Chapter 29
EVER
Zandrite’s arm smashes my ribs. I hold him tight, trying again to summon the magic in me and inflict the pain he deserves.
And failing. Maybe because a version of godliness actually does exist beneath his golden skin.
Sweat wets my palms and sticks to the fluffy hairs on his arm.
I writhe and fight with twists and fists, but he simply gathers me closer, his putrid scent of raw meat and moldy dirt drilling violently up my nose.
So I curl inward and sink my teeth into his abdomen, not holding back at all, pinching flesh. I spit out a coarse hair and hold my breath for the roar of pain, the backlash. But only a shallow chuckle forms in his chest. It spills from his throat like a slow-motion slap in the face.
“I’ll have to fill that mouth to keep you satisfied.”
“You’ll regret this.” I batter him with useless punches. “You don’t know who I belong to!”
“You belong to me now.”
Those five words only start a riot deep within me, searching for a path to the surface.
He can’t strike my bravery down despite the fear that crawls under my skin and nestles deep.
We round another corner and slip between two rough walls with rocks embedded in the dirt, but even with how close they are, my hands find nothing to grab onto as they fumble over the surface.
A sharp edge slices my leg open, and I’m not sure how bad it is until the heat of blood runs down my calf. He ignores my cries.
We enter a deep, narrow cave—not wide or tall enough to be considered a room.
Hides of creatures I can’t name decorate the dark space, tacked onto the wall with razor-sharp teeth and tail spikes for pins.
Zandrite sets me down unceremoniously, as though he just got home with a bag of groceries.
A fur rug with claws tickles my toes, and that riot inside me grows.
The lack of food must be getting to me, because it takes another sweep of the space to register Coen and Sola sitting against the wall, each with a thick rope in their mouths that ties behind their heads.
More ropes bind their ankles together and their arms to their sides.
They fight the restraints at the sight of me dropping to the cave floor at their feet, my leg bloody.
Sola’s wrists are heavily bandaged, her missing hands a haunting reminder of the savagery in Sonnet.
Her short black hair is mussed, gray dress torn and stained.
Bruises line Coen’s cheeks and jaw, and his normally silky hair is coated in crusty blood.
Unlike the other men in brown pants, he still has his own shirt and black pants.
But their feet are bare, and I have to wonder where everyone’s boots end up after entering the Underbroke.
“Looks like they know you as well. What have I stumbled upon with you?” Zandrite asks, strangely calm for just having stolen me away from a collapsing arena while the ground shook. He guzzles down a purple liquid from a glass vial he pulled from his pocket and rolls his shoulders back.
Tremors strike every minute or so, startling my heart into a shaken state over and over. From the dark depths of the cave, the thud of boots on the dirt ground echo dully. I twist my neck. The skirt of a long dress swishes with each step.
“Hello, my love.” My mother smiles down at me.
“How did you get here?” I should have known she was here when I saw Sola and Coen. How did they end up restrained instead of her?
“You know her too?” Zandrite asks my mother.
“This is my daughter, Everielle.” She caresses his upper arm while shooting me a gloating glance. “It helps to have a god on your side.”
“I am not on your side.” Zandrite brushes her hand from his hairy arm like a non-existent speck of lint. “You have access to something I want. Nothing more.”
“Which puts you on my side. I brought you a solution.”
“This?” He grabs my hair, dragging me a foot closer to him. “I found her without your help and believed her to be nothing more than a Vaile in the throes of linking by the name of Mini. You’re telling me she has the essence I need?”
“That we need,” my mother corrects. “I tested her. She has enough to get us both into the Immortal Realm. You said—”
“I know what I said,” he growls.
I dig my toes into the furry rug, seeking any possible distraction from the urges whittling away my sanity. Shit, even Coen looks fuckable. I tilt my head enough that Zandrite lets go of me. I’m numb to the whole situation on the outside, an uproar building on the inside. “So you want to kill me?”
“Well, young one, I wanted to use that body of yours to make my endless years a little more tolerable, but it turns out you’re much more than that. And now that I know, why wouldn’t I want to properly meet the daughter of my enemy before I kill her?”
I suppose I don’t have much chance of winning a fight with a god, but I won’t go down without making him wish he knew as many curse words as me. No reason to play nice. “Why make deals with her if she’s your enemy?”
