Chapter 30
Dominic told the Andreilians to meet them in the morning at the western gate to the city, then disappeared into a tavern. Shortly after, he emerged with a bottle of red wine, and took Adara’s hand in his.
They found an empty dock, far from the likes of the stragglers still awake this deep into the night. Uncorking the bottle and setting it on the wooden planks, he sat down and slipped off his boots, letting his feet dangle into the icy water. Adara did the same.
She lifted the glass to her lips.
Her scarred hands caught his eye. It was strange to see her bare hands. “No gloves today?” he blurted, wondering why she wore them. She wasn’t ashamed of her scars, so why cover them?
“Wouldn’t look right with the dress,” she replied, inspecting a hand.
“But the boots do?” He laughed.
Adara leaned over to bump him in the shoulder with her own.
“No one could see the shoes.” Once again, she looked at her damaged hands with indifference.
“I cover them because one, people could identify me as the Phoenix by my scars, and two,” she shot him a pointed look, “so people like you don’t ask about them all the time. ”
Dominic smirked. “In that case, how’d you get the scars?”
She shook her head, trying to suppress a grin. “You just love to get on my nerves, don’t you?”
“It’s been my favorite hobby since you arrived on the island.”
She sighed, lifting her hand and turning it at different angles in front of them, showing off the massive scars.
“Training,” she said simply, and for a minute, he thought that was all the answer he’d get.
“I was training one day with my magic,” she started.
“I went too far, lost my grip on reality. My powers spiraled out of control. Luckily, my father was there to stop me in time before any real damage was done.”
Dominic didn’t understand how she could dismiss her injuries so easily. To him, her mutilated hands seemed to be real damage, but he supposed it was nothing compared to what else she was capable of if her fire got out of hand.
“I burned my hands. That’s all there is to it.”
Her tone was flippant, but Dominic sensed the underlying misery. “What’s the story of Elysian?”
Adara’s eyes flickered with hope, her pain fading away. Happy to tell the stories of her gods, she started, “Goddess of Life. Long ago, before time even existed, when our world—all worlds—were nothing but dust between the stars, two gods fell in love: Elysian and Belor.”
Dominic choked on a laugh. “Life and Death fell in love?” he asked incredulously. Another reason he did not deign to believe in the gods. Their stories were outrageously, ridiculously unrealistic. “Impossible. Even if it was, wouldn’t their hearts want two very different things?”
“Not quite,” Adara mused. “Yes, they are vastly different, but the heart wants to be touched, to be held. That is why it beats relentlessly against the cage of ribs holding it captive. It wants to shed its armor, to be set free, to be loved, despite the possibility it will be broken.”
Dominic snorted. “Good thing I don’t have one.”
Adara sighed heavily, gazing out over the undulating sea. “One day, Nite, you will find that having a heart is not a weakness but a strength.”
“We shall see,” he said.
She pinned him with a forlorn stare, her lips pressing into a line, an expression that conveyed pity.
It was gone in a flash. “Anyway, as the universe started changing, more gods arose, waging wars of their own, forging our worlds as their battlegrounds.
Throughout it all, Elysian and Belor were separated, for Life and Death were never meant to be so close.
Calandra, Moira, and Kairos—the Goddesses of Love and Fate, and the God of Time—forbid it.
It defied the laws of nature. One who created and one who destroyed could never work out together.
“But Elysian refused to give up on her love so easily. Hope stood by her side, guiding her, helping her create the thing we call life.” Adara’s eyes darted around the empty harbor before a dull blue flame flickered to life in her palm.
The embers wove between her fingers as she bent them to her will, morphing them into images as she continued the story.
“Elysian experimented with many forms of life.” The flames transformed into little hands with strings attached to them, puppeteering things to life.
The strings fell into her palm, pulling up fire from Adara’s skin in the shape of trees.
Little fiery animals ran wild along her palms. “Then she created the most complex life form of all: humans.
“With each new life Elysian made, she sent them on their way to Belor. She’d place them in a certain realm and let the rest work itself out because she knew Belor would be waiting with open arms at the end of it all.
