Chapter 6 - ELLA
Okay, maybe antagonizing a being who could snap me in half with two fingers wasn’t my best move. Whatever he was—god, demon, angel, alien—pissing him off seemed like a fast track to an early grave.
But damn if he didn’t get under my skin.
Forty thousand years is nothing, he’d said. Nothing. My jaw clenched so tight I thought my teeth might crack. Who the hell did he think he was?
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I shot back, my voice dripping with sarcasm.
“Forty thousand years of clawing our way out of caves, building cities, surviving plagues, inventing fire, art, music, medicine—learning to fly, for God’s sake—just doesn’t count?
We’ve been through hell and back in the blink of an eye, and you think it’s pathetic?
Yeah, well, I’d love to see how your people would’ve handled an ice age or the Black Death with nothing but sharp rocks and opposable thumbs. ”
I could have gone on—oh, I wanted to go on—but his expression shifted.
Almost pity. Almost condescension.
“You misunderstand,” he said, in a steady tone, the kind of voice that vibrated in my bones.
“Your kind has crawled through shadows, yes. But it was the Arkhevari who lit the stars you looked up at. We seeded the worlds. Populated the void. The echoes of us are in every empire you’ve ever dreamed of. ”
My throat went dry. Whatever sarcastic retort I’d had lined up shriveled before it could leave my tongue. Populated the universe? Lit the stars?
I stared at him, suddenly very aware of just how far out of my depth I was.
He must have seen it in my face, because his mouth curved into something not quite a smile. “Enough for tonight. You need rest.”
The words hit me like a bucket of cold water. Rest. Like he was tucking me in. Like I was a child who had thrown a tantrum and now needed a bed.
Heat rushed to my cheeks. “I don’t need you telling me when to—”
“Yes, you do,” he cut in, final, absolute.
I opened my mouth to argue, but he was already moving, his long stride forcing me to scramble to keep up or be left alone in this ginormous palace of his.
“Come,” he ordered, not even glancing back.
The halls curved in impossible ways, archways that seemed to ripple like liquid before solidifying again, walls alive with faint veins of light that pulsed in time with a heartbeat I couldn’t hear.
The air smelled faintly metallic, threaded with spice I couldn’t name.
He stopped before a tall door etched with shifting sigils, their lines sliding across the surface like constellations rearranging themselves.
With a brush of his hand, the symbols flared gold, and the door peeled open without a sound.
My jaw nearly dropped.
The chamber inside was bigger than my old apartment building, the ceiling so high it disappeared into darkness.
A bed dominated the center—if you could call it a bed.
It floated a few feet off the ground, its surface glowing faintly, draped in something that shimmered like woven starlight.
Around it, translucent curtains hung from nothing, drifting like mist but holding shape, iridescent colors flickering through them as if they were alive.
Instead of lamps, hovering globes of liquid light drifted lazily through the space, rising and falling as if breathing. A low table stretched along one wall, carved from something that looked like obsidian and set with vessels that gleamed like molten crystal.
And the floor… the floor was unlike anything I’d ever seen. Black glass that reflected the whole room back at me, broken by swirls of gold that moved like ink in water, curling with every step I took.
“This will do,” Zapharos said flatly, as though he’d just led me into some broom closet instead of a room fit for a queen.
I stood frozen, staring around me. “This is… a room?”
“A chamber for rest,” he corrected, folding his arms. “Your chamber. You will stay here.”
I swallowed, turning back toward him. His aura cast long shadows against the shimmering curtains, his golden light flickered with threads of red, the black still lingering faintly at the edges. His eyes were too dark, too intense, and for a moment I forgot how to breathe.
He was beautiful. Incredibly, impossibly beautiful—like one of those Greek gods I’d studied in museums and textbooks. No, it was more than that. The statues were cold, lifeless marble. He was warmth and fire, terrifying and alive in ways that made the air between us vibrate.
Even when he was being a condescending ass, he carried charisma like a weapon, an aura that pulled me toward him as surely as gravity. I told myself it had to be some alien trick, some chemical or psychic lure meant to draw me closer. But deep down, I didn’t believe it. Deep down, it felt real.
I couldn’t look away. For a long, suspended moment, we simply stared at each other, caught in something I couldn’t name.
