Chapter Thirty-Three #3
What pours from the pearl on the end of a smoky tether is the spirit I caught a glimpse of before—the one that shifted and writhed and tangled under the grip of winding tentacles.
Only this time, he is perfectly clear and those are not his tentacles at all.
Rather, someone has brutally tied one severed tentacle in a neat clove hitch around this spirit’s mouth and a second tentacle secures his arms to his sides in another tidy hitch.
Both tentacles are angry and oozing at the wound site and are an exact match to the two missing from Vesuvius’s body.
I could almost swear they have been chewed off—as if he used his own teeth to gnaw himself into pieces.
Which, of course, he must have.
I barely notice Aurelius speaking in the background. “You bound him with your tentacles? Why?”
“When you must sleep within a confined space with an enemy who tries day and night to gain the upper hand over you, we shall see how quickly you decide he must be bound in some way,” Vesuvius replies. “Besides, it would not have suited me to have him slip free when she opened my gates.”
I grimace in disgust, but this terrible binding is not the worst of what I see, for in the grips of the tentacles is the soul I long for.
It’s Lieve. Battered and bruised, eyes welling with tears above that terrible winding tentacle, but still mine.
My heart lurches. I force myself past the air holding me and take a stumbling step forward only to be stopped by Aurelius’s spatha, drawn lightning quick and hovering with the tip just in front of my throat.
“That’s far enough, I think.” He’s on his feet now, still looking relaxed, but because I know to look for it, I see the stiffness in his left leg and the tightness around his eyes. “I think you’ll give an answer to our question now.”
“Yes, I want him back.” The words burst from my lips. “I want Lieve of House Carnelian, husband to Queen Coralys of the Crocus Isles.”
Lieve’s soul seems to sag a little and his warm eyes meet mine, spilling out love. My breath catches, but the spatha point moves just enough to prick my throat, pinning me in place. Could I slap it away with the trident? Maybe. But also maybe not. Aurelius is insanely quick.
“I never did understand why people assumed you could only put one soul into these pearl prisons,” Vesuvius says lightly. “Did you find it difficult to scoop up this mortal’s soul and house him with mine, God of the Air?”
“You know as well as I, Vesuvius, that any god could do the same,” Aurelius says, but he sounds like he doesn’t want to keep explaining like Vesuvius does.
He wants to get to the point, which I think might be to torture me.
After all, that’s what he did to Oke until somehow he lost his favorite toy.
Even so, he can’t quite keep the look of triumph out of his eyes. This is his moment. All his plans coming to fruition, all his plots tightening into place.
“Treseano would be happy to know that he no longer needs to keep that dreadful creature in his sack to pay for this imprisonment.”
I fight hard to school my face. My mind is racing.
So Treseano, the God of Death, paid for this?
But we killed his monsters. Shouldn’t that have set Lieve’s soul free?
Unless. Something in my chest tightens and I can’t quite breathe as I glance over at Vesuvius’s tentacles.
Perhaps they are what kept Lieve in there after we’d destroyed the monsters.
And perhaps my tentacled enemy knew in advance that he was going to need something to keep Lieve in place once the God of Death was murdered.
The tentacles end in round suckers. Just like the impression on Treseano’s face.
I think back to how we asked him where to find his old friend and of how we went in after Treseano cautiously. And how a many-tentacled former god had escaped just after he told us where to find the God of Death. He would have had plenty of time to get there first.
“All I had to do was overpower my rival,” Vesuvius is saying, ignorant of my sudden revelation, “keep him bound, and be sure it was I who slipped from the pearl every time you called a soul out.”
I push aside what he’s saying. I push aside my revelations. None of them mean anything compared to what is before me.
My eyes lock onto Lieve’s and in his are all the things I wished I could have said. All the “I love yous” we’ll never say. All the regrets for the choices we made. All the deep rich feelings that can only be shared between a husband and wife who have been partners for years.
He rips his gaze away to steal a glimpse at Okeanos. I look, too, my gaze flicking from husband to husband, my chest suddenly tight and painful as the breath squeezes out of me.
Lieve’s gaze returns to me and that’s when I know that he understands.
