Chapter 52
KELTER
Ican’t stop thinking about how much Ever has opened up to Eli after only months, how she laughs with him.
I used to make her laugh. If it weren’t for my cravings and all the other things that push us apart while bringing us together, it would have been different between us.
Maybe it’s only on my mind because I’m still chained to a wall, and my only other option is watching Zandrite on his throne, gnawing on bones.
It wouldn’t have been different. You’re too much of a pussy for her liking, Eli says, his unwelcome thoughts unavoidable. But I appreciate that you spent a year depriving her of cock to get her ready for mine.
Screw you. You don’t know what it was like. She was happy spending every day with me.
Show me your memories with her. Let me see, he demands.
His own anger gets to me, and the words are out before I can stop them. You can’t hide how jealous you are of me.
You don’t have to point out every fucking emotion. It’s bad enough you can feel them, Eli complains.
I think back over the last year with Ever. My link. I have nothing to myself anymore except my own past memories. I’m not giving that up.
What would he do with my memory of her throwing herself face down on her bed then rolling over, her hair caught across her face.
And the way she laughed, and it stuck to her tongue.
She shoved it away and looked up at me, her cheeks flushed and eyes like crystals.
I was captivated, pulled toward her even though it had only been two months since I made the deal with Eli and walked into that coffee shop.
Sit down already, she scolded. Are you going to watch the movie standing up?
I slowly slid in next to her, our shoulders and elbows and hips bumping through the awkwardly long amount of time it took me to settle in.
She rested her head on my upper arm and breathed out as if relieved.
Then she whispered, you don’t have to be nervous.
I’m sure if you wanted to sleep with me, you would have said something by now.
I felt her smile push into my arm. That was the first time I almost kissed her.
And far from the last missed opportunity.
But it wouldn’t have mattered if I had acted.
She wasn’t in love with me and never returned affection beyond our close friendship.
She drew an uncrossable line and stood behind it.
So I couldn’t fall in love with her either, especially when my priority was getting back to Sonnet, not her.
I only struggle to sort it out now because Eli’s emotions course through me so freely.
His obsession with her mixed up with our past together is too hard to untangle.
That warm fuzzy shit I’m getting from you better not be about my woman.
It is, I say, purely to piss him off, then I continue blocking him out.
Eli doesn’t get to see those memories. Because if he did, he’d know that she brought out the cravings in me, woke up my desires despite being on the other side of the border without magic.
He’d know the thoughts I had of her, how I craved to undress her while she held my gaze with those incredible eyes.
How I learned to loathe the word friend.
It didn’t matter that I didn’t want to feel that way about her at all.
And maybe what I’d like to hide most is how I pictured positioning her caseless pillow over her face and holding it there.
How it would feel to hold her down while she fought to free her mouth and nose, while she clawed my arms. To hear her heart drum its last beat.
I hated living in my head. But it was the motivation I needed to follow through with the deal and return to Sonnet to be cured, to get rid of those thoughts.
I spent the rest of our months together holding back as the cravings grew in strength. It was as if being around her made them worse. I thought I’d lose my mind by the end, but once I spent some time in Sonnet after so many years away, it was obvious it had been nothing.
Within days I wanted to kill everyone in sight.
The Centress knew I was the same Emerson she helped send away when my mother asked her to.
She kept me locked up to use my lethal tendencies for bargaining with the gods and would do anything to keep me under her control.
But I’d be dead if she knew who my father was.
Every day she brought me blood-filled canteens to hold me over.
And when that wasn’t enough, and I was so restless and agitated that I’d rather scrape my skin raw on the walls than sit with my cravings, she made me sit on the edge of the bloody birthing bed, got on her knees and gave me the release I needed.
She’d pat my cheek and praise me after. I let her do it for a break from the torture, but that broke me even more.
Now? Who knows how far I’d go for relief.
As I close my eyes to wait for the inevitable fade out of awareness, Zandrite’s voice pulls me back.
“I may not have all the abilities I had before I was banished from the Immortal Realm, but I know the Underbroke well enough to know they’re coming. You’ve served your purpose well, son.”
I’m too weak to waste energy on speaking. I’m not sure I could anyway.
It smells like he’s got an entire herd of something dead in here.
Eli pushes the thought into my mind as he saunters into the room from the main entry, no surprise attack or sneaky entrance.
I told him that would be impossible with Zandrite waiting for Ever to show up. He glances my way. You look like shit.
Good to see you too. And it is, even though I told him not to come. Even though he’s a stubborn dick. Even though Ever was supposed to be mine. He’s my brother.
