Chapter 46
Chapter
Forty-Six
The Field of the Forgotten is…peaceful. Time feels slow and uneventful, and I relax and drift alongside the others waiting.
It’s crowded, but in a way that I don’t mind.
There’s a comfort in not being here alone.
No one talks, but I’m all right with that.
I try to focus on my surroundings, to see what they look like, but everything feels gray and formless, and even when I squint, I can’t make out the beginning or end to the field itself.
I give up and just wander with the others, existing but not, waiting for Kalos to remember that he has worshippers and for him to shake off his apathy long enough to come and get them.
Is this what being dead is? Calm and drifting? I don’t mind it. My mind is quiet. I miss Kalos, but I’m content to wait for him. I have nothing but time.
A dark figure cuts through the milling crowd, and I lift my head. My heart skips a beat—do I even have a heart?—and for a moment, I think he’s come for me. “Kalos?”
But then the figure steps out of the mist and it’s not Kalos. My disappointment is choking, and I turn away, no longer interested.
The man doesn’t leave my side, though. Eventually I look up at him again and notice green eyes, startlingly similar to my Kalos, and the same soft, pouty mouth.
This one has a large nose and an angular face, along with dark hair.
All the features that made Kalos so refined and elegant seem oversized or misplaced on this man.
There’s no denying a familial resemblance, though. “Are you Rhagos? Kalos’s brother?”
He assesses me in the same cool, remote way Kalos does sometimes and yup, they’re definitely related. “I was sent a message from the Fates asking me to release you from my realm to Kalos. Explain to me why I should care.”
Oh. “Is…is he not coming?”
“Kalos very rarely visits the realm of the dead. I imagine because I am here.” He gives me a thin-lipped smile that lacks warmth in the slightest. “And I’m not inclined to give him anything.”
I perk up. There’s a vague memory in my brain of Lachesis. Of me asking her to send me to Kalos because I’d changed my mind. “Fate asked you to send me to him? That’s great!”
“Is it? Why should I?”
“Because I’m his Anchor. Was his Anchor. He’s going to miss me.” I smile brightly to sell my words, even though I’m not getting any warmth from this Rhagos guy. He looks down his long nose at me as if I’m a worm. “Your brother is lonely, and I want to keep him company.”
“Lonely?” He scoffs. “He’s a god.”
“Gods can be lonely,” I defend. “He has feelings and loves—and hurts—just like anyone else.”
“I’m told that right now my brother is staring at a wall and plans on doing so for the next few millennia,” Rhagos says in a deep, dry voice. “That doesn’t sound lonely. It sounds like he’s sulking. If you know him, then you know he’s impossible.”
“He’s not impossible!” I put on my brightest smile, because he’s clearly wrong and I must make him see my point of view.
“Apathy is hard for him to live with. He has good days and bad. We all do. That doesn’t mean anyone should give up on him or treat him poorly because he struggles sometimes.
I’m not about to give up on him. If he’s too tired to do anything but stare at a wall, then I’ll stare at it right alongside him. ” I lift my chin.
“You’re annoying,” he says. “Like a bird chirping incessantly in my ear.”
“Then send me to your brother and I’ll chirp in his ear and drive him crazy. Won’t that be fun?”
His green eyes glint down at me, the fog falling away bit by bit.
My thoughts are becoming sharper, and with them, my memories return, my needs, my wants.
How long have I been drifting down here?
Every day is a day too long. Poor Kalos probably feels abandoned by everyone, and the thought feels like a knife in the gut.
“You should know that Kalos is the most flawed of all of us.”
“Flaws are fine. I like his flaws. Imperfections are what make us human.” Am I getting through to him? At some level?
“Human.” Rhagos tastes the word and smiles faintly. “We haven’t been that in a very long time. I myself am not particularly inclined to help. Kalos and I have not been on speaking terms for millennia, ever since he last betrayed me.”
My heart sinks. “I’m sure he had a reason.”
“Belara,” is all the god of death says.
“She’s a real piece of work,” I blurt out.
“Mm.” His eyes narrow down at me. “Like I said, I’m not inclined to help…but my Max, my Anchor, insisted.”
He kept his Anchor? I notice his tone softens when he mentions Max’s name. “Tell him thank you.”
“Her,” he corrects. Before I can apologize, he moves on. “The Plane of Vultures is not a pleasant place. Are you sure you want to go?”
“A thousand percent sure.”
