Chapter 46 Jai
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
JAI
My heart is stabbing at my fucking ribs. I stand on the low terrace, gripping the stone balustrade, looking out at the sea and sky. I keep looking outward, as if that will stop the Godsdamned memories and spinning thoughts.
Funny. Phaethon isn’t even howling anymore. I can’t blame him for this dread.
She had really died. Killed by the fae king. I’d felt it back then, felt the bond wrenching, cracking.
“I was killed first before I was thrown into the sea.”
Should I have guessed she was still alive, since my heart went on beating? But I’d felt the bond sever, I’d felt her gone. I’d felt my soul shrivel and die.
I was broken.
My memories of those first years are mired in gray fog. Hells, of the first decades after I lost her. You might say I hadn’t known her for that long. Only a few months. But I fell in love with her, felt the fated bond click between us and I knew I was the luckiest man alive.
Then the voices in my head started.
And it all went downhill.
I remember the massacre… Fuck me, I do, but in glimpses. The images cut through me like blades.
I lean over the balustrade, struggling to draw a breath. What exactly happened that day? I’m drowning in recovered memories, but all I see from that day is blood.
Did the king kill her family? Did Phaethon take over me and finish the job? But why would he? What am I missing in the writhing mass of memories coming at me? They feel like snakes snapping at me. Like a dragon’s fucking maw threatening to swallow me whole.
Memories stretching over months, weeks, and days.
Memories of small things like watching draks fly against the darkening sky, eating thick soup, smelling the green grass.
Memories of bigger things like holding her hand and kissing her, touching her body, feeling Phaethon stir for the first time… feeling her death.
They come in random order. I have to piece a storyline together, a timeline, see how they fit into the puzzle of my life.
Meanwhile, familiar whispers wind inside my head. Phaethon is muttering about dragons and basilisks and caves and graves.
I always thought he was crazy—a madman to drive me mad along with him, spitting raving mad—but now I’m not entirely sure anymore. I pay closer attention and I think he’s talking about the events leading to the Last Reversal, about the battle the Eosphors fought against the dragons.
Damn. I should be able to remember that. I was there, wasn’t I? I sort of remember it in splashes of images, sounds and horror. So many memories are filtering back and they don’t always make sense.
I’m not fucking sure I want to see them play out, but there is no escaping them. More images flash behind my eyes.
I feel wrung out. Various wounds ache all over my body, and the mark spread over my chest and stomach burns. Something… something has changed. Somewhere deep inside of me, something has shifted. A cover was lifted, freeing a power I didn’t recall having.
Raising a hand to my cheekbone, I rub at the marks there. They itch. My shadows seem to pulse in time to my thumping heart. The rhythm accelerates. I can’t catch my breath. My stomach cramps and I swallow back bile. I look at the sea and I see double, images overlaying reality.
Houses buried in water. Corpses. Trees with only branches showing over the surface. It’s a scene after a Reversal, that complete disaster and desolation, that stench of death and rot, then… a woman’s face, grave and beautiful in the low light, regarding me through dark eyes.
“Are you sure about this?” she asks. “Is there no other way?”
The sorrow in my heart is real. Not because I’m in love with her but because she is dear to me and I… have to leave.
Leave this world.
I wanted to believe that it’s not true, that I’m not Marsyas, some half-forgotten heroic king from another world, but I can’t. Not anymore. The memories may still be a jumbled mess but I remember another life.
Various other lives.
Three souls…
Now it’s starting to make sense.
“Athdara Marsyas of the house of Dikerotes, the ancient king… The great king of old who took the Eosphor Phaethon the Bright One inside him. Who fell through the gate into this world.”
And then the woman in my memory asking over and over, “Is there no other way?”
The memory solidifies. Clears. I knew I hadn’t just fallen through, but now, for the first time, I recall the decision to do so.
I came through the gate. Purposefully. I came to stop a prophecy from coming to pass, to stop a king from invading us.
By the sleeping Gods. I came to stop a prophecy and became the prophecy. Now how can I give up such a mission, set into motion so long ago, a mission for which I left loved ones behind?
And still…
Rae. Who knew that crossing over would give me the woman I was meant to love? And who knew that such a bond would align so perfectly with the way I feel?
What the hell am I going to do?
“Have you tried talking to Phaethon?”
Godsdammit, why am I hearing everything the king has told me on repeat? He lashed me within an inch of my life, and that was after putting a mark on my mate, after crushing this world, only to decide he wants to go back and do the same to the world we left behind.
I sigh. Scrub my hands over my face. Just talk to Phaethon anyway.
What if he tells me things I don’t want to hear? What if I’m someone I don’t want to be around?
I feel his presence stirring, passing like a sea snake right under the surface of the water.
Pushing back, straightening, I watch the first streaks of light move across the firmament, announcing the arrival of dawn.
Phaethon, I say inside my mind. You were right. We need to talk.
Silence greets my thought and I huff a laugh under my breath.
Great. The first time I call on him with the express desire to talk, and he’s giving me the silent treatment.
I should be the one annoyed here. He not only uses my body and mind, he used my cock to fuck my girl.
That gets a reaction. He surfaces inside my head. It feels like a great animal uncoiling. A dragon, perhaps. Pushing against my skull, against my thoughts.
“She enjoyed it,” he says and I can hear his grin. “She liked being overpowered and taken hard and fast.”
I struggle to control my anger, and I’m damn annoyed that I find my cock hardening at the image he paints. I remember how it felt to be a passenger in my own mind as he took her.
“She likes me,” he says, “and you hate that.”
