Chapter Twelve Anton
Chapter Twelve
Anton
It was a downright shock to see the girl’s face in the Realm of the Dead.
He remembered her well enough; Sadira and her cohorts had sent her to placate him.
His first thought was that she must have died, and that would have been perfectly fine with him.
A companion, one as appealing as her, wouldn’t hurt if he was to resign himself to live here for the unforeseeable future.
And death had a way of distancing souls from their choices in life.
She wouldn’t have cared about Sadira’s cause for long—a few months, at most.
Upon following her, however, he came to the shocking conclusion that she was not, in fact, deceased.
It was her scent that gave her away.
Souls smelled like wind and smoke or something in between—an aroma he had to get used to.
And so when presented with such a bevy of scents at once—fresh linens, soap-scrubbed skin, nutmeg, and something sweet, like the first bloom of a water lily in the spring—it stood out.
Then Ishu betrayed him and bounded up to her like a long-lost friend, and he realized she’d recognized her, too.
The little minx was here.
But how? Why? Has she been sent to lure him back into the land of the living?
Leaning against a nearby column, he tucks a hand into his gaping, iridescent robe, threaded with emerald and a deep, luminescent blue, and observes her for a good long minute until he decides to make himself known.
Her response rattles him.
“It’s you.”
There’s something about the way she says it, as if he were an answer to some long-forgotten prayer. Like she didn’t expect to see him here at all. Then, to make matters even stranger, she stares like she’s expecting something from him.
“You found a way into this realm,” he says. “How?”
She notches up her chin, her loose plait unraveling around her face. Her hand rests on Ishu’s head—is that a purr he hears? “You made it here, did you not?” she states. “Is it really so difficult to believe I found a way, too?”
Ah, yes. Well, no. Maybe? Moranya opened a new portal for him in Razam, except that it was only supposed to let him in.
Somehow they must have found the portal. Or so he thought. But why send only her?
“They were too afraid to come themselves, is that it?” Perhaps they didn’t have his pendant after all.
Gustav would never have risked being near the Fate of Death without it, so he sent someone in his stead.
Laughable. “Moranya would turn you into soul sludge if she found you, you realize. No mortal may enter except through death.”
“Does that mean you will turn me in?” Her expression is inscrutable.
As if in answer, Ishu lets out a small growl. He chooses to ignore it.
“Depends on your answer,” he says with a shrug. “I want to know why you are here. The truth.” Not that he expects her to give it.
She bites her lip—a motion his gaze snags on. “My stepmother,” she says after a moment. “I am here because I—I need to find her.” She looks like she wants to say something more—like she’s desperate to, strangely—and yet her mouth snaps shut.
“What an adorable little lie,” he muses. “Almost as adorable as you.”
“I’d give anything to find her,” she says, notching up her chin. “But yes, I have come to appeal to you, too. That’s what you want to hear, isn’t it?”
How very astute. “What, then, could your appeal possibly be?”
“Simply that we wish you to come home.” Her nails curl into her palm as if she’s clenching a secret. “Your people—your friends—need you.”
“My friends?” His neck heats, the anger he’s worked so hard to forget simmering once more.
“Let us recount, shall we? My dearest friend stole my country and crown, and the rest of my so-called friends helped him do it—after which I was kept isolated for the better part of a month. Tell me, little minx, why should I play nice with liars and thieves?”
“Whatever Moranya offered you,” she squeezes out—almost as if she’s choking on it—“you haven’t decided whether or not to accept. Because whatever it is, there is a part of you still tethered to your true home. Consider the reason for that.”
“The reason?” He laughs—a caustic sound.
“You speak of things you do not know. And if I were you,” he says, forcing her to retreat a step, “I would be on my hands and knees, thanking Moranya for the offer she made me. Because had she not, I could have returned to Miridran once I escaped. And do you know what I would have done? Take a guess.” She shakes her head, and he spits, “It is because I did not that Miridran is spared from civil war at my hands. That half my court and council are not strung up before the palace gates. Luckily for them, Moranya made me realize that such a fight was not worth my time. They will all end up here in the end—subject not just to her judgment, but mine.”
Ishu nudges between them, as if to separate them, but he doesn’t back down.
Neither does she.
“Whatever this act,” she says, “you love your people. You would not harm them.”
“Love,” he says lowly, “is a fairy tale. A mortal king loves his people because they give him power. To think otherwise is na?ve.”
It had taken him far too long to learn that, proving just how much of a fool he had been. Time and time again, those close to him had betrayed him the moment Illian padded their purse. He had thought Gustav and Basile were different.
He thought wrong. The only difference was who lined their pockets in the end. Rather than his brother, it had been the queen he worked so hard to pacify. Whom he had thought was a confidante. A mentor, even.
“I don’t believe you,” she says. “I don’t think you believe yourself, either.”
Presumptuous little mouse. He opens his mouth, but to what? Refute? Argue with the tiny mortal, for all the good it would do? He reminds himself that his anger, misplaced as it is, is entirely useless. A moot point.
