Page 10 of The Deathless One
With a gasp, she shut the heavy cover and locked it so hard she felt her bones grind together. Scuttling back from the entrance, she didn’t stop until her back slammed into the stone wall of a building behind her.
She realized that she was in an alleyway. To her left was the sea, the waves lapping at the stone that angled beneath them. To her right, men and women were setting up stalls filled with fish. The scents overwhelmed her. Ocean, fish, blood. There was so much blood.
Jessamine lifted her hands and realized she was sitting in a river of it. Red fluid, all coming down from the fish stalls in streams on either side of the street. Her palms were stained crimson like her mother’s dress after blood had fountained out of her wound. Red like her palms when she’d tried so hard to stanch the bleeding around her own neck, praying that she wouldn’t die before she hit the waves so hard they felt like stone.
Cold water poured over her head, dousing her entire body with icy seawater. Spluttering, she stood, shaking off the droplets and blinking through the stinging ache.
A round woman stood in front of her, a now-empty bucket clutched in her hands. “You’re filthy, love. Just helping you out.”
Helping her out? By dumping a bucket of dirty water over her head?
Jessamine couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. The tall buildings loomed over her head, drawing closer, sinking tighter, until she could barely see the faint strip of sunlight through the gap between the stones. They’d bury her alive. She’d die again, and she’dmade a deal.
Stumbling away from the woman and the laughter of the fishermen, she found the next alleyway and disappeared into it. Frantically turning left, right, straight, whatever way led her farther and farther from people.
Until she found a small nook between two empty crates and tucked herself there. Shivering, terrified, and utterly alone.
He couldn’t get her future out of his head. Because her future was his future, and they were inextricably linked. She was a witch who could raise him. A witch who could finally bring him back into the land of the living, which he had missed so much.
When?
He did not know.
A gravesinger hadn’t been born in hundreds of years. Her kind had made certain that they would not be born again, not wanting to give him the opportunity to raise himself and seek his vengeance. Witches like her were rare, and witches of any sect had been nearly wiped out. But before she could free him, she would have to learn.
The Deathless One had control only in his realm of darkness and sleep. The living realm remained just out of his reach without the witches to anchor him. But he and this girl were not anchored together. He had no way of knowing when she would seek him out—but gravesingers always did. They were lost without their connection to a god, and he was all that remained.
The gravesingers had sacrificed themselves many years ago, but there were still plenty of people who remembered what it was to worship a god and know the blessing of that god’s favor. Witches remained, even some still connected to him. Though they were in hiding, he could find them. There were ways to see into their realm, to reach out to those who still walked the ancient path.
Conjuring a mirror in front of him, made out of inky oil that dripped onto his toes, was far easier than he had thought it would be. The Deathless One had spent so many years in this sad place, he had forgotten his innate power. A god did not have to wait for the witches. His magic came from deep within his bones. Yes, these old memories threatened to swallow him up, but they did not control him. Not entirely. Not yet.
Clutching the edges of the cold mirror in his hand, he peered into her realm. He sought out his little nightmare. The woman who had been born for him, to whom he’d given new life to fulfill her purpose and satisfy his revenge. But what he found disappointed him. She had not stormed back to her castle and rained havoc down upon the head of her murderer. No, she had gone to the streets, slithering about in the shadows like a snake cringing from the slightest movement.
Why? She was powerful. Capable of anchoring him to the living realm and tying him to reality. Soon, she would be linked to him. Surely she felt it. She must have seen that her gaze now mirrored his, haunted and black as night. Instead, she scuttled from shadow to shadow, hiding behind barrels with haunted wide eyes.
That… disturbed him.
He didn’t remember why until after a few days of watching her movements. He saw her steal food from a vendor, who chased her off with a knife in his hand. She tripped over her skirt and fell into a mud puddle, and the man had snatched the bread back with a sneer and left her there. She lay shivering in the water, her head bleeding from where she’d hit it against the cobblestones.
She was filthy. Ragged around the edges. Clearly in need of help, and yet no one reached out to her. This was not the city he had helped his witches build.
In his time, the witches were powerful. They had been scorned like this in his early days of godhood, until he had reached out a hand to them. He’d made them powerful. Dangerous. Terrifying to all who looked upon them.
No one would dare treat a witch the way this human refuse treatedher. They wouldn’t dare look at a witch with pity or refuse her entry to their home.
His little nightmare flinched again, freezing in fear before darting away to hide. Then he saw them. Figures standing at the end of the alleyway she’d walked into. He needed to see more. Stretching his awareness, he sent his mind down that street through the darkness on windowpanes and the inky black of puddles underneath their feet. Then he remembered.
A plague. A sickness unlike anything this realm had seen. These people stood frozen in the streets, their arms bent awkwardly at their sides like they didn’t remember how to hold them. Pustules burst all over their bodies, revealed through the tears in their clothing. Slack-jawed, they remained still as if listening for their next prey. They had but one urge: to find the next person to infect.
So, his last witches had failed. Even though they had murdered their own god, forsaking all their future power, they had not saved the kingdom that had hunted and feared them for centuries. Self-sacrifice, in the end, had earned them nothing.
The coven.
There were few alive who still worshipped the dead god they had killed and thereby condemned their world to utter madness. But he could feel them, living, breathing, practicing. All he had to do was reach out.
Casting one last glance back to his frightened, frozen deer in that alleyway, he turned his attention away from the witch who could awaken him. She would find her own path, he was confident of that. Though she was terrified and surely felt as though everyone had abandoned her, he knew the truth.
Lady Jessamine Harmsworth would soon have the most powerful patron she had ever dreamed of. And together, they would lay waste to all who stood in her way.
