Page 24 of The Deathless One
“I do not know whether to tell you to be afraid of yourself, Jessamine. Your path is yours to walk. Do youwantpeople to fear you?”
Yes,a voice whispered in her mind.I do.
But she shook her head. “You said those were ancestors in my dreams?”
“They are usually the ones who summon our spirits out of our bodies to speak with us, yes.” Sybil turned to leave, pausing in the doorway to look back at her. “You shouldn’t be afraid of them either.”
“Why were they covered in ink?”
Jessamine didn’t imagine the way those curled hands suddenly clutched at the wooden frame of the door. The inhalation of breath, and the way Sybil’s eyes widened not with surprise, but fear. “Covered in ink?”
“They were dripping with it. Just like the Deathless One.” She wrapped her arms around herself, shuddering in the brisk wind that came in through the open window. “They told me not to trust him and to rip him apart. I don’t know what that means.”
Sybil sagged against the door, her spine rounding and her hunched figure looking more like the ancient crone she was. “The gravesingers spoke with you.”
“You said there weren’t any gravesingers left.”
“They all sacrificed themselves,” she muttered. “The last of their kind, to keep him locked away. To take his magic and save our world. Along with the coven, the gravesingers sacrificed the last living god, stripped his power, and tried to use it to cure the plague. We knew what we were doing. We knew that by sacrificing all who could bring him back at the same time, that it was the only magic this realm would ever see again. At least, so we thought, until you. But the spell failed, and then there was no one left to get magic from.”
“Then they’re all dead?”
“Except you.”
Jessamine shook her head. “Who was talking to me, then?”
Haunted eyes stared back at her. “What remains of a great dynasty of women. They are the last vestiges of magic that linger in the realm between, where the Deathless One is bound. They wished to give you a warning, and perhaps a prophecy of their own.”
“So they want me to hurt him?”
“No, Jessamine. They want to you follow in their footsteps.”
Sybil slipped out the door and left Jessamine with only lingering questions and a continued icy feeling that trailed down her spine. If the people who had come before her wanted her to follow in their footsteps, did that mean they wanted her to sacrifice herself?
She lay down on the rags that covered the floor and couldn’t help but feel like that wasn’t at all what they were asking.
They wanted her to take from the Deathless One and use his power. To do what? She had no idea. She wasn’t a witch. She didn’t know how to cure the plague, and if that was what they wanted… they would be sorely disappointed.
The Deathless One sat in the corner of her room, his fingers steepled and pressed against his lips. Every time he visited her in the living realm, it drained some of his magic. But he was learning.
He had to gather up his magic from that realm of endless power that was his to control. He had to bring it with him, because he had no connection to that realm here. If he had a body, he would be connected to both living and dead. But for now, he was limited by his spectral form, which could only store so much power. His strength would ebb, and he would find himself sucked back into the same shadow realm where he had existed before.
It was infuriating.
And it was more infuriating that he even wanted to see her. He had things to do in that realm of darkness. Plans to make for the moment he was released from his confines. Now that he had a reason to be awake and aware, he remembered almost everything that he’d lost.
Jessamine had made that happen, even if unwillingly. She had awakened the demon deep inside him, and now he wanted to seize the world again. He would punish the witches for what they had done to him, even if that meant that he had to scour the earth for the few living ones remaining.
This one would bring him into an age of ruin when he would finally get his revenge, and she didn’t know how much it would eventually hurt her. Although, considering the past few nights he’d been watching over her, he suspected she might know something.
She lay on that pile of rags like a lost soul he’d found in the rubble of a fallen empire. Legs splayed, her skirt had ridden up those pale thighs. Though he couldn’t see that much of her, the sight of her skin made a fire rage in his chest.
He wanted her, and that was a problem. The last time he’d wanted a gravesinger, it had ended poorly for him. No one could blame him for thinking she would be the same.
If she was like the others, then she would soon try to seduce him. She would wriggle her way underneath his guard and then be angry when he didn’t give her everything that she wanted. The pouting and the tears would get under his shell even more. Pathetic creatures like her had always been his weakness.
So he had to beat her to it. He had to seduce her first. Get her under his thumb until she couldn’t think of a life without him. Then, and only then, would he have complete and utter control over her.
“What are you doing here?” Sybil’s quiet voice interrupted his staring at the little woman currently curled in the bundle of rags.