“You’re…not what I would have expected for my brother.”
“Because I’m determined and positive? It gets on his nerves, too.” I clasp my hands under my chin, turning my best puppy dog eyes on Kalos’s brother. “Please take me to him. I swear to be a pain in his ass for all eternity.”
“One can only hope,” the god of death replies, and swirls his cloak over my head, tugging me into darkness and out of the Field of the Forgotten.
The god of death is right—Kalos’s Plane of Vultures is kind of a downer.
When I arrive, I’m alone. There’s a thick mist everywhere I look, and my bare feet are ankle-deep in swampy water. I panic, imagining what’s creeping around in that water…and I remember I’m dead.
Being dead takes a lot of the fear out of scary places.
It’s a bit chilly and I glance down at my torn, weather-beaten dress that saw me cross half of Aos.
It’s speckled in mud and smells like goats and fields and sunshine.
I lift it to give it another nostalgic sniff and cross my arms over my chest for warmth.
There’s no sunlight here, and the trees on the horizon all look dead, naked branches clawing at the gray sky.
It’s miserable, but if Kalos is here, I don’t care. We can laugh about it. We can plant flowers or something. Add a few goats. Nothing is set in stone, not even godhood.
Seth taught me that.
I wander through the swamp, looking for a building or a location where I could find a god who just wants to be left alone.
Eventually a structure rises in the background, and I head towards it.
As I get closer, I can see columns and walls, and the ankle-deep watery mud dissipates, showing a floor made entirely of bones.
The pillars are made of skulls, the walls a repeating pattern of leg bones. For some reason it makes me smile.
Very edge-lord. Very Kalos.
I push open a pair of cage-like doors made from stacked ribcages.
They creak and fall open, and inside it’s completely dark except for one torch near the throne on the dais.
It reminds me of the temple in the swamp where he’d first arrived, and I’m hit with a wave of pure nostalgia and longing. That felt like forever ago.
Kalos is seated upon his throne, head bent, gazing off into nothing as if in a fugue.
He’s dressed all in dreary gray, an elegant gold-edged cloak of a fine, embroidered material sweeping over one shoulder.
His clothes are tasteful and fitted, with expensive buckles on his boots and an equally expensive belt at his waist. Everything is covered in a fine layer of dust. He looks good to my avid, hungry gaze, but all that dust means he hasn’t moved in forever, and that just makes me so very sad.
Even as I step forward, he doesn’t see me.
He’s told me before that when he’s in “deep” that it’s like a trance—nothing registers.
He’s simply lost in his own mind. This must be the case now.
I approach, brushing cobwebs off his face as I kneel before him.
His hair has grown out. It’s long and spilling past his shoulders like it did before we met.
A quiet rebuke of me, I wonder? Or just him not caring enough and letting it grow out while he remains catatonic?
I touch his knee and when that elicits no response, I speak up. “Well, I’m disappointed, Kalos. After all of our discussions about interior decorating, I really thought there would be a throne of scabs after all.”
Silence.
I’m patient, though. It takes a moment, and I see his pupils dilate.
He blinks once. Twice. His gaze flicks towards me.
His mouth sets in a firm line, but he doesn’t get up from his throne where he’s slouched.
Instead, he just regards me like a wounded animal afraid of getting attacked once more. “You lied to me.”
“I did. I was an asshole.” I brush my thumb over his knee. “I’m sorry.”
Kalos simply stares at me. Through me. As if I don’t exist. As if I’m nothing to him. “Why are you here?”
I refuse to be intimidated by his bored, aloof tone.
I know him better than this. I spent months at his side, closer than skin.
I know that his ennui hides a sensitive heart that’s been wounded over and over again.
I know that he retreats when he’s been hurt.
I know he pretends not to care but he does, greatly.
I take his hand and put it on my cheek. “Because I fucked up, Kalos. I could never think of the right time to tell you that Lachesis—she’s one of the Fates from my world—made a deal with me that I’d return to that world’s afterlife instead of yours.”
He doesn’t respond, but I sense I’ve hurt him all the same.
“I made that deal before I ever met you,” I say softly. “Because I thought I’d want to be with David after he died, and my family, and everyone else. That I’d want to go back to what was familiar. That deal was a mistake, though.”
I turn my face in, pressing a kiss to his cold palm. “Turns out I’d trade away everyone else for you. Even if you never speak to me again, I’m content to just remain here in your swamp. Just to be near you.”
He says nothing.