That he knows all that has happened since he died, and when his eyes meet mine, there’s a steely acceptance—almost a bleakness in them—and my breath catches.
He believes I’ve moved on without him. He thinks I’ve forgotten him.
But how could I? The sun could burn to dust and still I would love him as the last warmth of the world crept away. Even if my heart also bends to another.
I want to fly to him, wrench those tentacles from his body, and tell him that I love him yet. That there’s no chance of me ever choosing someone who isn’t Lieve, if there’s a Lieve to choose.
His eyes crinkle around the edges like he’s trying to smile at me. He’s trying to reassure me. I shake my head vehemently.
“You have to let him go,” I choke out. “You can’t hold his soul this way.”
“‘Can’ is a poor choice of words when you consider the evidence of your eyes.” Vesuvius’s words are barely louder than a whisper. “And to think—every time you called me, it could have been him who came out of the pearl, had he only been strong enough.”
If I felt lightheaded before, I feel it even more now.
I called Vesuvius out to advise me so many times and I had no idea that the one whispering in my ear kept my husband’s soul captive throughout it all.
I had no idea that I was opening the door to his tormentor and making him stronger.
How different would things be had Lieve spilled out of the pearl to advise me?
Would I have killed Okeanos? Would we be here now?
A wrenching gasp rips from my mouth.
“I’m waiting for you to congratulate me, Drowned Queen.
For my genius, if you like, or for chewing off my own legs to bind the soul of your beloved.
That takes grit, as well you should know.
After all, did you not just slice off your own finger to treat with us today?
Or if you do not respect me for that, then congratulate me for this—that you can see his soul at all.
It ought to be hidden from all but I who holds its prison—but those tentacles I have him bound with reveal him to you as long as they are present. That’s a clever trick, I think.”
“I love you,” I mouth in despair to Lieve, for there is no way out now. I am trapped coming and going and I cannot wriggle free. I think his eyes well more in response, but his nod is firm.
“And so we come to the point,” Vesuvius says.
“At last,” Aurelius says dryly. “You wear our patience thin as cheesecloth with all this talk.”
“Will you offer me some bargain, Vesuvius?” I ask. My voice shakes and I no longer care. I have come to the end, I think. Both husbands dead. Both in the power of my enemies. And me, powerless to stop any of it. “What more do I have that I could give to you?”
“Five impossible tasks,” Vesuvius says silkily. “Enough to raise the dead. Isn’t that what you’ve been working on for Okeanos? I’m willing to bet that by now you have five complete. Though they need a different name than ‘impossible’ if you’re the one fulfilling them.”
“I’m not going to spend them bringing you back to life,” I say stonily. But now my heart is beating even faster because I don’t have five tasks. I only have four. I have misjudged.
He barks a laugh, but then he stills, growing very serious, and I know we’ve come to the point because Aurelius’s eyes glitter with excitement, too.
“I think you came here tempted to use the power you’ve stored up for a particular purpose,” the God of the Air says. “I think you came to restore to life our old adversary, Okeanos. As I’ve said.”
I swallow and glance at the god in question; I do not know if he even hears us. One arm spasms slightly, but he is far gone now, almost fully sunk beneath the Nightwaters. I don’t know how a person could be deader than dead, but he seems like he is.
I clear my throat from the lump suddenly there and steal a look back at Lieve. His eyes are so full of understanding that I feel my stomach sink. It is as if he walked in and caught me breaking our vows, as if he’s watched me lay my heart out before another, and my cheeks burn with the shame of it.
I muster all my strength to put on a bold face. “If you’re planning to kill me, in order to prevent that, I hear it’s harder to kill gods than you might think.”
Aurelius smirks. “I kill less often than anyone might think. No, I don’t plan to kill you, Drowned Queen. But I do have an offer for you.”
He shifts his grip on his spatha just a little and I clench my teeth as I feel it draw blood and pain from where it nudges my throat.
“You can have the God of the Sea back,” he says, and his eyes taunt me. I don’t believe him. But he knows that.
“Or you can have something better,” Vesuvius adds, and without warning he grabs Lieve and shoves him toward me.