Chapter 6
Chapter Six
I’d been gone for a wink. A breath. A sleep.
Incredulity was a shallow, icy coating in my throat.
A stickwork of smoke, a member of my legion, slipped between the cracks of her home to deliver an urgent message.
I didn’t like seeing any being from my side of the veil here in the mortal realm when I was with her but, given that my legion were fragments of myself sent into the world to represent my interests, its news bared listening.
The misty filament insisted upon my return to Hell for a meeting.
The faceless sketch of a body didn’t deserve the wrath it received in response.
Smokey lines gripped the edge of the bed, unwilling to leave. Its relentlessness despite my ire convinced me that I was truly needed.
Eleni yawned, still half asleep as the earliest rays of dawn peeked above the horizon. “Come back to bed.”
“I promise I’ll be back before you wake,” I’d said. “I have to return to my realm for the barest of moments. Close your eyes, and when you open them, it will be to your head on my chest. Sleep, Eleni.”
Her eyes fluttered shut. “Not Eleni,” she said, voice drifting as slumber called to her. “Not to you. Not to the one I love.”
Love.
It was with angst and fury that I was torn from her side after the most important night of my existence, and the most magical word ever spoken by god or man.
I’d learned my lesson with Shala. Time passed differently.
I wouldn’t be away for more than a minute, that much I knew.
I’d see what was required, then return. Though there was no consistency to time and its flow between the realms, sometimes gaining time, often losing it, I knew every moment counted.
I kept my word.
I was in Hell for less than a minute. I loved my realm, my people, my father, but they’d never pulled me in two like the ripcord my human had on me.
I alarmed half of the royal kingdom and cut my father’s decree woefully short as I counted the seconds before saying I’d heard enough. I was needed elsewhere.
The shock on his face at my dismissal was one that no entity living or smote had seen before, which was all he needed to know of my urgency.
But the sun’s rays were no longer a fresh shade of orange when I returned to the surface.
I knew what had changed the moment I materialized in the room, but shock overtook me. I approached the mattress, fingers reaching tentatively for the neck where a pulse should be. I lowered my cheek to her lips, knowing I’d feel no hot puff of breath against my skin.
Eleni’s body was still in her bed.
Her soul, however, was nowhere to be found.
“This can’t…” I looked to the window, to the gauzy curtains, to the mid-morning light. I argued with the walls. “She can’t have…”
Her long-cold corpse contained no shimmer.
“No. No! Wake up. Eleni, wake up! Eleni…Love…Love, please. Please!”
By noon, the servants would find it. Mortal ears couldn’t hear the way my thunderous cries tore through the house, though they felt the earthquake as Athens broke and shattered.
I would have raked it to the ground if Athena herself hadn’t torn me out of her territory, revoking the kinship we’d shared.
Because we existed in the realms behind the veil, humans thought us omniscient.
None of us were.
If I were omniscient, I would have known who, and what, was responsible for this affront, this pain, this grievance worthy of every death, every plague, every disaster man or monster could fathom.
“You can’t be gone. You can’t.”
Frigid tears lined my eyes. I clutched her lifeless body against mine.
What deity could I call upon for necromancy?
Athena had allowed her to see me once. Would the Hellenic pantheon allow me to chase her across the River Styx?
What did Orpheus know of love if he turned back to damn Eurydice?
If given the chance, I’d lay waste to the Charon, I’d slay Cerberus, I’d yank her spirit from Hades himself and give the gods a new story, a true story of what it meant to love beyond the limits of death.
For the first time since the universe exploded into existence and my atoms rearranged into their hellish form, I wept. Those of us who lived beyond the mortal realm were mighty, to be sure, but I’d never experienced such powerlessness.
I’d call in a favor on the realm’s deity of pestilence if I knew who to blame.
I’d speak with our god of storms if I knew which city required fires and flooding.
I’d go in myself and break the necks and stop the hearts of every man, woman, and child if I were given a name.
