11. Chapter Eleven
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ASH
My flower thinks I’m a fantasy.
She sits on her bed in that grimy apartment, twirling one of my gifts through her fingers.
Her brow creases as she examines it, searching for answers in its delicate veins.
I watch from the space between worlds as her expression flits through several emotions.
It’s amusing how her lips form silent questions when she believes there’s no audience.
I suppose her assumption isn’t wholly incorrect. To her limited mortal perception, I exist as a shadow—a dream-figure that dissolves with daylight. A creation of her loneliness, perhaps, or evidence of her mind deteriorating at its edges. It’s the explanation any rational human would reach.
But I am very much real.
More real than the temporary structures mortals build to house their temporary lives. More real than their laws of nature and their narrow understanding of what can and cannot be. I existed before her kind took their first breath, and I will exist long after their last city crumbles to dust.
I press my palm against the veil, tracking ripples as it yields to my touch—not solid or liquid—resistant yet permeable to those who understand its nature. Through it, the distant thrum of her heartbeat calls to me. A rhythm I memorized during her first life.
Need courses through me, and I sigh. I want to tear through the veil.
Cross the distance between us and feel her skin beneath my fingers.
Not as the phantom touch I’ve been limited to for centuries, but as solid contact between two beings sharing the same plane of existence.
I yearn to hold her; gather her against me until that perpetual sadness in her gaze drifts away.
To claim her, finally, as what she has always been: mine.
Perhaps she doesn’t believe in my existence because I’ve been too cautious. Too patient. Speaking only a handful of words in her dreams, and never revealing the full truth of what she is to me or what we are meant to be together.
Though I believe I’ve been right to proceed with care…
this version of Maven is so damaged. She carries wounds that will never heal, bearing scars both visible and hidden.
Her spirit flinches away from the slightest touch, expecting pain where there might be comfort, and that is something her soul would carry to each reincarnation moving forward.
So, I can wait no longer. She’s ready for more, whether she realizes it or not. The sooner I show my true self and intentions, the sooner she can consent to leaving the mortal world with me.
And she will consent.
She must.
I refuse to watch her die again. Or to track her soul through the void as it seeks another vessel. I’m done waiting through decades of childhood and adolescence before revealing myself once more. Not when she belongs here, with me, safe from the cruelties of Earth.
With one last glance at her face, I step back from the veil and turn to survey the chamber I’ve prepared for her in our home.
Tall windows line the eastern wall, framing views of my realm’s unending twilight.
The sky beyond glows with colors mortals have no words for—deeper than purple and richer than indigo.
More luminous than polished gold. Stars hang low and heavy, close enough that one might reach out and pluck them from their celestial perches.
But I would never disrupt them in their slumber. Who knows what the Bright Gods would do if someone dared to disturb such peace.
The room itself reflects my latest adjustments; changes made to suit Maven’s current tastes while preserving elements she loved in happier lifetimes.
The bed is enormous, its frame carved from wood that grows only in the deepest groves of the Otherworld, its surface piled with pillows and blankets in the grays and blacks she now favors.
Gone are the bright colors she once delighted in—the vivid pinks and blues that made her clap her hands with unabashed joy when she first saw them.
That was millennia ago, in her third incarnation. She had been a weaver’s daughter then, her fingers skilled with thread and loom. I brought her silks in colors her people had never seen, and dripped with satisfaction as her eyes widened at the fabric that seemed to change hue with every movement.
“Are these magic?” she asked, wonder making her voice breathless.
“No,” I answered, watching the silk shimmer against her skin. “Just from a place beyond your knowing.”
She had been so close to saying yes that time. So close to accepting my offer to join me in my realm where such wonders would be commonplace rather than miraculous. But her father fell ill, and she could not bear to leave him. By the time death claimed him, her resolve had hardened once more.
My fingers graze the shelves that now line the chamber’s walls, filled with books from her various lifetimes.
Poetry from her days as a scholar in Alexandria.
Medical texts from her brief incarnation as a physician’s apprentice in medieval France.
Novels from more recent lives, stories of people escaping circumstances as binding as her own.
A writing desk sits beneath the windows, its surface bare save for pens, ink, and pristine paper.
Maven hasn’t written in this lifetime—hasn’t created anything beyond columns of numbers for faceless corporations and a few jagged lines on her skin—but the impulse lies dormant within her.
In the Otherworld, with eternity stretching before her, perhaps she will rediscover that part of herself. I hope she will.
The recently painted walls have dried to a deep charcoal, a touch lighter than black, with subtle patterns that shift when observed from different angles. They reflect my realm’s nature—seemingly fixed but constantly in flux, governed by laws beyond those of Earth.
If she detests it, I will change everything. If she finds the room too dark or too large or too reminiscent of what she’s leaving behind, I will remake it in whatever image pleases her. If she despises our entire palace, I will build her a new one, stone by stone, with my own hands.
I am not attached to this place. It is merely a structure of necessity—a collection of spaces I have inhabited for the majority of my existence. The only thing I have ever truly attached myself to is her. Maven. My flower.
My counterbalance.
The missing piece of myself that has wandered lost in the mortal realm for too long.
She could ask for anything, and I would cross realms to secure it for her.
Mountains moved and oceans drained. Stars rearranged in the night sky—damn the Bright Gods—to spell the chapters of her favorite book.
Nothing is beyond my power when it comes to her happiness. Her comfort and desires are my own.
When I reach my study, my gaze drops to the books strewn across the table before me. Bound in leather the color of midnight, their pages yellowed with age.
Some volumes show more wear than others, but each holds equal importance. Each represents a piece of the elaborate puzzle that is Maven’s soul, a fragment of the whole I seek to claim.
A thunderous rumble shakes the palace foundation, vibrating the floor beneath my feet and sending tremors through the delicate stems of the flowers I’ve been examining. Someone waits at my door, demanding entrance with all the subtlety of an earthquake.
I sigh, frustration tightening my jaw. I have no desire for visitors. The only arrival I would welcome is Maven herself, as she crosses the threshold into my realm. But that day has not yet come, and whoever pounds at my door now is most certainly not her.
Still, better to address this intrusion quickly and return to my preparations. Tonight is not just another dream visitation. Tonight I will speak to her in the waking world and make her realize I exist beyond her sleep.
I leave the chamber, shifting through corridors that lengthen and contract according to my needs rather than any fixed architectural principle.
The foyer awaits, a vast space of polished obsidian that reflects the ever-twilight sky visible through high windows.
The doors—tall enough that three mortals standing on each other’s shoulders could not reach the top—remain closed, though they tremor slightly under the visitor’s continued pounding.
With a thought, I open them.
The figure standing on my threshold makes me pause.
For a moment, I nearly demand to know how a mortal has found their way to my domain.
The man appears human at first glance—average height, unremarkable build, dressed in clothing that would not draw a second look in Maven’s world.
But then my vision adjusts, and I recognize the face of the Nameless God.
Seyr. Though I will forget that name the moment he departs, as all who encounter him do.
This particular god has always irritated me with his ability to simply vanish from memory.
The moment he removes himself from one’s sight, his name and face become smoke, impossible to grasp no matter how tightly one might clutch at the recollection.
Even we, his fellow Dark Gods, refer to him as the Nameless God in his absence because none can recall his true identity once he has retreated.
I study my visitor with narrowed eyes. His appearance shifts subtly from moment to moment, features never quite settling into a fixed arrangement.
His eyes are deep-set and dark, surrounded by hair that might be brown or black or no color at all.
His height fluctuates by imperceptible degrees, making him seem at once taller and shorter than myself.