Chapter 5
If he wasn’t careful, Elric was going to explode.
The coven had gathered at a small seaside shack. One that was very similar to where his story had begun. Sybil was eerily good at finding abandoned buildings like this, and with a small amount of magic, she had made it large enough on the inside to hold all of them.
But now he was sitting in the center of chaos.
Witches rambling all around him, without the anchor of his gravesinger to cling to.
He felt like their words were buffeted to him from every angle as they all stared at him, wondering what he was going to do.
They knew how he felt about Jessamine. They knew that the God King was his brother.
They knew she had been taken by Ajax, who would do all manner of horrible things to his woman.
Their words already filtered through the dull thud of his own heartbeat, which had been hiding the sound of their voices for hours now.
“Isn’t he going to speak?”
“Why would he? His lover is gone. He has to be worried about her, and besides, she was the only reason we were holding back. The coven needs power. We gave it all to him, glutted him on it, and look at what happened.”
Of course there would be someone who already brought up a sacrifice.
Jessamine was the only thing standing between him and certain pain.
Death? No. He couldn’t die, after all. But there was the suffering as they drew out his pain for as long as they could before they sacrificed him for all the magic they had given him.
It wasn’t a bad idea. It wasn’t even one he blamed them for.
He hadn’t done much for them. He’d brought them here, convinced them that they were doing the right thing, and then disappointed them.
There was no blood to feed their thirst; no man was dead for harming them. There was only failure after failure.
Elric feared without Jessamine, he was nothing but a lingering shadow at the whim of a coven who had already shown an interest in sacrificing him. They didn’t know he had overheard their whispers, and none of them had said it to his face yet.
But he knew a coven was nothing without magic. A coven could do very little until he gifted them the magic they needed. At some point, they would hunger for more. At some point soon, they would need to go to war again.
“What do you think that man is doing to her?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think he’s known for being kind, and that was before he had a god in him.”
“Probably torturing her for information about us.”
“No, that’s not logical. Clearly, he didn’t think we were a threat, and obviously we aren’t. We had more power than we’ve ever had, and it was so easy for him to toss us all aside like twigs! We need more if we’re ever going to win.”
Abruptly, he stood and strode out of the seaside shack. He couldn’t stay while the weight of their expectations pressed down on his shoulders. He just needed a few minutes. A few breaths. He’d be fine, and he’d come back in to tell them a plan that would get her back.
Everyone fell silent and watched him with wide eyes as he walked out of the room.
Perhaps he opened the door a little too hard, and maybe it slammed against the side of the shack with a shocking bang, but he wasn’t exactly in the right state of mind.
They had to understand that. They had to give him a little grace for what he was going through, even if it meant that later on they sliced through his flesh.
He’d let them do it. If it meant getting Jessamine back in one piece, he would sit in whatever darkness they wished. He’d let them take knives to his flesh and destroy every part of him.
Because he knew what his brother would do to her.
He knew how talented Ajax was at convincing people they were worthless, and that the only person they could trust was him.
Elric had spent his entire godhood under the thumb of his brother, who had told him over and over again that he would never be lovable, never be worthwhile for anyone to worship, and all he had to do was listen to Ajax and maybe it would change.
It hadn’t. Years upon years, coven after coven, he’d failed just as Ajax had said he would.
At least, until now. Until he had been gifted a gravesinger who saw him as a person and not a tool. Of all the things that could have happened, he had never anticipated losing her.
The door opened and closed behind him, but he was already heading down the beach. Elric didn’t want to talk to anyone. He just wanted a few minutes alone.
It took very little for Sybil to catch up with him. The woman was long legged and determined. He expected her to scold him, or at the very least tell him that barging out of the shack while they were all trying to figure out what to do was an immature response, and he needed to behave.
But she didn’t. She only slipped her hand into his and tugged him closer to the sea.
Elric let her push and shove at him until she had him settled on the sand just out of the waves’ reach.
The sound of them rushing toward him and then slowly retreating grounded his mind, just like the sensation of the sand beneath his feet and hands.
Sybil didn’t have to say anything. She anchored him in the moment until he was ready to speak.
Elric took his time. He got his head back in line and his fears grounded, so he could actually think through this abysmal feeling.
“I am afraid,” he said. “I never thought the other gods would return. I thought they were all dead and gone for good.”
“So did I.” She stared out at the sea with a troubled expression. “It’s not a good thing that he’s returned. I’m afraid of what that means. I thought…”
Her words trailed off, and he glanced over at her. She was still looking at the waves, but he knew she was looking far beyond that. Into the past where they had both lived and known what these gods could do.
“You thought?” he prodded.
“I thought we were finally free of them. No offense to you, but your siblings were certainly not kind to anyone or anything around them. There were so many people praying to them, asking for gifts from the gods and getting them without any rules on whether they should or not. So much bad happened in the name of gods, by people who thought they were doing the right thing.” She shook her head.
“And now I fear we are going right back into the same time. It was better when the gods were dead and the few remaining worshippers never had access to the gifts they would have been given in the old days.”
He nodded a few times, although he did not know why. “If I could stop him, I would.”
“I know you would, dear. But I also saw how easily he overpowered you.” She looked at him then, that troubled expression doing nothing to ease his nerves. “I thought you were strong enough to stop him?”
“I could have stopped Leon if we’d made it there in time.
If I hadn’t underestimated the remains of my sister that the priestesses still had in their grasp.
The magic he had…” Elric couldn’t look her in the eye and say this.
So he stared down at his hand in the sand, focusing on all the scars along his knuckles and the ragged tips of his fingers.
“I am not a strong god, Sybil. I never have been compared to them. Asking me to go up against the two strongest gods in our pantheon is like asking a flea to fight the dog it feeds off of.”
