Chapter 10
The last thing she wanted to do was spend an evening in a barn, but it wasn’t like they had all that much of a choice in the matter. After all, she didn’t want to hurt that poor woman who lived in the seaside cottage. She thought she was safe from all the gods that could wreck her life.
Jessamine wouldn’t be one of those people who took without giving. A barn would be fine. They’d be out of the way, and soon enough, that old lady would forget they had even visited.
Elric grumbled the entire time he carried her, but she didn’t mind.
Her entire body hurt. She just wanted a quiet place to rest for a few moments until she could breathe again.
It would take some time for her body to deal with all the aches that Ajax had left within her.
But at the very least, she wouldn’t have to worry about what other people were thinking while she dealt with that pain.
The barn was as well cared for as the house.
It was painted a pretty white, matching the exterior of the home farther away from it.
There was a small fence encircling it, but she thought that hadn’t been used in a while, considering the grass within the fencing was overgrown and there weren’t any mud puddles or signs that animals had recently been inside of it.
The double doors were marked with crossed wood and, as Elric and Jessamine entered, they were greeted by the scent of fresh hay.
There were only six stalls. Three on either side of them, with pretty wooden doors and little signs above each one.
As they passed, she read the first one that was a brass plaque with looping metal spelling out the name MAPLE.
“There aren’t any animals in here,” she said.
“Chickens.” Elric nodded toward the back. “There are a few chickens, it seems. Although they’re all loose.”
She reached out her hand and trailed her fingers along the door of another stall that had the name LUCY above it. “I wonder what animals were in here, then. Seems like they had a lot of love if they were willing to go through so much trouble to put their names above their doors.”
“Horses. Some people get really close to the beasts. They are unnaturally gifted with intelligence, I’ll say that.
” He nodded toward the last stall, which seemed to have a shorter door than the others.
“That one was likely a pig, though. If you want to talk intelligence, those rival some people I’ve met. ”
“Look at you and your knowledge of farm animals.” She tried to shift herself in his grip, wincing as his arm scraped along a cut that was white hot with pain.
He snorted as he looked around, trying to find a place for them to go. “I wouldn’t consider that to be a good thing, nightmare. My history has led me to this place, but barnyards are not something to be proud of.”
“I don’t see why not. Farming is essential to any kingdom. It’s the literal food that it runs on.” She quieted when he brought her to a ladder and set her legs down on the ground. Steadying her silently, he looked up the ladder and then back at her.
Ah. Right.
She tried not to wince at what he was suggesting. It would be hard to climb, but she could do it. If she could run from Ajax in the state she was in, she could climb one more ladder.
Jessamine grabbed onto the rungs and climbed. She pulled herself, step by step, until she could roll herself onto the attic floor and lie there. Her breathing was ragged and hard, but she’d done it.
The loft wasn’t all that bad. It was full of hay bales stored for the winter, with a hatch for tossing hay onto the ground below.
Light beamed through the opening, and so many golden flecks of dust floated through the air it felt like she was surrounded by fairies.
The straw poked her back a bit, but it was still much softer than she’d expected.
Elric followed, an amused tone in his voice as he gathered her up once more and dragged her over to a larger pile of hay. “Stay here, nightmare. I’ll see what I can find to tend to your wounds.”
She had no idea what he was going to find in a barn, but she couldn’t move anyway. She wanted to lie here, pretending she was asleep, just so she could get a few minutes of rest.
But her mind didn’t want to rest. Her mind wanted to focus on the knowledge that she was alive.
Even if that meant her ears pricking at every sound of Elric moving downstairs, or the soft clucks of the chickens as they realized they were in his way.
His deep voice murmured reassurances to them as he moved among the beasts.
And then he was heading back her way, the sound of his hands on the rungs and a wet sloshing that meant somewhere, he had found water.
Suddenly, her mouth was so dry it was hard to focus. She needed water. When was the last time she’d even had water? Ajax hadn’t given her much of it. He liked to keep her right on the edge of thirst, giving her only enough to keep her alive but not enough to find relief.
Elric seemed to know that. He’d already placed a ladle in the bucket and handed it to her immediately upon coming up the ladder. She grabbed onto it, careful to not slosh too much of it over the edge, but also her hands were shaking so badly she inevitably did.
Drinking as much as she could, she handed it back to him for yet another drink. They continued this process over and over again until finally she could form words without feeling like she was going to die at any moment.
Her stomach was distended with all the liquid, and she was slightly nauseous, but it was in the best way possible. Finally, finally she had enough water.
Elric crouched beside her, looking her over with a strange expression on his face.
“What?” she asked.
“He used to do the same thing to me, when I was a young god. He said it would build my confidence, knowing that I wouldn’t die.
” Elric swallowed hard, and then took his own shaking sip of water.
“We didn’t know back then that I couldn’t die.
Or at least, that I wouldn’t. No matter what happened to me, I could always be brought back.
After he discovered that, there were a lot more of his experiments to deal with. ”
“He used to do this to you?” she asked.
“He did it to everyone. The God King was the strongest of us all. He had elemental magic, as you’ve seen. And he also had, unfortunately, far more than that.” He released a frustrated growl. “I’m sure he also made it clear to you that he can control flesh?”
She nodded. Unbidden, goose bumps rose on her arms at the memory of all that pain he could inflict with a single thought.
He noticed. Elric’s eyes went to the raised bumps on her arms, and she saw his jaw tick. “I’m going to kill him for that.”