“Not her.” Zandrite’s brows land high on his forehead. “Your father.”
That rocks some feeling into me. I stand up next to his massive frame. “You know my father? Who—where is he?”
He rests a hand over his chest as he lets loose a laugh. “He’s living my life. But not for long now that I have you.”
“Stop being a cryptic jackass and tell me.”
“Your father is a thief.”
Apparently, I take after him.
“Ametrine was mine,” he continues. “We were the first love in existence, and he turned her against me and made her his own. She stripped me of most of my magic over nothing. Then, all I did was kill her, and your bastard father banished me from the Immortal Realm.”
The numbness fades the rest of the way. My constant desire transforms into the raw need to know. “Who is my father?” Each word is an attempt at a threat, a plea for the truth, a breath it hurts to take.
He smiles, awful and beautiful at once. “Malachite, god of death.”
I leave my body. My sanity. Every moment of searching and wondering piles onto this one. “There’s no such thing as gods,” I say. Out of habit, I suppose. And so quietly that my ears ring.
“Of course not. Except Ametrine and me. And my son. And your father and Peridot.” He grabs my jaw. “And you.”
I collapse, stunned, my legs too weak to hold my weight. My throat closes. My riot disperses.
“And now I finally get to return to the Immortal Realm thanks to my enemy knocking up his Vaile fuck buddy.” He ticks his head toward my mother.
“I’ll leave this mortal prison and everyone in it behind.
But tell me, how is it that you happened to end up with the rarest, most precious magic inside you? ”
“Obviously, her father passed it on to her,” my mother says. “And you won’t be leaving me behind. Malachite will be waiting for me there.”
“He doesn’t want you anymore. Was it not clear when he left you in the Mortal Realm?
” Zandrite punches my mother in the side of her neck with what I can’t deny is a godly force.
Her body flies back, smashing into the cave wall and landing limp on the ground.
He cracks his neck to the left and right. “She annoys me.”
I pretend not to notice. “Wh-what was he like?”
“I tell you that your father is the god of death and abandoned you and your mother in a realm of useless mortals, and you want to know what he’s like?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll tell you while I end your mortal body,” he says, much too casually. “You can thank her for your mortality. You’re not immortal until you die.”
I stow that information away as impossible and spare a glance at my unconscious mother. Then at Coen and Sola, their eyes wider than the trench splitting my heart in two.
“But she’s wrong. Your father isn’t responsible for your essence,” Zandrite says.
“It’s not passed on to children. Essence is finite.
It can only be given or taken. I still have mine from Ametrine.
” He speaks as though he’s not as murderous as he wants to come off.
“But it’s like love—the give and take of it is powerful, but once you have it, it’s pointless. ”
I open my mouth to tell him that’s a load of shit, but he’s not done.
“I’m not the god of love for nothing. What’s more destructive than falling in love? Than a broken heart? Passion lies in the wreckage. Stagnant love is meaningless.”
“You don’t think you’re a tad bitter?”
His pupils pop, control evident in his stifled sneer. “I’m quite curious where your essence came from. I can only guess it has to do with this.” He pulls my necklace from his pocket and dangles it in front of me.
I try to grab the chain, and he pulls it away, laughing.
My mother comes to and staggers toward us. “That’s mine. Malachite gave it to me.”
“Did you realize you were wearing the death stone of his lover around your neck? Do you still think he actually loved you?” Zandrite jeers.
“He did! If it weren’t for this mistake”—she points at me—“he’d still be with me today. He picked up and left the day she showed up.”
“I couldn’t help being born!” I yell.
She dismisses me with a flick of her hair, revealing a purple welt on her neck from Zandrite’s fist. “You don’t understand what it was like to lose him.
Especially with all it takes to be the Centress—the secrets only I know, the sacrifices I make, the lives I destroy for the sake of Sonnet.
I needed him. I tried to get him to come back.
I sent you to Caldera to be raised far from us.
But he never came back. And that was my mistake.
I should have killed you while you couldn’t fight back. ”
Fire blazes through my veins. “You wish you’d killed me as a baby?”
Her black eyes become molten. I prepare for them to ooze down her cheeks any second. Not a trace of emotion shows on her face. She smooths her dress over her hips and thighs then lifts her chin. “I wish I never had you.”