Page 4 of The Deathless One
“This is my home,” Jessamine replied, her voice thick. “You cannot take it from me.”
He inhaled deeply in her ear, and then sighed long and slow. “Oh, princess. I already have.”
One of the guards slid his blade across her mother’s throat. A gush of bright red erupted from the wound, spilling out and sinking into the deep blue sea of her dress. The hard set of her mother’s eyes never changed. Her jaw clenched, her fingers fisted the fabric of her skirts, but she barely reacted. Through it all, the queen of Inverholm never flinched. She greeted death as an old friend and died with grace and beauty.
Any of the old guard, the still-living noblemen and noblewomen who had renounced them, would remember the moment when their queen had died for no reason. Their eyes turned as one to Jessamine.
She held herself stiffly, refusing to look afraid or even feel an ounce of that fear. Leon still held her, his arm around her shoulders, the prison he created with his body still strong.
“Should I let the infected have you?” he asked, his voice rumbling behind her. “Should I feed you to our mutual problem?”
She trembled in his arms but did not reply.
Leon tsked. “No, I think I’d best fix this permanently, rather than have you wandering around. After all, if I’m going to sit on the throne, I cannot have anyone threatening my claim.”
The cold press of a blade against her throat should have frightened her. But she accepted her death with the glint of steel in her own gaze as she memorized every face of every traitor who had touched one of her people.
“Goodbye, Lady Jessamine,” Leon murmured in her ear. He wrenched the knife across her throat, sending a kaleidoscope of pain through her entire body. And with a twist of his arms, he sent her tumbling over the edge of the cliff and into the sea.
His existence was only ice and pain.
Centuries of it.
Memories flickered through his mind. Bitter iron biting through his wrists after a hundred years of being chained to a wall. The hot sting of blades against his skin as they cut through his flesh for a single drop of ichor. The hissing laughter of a hundred witches as they used him, destroyed him, purged their hatred of the world by ripping out his organs and masticating what was left behind.
He was inevitable. The end for all things. And still they had destroyed him, bit by ever-darkening bit.
He couldn’t remember much of the living realm. Only that the scent of green grass had once made his mind calm. He remembered the featherlight touch of yarrow as he ran his fingers through the fine white petals, like lace. And he remembered the shimmering darkness of a raven as it looked into his eyes and reminded him that all the gods were dead.
All but him.
That was right. The humans called him the Deathless One. He who escaped the end of all things. The end of magic and life itself.
All the gods were dead, they claimed. But one was still alive. One who lingered in the darkness, in the shadows, waiting…waiting…
For what, he could not remember.
He drifted through this endless night, his body floating on a lake as inky dark as the starless sky, his eyes staring unseeing into the mass ofnothing above his head. Hadn’t there used to be stars? He thought he remembered the little pinpricks of light that had always captivated him. He could have lain in a field and watched them for months if the sun hadn’t come and washed them all away. Even then, he wouldn’t mind staring into the sun just to savor the bright spots left in his gaze.
That was right. There had been stars. And a sun. And grass that tickled the back of his head, and little grasshoppers that bounced up and down his arms.
Until someone had come with a knife, reminding him that there was only one good end for a deathless god like him.
Sacrifice.
Pain.
Darker memories threatened to swallow him up again, sinking him into the muck. Dark hands rose out of the inky liquid, pressing against his face and digging into his jaw. They tried to turn his head toward the bitter memories, the ones that turned acidic and rotten in his mind.
But he wanted just a few more moments in that field. With the sun moving across dappled leaves, and the feeling of a breeze cooling the sweat on his skin. Oh, it had been wondrous, and the world had been so kind, until witches had found him and turned it all to shit.
Baring his teeth in a snarl, he ripped at the ink. The hands tried to pull him back, to make him wallow in the memories that seared through his very soul. He would not allow them to. Not this time. Not when he was so close to remembering the softer moments they always stole from his mind.
No, he would not linger in darkness today.
Pulling his way out of the inky darkness, he got onto his hands and knees. The darkness that bound him turned sharp-edged, plunging into his back and breathing all his memories back into him.
Years of being a god. An unending life of learning and living and taking whatever he wanted. Until the witches had claimed him as their own, until he’d claimed them in return. He had raised a city for them, a realm of power and magic. All of that would have been fine if it hadn’t been for…
