Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
ETERNITY
Ilanded, panting on my hands and knees, on the edge of the Dead Sea.
Heat scorched me. My hands burned. I winced against the blinding sun, an endlessly blue sky. A stampede of men stormed over me, trampling me underfoot. My mouth was forced into sand, jaw twisting, choking on dust, as their accusations filled the air.
I struggled to my knees, spitting sand onto my forearm, as the memory yanked open a door I’d closed, forcing me to watch an innocent woman beg for a god who would not answer.
Somewhere, on a distant cliff, Gula would be watching.
I felt the cuts and bruises of a mortal body, shoving as if I was just another man, as I forced my way to the front.
The sentence was issued, and the stoning began, but it was not Shala on the shore.
Yuka looked up at me, wide eyes forsaken and wet with betrayal as she spied her protector, complicit in her death. In her silence, three pained words pierced me:
I trusted you.
Watching, when the first rocks hit. The Qawiaraq word for “Fluffy” barely escaped her lips, the pleading cry of the abandoned.
The air escaped my lungs. I shoved men out of the way, the impact of their rocks exploding against the back of my skull, bruising my spine, cracking my ribs as I threw myself over her.
When I landed, there was no one beneath me.
The sun, the sands, the crowds, were gone.
I shivered against the cold, shocked by the smell of manure and unwashed fur.
The strained hiss of rope was a unique noise, but one I’d encountered before.
I scrambled to my feet once more, knowing I’d left my mark on the realms and their challenges.
Jarovid threw back his head in a cackle as he gave the order.
I’d never met the swollen, battered woman at the center of the quartet of horses, but the shimmer of her soul was enough to shatter me.
This was a life I’d evaded—a death that had haunted me even when told by a legion while I seethed from my palace.
Four men slapped their horses at Jarovid’s count.
I cried, throwing myself upon her once more, but this time I was not spared the violence.
I held her body against mine as she screamed, clutching her as arms and legs were pulled in four different directions, sobbing into her hair, promising her it was okay, that I had her, that I would save her, as she was ripped in quarters.
I cried into the bloodied stump of her torso before it evaporated.
A single light illuminated an infant at the center of the room.
I stopped short.
I turned away from the infant only to see it appear in the opposite direction under the same spotlight.
“This isn’t real,” I said, first to myself, then to the room. I closed my eyes but knew it wouldn’t be enough. Nightmares didn’t work by closing your eyes. Not when your vile bitch of a sister came from the Court of Nightmares.
“Izi,” I seethed, “You are almost clever.”
I knew what was happening, but I was still losing.
She’d never outrank me in the Royal Court.
Only the heir to the throne would inherit the king’s powers.
Her royal blood was useless while I lived.
Even if she could take me in battle, she wasn’t a god-killer.
A thousand years of perfectly honed skill, and even my beheading would see me knitted together to return and seek vengeance.
She couldn’t best me on mortal soil, nor in Hell.
The air left my lungs.
A crushing weight suffocated me.
I scrambled for reason, for a foothold in logic, as I searched for my assailant.
A cough, a gag, and my knees hit the cobblestones. I braced myself, hands clutching rock as I choked on something horrible. A rope? No, it was moving. I heaved, puking the head of a cobra as it twisted backward, its body still invading my throat, fangs dripping as it poised to strike.
I grabbed just behind its jaw and ripped it out, esophagus raw as the scope of our battle seeped into me with horrifying clarity.
The Nightmare Realm, however…I was ready for swords. Give me fire, fists, warriors. Roll me in storms, drown me, burn me alive. But I’d spent so much time with my human that I was nearly mortal, myself. My nightmare was singular. And this…this was a trap I didn’t know how to escape, unless…
The infinitely black room.
The single light.
A helpless infant in a life I hadn’t gone to the mortal realm to protect.
I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t rage. I couldn’t save her. I couldn’t break.
I looked toward the ceiling and tried the only thing I had left.
“If she dies,” I said, letting my voice quake, “I’ll still love her.”
