Chapter Six
I should have known better.
Expecting Netharis to end me was foolish. I still have my uses. He’s never going to let me go.
I’ve lost.
And despite unleashing every ounce of innate magic I possess, it wasn’t enough. I’ll never win.
Resigned to existing, the weeks following passed in a listless haze.
I didn’t bother leaving my bedroom.
Netharis never sent for me, and neither Vaelyn nor Ylara visited. While this was likely by my father’s design, not hearing from them hurt. I would have found a way to reach them were the situation reversed.
Netharis has isolated me, again. This time, thankfully, not within an obsidian box. Though I’m not convinced he meant it as a kindness. Instead of enduring the torturous magics of cursed obsidian, I’ve spent my time lamenting.
The first week, I never left my bed.
That’s a lie.
I did, once.
In a desperate attempt to incapacitate myself, anything to stop feeling, I discovered the windows warded shut and the glass reinforced. Shimmering blue-silver runes created a streaming curtain over the glass and obsidian, preventing me from plunging to the rocky ground leagues below.
The rest of the week, I remained in bed, see-sawing between sobbing and sleeping. The thought of not being able to see the living realm sent me into a dark tailspin and I wallowed. Hopelessness smothered me. It grew in my chest, wrapped itself around my still heart, and fogged my mind.
With the second week, my despair transformed into cold fear and hot anger.
I volleyed erratically between the two volatile emotions.
It left me drained mentally, emotionally, and physically.
Netharis’ plan of finding a position for me within the hells isn’t meant as a kindness.
I’m being punished for something I have no control over.
By the third week, I became apathetic.
All those messy emotions and thoughts were swept away. Tucked into the darkest pockets of my mind where my shadows could feast upon them—where I could forget. My innate strangled them, smothered them, and left them as lifeless as I felt.
It was the end of the third week when I finally attempted to leave my room.
I’d been surprised to find my door lacking the same ward as the windows. Though it was a short-lived surprise when upon opening the door, two guards turn to stare at me. Giant, bat-like demons in black steel drew their weapons—a clear sign I was not welcome to leave.
Killing them would have been simple enough.
Answering to Netharis for their deaths would not have been.
The days and nights continued to blur together as I passed time sleeping, staring out the north facing window, or re-reading one of the few books I’d stolen from the library. I squirreled away a few titles, nothing I’d consider heavy reading, just books I simply enjoyed and didn’t want to lose.
The Elder Mythos provided a touch of escape.
Legends and folklore on primordials, the powers before the gods who’d abandoned our realms. Some of the stories talked about lost languages, depicted runes I’ve never seen in any other title in the library, and explained in fantastical ways how the realms were created.
Eight primordials, each with an opposing force, coming together to create the living realm, the hells, the heavens, and the veil. Darkness and Light, Chaos and Order, Life and Death, and Aether and Nether.
These entities birthed the current pantheon of gods and shaped a few of the species of the living realm. Chaos designed humans, Order contrived fae, Nether devised demons, and Aether formed nyraphim.
What I would give to see one of these primordials awake from their slumber and crush Netharis—to wipe him from existence with little effort. When I wasn’t losing myself in imaginary worlds where the primordial gods existed, my mind circled back to the events at the Moon Temple.
It’s been a month.
And I’ve burned each moment of that night with a magnified scrutiny borne of desperation trying to understand what happened. I searched for clues, hints, signs—anything to help me leave the hells. In the end, leaving this realm would be impossible on my own.
There’s no spell strong enough, no ritual robust enough, no sacrifice sacred enough to pierce the veil against the natural flow of the realms. A god would need to intervene.
Celesta has turned my entire pitiful world upside down.
Until her meddling, existing within the living realm was nothing more than a foolish dream I kept close to my lifeless heart. An illusion I clung to when alone in the middle of the night—but now…
Now, I know it’s possible to walk among the living.
And I can’t pretend it isn’t.
Hope has taken root in my chest and, despite the darkness and shadows, begins to bloom. Whether it fractures me further or becomes the bright shining glue holding all the pieces of me together remains to be seen.
What had once felt eternally out of reach, now feels attainable—almost.
Despite the hurdles, I can’t help but dream of living.
No more list of names.
No more waiting for the final moments of mortals to pass.
No more barren hells.
