Chapter Sixty-Four
They say that the truth will set you free.
I think the truth is what will burn us.
Tabitha Wysteria
Mal landed back upon the bed, though this time she was alone.
She did not wait for Thanatos. His warning had been enough, and she had no intention of testing whether it was true. Sliding quickly from the bed, she snatched up her sword and hurried back out into the main room.
‘Oh, there ya are!’ Wren appeared at her side as if conjured from thin air. She now wore a long black robe thrown over her wolverian clothes, and a large blue feather had been tucked proudly into her hair.
Mal blinked at her. ‘What are you wearing?’
Wren shrugged. ‘They keep gifting me things. Though da feather I won playing cards.’ She narrowed her eyes and stuck her tongue out at a soul seated at one of the tables.
Mal caught her arm. ‘We need to leave. Now.’
Wren nodded, and before she could begin the flood of questions already forming on her lips, Mal spotted a door. She yanked it open and dragged Wren through.
Darkness swallowed them.
It lasted no more than a heartbeat before they plunged into a raging sea.
Mal managed to keep hold of Wren at first, but the furious waters had other plans. The waves tore them apart and dragged them beneath the surface.
For a moment Mal lost sight of her completely, until she glimpsed the flash of Wren’s silver-white hair cutting through the water as the wolverian swam towards the shore with surprising ease.
Mal struck out after her.
Both women collapsed onto the black sand moments later, gasping for breath. They rolled onto their sides, coughing violently and spitting seawater onto the shore.
Mal recognised this ring immediately.
The dark sand. The pale cliffs rising stark against the sky.
It looked almost exactly like the place where the keep stood; the lonely stretch of land where she had spent the last few months hidden away with Ash and her uncle Morthos.
Mal pushed herself to her feet and immediately turned to check on Wren. ‘You all right?’
Wren nodded, brushing wet strands of hair from her face before glancing around them. Her blue eyes widened with open wonder as she took in the strange shoreline.
‘Stay close,’ Mal warned, helping her properly onto her feet.
‘Where are ya going?’ Wren asked, frowning.
‘I’m curious about something.’ Mal gestured towards the white cliffs rising ahead of them. The last time she had come here she had not been able to explore, but now the need for answers gnawed at her. ‘Hurry. Before the king of this ring shows up.’
They set off at once, hurrying across the black sand until they found a narrow path carved into the cliffs. Mal kept her sword drawn, her brow furrowed with quiet tension.
It did not take long before the path revealed what she had hoped and feared to find.
A small wyverian keep lay nestled between the pale cliffs, just as it did in the mortal world.
They stepped inside the abandoned structure. The place was eerily familiar. The main hall opened through wide arches that looked out across the dark beach below, where the restless sea still churned and foamed against the shore.
Mal glanced towards the horizon, checking whether the king of Hell had appeared.
For now, the sea alone moved wild and endless.
She turned and hurried up the staircase, her steps quick and purposeful, until she reached the door to the room her mother had once occupied.
Mal paused there.
Her heart hammered hard against her ribs before she finally pushed the door open.
Inside stood the same chair her mother had always used, positioned to gaze out over the sea.
The room looked almost identical.
Almost.
Because beside the chair stood a cradle.
Mal frowned as she stepped closer, her fingertips brushing lightly over the dark wood of the cradle.
‘No babe,’ Wren pointed out.
‘No…’
Mal’s thoughts flickered, unbidden, to her own child, wondering how they were faring. For a moment the world seemed to tilt dangerously beneath her feet. She forced the thought down, burying it deep within herself and slamming the door on it.
If she allowed herself to think of her child or her mother, she would fall apart.
‘The real question,’ she said quietly, ‘is whose child was here?’
Mal and Wren exchanged a glance, neither of them possessing the answer.
Then Wren stiffened.
‘It’s gone quiet,’ she said, her voice hushed, as though speaking too loudly might disturb something watching.
Mal had noticed it at the same moment.
The endless crash of waves against the shore had ceased. The sea had fallen into an unnatural stillness.
She turned towards the open archway that overlooked the water, the very same one her mother had once used to…
Mal cut the thought short and shook her head sharply.
She would not think of that.
Slowly, she approached the archway and looked out across the sea.
The waters had gone eerily calm, their restless movement smoothed into a glass-like stillness.
And then something rose from the depths.
