands in his own and forced me to be still.
I continued to flail within his arms, cursing him, trying to free myself, trying to hurt him as I pictured her trembling from exhaustion, body shaking, breath ragged as she gave every drop of her power to save me.
Ten thousand swords every bit as sharp and deadly as Estrid’s cut through me, eating me up and shredding me until I was little more than pulp and gore as I pictured her blade finding purchase in Fauna’s neck.
Estrid had won the killing blow because Fauna had watched to see that I was safe.
She’d turned to ensure Caliban made it to me, and it had been her undoing.
I wasn’t sure exactly when my screams had turned to sobs.
I didn’t know how long I’d had a throbbing migraine, or when I’d wounded myself.
It was unseasonably cold in the apartment, sending goose bumps of adrenaline and chills up and down my arm as I looked at the crimson smears on them.
I wasn’t entirely sure what blood was mine and what was Ella’s.
Caliban hadn’t tried to heal me, and I suspected I knew why.
Pain was what I wanted. I needed it. I clung to it like a lifeline in the void. Pain was true. It was love. It was something. And if he took it from me, I’d never forgive him.
I could barely see his ivory outline as the last lights faded.
I didn’t want a light, and he knew it.
Maybe he helped me fall asleep when night fell. Maybe I worked myself into an exhausted rage of my own accord. Maybe Fauna’s ghost put me into a coma to keep me from hurting myself so badly that I’d rendered her sacrifice useless.
When I dreamed, it was of the ocean.
Salt and pine and snow moved on the wind, rustling my hair as I stood along the beach.
Cold waves licked around my ankles. There was something odd about the foam.
The flotsam rolling against the waves and gathering at my feet was pink.
I picked my foot up out of the sea, and bright, angry splashes of red dripped from my toes and into the water.
I turned to run for the shore, but it had disappeared.
The hard-packed beach disappeared beneath me as I was plunged beneath the ocean’s ruby waves, drowning in the very blood that was on my hands.
I sat up in bed coughing so hard that I thought I’d lose a lung.
Caliban touched my back as I cried, crumbling into him at long last as he held me. We sat awake through the night, but I was caught on sickening repeat, the same words stuck in my throat.
“Fauna can’t be dead,” I said over and over, as if repeating it would make it true. “She can’t be gone. She can’t.”
One day became two, bled into three.
If he had meetings, he didn’t say. If there were royal obligations pulling him away, he’d forsaken them to hold me.
On the fourth day of listless nothingness, in the repetition of Caliban fruitlessly trying to get me to drink water, falling in and out of sleep, refusing texts or calls or emails or television, and resuming my monastic silence, he spoke.
“Kirby is safe” was all he said.
I looked at him dully. I should have been glad they were safe, but it felt hollow. It was as if I knew their safety was temporary. Proximity to me would result in death. It was only a matter of time.
“Estrid?” I responded.
“Azrames did not spare her,” he said.
Maybe the news should have brought me some sense of justice, but it didn’t.
Estrid was just another in the long list of people who were dead because of me.
She and Ella should be happily living out their immortality in their cliffside home in álfheimr. They should be drinking mushroom tea and cursing godly politics and staying far, far away from human women named Marlow.
They could have remained friends with Fauna, enjoying her company, watching the waves from their great bay window the way that immortal friends should.
“Fauna…Fauna’s not coming back, is she.”
It wasn’t a question, so it didn’t receive an answer.
Three lives were over, and it was my fault.
Azrames had taken down a valkyrie, and I was to blame.
I wasn’t sure if he’d ever speak to me again. I wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t. I didn’t want to speak to me either.
On the fifth day, Caliban brought me coffee in bed with honey.
“It’s time,” he said.
I looked at him despondently.
“You need to get in the shower. You need to get dressed. And you need to get back out there and fight. Because you and I both know that Fauna didn’t give her life so that you could fall apart. She believed in you. It’s up to you to end this thing. For her, for you, and for us all.”
I looked into the deep browns of my coffee but saw only the overturned earth and mud as she’d called the very earth to fight for me.
I couldn’t feel my arms or legs as I went through the motions of washing my face and brushing my hair.
I put on real clothes for the first time in days, but I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror.
Caliban handed me my computer when I emerged from the shower. “Tell your friends you’re alive. You can ignore the other messages.”
I frowned at the flooded inbox. EG had sent successive texts, emails, DMs, and varied forms of communication with preview texts that said things like “Was that you at the concert…”, “Marlow, what’s going on…
”, “Everyone at Inkhouse recognized…”, and whatever else they would have said if I had bothered to click on them.
I opened the group chat.
(Marlow) I’m sorry it took so long for me to respond. I didn’t mean to worry you
(Nia) …what happened? Kirbs doesn’t remember anything
(Nia) Kirbs? Wanna repeat what you told me?
(Nia) Kirby?
A moment later, an icon in the corner of my computer screen went off as Kirby called. I took a steadying breath as I answered. The screen filled with their video feed as they looked at me from the safety of their living room.
“Hey, Mar,” they said quietly.
I smiled faintly, but we both knew the motion was disingenuous.
“Can we meet?” they asked.
My brow furrowed. I looked around the apartment for an excuse. No, of course I couldn’t meet. It was offensive that they would even ask, when I could never leave my apartment again. I had to spend the rest of my life in this tomb.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
They frowned at me. “You mean, apart from gods making a public appearance, humanity scrambling for meaning, and the world falling apart?”
