CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Home is layers of perfectly set stones carved from giant boulders. It’s deep trenches cut beneath arched bridges and polished stairs that go straight into the gleaming blue waters.
Home is ivy covered walls and waterfalls that tumble from rooftops down into the channels.
Home is the most beautiful place I have ever thought possible and I can’t look at everything fast enough. I can’t absorb, never mind process, as I’m led through doorways that lead into courtyards that extend into corridors that lead to gazebos built over ponds littered with floating lights.
And there are people.
Creatures.
All manner of beings simply going about their business.
There are women clad only in leaves cradling baskets of straw, laden with fruits and vegetables.
There are men made entirely of stone hauling massive boulders through the square.
Children with the top half of a human and the bottom half of a horse attacking each other with wooden swords.
I want to ask where their parents are and why they’re not home in bed, but no one else seems to be concerned.
In the water, sitting on rocks beneath the waterfalls, gliding through the channels, pulling themselves up the stone steps are stunning women with gleaming tails and luminous scales across generously endowed breasts.
“You have mermaids?” I hiss, marveling at the flawless grace of two blondes sitting on a stone, tails swaying in the stream, casually chatting.
“We have all manner of creatures,” Vaelith says.
I try not to stare. It’s hard not to gawk when every person we pass stops to bow and welcome me back. Some go right on their knees.
“They all know me,” I say as we step through a domed pathway to a garden of statues.
A couple sitting on a stone bench leap to their feet when we arrive. The woman, a gorgeous beauty with thick, black hair and slitted feline eyes clutches her heavily swollen belly and beams when she sees me.
“Rina!” Realizing her slip when the man next to her shoots her a sharp glower, she quickly adds, “Your Majesty. You’re back.”
“Thank you,” I say for lack of anything better.
“The others will be thrilled,” she rushes on. “We’ve been hoping we’d see you again soon.” Her smile slips a notch. “I’m sorry it happened the way it did.”
I’m guessing she means how I died, and I offer her a smile.
“Thank you,” I repeat.
Vaelith settles a gentle hand on my lower back, for which I’m grateful; the look of hope on her face is filling me with an anxiety that is fueling my nervousness.
I didn’t have many friends when I was alive. After Dad’s stroke, I spent a lot of my time at home. That doesn’t seem to be the case here and from the look of absolute delight on her face, we were close.
“I’m still trying to remember everything,” I tell her, annoyed with myself when she shifts nervously.
That seems to be the right thing to say when she blows out a breath and nods. “Of course. Once you do, you know where to find me.” She starts forward like she wants to embrace me but stops herself. “Soon.”
Vaelith leads me further along. We follow the stone slabs along clear waters too shallow for any mermaids, but dotted with lily pads and sleek, rainbow fish that shimmer as they glide past.
“This place is amazing.” I sigh, leaning into the figure moving alongside me. “That woman back there...”
“Magda.”
I nod slowly. “We’re friends?”
“You enjoyed her company,” he answers, which I guess is the same thing. “You had a few ladies with whom you spent your days.”
I suppose that makes sense. He can’t have spent his every waking hour with me. He has a literal kingdom to run. But I’m still reeling with the knowledge that I had this. I had this entire life for a year that was vacuumed straight out of my head.
“It will come to you,” he assures me gently, practically reading my thoughts.
“Has this happened before?” I stop and face him. “Has someone left and come back?”
Vaelith hesitates. “We...” He takes a deep breath and tries again.
“We don’t get humans here, my love. You are the first and only one who has made their way here.
The fairy rings take you to Virelia. That’s their purpose.
No one has ever escaped one or been sent back.
” His fingers frame my cheeks. His thumbs brush over my skin.
“Except you. You found your way to me. Broke into my kingdom. My castle...” His lips curve into a proud little smile.
“You found my bed out of every room in the castle. You were meant to be mine.”
I set my palm over the back of his hand. “How do you know I’ll get my memory back if no one’s ever come back?”
He turns his wrist and threads our fingers together. “I asked. It was important to you so I asked Eryndor for an audience and he assured me you would regain your full memory gradually over time.”
“Eryndor?”
“The Fae king. He’s the ruler of Virelia”
I sigh. “The fairy rings.”
It makes sense that the person who would know the most about the pockets between the human and monster realm would be the one who controls them.
“Thank you,” I murmur. “For asking him. I know the Fae are assholes.”
His fangs flash in a broad grin. “You’ve been talking to Malakar. He is definitely not a fan of the Fae people, but...” He resumes our walk. “They are our ally, and we must maintain a strong bond with the other creatures within Chthonia if we want balance.”
We.
I suppose as queen I should know these things. It will be my responsibility to rule this whole place alongside him. I will need to learn a whole new set of laws and rules, and names. I will need to do whatever it takes to be the kind of queen that Vaelith needs. That the people of...
