Page 52 of These Eternal Bones
“The only being capable of creating life is God.”
He laughs at that, but it’s a cold, bitter sound. “There are many gods, and humans have long overstated their purpose. I didn’t create life, Molly, I ended it. I took the beauty and sanctity of life and perverted it because I could not stand to be alone. I created many and set the scourge loose in the world without as much as a thought spared for them.”
“You-you’re a god?”
The expression that falls over him is best described as a grimace, one that bears his fangs, and with it, he snaps. “It did me little good when I could not save a single life! All mygodlypower and I could not prevent this fucking hell! You cannot understand because you canforget! You always forget, and I am cursed with the memories, the ghosts of you!”
“What do you mean?” I sniffle, tears streaming down my face. “What did I forget?”
A savage growl tears through his throat as he shifts away from my back, leaving me tied down by his tendrils. Mere seconds pass before his hands grasp my face, his forehead thudding against mine. “I will not spend what little time we have speaking about old pain. Even within an existence of agony, I have you! That is enough. Let it be enough. Every waking moment, I am ridden by this need, this sick fucking impulse, and I cannot stop it. I cannot stop myself from killing you!”
An ugly, ragged sob breaks free from my chest. “You would never hurt me,never. Please, please tell me so that I can help you.”
If it is possible for a heart to bleed, mine does. The moment that inky black substance that fills his being pools in his eyes, a single obsidian tear spills over as his lips capture mine in a kiss. It’s not the soft, adoring ones I’m used to, nor the heated ones that raze my soul. This kiss is desperation, longing unlike anything I felt before. “I have loved you in all of your lives.”
Péal’s words flood me, Tien’s odd comments rushing with them to the front of my mind. “Elric I–”
His lips silence me again. “I have kissed you more times than there are stars in the sky, and somehow each feels like the first. Molly, you said you had held onto your love because you were saving it forme. You have no idea how right you were, because for all my immortal life,youhave beenmine. One hundred and seventy-two years, I waited to see you again.”
I nearly choke on the sob that bubbles up my throat. “I am not–”
“But youare,my love. Your soul is tied to mine. It is why you feel incomplete. It is why you wander in every life until you find your way home tome.”
I shake my head, my heart bursting with grief for him. His mind is so riddled with grief and loss that it has fractured with time. Can a god go mad?
Surely not.
But he is…right?
“I am just Molly,” I breathe.
The smile he offers me is sad, my hands shaking as I wipe the inky tear from his cheek. “And you are perfect, wondrously beautiful. I wouldn’t want anyone else. I am sorry.”
“Whatever for?” I sniffle.
“Because you have paid the price for my crimes more times than I can bear, and you will again. There is nothing I can do to stop this. To stop from losing you. To stop this horrible grief. There is nothing I can do to make you remember me, but God, how I havelovedyou. There is no being or creature alive that could compare to the way my soul bleeds foryou. I am an open wound until you come and balm the ache.” His words rush out, like he’d been holding them there on the tip of his tongue for a lifetime.
My mind races wildly, thoughts battering the walls of my brain like wasps. “Then why are you so sad?”
“Because I will lose you again, and it is my fault.”
The sounds that leave me next are guttural at best, because despite all his madness, his weaning mind…his wordsfeelright. My soul seems to throb and pulse with the weight of them. For a moment, I can understand how he’s gotten to this point. I can understand the blank, lifeless stares, the weeks without sleep, pacing, and agonizing. If one moment sends me tendering over the edge, I cannot fathom an–
How long, god, how long has he suffered this?
It is fantastical and heartbreaking when my disbelief leaves me.
My mate.
A god.
“How long?” I sob as he gathers me to his chest. “How many times have I died?”
He doesn’t answer with anything except that song, the eerie soft humming battling with my sobs as he blurs to his bedroom and settles us on the bed. Not a word is traded between us as I cry, as I grieve a part of myself that I can barely wrap my head around, let alone recognize. His comfort comes in his closeness, a shared pain that lurked between the cracks of my very being, one I had no name for until now. There are no sweet mumblings that can fix an ache like this, so he holds me, I suspect, long past the point that the sobs stop and my body gives in to exhaustion.
26
Syringa