“Yeah,” I murmured, “apart from that.”
“Something weird happened after I…after we…Have you spoken to Ella?”
My soul evaporated. My lips parted in speechless horror. I tried to say something, but I could barely bring myself to shake my head. What did Kirby remember?
“We went to meet…” Their voice dropped a register. “Actually, I don’t think I should say over the computer. It’s nine a.m. now. Can you be at that coffee shop you like in thirty?”
I bit my lip. “Kirbs, I…”
“I know you’re going through it,” they pressed, “but this is important.”
I looked up over the lip of the laptop to where Caliban leaned against the wall. He’d moved in so noiselessly I hadn’t noticed his entry. “I’ll take you,” he said.
I looked back at Kirby. Rocks in my stomach, I nodded. “Sure. I’ll meet you soon.”
I resented life for going on, but I slipped on my shoes and looked at Caliban. “I don’t know if I can do this,” I said, voice wobbling as I spoke.
He tucked me into his arms, slipping his fingers into my still-damp hair as he held the back of my head to his chest. I closed my eyes and inhaled mist and fern. I knew I was safe with him. But I didn’t feel safe. Not in the human realm. Not in any realm.
“The only way to fix this is to end it,” I whispered against his shirt.
His thumb stroked against my hair. His lips brushed the crown of my head. “You shouldn’t have to do any of this,” he said.
“And yet,” I replied humorlessly.
I expected us to step through time and space, but Caliban wove his fingers through mine and guided us out the front door.
He popped on a pair of sunglasses before we reached reception as we bypassed the bewildered attendee, ignoring the jaw she left on its hinges as we headed for the garage.
He walked me to the passenger’s seat and held the door open for me before sliding into the driver’s seat.
I didn’t question him as he brought the car to life or guided it effortlessly out of the building.
He had us to the coffee shop before I had the time to fully comprehend that he was in corporeal form.
He was letting people see him. And he knew where we were going without being told.
He parallel-parked my Mercedes with expert precision in a spot directly in front of the coffee shop, then hopped out and opened my door for me.
A woman on the sidewalk looked up to see him as she passed and was so transfixed that she nearly ran into the street-sweeping sign. She dodged it at the last second but continued staring as she walked away.
I’d imagined this moment a million times.
I’d daydreamed about Caliban being real.
I’d fantasized about us going on dates, about him taking me to dinner and movies and stepping out of my imagination and into the world.
Even after I’d learned he was real, I hadn’t thought this day would come.
And I certainly hadn’t foreseen it happening like this.
He was here to hold me up in the wake of tragedy, knowing I could no longer stand on my own two feet.
“Are you sure it’s…wise?” I asked, nerves spiking.
“Gods are out of the closet, Love,” he said.
He looped his arm around my shoulders and pressed another kiss into my hair as he guided us in.
I scanned the exposed brick and wooden tables for Kirby, but we’d beaten them here.
The barista working the cash register had stopped in the middle of taking his customer’s order when we’d walked in.
The customer had been annoyed until they’d looked over their shoulder to join in bewildered, frozen awe.
“Caliban…” I whispered, anxiety growing.
At the far end of the counter, a curly-haired man with a bad moustache and a stained apron shouted, “Your Majesty?”
I shifted to regard him, brows pinched as something uncomfortable scratched the back of my brain. The barista’s thick brows furrowed as he read, “Ten pumps of sugar, a pump of caramel, vanilla, and honey for Your Majesty?”
I stepped away from Caliban before I knew what I was doing. I followed the magnetic pull toward the coffee. I reached the barista and looked up at him with wide, demanding eyes. “Who ordered this?”
He gave me an annoyed look that told me he wasn’t paid enough to deal with stupid questions. “That’s the point of calling out the name, ma’am.”
I controlled the nerves and temper that battled for attention. I scanned the room once more, looking for something—or someone—impossible. “Was it a customer here? Was it a call in? Was it—”
The barista at the cash register had been eavesdropping. She spoke over us, saying, “It was an online order. Said to be ready for…nine-thirty. The order gave two names.”
“The second name?” I demanded breathlessly.
Her eyes flitted with discomfort to the other customers before looking back at me. After fighting whatever internal battle warred within her, she said simply, “Dumbass.”
I snatched the paper cup from the barista before he could say anything further. I slipped the cardboard sleeve to the side and examined the cup, disappointed to find it blank. I turned back to the man. I was unsteady on my feet as I asked, “Did it come with a receipt?”
He made an unamused noise before waddling away. A moment later, he returned with a slip of paper.
20 oz oat milk latte
Two shots of espresso
10 pumps sugar
1 pump caramel
1 pump honey
2 pumps vanilla
Your Majesty, a.k.a. Dumbass
Order notes: Meet me in the cradle, baby
Caliban caught me before I realized I was dizzy. Stars speckled my vision as the room grew dark. He had the latte in one hand, supporting me in the other as I slumped against him, holding me until I regained my footing.
It couldn’t be. It was impossible. It was insane.
I looked up at him for an answer, confusion and bewilderment deepening at the crooked amusement on his face as his eyes remained trained on the receipt. With a soft, musical chuckle, he broke the shocked tension by saying, “It looks like we’re going to the Cradle of Civilization.”