Chapter 3
Chapter Three
It was a horror from which I’d never recover.
The frenzied cocktail of rage and helplessness were fiery, unseen flames beneath my skin as I scrambled to make sense of the nightmare from which I’d never wake.
It was as if Heaven had won the war, as if my father had been slain, as if Hell had crumbled and left me without a home.
I knew, I knew. I. Fucking. Knew. Better.
I’d known time passed differently, erratically, painfully, between realms. I understood the gaps in spaces and the movement of days, months, and years for the mortals.
Izi claimed I hovered, but it brought me joy to be close.
I was there when my human called. I answered in a way her god never had.
Each smile, each glow, each earnest praise and piece of gratitude that tumbled from her lips, set pieces of me ablaze I hadn’t known existed.
I loved being around her so ardently that I struggled to remember a time before her and hadn’t bothered to consider a time after her.
I’d been in Hell’s palace for a little more than seven sleeps. I’d hated every night away from my human, but royal duties had called, and I could handle a few miserable moons away if my kingdom demanded it.
Ambassadors visited, and my presence wasn’t negotiable.
I’d told her I’d be away. She expressed immense gratitude that I’d been present for as long as I had, and there wasn’t a hint of disappointment as she urged me to go, to do what must be done, to return when I could.
I’d been topside so long that I’d forgotten how to fidget among gods. There was no skin to pick around my nails, no blood to draw as I clenched my fists until it broke through what would have been my flesh, had I been on the surface.
Dignitaries droned on, plans were made, treaties sworn.
I was here.
This was where I belonged.
The rest didn’t matter.
Shouldn’t matter.
Couldn’t matter.
My father was a king and commanded the love and respect of our realm and its citizens.
But he was more than that. His discernment, empathy, and attention weren’t required of a royal, but they certainly fostered enduring devotion to all who’d followed him off the cliff beyond The Fall.
It maintained the loyalty of those born after the catalyst between Heaven and Hell.
These traits were especially acute between father and son.
“You’re somewhere else,” he murmured once the dignitaries had left.
“Hmm?”
A pearl of white teeth peeked between his lips. “Take a break. You’re a tireless ambassador for our kingdom. You come whenever duty calls. And perhaps…duty calls you elsewhere.”
I was a shadow of a prince, unable to focus as my anxiety remained on my human.
I tried to blink away the thought of her. My human was a fragile thing in a hard world. Seven nights were miserable, but negligible. She had a resilient heart.
I grounded myself on the glittering floor. “I’m sorry. I know my responsibility to the realm.”
He gestured to the palatial ceilings, the columns, the enormity of what it meant to wear Hell’s crown. “The kingdom isn’t going anywhere. Whatever’s on your mind…I’d like to hear the tale, when you’re ready.”
I’m sure I offered perfunctory smiles and bows. I probably signed my name and tipped my hat and shook hands with whoever lingered beyond the hall. Surely, I went through the motions, but my mind remained on a certainty:
Nothing should have changed. The world should have been exactly how I’d left it.
The moment the ambassadors left, I burst into Shala’s house with incomprehensible exuberance. I was ready to make oaths of my own, swearing to never be away that long again, aching for our reunion.
Eternity was a long time, and Shala gave me a reason to be.
When she was absent, so was my purpose.
It took me thirty seconds of scouring the house to understand that Shala was not there.
Her scent was no longer in the air, on clothes, or even on the bed.
I leaped through walls and doors, floating between spaces in my haste to reach the servants’ corridor where I heard them discussing the new lady of the house.
I knew the culture, the village, the people. If Shala’s husband had taken another wife, she would have still maintained a position of honor as the first wife. This didn’t make sense.
I returned to the house in search of said spouse and found a doe-eyed girl of barely marriageable age.
I burned hot with rage and confusion—emotions with a sticky, unfamiliar tang—as I scoured the village for evidence of my human.
I called on my legion of spirits who were stunned to hear from me on such a task, which was an interesting turn of events.