She wanted to sleep with him. I knew that. I felt it. I experienced it. So it shouldn’t shock me, and maybe it’s not shock but jealousy that spikes my heart rate and covers the world in a red tint.
I’m surprised, I send the thought, that you deigned to occupy yourself with a human.
“She isn’t human. But even for a human, she isn’t bad.”
Isn’t bad, I repeat, disgusted. That’s high praise indeed.
“What do you want me to say, that she’s the most amazing, most beautiful female to ever live? I hear some of your tacky thoughts, you know,” Phaethon murmurs with a dainty sniff. “I’m an Eosphor. I have to keep up appearances.”
Fuck you. You wouldn’t know what love is if it bit you in the ass.
A beat of silence. “In any case, she’s growing on me.”
I blink. That’s disturbing. It sounded… almost sincere. You really do like her, don’t you?
“She is… fierce.”
She is. I find myself smiling. Strong and stubborn.
“There you go again, tacky and overly sweet.”
You don’t even know what that means.
“And I don’t care enough to find out. Did you want something? Or did you just want to socialize with me? Are you feeling lonely?”
Fuck off. I have questions, and I’m sure you know more than you’re letting on.
“Always,” he says, deadpan. “Doesn’t everyone?”
Are you really Astar, the original Eosphor?
“I am.”
And you’ve always known that? Who you are, who I am, how we crossed into this world, and why? You kept it from me.
“Hold your dragons.”
You mean, horses.
“Whatever means of transport you have at hand. I didn’t willfully withhold any knowledge from you. Let’s just say that for a long time, my consciousness was foggy, at best. Of course I knew who I was. I didn’t realize I had to inform you that I am Astar. That’s in the history books.”
I snort.
“But I didn’t know who you were or why we were tangled together until these past few days. It’s still… slightly unclear.”
What’s unclear? How we became tangled?
“No, that’s covered. That was bad enough when it happened.” His voice in my head sharpens with anger. “I want to know why you decided to cross and take me along with you.”
Tit for tat. I tell you that, and you tell me what else you know.
“About what?” he asks.
About what really happened to Rae’s family.
Another silence. “Ask your question.”
I bow my head, drawing a fortifying breath. How did she survive? How did she turn into finnfolk?
“That’s… an unexpected question. I thought you were going to ask about…” He pauses. “Never mind. You know that after the king grabbed you and took you to the palace to live with him, you were confused.”
You mean crazy. Because you had awoken inside my mind. Right? The memories are still fuzzy on that part.
“Yes. So you were present when the king decided to head back and massacre everyone, and you insisted on going along.”
Cold shivers over my skin, sinking into my bones. I was really there.
“Indeed you were. You were lucid enough to think you could see her again, stop any violence but you were wrong on the latter part. You found her, though. And through you… I… saved her.”
You?
“Don’t sound so surprised. I am a powerful Eosphor. Changing creatures into other creatures without a gate is challenging, but I am a dragonking. We are a dragonking. We have many abilities.”
I rather meant… why? She may be growing on you now, but you don’t care for humans.
“Ah, Jai, don’t you see? We’re one. We had our disagreements—”
I bark out an incredulous laugh.
“—but she is important to you. So I saved her from the final death.”
By turning her into a mermaid?
“Mermaid?” He chuckles. “No. Scales. That’s the closest to my power. Scales and dragons.”
I shake my head, not following. You make it sound as if you cared about what I wanted.
I needed you sane. Saving her sounded like a good plan at the time.
And said nothing to me about it?
“My mind—our mind—was affected by everything that happened. I lost the memory for a long time. I lost… track of time. You kept me suppressed a lot with the king’s help. Until he realized who I was and what I could do.”
It wasn’t the prophecy? The king keeps talking about it. Did you think the prophecy had to do with her?
“I am Astar, and Phaethon. I don’t answer to prophecy. Prophecy answers to me.”
This time I chuckle. That sounds just like Phaethon. Fine, you saved her. Fine, you like her now. I have good taste in girls, don’t I?
“Like I said, she isn’t bad.”
Right. Keep up appearances. You said that, too. So will you stop aiding the king? Forget this plan of opening gates and—
“We take her with us.”
What?
“Across the sky. We’re going home, Jai. That’s what I wanted to ask you. Don’t you want that? We could go home and take her with us. We don’t have to fight anymore, we could agree to follow one course to both our benefits.”
Dear fucking Gods below. “You really think that is a question that even needs answering?” I growl out loud.
“You said she is your fated mate. She wouldn’t object to coming along, would she?”
Fierce. Strong. Stubborn. Remember? She is here to avenge her family and save her people and you think she will just give up on that to follow you and doom another world to ruin?
“Us, Jai. Not just me. Us.”
And that’s your second mistake. You think I’d fucking give up and ignore my beliefs to do as you say because you finally deign talk to me?
You’re an idiot. I sigh. This is what I came here for, Phaethon.
Why I crossed the gate, why I died and was reborn as this shadow creature.
I came to stop King Rouen from returning to our world and razing it to the ground.
“He wouldn’t do that. It’s his world, too, he said—”
The prophecy he keeps quoting wasn’t meant for this world, but for the other one, and it’s not a promise: it’s a warning.
A warning for that world. When the old dragon falls through the sky, right?
That’s you. That’s us. And a soul thought lost returns to life, that’s the king.
Watch for the signs in the shifting stars: a new order will come. King Rouen’s order.
He’s silent. A thread of unease wraps around my thoughts.
Good. Uneasy is how he should feel. Damn uneasy and unsettled. He’s lucky it’s just unease.
It beats the fucking panic I’ve been living with for so long.