“Elric, he’s insanely powerful. If he can inflict gods with pain just as much as he can inflict humans, I don’t see how we can beat him.” And that was the worst part of all of it. She didn’t see an end to this. She could only see there might not be a way to come back from it.
They’d failed. Jessamine had never felt like this before. She’d had times when they had done something wrong or thought they couldn’t come back from it, but there had always been another plan, another way to fix what they had broken.
This time, she didn’t see another end.
The God King was back. He wanted to bring back even more gods and goddesses, or at the very least, a queen to rule by his side. No matter what they did, he was too much for them to beat.
She watched Elric as he struggled with the same thoughts, until they were both staring at each other, perhaps a little lost.
“Come here,” he said gruffly, heading over to her instead and curling his body around hers.
Elric held her back to his chest, his arms around her waist and his legs safely bracketing hers. He just held her. Quietly. Without any need or desire for this to turn into anything else. He held her, and he took all the pain that was in her body, making tears build in her eyes.
She didn’t want to cry on him, though. He had suffered through the same fate she had, and he wasn’t crying.
So surely that meant she needed to be strong right now.
She shouldn’t show him how much her body ached, or how scared she had been, or how awful every bit of this had made her feel.
She was better than that. Jessamine was not only a princess but a gravesinger, and a woman who had survived worse.
“I know how scary that must have been for you,” he whispered in her ear, gently rocking both of them to the sound of his words. “It’s okay, Jessamine. Let me carry it for a little while. I promise I’ll give it back. But for now, just let me carry it.”
The floodgates burst open at his words. Because he knew that she was about to shatter, and the fact that he didn’t mind if she did—that he was so kind about it—that made everything in her break.
The tears turned into body-rocking sobs.
Every ounce of her ached with it, because she was so bruised that every inhalation hurt.
She hiccupped between every sob, begging her body to calm down, but there was nothing she could do.
She had to purge all of these feelings, and it did feel like he was carrying them for her.
Some part of her recognized he was weaving a spell around them.
He had taken her emotions. The more she let out, the more she realized he was siphoning them out of her body and drawing them into himself.
She could feel them disappearing for a little while.
He’d give them back, though, and she took comfort from that.
She would deal with what had happened to her. Soon enough, she would learn how to live with gods’ powers that were so much stronger than her, and the torture she had felt at his hands.
“I was only there a week,” she whispered once she had quieted down enough with her tears. “How long did he do that to you?”
“Years,” Elric murmured. “Many, many years.”
Her heart bled for him. Family weren’t supposed to do that to each other. They were supposed to support and help. That was why families were so strong when they were together.
“I’m sorry,” Jessamine said, stroking his arm where it was wrapped around her waist. “You didn’t deserve to have someone do that to you.”
“None of us did. The gods were not kind to one another. Ajax ruled us all by fear, but there were a few who knew how to manipulate him as well.” He scoffed.
“My sister was particularly good at it. She was so rarely touched by his magic because of it. The Huntress had a way of getting underneath Ajax’s skin. ”
“You make it sound like they were very close.”
“They stopped calling each other brother and sister many centuries ago. After all, none of us are actually related. We just wanted to create a group of gods who worked together rather than against each other. How better than to claim we were all family?” He sighed, the long breath fanning across the back of her neck.
“The rules didn’t apply to everyone, though. ”
She didn’t have to ask what place he held among them. Elric had made it very clear they all thought he was beneath them, but she had never understood why.
“You are so strong,” she quietly stated. “So much of your magic can be built upon, as well. If you have a strong coven, why didn’t you try to create thousands of witches? Or at least hundreds of women sacrificing to you. You could have been the most impressive of all the gods if you wanted to be.”
“I never would have been that. Sacrifices only get me so far, and I…” He shook his head, ducking his nose to the back of her hair and breathing her in.
“Years and years of them telling me I was never good enough, and honestly believing that, certainly held me back. Now we’re too late.
Even if we had the time to build a coven of that size, he will still have gotten even stronger. ”
“If you acquire more magic through sacrifices, how does he get his?”
“Pain.” The word rocked through her. She did feel weaker when she was around him. Even worse when he was making her hurt. “He gathers energy from torturing people. That energy feeds him, and it is very easy to gather for one such as him.”
Shit. Well, that made everything even more complicated. Because Elric was right. His brother could take that kind of power in mass amounts before they could even find someone who was born to be a witch.
“What are we going to do, Elric?” Jessamine whispered.
“I don’t know, nightmare. All I know is that I have you back, and that is the only thing that matters to me.” He pressed a kiss to her shoulder. “Are you ready for me to wash you?”
“I can wash myself. I’m not that injured.”
“And yet, I will be doing so. I want to make sure you are all right. Don’t rob me of the opportunity, nightmare.”
He rolled to his feet, and that was when she noticed yet again the deep hollows and bruises underneath his eyes.
He hadn’t been sleeping, not since she had been taken.
This poor man had been so worried about her, and now he just wanted to take care of her.
He needed to see for himself that she was as well as she said she was.
She seemed hesitant, but eventually she nodded. “Okay, Elric. We can do that.”
As he dipped a rag he’d brought with him into the bucket of water, she stretched out her legs first and let him start at her ankles.
The man lovingly took care of every inch of her body, washing away all the touches from so many others before he gathered her up in his arms once more, and she sank into a deep, restful sleep.
“I will stay here all night,” he murmured as she drifted off. “I will guard your dreams, nightmare.”