Her dark, wrinkled hand slid over his. “You are so much more than what they led you to believe.”
The words nearly broke him. She’d believed in him, and he had failed her. He was supposed to be a god! Why couldn’t he do this?
Sybil’s hand squeezed his. “Focus on the sand, Deathless One. This was the beach where it all happened. Do you not remember?”
“Where what happened?”
“The death of the gods. Perhaps you were not there, but I was. I saw the spell the gravesingers wove in the air, although I still do not know what it was. I saw the intricacies in their curse as an entire coven of gravesingers, the people who were closest to you and guided your coven, danced in the moonlight. It was like a web they wove between each other’s fingers, balancing the power only you could give them. It was beautiful.”
And in his mind, he could see them. The ghosts of his own gravesingers as they danced, their bare feet leaving imprints on the sand before the waves washed them away.
Her voice continued, low and quiet, like a whispered prophecy.
“They brought about the end of an age where so many had fallen prey to gods who hated them. Your gravesingers took the essence of life that floated in the air, and they brought it down upon the effigies of the gods. I remember what it looked like.”
“You said you weren’t there.”
Sybil smiled, and the expression was full of secrets. “I lied.”
“So you know how they died?”
“No. I wasn’t supposed to see it. I was only supposed to help build the small effigies so that the coven could kill them.
But then I couldn’t help myself. I came down the sands, and I watched them slice through the gods.
One by one, in a spell so beautiful it was heart wrenching.
And they were only able to do that because of you. ”
No, that wasn’t the truth of the story. Because now that she said it, he could finally remember what happened as well. It surfaced in his mind, like the gravesingers, in the realm he had trapped their souls, finally wanted him to see.
“They killed themselves to do it,” he murmured.
His eyes filled with unshed tears as he said the words.
“It wasn’t beautiful, Sybil. It was tragic.
They slit their throats, one by one, all of them sacrificing themselves and then ending up with me.
A god they hated more than anyone on this planet.
They killed me to do it, and all I wanted was my revenge. ”
Sybil shrugged. “I don’t blame you for that either. They made you hurt, and so you hurt them. Even if they were the ones to free us all, they did so by stepping on your neck.”
He shuddered. “All of this is too hard, Sybil. The guilt. The need for revenge. The aching pain of knowing I lost her to a god, and that of all the gods, Ajax likes pain best.”
“We’ll get her back.”
“And if we don’t?” Now wasn’t the time to question himself, but he was certain that Sybil would understand. “I cannot live knowing that she is under his thumb. Ajax knows how to get into the mind of a human and make them believe whatever he wants them to believe. It is not a good end, Sybil.”
Already he was having a hard time not thinking about what Ajax would do.
His brother was swift in his torture because he knew how to break a human mind.
He was likely forcing her body to contort any way he wanted, twisting her bones and cracking through the heaviest of them.
He’d once watched Ajax break a man’s femur, collarbone, and skull all at the same time, just to see how much pain he could withstand before he died.
Knowing that he might be doing that to Jessamine, even now? It made him want to shred the world, but there was nowhere safe to put his anger.
“We will do what we must,” Sybil said, her voice hard.
“I will not rest knowing that she is there, suffering when she does not need to suffer. I know she didn’t want to lead this coven, but we all look to her as that person.
The coven needs her calm and reason to keep it moving in the right direction. ”
“Until we get her back, that job lands on your shoulders.”
“Oh, I know. Agnes has already been talking with too many of the younger recruits. They are telling stories that I will have to end quickly and without mercy.”
The troubling words settled between them. He knew what she alluded to. He didn’t need her to pretend that it was anything other than the logical solution to all their problems.
But he could be gentle about it. Because that was what Jessamine would wish him to do.
The words were hard to choose, but eventually he said, “I know they want to sacrifice me, Sybil.”
Another long pause answered him. He knew she was struggling to find the right words, but there weren’t any.
How was she supposed to soften the reality that yet another coven wanted to tear into him?
The more pain they caused, the more magic would spill out.
He knew this. She knew this. They didn’t have to pretend that wasn’t what would happen.
“It’s all right,” he added. “If that’s what will get her back, then I will gladly do it. I will even create the weapons that will be the most successful in harming me. I will let them take whatever it is they wish to take, as long as you can promise me that she will be safe.”
Sybil grabbed a handful of sand and tossed it into the sea. He’d never seen her so angry before. “You think I would let them do that to you?”
“You did it yourself, long ago.”
“I never took a blade to your skin, and I never agreed with what they were doing.” She whirled around, suddenly kneeling in front of him, uncaring that the waves wet her skirts and likely chilled her legs.
“Listen to me, Elric. After all this, all we have done together, you are not just my god. You are my friend. I cannot allow them to hurt you like they have before.”
He sometimes wished he could be as fervent as a mortal.
He wished he could feel that depth of emotion and make a declaration so honest that no one would ever question whether or not he meant it.
But he was old. And he had learned long ago that no matter how strongly he felt about something, it didn’t mean he could make it come to pass.
“If it has to be done,” he started, holding up his hand when she would have interrupted him. “If it has to be done, Sybil, then I want it to be you.”
Her dark eyes filled with tears that then dripped silently down her cheeks. They stared at each other, and he never once broke that heavy gaze.
“Why would you ask that of me?” she whispered.
“Because you care. Because if I need to die again, then I wish for it to be at the hands of someone who cares.” He tried a smile. “It would be the first time ever.”
“Elric…”
“Don’t say no.”
Sybil’s lips compressed into a firm line before she nodded. “If it comes to that, then it will be me. But we will do all that we can to avoid it.”