Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
ANOTHER AND ANOTHER AND ANOTHER
Imelted into the silken luxury of royal silks, blankets, and pillows.
I’d nearly forgotten what quality bedding felt like, given that I was laying in a bed I’d famously vacated.
No one seemed to reject their crown with the same flourish as Hell’s least grateful prince.
I folded my hands behind my head, eyes open, but unfocused, as I gave myself a rare moment of solace in my room.
“Your Highness?” A quiet voice sounded from beyond the door to my palace rooms.
So much for my solace.
The royal chambers were ostentatious, which made walking to the door a chore. I sat up in bed and threw it open with the flick of a wrist.
“What?”
Two members of my father’s legion stood in the doorway.
He commanded seventy-two, with two thousand in each, all wispy, smoke-like beings, all eyes and shadow and bowing apologies.
They hardly inspired the sort of trembling and fear one would expect of one hundred and forty-four thousand clad in weapons and tooth and armor when brute force was required, but for everything, a time and place. I preferred my legion work in whispers.
“Out with it.”
“The King requests an audience,” said one.
“Your sister is present,” said the other.
The tight, thin line of my lips conveyed enough for the pair to scatter. Their message was not unexpected. I’d awaited an intervention for some time. I’d prepared myself for a larger discussion with my father.
Izi inserting herself further into the narrative, on the other hand?
It was a struggle to keep my fists unclenched and my expression unbothered as I made my way past the ancient architecture, beyond the fountains, through the dining halls and modern wings and galleys of such and such grandeur before I approached his throne room to the most horrid thing Hell had to offer in the loveliest package.
The Soul Eater.
The first emotion to replace my ire was loathing.
I hated the woman-adjacent horror who sat outside his office. She sat prettily behind a desk, though the tiny barrier was to make visitors feel comforted by a false sense of distance, rather than any sort of administrative duty. She was the most terrifying security the courts had to offer.
Her golden hair belonged in wheat fields, not on a living being.
Her blue eyes should have been set in a doll’s face, not on hers.
She had the sort of innocence that tipped the scales beyond uncanny and into threatening.
She was the absence of scent, of sound, of air.
It was a quality of all Soul Eaters. Crafted by something from the Primordial Monster Realm and loyalty sworn to our court’s royal family, she was of no direct threat to us.
Blood oaths prevented her from turning her abilities on my father or me.
The spelled shackles did little to put me at ease.
“Your Highness.” The Soul Eater, no name beyond her formal title, stood from her desk and clasped her hands in front of her pale blue gown before offering a curt bow.
So ladylike. So unrepresentative of her ability to dislocate her jaw and prolong razor-sharp teeth and devour anything before her into utter annihilation, ending worlds and dynasties and any immortal being that hadn’t attained the sovereignty of godhood.
Honestly, I needed to verify whether or not godhood would stop her, should her sworn chains one day break. Was she a god-killer?
I brushed past the Soul Eater, suppressing a shudder.
If the conversation between Izi and my father went south, I’d keep such deflecting questions prepared. It was never a bad idea to have a topic change or two at the ready.
I pushed open the double doors to see the figures poised beneath rows of opulent chandeliers.
Izi was seated with uncertainty on a settee on the far side of the room.
My father folded his wings behind him as if they’d just been flared in the heat of battle.
Both of their rigid postures and tight expressions told me I’d interrupted a heated exchange.
Izi’s scent of amber and heat splashed against his pomegranate and spice the moment I stepped between them, as if I’d plunged my head beneath an ocean of perfume.
The assault on the senses was almost too much after my prolonged time with the humans, but I was not the only one suffering.
My sister’s tucked position suggested that she was on the losing end. Good. Whatever the fight, I was on my father’s side.
“I was summoned?” I asked.
I had exactly one guess as to the topic at hand, and I didn’t want to hear it. Apparently, my grace period had run out. It was time to defend myself, and I was in no mood.
Izi opened her mouth to speak, but my father went first.
“Word of your human has spread beyond our walls,” he said.
There was a sympathy in his voice that I didn’t appreciate.
I clasped my hands behind myself, widening my stance and planting my feet, but said nothing.
He went on. “We’ve established relations with numerous pantheons.
You’ve kept your word as emissary after our discussion.
But prior to that? The realms who feel you tore through their people before dignifying them with a greeting? This was not the best way—”
Ah. This was the angle. I was brought into the kingdom to fulfill the obligations of a monarch, and my crown was ill-fitting? Sure. I could work with that.
“I disagree,” I said coolly. “I was there in a way that posed no threat. They had a chance to see Hell in a companionable light.”
“There’s no power in what you’ve established,” Izi snapped. “We look chaotic at best and weak at worst.”