I wasn’t completely aware they were capable of the emotion.
A legion—each composed of two thousand—was more thought than entity.
They were an extension of ourselves, a stretch of our will, a trick of shadow and light that raked the universe, spied for its leader, and enacted our will.
Some members of the royal family manifested their legions as glittering accessories, shaping the clot and steam of action and will into color, into shimmer, into something blue or green or diamond.
I had no stomach for pomp and circumstance.
I’d never summoned my legions topside, but within moments, a wavering collection of condensed shadow, each with the vague, stick-figure shape of something bipedal, returned with news.
A high-pitched ringing replaced whatever the member of my legion was saying. His mouth moved, but I was incapable of comprehension beyond the initial message.
It was with a trembling voice and eyes to the ground as he told me that she’d passed in the years of my absence.
The world became a static hum while the spirit described her burial site.
There may have been more details, something about her earthly possessions, something about her last words, something that might have mattered or might not have, but I heard none of it.
She was gone.
“…Your Highness? How may we serve—"
Rage burned behind my eyes. “Leave me.”
“But sir—”
Hatred frothed as I flung him back to Hell. “Leave now or you’re the first I smite.”
I stormed to the home that had once belonged to my human.
I stuck my hand through the new wife’s spine until she screamed in terror and bolted from the shelter.
The moment the child bride’s feet crossed the threshold, I set the place ablaze with the husband trapped inside.
I neither knew nor cared if he was responsible.
He was meant to be her earthly protector, and he’d failed.
Whether she’d died of sickness or hunger or injury, he’d been meant to look after her, to call for doctors, to save her when I could not.
His shortcomings cost him his life, and I sneered at his cries for help as he pounded against the door that would not open while he cooked within the clay oven of his home.
The wrath within me burned hotter than the inferno of her former home.
I stayed on the property until the fire cooled and his carcass was a charred husk of a man.
I grabbed his ghost by the throat as it escaped his body and flung it into the middle distance, trapping it in limbo as it scrapped, clawed, and failed to reach its afterlife.
I stood over the empty remnants of his body with a scowl.
That was it.
When I left the mortal plane, I vowed to stay gone for as long as it took for my hate to subside. The purple of my revulsion, the ruby of my fury, the gory urge to murder every man, woman, and child who walked the earth, would either fade with time, or it wouldn’t.
There was only one way to find out.
One hundred earthly years went by in the timelessness of Hell.
On the hundred and first year, I told Izi that if she brought up Shala again, I would rip her tongue from her mouth.
Days and nights were a blur of violence and indifference, hate and pain, emptiness and sorrow. I mourned, I seethed, I became a hardened tyrant for a decade, a cruel dictator for another, and finally, a cold, distant remnant of the prince my kingdom had once known and loved.
I’d had a human once.
She had brought me unspeakable joy. She had shown me depths and flavors and curiosities of emotions and experiences that I’d never known.
I felt tenderness and want and curiosity and hope in a new and perfect way.
I’d thoroughly savored every second together, until I’d encountered the hubris that came from believing I’d had it all.
I’d touched mortality. I’d brushed humanity. I’d nearly understood the frayed corners of an emotion, a feeling, a verb, a complicated four-letter-word that was practically an abomination on my tongue, so I held it in.
My human was gone.
Two hundred years, and I could take ambassador meetings topside once more.
I visited her grave site on the two hundred and sixty-sixth anniversary of her death to see if there was any trace, any remnants of her pearly soul, but regretted my fool’s errand instantly.
I had only painful memories where once she had lain.
She’d done unspeakable damage to me by showing how full my life could be with her in it.
And as much as I wanted to forget her, I knew I’d never be able to return to the life I’d once known.
Three hundred years, and I’d nearly begun to smile again.
Four hundred years, and the court could count on me to keep my level head once more.
Five hundred years, and I’d stopped saying her name before I fell asleep.
She’d changed me.
For better or for worse, I couldn’t know.