The light reappeared on the ceiling, the baby upside down as the nightmare tried to force me to look at it. But terrors fed on panic, on urgency, on suffering.
I looked down, hands clenched, and said, “She’ll die. She always dies. She’s mortal. Sometimes she dies of old age, happy, loved, and safe. Sometimes she dies because you’re a cunt. Sometimes I feel guilty…but do you know what I learned about those times?”
The infant again, this time deep underground, as if through a translucent floor. The single spotlight flickered. The infant itself wobbled, struggling to keep its form.
“I felt really fucking guilty when you convinced me to stay in Hell,” I said. “Turns out, I had nothing to feel guilty for. Her deaths are on you. I didn’t intervene because I trusted you. Briefly. You’re an absolute disappointment. You know why you never earned father’s favor?”
The light flickered until it strobed in and out of visibility.
The baby appeared inches from me, but the unstable dream had no face as the lighting disintegrated.
“You enjoy your jaunts on the surface? It was fine, the same way we let cows graze in the fields, Izi. It’s fine when the cow stays in the pasture. But you’re a cow who’s broken out of the fence. You’re incompetent. You’re an embarrassment. You became a fucking liability.”
Her voice crackled through the darkness.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” The sentence wobbled, much like the image of the infant, but I grabbed hold.
I sneered. “I’ve called the only summit of gods in the history of immortals. I’ve murdered major deities for disrespecting something I care about. I’m the linchpin to a prophecy that will save the world, but do you know what’s better, sister?”
Only the flickering spotlight remained in a sea of darkness. No children, no imagery, no versions of love assaulted me as I peered into the nightmare’s core.
“None of that was true before I became father’s favorite. I’m the Crowned Prince. I was granted a kingdom, a realm, a world, before proving myself in the slightest. He had two children, and what did you get, again?”
“Stop it.”
“He. Gave. You. Nothing.”
“Stop it!” Hurricane winds blew through the nightmare as she appeared, screaming at me amidst the crackling clouds of the Court of Nightmares.
I took a step toward her. “He gave you his time, his patience, his love, because he is good. But you? Izi, you had to slurp your worth to pretend you had relevance.”
“I’m his only daughter,” she hissed, matching me step for step.
She pressed her face so close that her nose was nearly on mine.
“He won’t even let himself be disappointed in your monumental failures while your essence remains.
All that wasted potential. All the citizens you put in danger with your selfishness.
I’m the heir you’ll never be. The best thing you can do for our kingdom is die. ”
I looked at the cloud crackle overhead, witnessing the blue-gray rumble as electricity silhouetted godly shapes who pointed and laughed.
I took one step forward, forcing her toward the cloud.
“No one with power needs to scheme, needs to manipulate, to lie. Power doesn’t steal. Power simply is.”
Another step, then another.
She extended her hands, mouth in a snarl, still leaning toward me, but unwilling to let us touch. “There is more power in words, in knowledge in the battles that exist within the mind than you—”
“I am humiliated that I ever called you sister, you amateur. You led Heaven to our doors. You were so desperate for relevance that you spent cycles upon cycles snitching to the only realm that could take us down just to remain in the game.”
One more step.
The lightning crackled again, this time so close I could taste its ozone.
“It should have been me,” she cried. She jammed her finger into her chest, snarling as she rolled onto the balls of her feet. “I have the fight! I have what it takes! I’m the heir that should have ascended!”
I could barely exhale through my laugh.
“Yeah? Then prove it.”
I exploded with energy. Two flat palms against her chest, I used my final steps to push her into her crackling nightmare and watched as the cell of lightning bolts crackled around the cloud, trapping her in the cellar of her prison.
I stood and watched the silhouettes as she cowered, as she raged, as she fought.
She ran, she cried, she ran, she battled, she ran, she ran, she ran.
I’d been prepared to kill her.
I had no idea how much time passed as I watched Izi—the succubus I’d once called sister—trapped in her own nightmare, before I knew there would not be escape.
I had one thing she didn’t.
In my lifetimes of weakness, I’d experienced the one thing she’d never had.
I knew Love.