Our father shot her a silencing look. She’d clawed her way into our meetings, but would do well to remember which, between the two of us, was set to inherit the throne.
“This isn’t about the other gods,” I said. “Why don’t the two of you come out and tell me what you’ve called me in to say: you don’t care for my human.”
My sister’s terse laugh earned her a second silencing glare.
“If I’m the first to keep a human, do tell me,” I said. “For it would be news to me.”
He sucked his teeth. “Of course, you’re not the first. Gods, demons, cryptids, fae…lore of such dalliances lives in infamy.”
I’ll admit, I was too offended to lean into deference.
It wasn’t my most respectful of moves, but I buffed my nails against the cloth pressed to my collarbones, then examined my handiwork as I recited text from the pantheon that had banished our kingdom.
“The sons of god found the daughters of men beautiful and took them for wives as they chose.”
Quoting a passage from the King of Heaven’s book earned me a glare from them both.
“Angels falling in love with human women is why half of the dukes and counts and marquises in our realm were kicked out of Heaven in the first place. So please, lecture me as to why I am not permitted. Forbidden love is a pillar of our fall.”
He lifted his hands as if soothing a wild horse, but whether the gesture was for me or to calm himself, I wasn’t sure. “It’s not that you have a human.”
I clapped my hands together. “Excellent. Then, we’re done here?”
Izi got to her feet. “Claiming a mortal is not the problem,” she said. “It’s that you have one human. And you’re making choices that put her interest above Hell’s.”
I opened my mouth to respond.
Izi stamped a foot over my first syllable, speaking over me as she pushed. “The Hellenic pantheon turned a blind eye when their nymph wound up dead, but there isn’t an immortal soul who doesn’t point silent fingers at you. What was her crime? Seeing you with that girl? What was her name?”
I waved it away.
“Eleni. That was the one.”
She must have caught the way my face tightened. She’d gotten to me and, from the way she relaxed her weight into one hip, berry-dark lips twisting up in a wicked, charcoal smile, she knew it.
“How do you…”
She sneered. “I could fill tomes with what you think I don’t know.”
I kept my expression bored, though it was merely for show. “Your kill count is as long as your body count, sister.”
“Mortals!” she gasped. “I do not kill gods.”
“You can’t kill gods,” I bit, planting a foot forward as I stepped toward her. “And a nymph hardly counts.”
Candlelight from the chandeliers reflected her hate as her glare bore into mine.
My father cleared his throat. “Your sister makes a point, indelicate though it may be. Word continues to grow of your fixation on a singular mortal soul. The Hellenic pantheon has cause to retaliate, should they wish. The Celts and the Innuits—”
“With whom I’ve established good relations,” I reiterated through my teeth.
“They are the exception,” he allowed.
My sister’s eyes narrowed. Black hair billowed behind her as she approached. “And if the bear god had attacked your human then? If he’d wanted her thrown into the sea? Would you have permitted it? Or would we have another dead god on our hands.”
“If you have to invent a fictional scenario to prove your argument, it’s a poor defense,” I snapped back.
Our father regained control of the room. “Are we to expect that your newly established relations will hold their tongue if Heaven presses them for information? For weak spots? If they offer allyship? How confident are you in these ‘ambassador missions’ that cover your proclivities?”
Even Izi wrinkled her nose at his final question. Heaven had many tricks up its sleeve, but it would not side with a rival pantheon, no matter the cost. It had no allies.
“You threaten the realm,” Izi said firmly.
Histrionics bored me. “Unless you know something I don’t, find something to do with immortality beyond my eternal agitation.”
They exchanged glances—an act that disquieted me more than I cared to admit.
“Do you?” My voice dropped. I pictured Brigid and her vague warning as I eyed them now. “What have you heard?”
Our father’s expression was gentler. “We all have our role to play in the war. You are the heir to our throne, should I fall. As such, you have my trust. Let’s put the issue to bed.
We can do away with the sorts of rumors that come from other realms and their soothsayers.
They aren’t our citizens. We aren’t beholden to their fates.
Tell me what it is that you see in this soul, son.
I’ll listen. Perhaps if you could articulate your connection with this human… ”
I wondered if he saw the pieces of me—a minute twitch of the eye, a tendon in my hand—that betrayed my reaction to the cavalier reference to Love. This human. My human.
I stood, Hell’s Prince. The Hope of the Realm. The Kingdom’s Future.
If the Celtic pantheon had shared an ominous vision, I had to believe they weren’t the only one.
I didn’t see her as a threat, a weapon, a crack in Hell’s armor.
To me, she was simply Love. To articulate our connection in a way that would answer all questions and reassure the kingdom I left exposed?
A defeated huff came from the hollows of my lungs. “Let’s hope for all Hell’s sake that I can’t.”