But the sense of “omniscience” comes from our active legions—two thousand immortal servants per legion, one of whom we would post in the houses of the faithful, in places of interest, in war rooms of enemies—that report back to us.
Our time flows in a river separate from mortal waters, and our underlings told us what we needed to know when we needed to know it.
Except, I had posted no legions.
I’d involved no immortals with my human.
She was mine. Not theirs for spying or prodding or touching. It was frustrating enough to imagine how unworthy any human in her presence was as it stood. The idea of an immortal being invading her space without her knowledge was unspeakable.
As such, I had no answers.
I hadn’t even been able to ask her what she’d wanted to do with her soul upon her passing. Perhaps she might have chosen to stay with me, to join me in Hell’s undying realm, to be one with the infernal. Even if she wanted to remain human, she should have been given the chance to decide as much.
To her, I was a star who took snow’s form.
From this moment on, I proved my sister right. I was ice.
I laid waste to anyone who dared to exist between me and Eleni’s memory—Love’s memory.
Before I returned to Hell, I made my way through Granicus, Issus, and up to the Caspian Gates, slaughtering every member of the Macedonian empire I met along the way.
I drained the blood of her husband and his men.
Whether they blamed the inexplicable decimation of their troops on poisoned water or an act of any god on their dusty earth, I didn’t care.
They needed someone to blame. So did I.
Blood dripped from my hands as I stormed from the deserts into Hell’s palace. Shocked incubi, devils, winged minions, shadowed legions, and visiting dignitaries from the lower courts watched with lifted brows and wide eyes as their prince charged for the throne room.
I pushed past the outer chambers on my way to see my father, interrupting the trivial gossip of succubus courtiers as I pushed past the Soul Eater. My sister caught my tirade and scrambled up from where she’d been lounging, talking to some unrecognizable horror from the Nightmare Courts.
Izi’s feet slapped against the black marble as she sprinted after me.
“Amagi, stop—”
My growl came from between my teeth. “Leave me.”
“We have visitors! Hell is entertaining! You can’t just—"
I didn’t know anything about the company she’d kept and made it abundantly clear that I did not care.
“Please, brother, you need to calm down.” A ripple of shadow trailed in her wake as she jogged to keep up with me. Amber and spice wafted around her, filling my nostrils, drowning out whatever had remained of the fresh cloud scent of sky.
My lips pulled back in a soundless snarl. “You have five seconds to get away from me.”
“Your visits to the human realm are supposed to be fun,” she insisted, bare feet slapping against the palace floors as she struggled to keep pace.
Inky coils of hair, unbound by earthly gravity, pooled in front of us in a blackened pit in an attempt to stop me.
I thrashed through it, pitch-colored smoke exploding at my sides as it rejoined the ever-shifting curls cascading down her shoulders.
“No one blames your dalliances, brother! There’s nothing wrong with playing with mortals, but you really need to—”
I spun at her at the insult.
“Playing?” The word came out in a roar.
She lifted her palms to pacify me. “This is what I’m talking about,” she said.
“You’re gaining a reputation, and not the good kind.
We can’t have Hell with such an obvious weak spot.
Imagine how easy it would be to topple the Nordic pantheon if Odin had only one human?
Or how the Hindu pantheon would crumble if Vishnu—”
“Stop,” I bit, pushing past her.
“You know I’m right!” she shouted, though this time, she stayed put.
Her voice became quieter as I marched.
“If you go to our father. You’re damning yourself. You’re damning us all.” When it didn’t stop me, she added three chilling words. “You’re damning her.”
I stopped mid stride.
“Her soul won’t be permitted to return if she’s this much of a distraction,” Izi argued. I kept my back to her but hated the logic in her words. They were poison, they were hateful, they were a blight.
She made her final plea.
“Bend humans to your will far and wide. Love them, use them, leave them. But this fixation with a single soul is a mistake. Not just for you, but for the kingdom. Others are going to notice. You’re putting Hell at risk, and no one in our realm will stand for it.”
My shoulders remained tight, fists clenched, teeth together. “Izi…”
“You’re going to have to let her go.”