And he recognizes this for the tactic it is.
How expertly she’s dodged his questions and derailed him all in one go.
The only thing he hasn’t admitted to himself is just how attractive he finds her, especially now that she’s so…
combative. But she’s more trouble than she’s worth.
Despite her claims, he’s starting to think perhaps Sadira or Gustav sent her here to see what else they might steal.
Why stop at just the one kingdom? Perhaps they want this one, too.
Pocketing his hands once more, he merely offers her a slice of a smile. “You are a marvelous actress. Truly, I can’t help but like you, fruitless as your endeavor might be. A shame you have to go back.” He reaches for her arm—
“Allow me to stay,” she says, swinging out of his reach. “Please, at least let me search for my stepmother.”
“Find her in death like everyone else,” he says. “You will have an eternity to do so. This is no place for a mortal.”
Even if she would be pleasant to keep around. To look at.
“She saved my life.” It comes out in a rasp that grinds at the rock he used to call a heart. “And she was killed for doing it.”
He feels the truth in that, though something still doesn’t add up.
She catches him off guard, then, when she steps toward him. “Please, Sire. If I am to fail in my quest to convince you, at least help me reunite with her. I—I won’t speak of Sadira or the past. I vow it.”
Ishu circles them now, her tail nudging against them both.
“Touching,” he says. “But though Moranya has granted me power over this dominion, she has not allowed me to reunite loved ones. Souls must find their way back to one another themselves; such are the laws of this place. I cannot help you.”
“The codices state a soul’s lodgings.” She’s close now—far too close for his liking. “Permit me to stay and search for her here myself.”
“Then what? Will you stay here? Give up your mortal life and exist among the dead?” He shakes his head.
For all he wouldn’t mind her company, he doesn’t think it right to condemn her to this fate so early on.
“You will have an eternity here soon enough. I will return you to the mortal world. Finish out your life. It is likely shorter than you think.” With that, he reaches for her arm—
“I’ll dance for you,” she blurts out.
He freezes mid-swallow. Almost chokes. “Come again?”
“On the condition that you let me stay,” she says, that tantalizing hip jutting just so. “Each evening, I will dance for you.”
A dancer. Really? She’s a Fates-damned dancer. He can’t help the crawl of his gaze, the way he runs it over her slip of a frame. The divot of her waist. The curve of her thighs…His imagination swings into action—
He scrubs a hand over his face. No.
Maybe?
She misinterprets his silence. “I am offended at your skepticism, Sire.”
That glare could cut glass.
“You…don’t exactly seem light on your feet,” he says. He saw her attempt to run.
A flush paints her cheeks, flaring brighter. Is that a temper he detects? Oh, please let it be a temper.
“The choice is yours, Sire.” That last word—she draws it out as if in mock salute. “Accept my offer or turn me away.” Idly, her fingers dip to her throat and down farther, to her tunic, but she drops her hand when she sees him looking.
“You have yet to see my parties. They would scandalize you.”
“Because you think I’m innocent?”
“Are you not?” he asks, folding his arms—irresistibly amused now.
“I don’t feel compelled to answer that, Sire. Are you rejecting my offer?”
“Many of my souls dance.”
“Not the way I do.”
His brows rise of their own accord. “How so?”
She folds her arms, mimicking his stance. “You’ll have to see for yourself.”
Fiery, haughty little thing. He drags a thumb across his chin. “They called you Vastianna. Back in Sadira’s palace. Yes?”
“They did.”
It doesn’t escape him that she evaded his questions about how she got in. This is likely still some ploy by his former friends, and yet his curiosity is insatiable now.
He narrows the final distance between them, so close she’s but a breath away. Admittedly, he hopes to unsettle her right back. Rouse her even more.
“All right, then, Vastianna,” he says finally.
He stretches a finger out, trails it down the line of her delicate throat.
“You will dance for me every night during my evening soirées until I tire of you. In return, I will keep up your ruse of blending in. If the souls discover you are a mortal, it will cause quite the stir. Not to mention, they’ll likely find ways to torment you. ”
She swallows beneath his touch. “And Moranya. Will she find out?”
“Should that happen, I would be the one to deal with that headache,” he says.
“You said she would turn me to soul sludge if she knew I was here.”
“She won’t, because I will keep your secret for now. And I will instruct the Aegis to do the same.”
“The Aegis?”
“Oh, you know, those soulless, brainless spirits who enforce the rules of the realm.”
She thinks it over. “What if I wanted to appeal to Moranya directly?”
“There is no appealing to Moranya. You are not permitted to be in her presence, for one. And if she did find you, she wouldn’t listen to a word you said.”
Again she bites that plush bottom lip. Her top lip, he notices, is thinner. Heart-shaped, and rather pleasing at that.
“Fine then,” she says, stepping back. “We have an accord.”
“I expect you on the fourth-floor pavilion in two hours,” he says, unable to help a grin…“Wear something blue.”