“Elysian’s creations of life were meant to be a gift to Belor, a way of showing her everlasting affection, despite the fact that they were doomed to be apart forever. She made more gifts and sent them on their path, where Belor would collect them at the end, keeping them forever.
“But what Elysian didn’t know was that Belor was overwhelmed with heartbreak and grief. He cherished her gifts . . . at first. As time went on, he felt like she was taunting him, holding his heart on a leash, teasing him with a love that could never be.”
Adara never broke contact with her magic.
The flames danced and twined around her fingers, holding the universe in her hands.
They moved along with the story, the emotions, dwindling to embers barely visible or climbing higher as if trying to escape her clutches.
It didn’t take seeing her magic for Dominic to realize how much emotion Adara felt in the two gods’ tragic love story.
She believed in them with her whole heart.
He didn’t know all that she went through, but he’d been able to read the pain in her eyes when she talked about her past. He couldn’t fathom how she could have so much faith in the gods when it was their fault she’d been broken.
Leaving his questions to be answered for another time, Dominic listened intently as she went on.
“That’s when he created Helfarrow. An eternity of misery for every useless thing Elysian had sent him.
He indeed kept all her gifts, but not in the way she intended.
Belor tortured them the way they had tortured him—the way Elysian had tortured him by giving him hope for a future they both knew they’d never have. ”
Despite his disbelief, Dominic leaned closer, transfixed by the fire swirling in her hand, silently urging her to go on. The way she told the story, with magic and admiration shimmering in her eyes, made him want to believe anything.
“Eventually, Elysian discovered Belor’s sadistic antics.
She was furious, heartbroken that he would treat her life with such disdain.
Elysian, however, would never resort to violence the way Belor had.
Instead, she continued to create things because this journey we call life is also a gift to us, and she would not take such a beautiful thing away. ”
Dominic almost scoffed at her description. This life was not beautiful. It was filled with hate and suffering. The slums was all the proof he needed. Even with the vibrant decorations for the festival, Lykrios was still some drab, filthy kingdom where even the rats barely managed to make a living.
Adara paid him no mind as she said, “Instead, she began to claim lives before Belor could condemn them to Helfarrow. To this day, both gods seize their opportunity when the time comes to save or destroy a life by sentencing them to Belor’s eternal prison in Helfarrow or Elysian’s infinite salvation in Sengui.
” Adara’s flames dwindled to ash in her palm.
“So what I’m hearing is there is no actual point to all of this?” Dominic asked sullenly. “We are simply a plaything for the gods.”
Adara shook her head. “Life is merely a gift. There is no meaning to it. We live until we die. It is the things we experience along the way that make it worthwhile. Life is what we make it.” She pointed toward the starlit sky.
“Legends say when Elysian claims a life and takes them to Sengui, you can see them from our world. They are the stars. And the constellations are made up of pieces of the gods. That one”—she moved her hand to the left, pointing at a jumble of stars— “is Elysian.”
Dominic angled his head, trying to see what she was seeing, but it was all a mess of white dots on a canvas of black to him, nothing more than bright lights in random shapes that he used to navigate the seas.
“And those,” Adara continued, finger shifting up, “are the Eyes of Elysian. They watch over us . . . always.”
Lifting a hand, he pointed to the twinkling stars. “Those?”
Adara gently grasped his hand and moved it ever so slightly, leaning in close to him so she could see the sky from his perspective. Her lavender scent enveloped him, and he gladly breathed it in. He would prefer to get drunk on it rather than the wine he had yet to touch.
“Those,” she confirmed, fingers lingering on his.
He dropped his hand back down to his side, hers following. If there truly was a god watching over him, how could they let this happen? How could they let the world suffer?
Yet there was another part of him that wanted to believe her. “Tell me more,” he urged.
A wide grin radiated from Adara, and she immediately launched into more stories.
He learned that the Crowned Pantheon—the gods Malrynians worshipped—were the only ones born deities.
Elysian, Belor, Calandra, Kairos, and Moira.
Life, death, love, time, and fate—the five pillars on which the universe stood.
But Blemythians worshipped twenty-seven, the others having risen to divinity with their acts as mortals.
Adara said that Kairos and Moira were the best of friends, writing stories together as fate and time intertwined.