32. It Is Not Home Without Her
Chapter thirty-two
It Is Not Home Without Her
Athanasius
The pressure of the deep is constant—a comfort, really.
The crushing weight above my palace reminds me that even primordials have places to brood.
The darkness is home, the water surrounds me, black as ink, black as a singularity.
I can see through the piercing veil, the fish, the sharks, the little life that calls this place home.
I had meant to bring her here. My rabbit.
A sanctuary of bone and silence. She would have hated it.
And loved it.
But instead I sleep… and I dream of nothing. Until she calls.
It starts as a whisper—no, not even that. A ripple in the dark. A tremor of something familiar. She’s reaching. Reaching through whatever prison holds her, through the folds of realm and reason, to me.
I sit up.
My vision burns gold. My breath catches like it hasn’t in centuries. She was crying out—no, not with fear. Want. Desperation. For me.
I send something back. A feeling, raw and urgent. A pulse of presence. I don’t know where she is. I don’t care. She needs to feel me.
“Rabbit,” I murmur, voice rough with sleep and fury. “Do it again. Tell me where you are.”
But then… silence. The thread snaps. The echo dies. I taste ash.
My temple groans around me, as if feeling the mood shift. With a sweep of my hand, a pillar—centuries old and made of carved leviathan rib—shatters against the floor. The rest of the structure buckles, collapses. Dust and whale bone rain down like snow.
She was meant to be here. Instead, she’s somewhere out there, surrounded by insects. Pretenders. Traitors. Ambrose. He will answer for this.
I rise, step barefoot over ruins, my body humming with cold rage.
I feel the pulse of it—faint, far above me.
Devotion. Sacrifice. My name. They still gather.
I never cared much for them, the cults. Filthy little dramatists, obsessed with mythology and drenched in incense.
But now? Now, they are useful. I stretch a hand toward the surface, and the deep parts like breath.
A whisper, a call, a tug—and one answers.
He arrives slick with seawater, wheezing, blinking behind gold-rimmed glasses.
An older man. Rich. Stupid. He smells of imported leather and spiritual delusion.
“Master?” he says, awe-struck, trembling.
Of course he is. “I have work for you,” I say.
He bows so low his spine cracks. "Whatever you require, my quintessence."
“My siblings,” I continue, “have eliminated every mage on this miserable plane.”
He nods too fast, eyes bulging. “Yes, yes, Master, they were threats, they—”
“Silence.” He freezes. I circle him once, slowly, like the predator I am.
“There are witches left. Still tied to the old ways. Closer to life, to the rhythms beneath all this noise." My hand waves, and he watches it, awestruck. As he should be. "I need the oldest and the strongest one.”
He gulps. “How… how do I find her?”
“Do I look like your errand boy?” I hiss.
“Use blood, under a full moon. Sacrifice a deer. Or a goat. Or your accountant. I don’t care.
Use the internet. You all have that now, don’t you?
Use your resources. I want her name, her face, and her location in two days.
Or I’ll feast on your marrow.”His face drains.
I flick a hand, and he’s encased in shimmering light—a bubble of breath and warmth. “Go. To. Work.”
With a thunderclap of displaced water, I hurl him skyward.
And then… silence again. The silence I used to enjoy.
I return to the broken remains of my sanctuary and sink to one knee.
I can't stand this feeling. She is ingrained in me so deeply that I cannot function without her near me.
How did I get this way? I want to be angry, upset, I want to hate her for doing this to me, but all I can think about is crowning her as my queen and placing her next to me on a throne of shadow and blood.
I need her. That's when it hits me…she's the one keeping me from falling apart. From slipping back into my old ways.
I close my eyes. I reach—not with magic, not with force, but with everything else. Ione. My rabbit. My terrible, radiant little storm.
Her face flashes before me. Smiling. Then screaming. Her lips are pale. Her skin wet with fear. She stares at me through the veil—reaching, trembling. Her eyes pierce me like they always have. Always will.
I’m coming, rabbit.
Hold on.
Please.