Milo and Kaleida follow Eli’s stride, flanking him. Three against one. Zandrite’s practically powerless, but he emerges from behind his throne with the eager grin of a god who thinks he has the upper hand.
“Don’t you recognize an old friend in a new body?” Eli asks, his arms crossed, hands gripping his biceps so hard it looks as though he’ll rip them off. He’s fighting the urge to slaughter everyone in this room. As am I, chains my only control.
Why are you going that route? I ask. If my shoulders could slump any farther down, they would. He’s unpredictable even living inside my head, but I knew his plan the instant he thought it. He wants to try to reason with him, lure him into a trusting state for Ever to kill.
Never’s getting closer. She weakens me too much to simply overpower him like I normally could. You’ve seen. My strength is a tenth of what I’m capable of. My senses are dulled. And she can cut through my skin with her bare hands.
Zandrite sits down on his throne. His fingers tap the armrests. “Ah. Peridot’s mistake. I should have guessed. Back so soon?”
Eli straightens, standing taller, emotionless.
But I feel it all—his fear for Ever, his shame for being a mistake, even his gratitude to have his friends at his side.
And the effect of my own cravings passed to him, the source of his desire to leap forward and strangle Zandrite, plus his need for release. It’s exhausting.
“It’s been hundreds of years,” Eli says.
Milo rests a hand on his shoulder, impelling him to take a stabilizing breath—shaky at best.
I knew it, I suppose, but it only now strikes me. I block the thought from Eli before it fully registers in my mind, now a familiar task. He’s known my father for hundreds of thousands of years… while I just met him.
“A blink for me. You don’t feel the same?” Zandrite asks, shifting on his throne.
Eli snarls. “I’m not here to fucking chitchat.”
“Our friendship means nothing now?”
Sypher and the Hollow are lost in the lower levels, Eli says, carrying two conversations at once.
His running thoughts on top of my own are as habitual as breathing now.
They won’t make it in time. I hear them arguing.
The Hollow found the Centress’ body, panicked and now won’t budge. And Never’s above us.
How’d she get on the wrong floor? I ask.
I don’t know. Milo said the kid knew his way around.
I try to push my urgency at Eli, but it’s all mixed up with what my body wants. She’s safer there. Get everyone out, find her and leave.
Eli shoves me from his mind as he steps closer to Zandrite, but he’s unable to fully block me out. Milo follows bravely.
“Can a man ever trust a god?” Eli asks.
Zandrite answers without hesitation. “No.”
“Then it was never friendship, Zandrite. It was a necessity for both of us.”
“And that makes you think you can show up and cause a scene in my arena and now my chamber?” Zandrite gestures to the massive room with an upturned hand.
“It does when you think you can have my girl and bury her alive,” Eli says.
Milo grips his shoulder tighter as though he might need to hold him back.
Which wouldn’t work. He’s strong, yes, but if my cravings are even half as strong for him as they are for me, then he’s on the verge of a killing spree.
“I didn’t even get the chance for some fun with her before I learned who she is—that one was too busy with her.” He points a reckless finger at me. “I never got the turn I was promised.”
Eli’s voice goes stone cold in my head. Tell me you didn’t fuck her and block me out.
I didn’t. He lets out a relieved breath. But I would have if she had let me, only to stop the lethal effects.
I’m pretty sure something bursts inside Eli’s brain. He tremors with rage.
We were linking, I remind him. But he’s far past caring about my explanation.
Zandrite sweeps a hand through his thick head of hair. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had my way with a freshly linked Vaile. They taste better, you know?”
“Another word and you’ll be tasting your own severed cock.” Eli raises his knife toward Zandrite, but I have no doubt his threat is aimed at me.
It is, he seethes.
“That’s not an empty threat,” Kaleida says. “He sliced off a guard’s balls and made him kiss them goodbye before he killed him.”
Zandrite’s vicious smile spreads wide. “Every man you’ve ever been was not one to be messed with.”
Eli steps forward again, and I imagine the smooth entrance of his blade into Zandrite’s gut, the downward pull as he slices him open.
Zandrite’s gaping mouth. The warm blood painting his hand.
If it were me in Eli’s spot, that would be the closest I ever was to my father.
Our most connected moment. I learn a lot in those final seconds before a kill.
The truth seeps out their eyes as death comes on.
And I know them like I know myself. And to think I could know my father like that, see him at his most vulnerable, be the last face he ever saw in his hundreds of thousands of years—it’s arresting.