1. Maren #2
Darkness gave a smooth push into the airless cavern, sending his wraithling back to its home above.
“The Fate of Love. He will answer her for severing his corda-cruor from his body without her blessing. Such bonds are blasphemy to break. Of all the bargains I have made since the dawn of my time, his remains the only one I should have refused. Tell me what you seek, my darling. And I will tell you what I’ll require in return. ”
“I need a way to stop time.”
Darkness stared at me a moment. Then, slowly, his smile widened. “Stop time, pet?”
“For three days.”
“Three,” he repeated. “The sacred number. And what do you plan to do for three days while time is stopped?”
I hesitated. Could Darkness truly sense my lies?
He dipped his chin, smoky gaze locked into mine, and then loomed closer, churning and blooming like black vapor.
His feet left the floor, floating behind him, and he walked on the heels of his elbows through the air.
“Play me for a fool, you will not, my pet. Either voice the truth of your soul or leave my home for the light.”
I didn’t budge as he drifted into my face and disappeared. “I need to rid this world of one of your creatures.”
“A wraithling?”
“No,” I said, my resolve tightening in my chest. “The creature that lives deep in the Brána Do Podsvetia.”
Darkness swept back, a wind forceful enough to tug my hair from my shoulders. The god surveyed me in full, eyes narrowing through the swirling mist of his shadow. “You’ve come to ask me a favor so that you may kill one of my creatures?”
I’m not sure how I’d managed to ignore that perspective until this moment.
I’d been so focused on Kye, so determined as soon as Selena explained what I must do, so dependent on the idea that Darkness would leap at the thought of taking something from me, that I hadn’t even considered he might refuse my bargain.
He didn’t wait for my answer. “The Abyssi at the bottom of the Brána Do Podsvetia was once like you. She found me in grief, searching for a way to reach a lost soul. She came the other way. From Perpetuum, on a new moon when Theia’s back was turned, seeking a way back to life.
The cavern she now guards is the gateway to the sea of stars.
A passage not made for mortals. She crossed it but failed to barter with the Fates.
They refused her request, whatever it was. Now she belongs to me.”
My brows lowered. “I am not afraid.”
Darkness wrapped his smoky fingers around my chin, stroking my jaw, the cold dripping from his hand. “Liar,” he breathed. “Grief sits over your shoulders like a hungry demon. It’s feeding on you as we speak. Drinking you in waves. You are afraid of failing.”
A cinch in my throat constricted, though I refused to acknowledge his observation as truth. The soft burn of impatience returned. Poison crawled up my walls like black vines, hooking into my chest, and my lips peeled back from my teeth. “I am not afraid.”
The shadow smiled. “They come for power. They come for revenge. They come to heal a broken heart. Most Naiads come for the third. A corda-cruor lost. What a curse it must be for a siren to bond for life. I am Darkness, and you cannot hide why you came from me. I cannot see the future. I cannot see the present. But here in a house of shadow, time stopped the moment you set foot in my realm. And I can see your past. Most take days or weeks to make their way here. They bargain with themselves before they bargain with me. You should know, pet, that it’s the souls with a broken heart I send away.
They don’t have the same ambition as ones searching for power or justice.
They’re just looking for a way to lick their wounds.
Give me a drop of your blood and I will free you to find a new cordae. ”
I stepped away, wrenching my chin from his grasp. “I am sent by Theia the Moon to rid her waters of a monster that feeds on victims of the sea. I am a Guardian, a protector of life. The Queen of Juile, the third in Theia’s Triad. I come with a broken heart, but I refuse to turn back.”
Darkness stared flatly at me. Long enough to make me shake with soft fury.
Time may have stopped when I’d fallen through the bottom of the lake, but I somehow felt the seconds ticking by, each one a small explosion in my ears.
I stared back, seeing nothing of the playfulness he displayed when I’d first arrived.
Curling and dripping and whispering in my ears.
Now he watched me with a hardness that lashed anger down my spine.
“Did you know, dear mortal, that the moon once tasked another group of three to become her Triad?”
“Yes,” I said, fists curling. “Xeno, Corvus, and Androma.”
He held my gaze, as though the names were more profound than I could imagine. “And where are they now?”
“It’s a myth.”
“If it were mere myth, why would you believe in it?”
“I don’t have time for games, Darkness.”
“Time is all you have down here,” he laughed coldly.
I glared. “I don’t know that I believe it. But if there’s a chance, I have to try.”
Darkness clicked his tongue. “Myths are born from legends. Legends are born from tales. Tales are born from truth. The best truths are tragedies, aren’t they?
Fables shredded and resewn throughout generations, only morsels of the truth tucked inside each new weave.
I was there the day Theia blessed the Three with immortality.
Corvus betrayed his brother, Androma was sacrificed to a monster, and Xeno lost his mind.
Some blessings are a desecration, my pet.
And what became of the Three, after they had won?
Have you ever heard the rest of the tale? ”
He raised his brows, half hidden in his shadows, waiting for my answer.
I crossed my arms. “They became the Three Stewards—”
“The Three Stewards,” he repeated, mouth cracking in a smile that verged on mockery. "You’ve probably been told that they protected land and sea and light as well.”
Unable to deny that I had, I merely glared, ignoring the flicker of unease that rippled through my gut.
“They forget, the other gods,” Darkness said, his voice dropping to a murmur.
He angled his head, and I couldn’t decide if the black dripping from him moved more like ink or ash or something as non-existent as night-woven fear.
“Theia looks to the future. Aalto sees only the day at hand. They forget what has come. What has gone. What has been left behind. I hold the past. Every tear, every sob, every shattered soul. Theia forgets that Xeno couldn’t stand the sight of Corvus after he sacrificed Androma to the sea monster, that he exiled his brother after they returned.
Theia forgets that Androma never overcame her fear of dark places, that even in immortality she hides, a shell of her former self.
Theia forgets that the Three Stewards never lived the life they were promised. ”
His shadows tipped toward me, climbing, winding, falling like soot.
“If you return from Perpetuum, it will only be because you’ve made bargains with us all.
The Fates. Theia. Myself. Gods who do not care what happens to you or your soul.
Gods who will take from you more than they will give.
Gods who would use you for their own means.
As a message, as a weapon, as a tool. The Fates are indifferent to your life.
Theia will neglect any purpose of yours that is not also hers. ”
“Ah. But you won’t,” I finished for him, scorn heavy in my voice.
Darkness smiled faintly, so small the curve of his mouth was merely a hint of smoke. “I will never forget, darling. The memory of you will plague me through the cord of time, every stitch and loop and knot. Until I am succeeded by a new Darkness. Freed from the curse of what once was.”
“So, you’ll bargain with me.” In the deep vault of the house of shadow, there was no air to fill my lungs. But I held my breath.
Silence elapsed like dragging feet the longer Darkness studied me, his face a map of hard lines, barely discernible in the dim room. The black around him flickered, velvet flames dancing across his shoulders. I swallowed, straightening. Waiting.
“No.”