Then his hand lifted, his fingers brushed my cheek, warm against my skin, and a shiver raced down my spine.
He leaned closer, his lips parted, and he whispered that word again. “Aelyth.”
The sound of it curled around me like a spell. My breath hitched, and when I spoke, my voice came out soft, breathless even to my own ears. “What does that mean?”
For the first time, something flickered in his eyes, something unguarded. His thumb traced my cheekbone, and he answered in a voice low and rough, as though the word itself carried weight even he couldn’t quite bear.
“It means balance,” he murmured. “It means… the other half of what I am, what I was forged without. What I was never meant to find again.”
His hand lingered, but his jaw tightened, as a shadow swept across his features. “It means you.”
The word hit me like a blow.
Me.
I wanted to deny it, to laugh, to run. But standing in that alien chamber with his aura flickering around us, all I could do was stare up at him—drawn, terrified, and unable to pull away.
For a heartbeat, I thought he was going to kiss me.
The air between us crackled, his hand still pressed warm against my cheek, his mouth was close enough that I swore I could feel his breath.
My stomach flipped, my pulse raced out of control; I was terrified and exhilarated all at once.
But then he pulled back, his jaw tightened once again, and his eyes shuttered shut.
Without a word, he turned on his heel and strode away, with his aura trailing like the tail of a storm.
I stood frozen, staring after him until the curtains/door swallowed his silhouette.
What the hell just happened?
I pressed my hands to my face, trying to catch my breath. None of it made sense: him, me, this place, my life. What even was my life anymore? Was I even alive? Or was this some cursed afterlife some sick entity thought I deserved?
I didn't even know if it was night or day. I hadn’t seen a sun since Rotodex was swallowed, yet somehow there was light everywhere here—pale and shifting, cast by fires that burned blue and sigils that glowed with no source at all.
And the way we moved from one place to the next, floating through empty space like it was nothing, like gravity and distance didn’t exist.
I’d never been good at physics, but even I knew this wasn’t how the universe was supposed to work. My head started to pound, and I pressed my palms harder into my temples. Too much. Too big. I couldn’t wrap my mind around it.
And I definitely didn’t want to think about that… thing—that Morlock creature with the glowing eyes and blood-stained teeth. A shudder racked through me. I curled into myself on the shimmering bed, wishing for a moment of silence, of normal, of anything I could understand.
But there was no normal here. Not anymore.
When I woke, my head was full of static and sand and a music-box whine that made the world wobble.
For a moment—less than a moment, an echo—I thought I’d made it home.
The impossible city, the Abyss, all of it: a narcotic dream, a trick of fever, or perhaps the psych ward’s best pharmaceuticals.
It was so easy to believe. The sheets were silk, or something like it.
The ceiling arched overhead, painted with pale gold glyphs that seemed to pulse and rearrange themselves if I looked too long.
Definitely some drug-induced hallucination.
Even the air tasted different, sweet and cold.
If I concentrated hard enough, I could almost remember my old bedroom, the pitted white paint, the crack that spidered from the corner of the window.
My mother’s voice, sharp and worried in the next room.
My father’s footsteps on the stairs. For an instant, I was a child again, waking from nightmares and knowing that if I called loud enough, someone would come running.
Until I turned, and just like that, the illusion shattered.
A figure, tall and silver, stood at the foot of the bed. Its skin was a flawless mercury, so thin I could see the blue arteries curl beneath. Its coppery eyes were fixed on me with the patient intensity of a surveillance camera. It wore a flowing yellow dress that, like its wearer, didn’t move.
I recoiled, sending the covers skittering to the floor. “Jesus—!”
The figure tilted its head, as if it had all the time in the world to observe my panic. Its voice, when it came, was a smooth, androgynous monotone. “The master is waiting. You are to join him for breakfast.”
I gawked, and it took me a moment to remember the servant from last night. I hadn't paid close enough attention to discern if this one was the same. “Were you… watching me sleep?” I managed to push out, since my throat was still thick with sleep and confusion.
The servant didn’t answer. Instead, it—he? I’m going with he—offered me a shallow bow, impeccable, precise, dismissive. As if even acknowledging the question was beneath him.