Livyatan.
His form resembled a wyvern, his great head shaped like the beasts of her homeland, his jaws lined with endless rows of jagged teeth. Yet the rest of him was something far older and stranger—a vast serpentine body, a long, sinuous neck that disappeared into the black depths of the sea below.
Mal sighed softly.
Her time here was up.
She gestured for Wren to follow and turned away from the archway. Together they descended the path in silence until their boots sank into the wet sand.
When they reached the shore, both women lifted their eyes to the towering king of this ring, watching him with quiet awe.
‘You have returned, child of Hades.’ The king’s voice rolled across the sky like distant thunder. His great jaws did not move, yet the words reverberated through the air as though the very sea itself had spoken. ‘Do you come to return the soul you took?’
Mal refused to let her thoughts stray to Makaria—her sister, trapped within this very ring because of her. She would not allow guilt to rise. She would not allow herself to feel anything at all.
‘No,’ Mal replied evenly. ‘I have not.’
Livyatan chuckled, the sound cracking through the air like lightning splitting the heavens.
‘I have come to visit another king of Hell,’ Mal continued. ‘The one named Lucifer.’
A silence fell over the beach. It was thick and heavy. Almost suffocating.
For a moment Mal wondered whether the ancient creature had even heard her.
Then his voice returned, darker than before.
‘You should not seek that king.’
‘Why not?’
Livyatan did not answer.
Mal glanced back over her shoulder towards the cliffs, where the small keep stood nestled between the pale stone.
‘Why does that place resemble the one in the mortal world so closely?’ she asked.
The great beast laughed again, a low, rumbling sound.
‘Do you know what we are, child of Hades?’
‘The kings of Hell.’
‘But do you know what we were before?’
Mal stiffened. She glanced briefly at Wren, who only shrugged in helpless confusion.
‘You were angels of the Sun God,’ Mal said.
Livyatan’s laughter rose again, deep and ancient.
‘Yes. We were his warriors. His messengers. We fought his wars. We carried his will into battles against other gods.’
‘What happened?’
This time Livyatan did not laugh.
He seemed to grow strangely still, thoughtful. Mal had the odd impression that if such a creature were capable of sighing, he would have done so then.
‘He fell in love,’ Livyatan said slowly, ‘with a goddess who did not love him in return. The goddess Nyx loved another.’
‘Who?’
‘The one known as Lucifer.’
Mal felt her body tense.
‘When the Sun God discovered the truth,’ Livyatan continued, his voice echoing like distant thunder across the silent shore, ‘he commanded us to destroy Lucifer, one of our own.’
The great serpent shifted slightly in the water, the vast coils of his body stirring the dark sea.
‘We searched for them everywhere. For Nyx. For Lucifer. We hunted them across realms, prepared to slaughter our own brother in the name of obedience.’ His voice deepened. ‘But then we discovered that Nyx carried a child.’
Mal felt the air grow heavier.
‘So we tried to hide them,’ Livyatan said slowly. ‘We tried to protect them.’
‘But he found out,’ Mal finished quietly.
‘Yes.’ The king’s voice rumbled through the sky. ‘The Sun God learnt the truth. And in his fury he went to his cousin, your father Hades, and demanded a prison be built. A place from which we could never escape. Punishment for defying him. For refusing to carry out his will.’
The sea rippled faintly beneath the great beast.
‘Each of us was cast into a ring,’ Livyatan continued. ‘And so we became the kings of Hell.’ He paused. ‘What the Sun God never discovered… was that we had hidden Nyx here as well.’
Mal’s grip tightened around the hilt of her sword, her purple eyes widening.
‘We concealed her within this realm,’ Livyatan explained. ‘Your father knew the truth. We fought over it, he and I. But in the end he carved out a place where she could remain hidden, and I became her guardian.’
The wind stirred faintly across the black sand.
‘Nyx remained here for many years with her child. Until…’
‘Until?’ Mal pressed.
‘Until Hades changed his mind,’ Livyatan said gravely. ‘He took the child beneath his own protection… and Nyx vanished. Disappeared.’
Mal felt her throat grow dry.
‘And the child,’ she asked slowly, ‘the son of Nyx and Lucifer… what was his name?’
Livyatan chuckled softly, as though he already knew she had guessed the answer.
‘His name,’ the ancient king said, ‘is Thanatos.’