“Where are we?” I choke out, knowing he’s told me and the name has already left my head.
“Paludaris.”
I am the queen of Paludaris in a place called Chthonia where gods called demiurge have locked up all the monsters off earth and imprisoned Vaelith, a wild demiurge, to keep him from destroying humanity.
“You were overwhelmed the first time, too,” he tells me gently. “You asked if you could just be my toy.”
I force a shaky laugh. “Is that an option?”
He chuckles. “You’re already my wife and queen, but there’s no rush for you to take either of those roles until you’re ready.”
I wish it would hurry up.
The trickling is beginning to drive me crazy. The not knowing and heading into all this blind is making me anxious.
“What if I don’t get my memory back?”
He shrugs. “Then we relearn everything. If I know anything about you, Rina, it’s that you’re resilient and determined. You won’t let a memory loss stop you. Now, come.”
I don’t push the mountain of fears and anxieties clawing up my chest, filling my throat. I know he’s right. No matter what, I will figure this out. I just hate that there is so much I need to know and I need my memories to make the right choices.
“Did I agree to let you in?” I blurt as we start up a series of flat rocks leading up the side of a hill. “You said you didn’t want to risk it, but did I want to do it?”
Vaelith glances over his shoulder. “I won’t tell you that.”
I blink. “Why not?”
“Because that isn’t for me to tell you. That is a decision you need to make on your own and if your answer has changed since the last time, that is your choice, too. My answer should have nothing to do with what you want.”
I’m annoyed that I respect that answer. That it only makes the weight in my chest just a pinch lighter because I know my answer.
I know to the very pit of my stomach what I want and it has nothing to do with before.
I don’t know what kind of person I was the first time I was here.
I don’t know what kind of life we had. But that was almost a decade ago.
I was eighteen ... nineteen years old. Barely legal.
My view of him could have been tainted by rose-colored glasses.
By a false idea of what I wanted versus what I needed.
But I am a twenty-seven-year-old woman with enough life experience and understanding to fully appreciate the scope of my choices.
I love him.
I love this beautiful creature holding my hand with such tenderness when I know he could crush a boulder just as easily. I love his humor. I love the way he looks at me like I created the universe. I love the way he cares for me, looks after me in the smallest ways.
Yes, he’s a monster. A killer. His kingdom is built on the bones of thousands of humans and that is a fact that I am not oblivious to.
But I have seen his love and devotion to every blade of grass.
Every stone. I have seen the beauty he has created.
The life he’s breathed into every tree and plant, every animal and creature.
He is their Father, and they are his children, and he had to watch them die in cold blood.
I can’t even imagine that level of pain and loss.
We reach the top and I gasp.
Stone columns jut up to the dark heavens in ornate arches overrun with ivy and moss. They rise from a patchwork of stone surrounding a naturemade pond, the soft green of jade that extends up a frothing brook that ends with a roaring waterfall falling straight from the side of a grand mountain.
“Oh, this is beautiful,” I breathe, clutching a hand over my heart.
“I built this for you,” he murmurs, releasing my hand when I wander along the pond’s edge to where the stream meets the falls. “As a wedding present.”
I hear him, but the rush and roar of the water crashing over slabs of stone that brim and flow into the creek has collected in my ears. It sings with such a familiar harmony that I find myself moving even closer. Drawn.
My fingers fumble with the zipper on my dress, but he’s already there, fingers pinching the tongue and freeing me of the fabric. It flows down my form and creates a silver puddle at my ankles that I kick away.
It was night then, too, I think.
The night he took my hand and led me here, leaving behind the party going strong back at the castle.
He’d taken my hand when no one was looking and we slipped away like teenagers.
The entire way, he kissed me. His big hands tore away my beautiful dress until there was nothing between us but skin and vines.
I suck a breath still lingering with the scent of wildflowers, moss and honeysuckles.
My throat muscles flex as I teeter between the memory and the reality.
Every blink has me moving between the misty haze of that night when he’d carried me into the water with my legs around his hips and now as he scoops me up against his chest and steps into the stream.
“There were candles,” I whisper, their soft, orange light washing along the lines and grooves of his face.
I blink and the hundreds of wax pillars are gone and I’m being placed on the flat stone beneath the falls.
The water is warm pouring over me. I close my eyes and tip my head back into the spray. Even when my thighs are parted and his shoulders fill them, I keep my eyes closed and lean back.
“Feet up,” he instructs. “Flat. That’s a good girl.”
I let him arrange my feet into a squat on the rock with my knees up and my hands braced behind me. The position has my opening face level and, for the first time, I get to watch as he unfurls his tongue and finds my entrance.