I want to dance under the moonlight, learn to swim in the sea, and lay under the canopy of a tree on a sunny day…
Deep, muffled voices pull me from my thoughts, and the window before me comes back into focus. As I turn, the click of the door handle sounds, and I brace myself for Netharis to enter.
The door swings wide and Vaelyn strides in, smiling.
His arms filled with books.
Kicking the door closed with a heel, he crosses the room, headed for the desk in the corner near a window. I watch him in confused silence, as he sets the stack of books down with a thud.
“I would have come sooner,” he says, turning to face me and crossing his arms over his chest. He speaks as if it hasn’t been weeks since we’ve last seen one another, but simply hours. “But Netharis had the entire floor warded. Forced the rest of us to sleep elsewhere.”
Interesting.
A small smile curls my lips. For a time, it seems, my own father viewed me as a threat to his House. Too bad I wasn’t successful in ending him; I would have given Vaelyn the hells without remorse.
I release a long, long sigh.
“What does he want?” The sound of my voice sits strangely in my ears.
They’re the first words I’ve spoken in weeks.
Vaelyn shoots me a confused glance. “Netharis didn’t send me. Ylara did.”
He gestures to the stack of books on my desk as if they would prove his point.
I lean against the windowsill, one of my wings brushing against the warmth of the glass. The other rests against the cool of the obsidian wall. Vaelyn pulls out the chair and straddles it, folding his arms across the back as he watches me closely.
“If you’re here to fight with me about Kassil again—”
“I’m not,” he interrupts, hurt flashing through his eyes. “Ves…” he trails off.
He’s not sure where to start.
To be fair, I don’t know where to start either.
Where does one start when I’ve been nothing short of a persistent thorn in the god of death’s side? There hasn’t been a week where I haven’t earned some degree of Netharis’ ire for my behavior—and not all of it intentional.
His stare is laced with concern, evidenced by the creases bracketing his mouth. “I thought Netharis was going to end you.”
“That was the goal,” I scoff, looking away.
Vaelyn’s eyes widen, his cerulean blue pinning against mine, and I’m sharply reminded of the same intense stare from Celesta.
I shouldn’t have hesitated when she made her offer.
Things would be different if I hadn’t.
A mistake I’ll regret for eternity.
“You don’t mean that,” he says quietly. “And even if you do, you know he’ll never allow it. Think of the message it would send. Killing you doesn’t serve him, it serves you.”
I remain silent. As much as I hate it, Vaelyn is right.
“No.” Vaelyn shakes his head. “He’s going to break you. And I don’t want to see that.”
“Again,” I whisper.
Sighing, Vaelyn nods weakly. “Again,” he echoes softly.
Truth be told, I would rather not go through that again.
“You’ve given him no choice, Ves,” he says, curling some of his silver hair behind a pointed ear. “Because of your display, the Layer Lords think you will be the one to overthrow Netharis.”
I scoff, rolling my eyes. “I’ve no interest in involving myself with any of the Layer Lords’ eternal hunt for power.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he counters with a laugh. “You rattled the whole realm, cleaved the tower in two, and killed twenty.”
Their screams ring in my mind with the memory. And the sinful delight I’d felt as my shadows fed upon them rolls up my spine once again. I shudder against the sensation.
“I gave everything. It accomplished nothing, Vae.” The hopelessness I’d combated against the last few weeks returns with a vengeance. “I don’t want anything to do with the hells, let alone to rule them. Let me wither in peace.”
“I know that. Netharis knows that,” he says, tapping a nail on the back of the chair and I grimace at the sound.
So many little mannerisms like Netharis.
Every time I see him, a new one makes itself known.
“All your hiding these last couple centuries—gone. All of the hells is watching now. No one is going to let you wither.”
Of course they’re watching. They’re waiting for me to usurp Netharis’ throne or waiting for me to fail. I hate the truth of his words with the depths of my essence.
Continuing he says, “In fact anyone who has ever spoken to you over the last three hundred years knows you want nothing to do with the hells. At least, not anymore. You weren’t always this way,” he finishes softly.
He’s not wrong.
Scoffing a laugh, I peel myself from the wall and move across the room to my bed. “Netharis has made it clear I will be nothing.”
“What?” He stops tapping.
Sitting at the foot of my bed, I fold my legs beneath me. “Netharis has revoked my role as Death Bringer. I am to serve his House in other ways.”
His House. Not mine.