15. Chapter Fifteen
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
MAVEN
Sleet squelches under my feet as I walk alone back to my barren apartment. For once, I’m without company—Ash disappeared to wherever he goes when he’s not consuming my existence.
The cold air burns my lungs with each inhale, but I welcome the pain.
It grounds me in this reality, this moment, this body that feels less and less like my own with each passing day.
I don’t know what to do with myself anymore.
Nothing has ever seemed certain, but the chaos tormenting my mind is unprecedented.
Many questions plague me. Endless thoughts and contradictions weaken my understanding.
Nothing is as it should be, and for once, I don’t think running away will help in the slightest.
A presence materializes beside me, so sudden I nearly stumble. My heart slams against my ribs, though the initial shock fades a moment later. It hasn’t even been two hours.
“How often do you need to feed?” The question tumbles from my lips before I can stop it, one of the many things I’ve wondered these last weeks.
Ash turns his covered face toward me, and though I still cannot see his expression, I sense his surprise at my unprompted question.
“Less often than mortals,” he replies. The street is mostly empty, saving me from the embarrassment of others staring at me talking to thin air. “Once every few days is sufficient, though I can go weeks if necessary.”
Clouds of breath swirl in front of my face as I process this. “And what happens if you don’t? Feed, I mean.”
“I weaken.” I wonder how often he feeds to keep himself visible to me for hours at a time. “My connection to this realm grows tenuous. My ability to manifest diminishes until I become little more than a whisper in your dreams.”
Something in his tone suggests he’s experienced that before—fading from this world as his hunger goes unsatisfied. The thought sends an uncomfortable twist through my gut. I shouldn’t care about his suffering, or wonder what it feels like to starve for something so abstract as longing.
And yet.
“What does it taste like?” I ask, curiosity pushing past my better judgment. “When you feed on someone’s longing?”
He’s quiet for several steps, as if weighing his answer.
“It varies,” he replies after another moment.
“The longing of a mother for her lost child tastes of salt and copper, like you would describe tears mixed with blood. The ache of unrequited love carries notes of honey turned bitter on the tongue, while yearning for a home that no longer exists feels gritty like ash—warm at first, then cooling to something that coats the mouth.” Well, none of that sounds pleasant; I’m not sure I would eat if I were forced to swallow tears and blood every day.
My apartment building appears ahead, its weathered stone facade catching the last rays of sunlight. I slow my pace, reluctant to end this strange conversation despite myself.
“And mine? What does my longing taste like?”
Ash stops walking entirely, his stillness so complete he might be carved from the same stone as the surrounding buildings. The air between us thickens.
“I wouldn’t know,” he says, his voice dropping to that register that vibrates through my bones. “I have never fed from you.”
The confession catches me off guard, and my head whips in his direction. “Why not?”
“Because you are not sustenance…” He trails off, but the unspoken words hang between us. You are mine.
We reach the entrance to my building, and I pause with my hand on the door. “You’re not going to leave if I tell you to, are you?”
I sense rather than see his smile—what I would give to see him smile. See any part of his face, really.
His head shakes along with his shoulders. “No.”
My lips twitch. The honesty is almost refreshing; no pretense or manipulation to be seen. Just the simple truth: he’s not leaving, no matter what I say or do. The truth of it should not flutter in my stomach as it does.
I shove through the door without responding, my feet carrying me toward the stairs automatically. The climb to the sixth floor drags on longer than usual, each step heavier than the last. Ash follows, his movements making no sound on the worn wooden treads.
Inside my apartment, I drop my keys on the counter with a clatter.
The space feels smaller with him in it; as if the walls shift toward his presence, while the ceiling begs to touch him.
Or maybe it’s just the weight of his being.
The density of whatever power radiates from him, demanding more room than this place has to offer.
I shed my coat, tossing it to the floor in a heap of fabric.
What does it matter? Nothing matters. Not the state of my apartment, not the dishes piled in the sink, not the laundry I’ve been ignoring for days.
Nothing matters because I don’t matter—have never mattered—to anyone or anything except, apparently, a god.
A hysterical bubble of laughter escapes my throat, which I don’t bother to suppress.
I’m losing my mind. That’s the only explanation that makes sense.
I’m having a psychotic break, and instead of hallucinating demons or monsters, my brain has conjured up a devoted god who’s been pining for me across lifetimes.
Because that’s more believable than someone actually wanting me.
“Maven.” Ash’s voice cuts through my spiraling thoughts. “Your mind is racing. I can feel it.”
“Stay out of my head,” I snap, pivoting to face him. “It’s bad enough you won’t leave my apartment. My thoughts are still mine.”
“I cannot read your thoughts,” he says, remaining by the door as if giving me space. “But I can sense the turmoil, and it radiates from you.”
My hands clench into fists at my sides, nails digging half-moons into my palms. I’m going to explode. “What do you expect? You show up in my life, tell me everything I thought I knew about myself is wrong, claim I belong to you, and then refuse to leave when I ask. How am I supposed to feel, Ash?”
“I understand your confusion—”
“No, you don’t!” The words tear from my throat, raw in their delivery. “You don’t understand anything about me. Or about my life. Or about what it’s like to be so fucking empty all the time that you can barely remember why you bother to keep breathing.”
He takes a step toward me, and I back away before bumping into a wall. “That emptiness,” he begins, his voice gentle in a way that makes my heart ache, “is because your soul knows it doesn’t belong here. It’s calling for home.”
“This is my home,” I insist as my arms flail toward the sparse apartment. “This life is—it’s all I know.”
“It’s all you remember,” he corrects. “But your soul remembers more. It remembers where it belongs.” He keeps saying that, but what the fuck does it even mean? I want to scream until my lungs give out and I can finally be done with living.
“With you,” I say, unable to keep the bitterness from my voice.
“In your palace in the Otherworld, where it’s always twilight and you have a garden you tend yourself and everything else I can’t think of right now—oh, where I’ll never want for anything because you’ll give me everything my heart desires. ”
“Yes.”
Exhaustion seeps from my bones. I slide down the wall until I’m sitting on the floor, knees pulled to my chest as though I’m hiding from a monster.
But the monster—if that’s what he is—doesn’t leave. He crosses the room and lowers himself to sit across from me, the same as he did all those nights ago.
“Why me?” I ask, the question barely a breath. He’s told me so many times, but I need to hear it again.
“Because you are my counterbalance,” he says, as if it’s the simplest thing in the world. “The light to my shadow. The completion to my beginning. The answer to a question I’ve been asking since the moment I came into existence.”
“But I’m nothing.” The truth of it burns my throat. “I’ve never been anything to anyone. I’m just…empty space, really. The white static on a TV.”
“You are everything,” he counters, leaning forward. “You are the reason stars burn and worlds turn and gods like me continue to live despite millennia of being forgotten by the mortals we once walked among. You are the point of it all, Maven.”
I laugh at that, wincing as my head drops against the wall. “Right. That’s why my life has been one long exercise in misery and isolation. Because I’m so fucking important.”
“Your suffering in this realm is solely because you don’t belong in it.
” There’s a tense edge to his tone. “Your soul is trying to find its way home, and this world keeps rejecting it, like a body rejecting a transplanted organ. The pain you feel is the dissonance between what you are and where you are.”
I press the heels of my hands against my eyes, trying to block out his words so I might have a moment of peace.
Because if he’s right, then what has it all been for?
The years of therapy, the dozens of medications, the desperate attempts to find somewhere I fit.
Someone who wanted me. The scars on my wrists and thighs, or the nights spent staring at bottles of pills and wondering if this time, I’d have the courage to take them all.
What was the point of it if I was never meant to be here in the first place?
News flash: there was no point—is no point. Nothing is real and none of it matters, least of all my silly attempts at normalcy. Whatever that is.
“I can’t do this,” I say, dropping my hands to stare at the floor. “I can’t keep having this conversation a million times. There’s too many things without answers, and I do not have the energy to seek them.”
“Then come with me,” Ash pleas as his form reaches for me. Maybe if he could touch me this would be easier. “Leave this uncertainty behind. Come to where you belong.”
“And if you’re wrong?” I challenge, glaring at the draping fabric. “If I go with you and discover that I don’t belong there either? That I’m just as miserable and empty in your world as I am in this one? What then, God?”