Page 54 of The Deathless One
“Yes?” Did that word sound as breathless as it had felt?
“You still have the book I told you to gather. Don’t you?”
She blinked, the words settling in before she realized what he was asking.
“Oh.” Bursting into movement, she awkwardly pulled the book out of the bag next to her. “Yes, yes, of course. I still have it. I don’t know why you wanted it. It won’t open.”
“It will open for me.” He stared down at it, and she could almost feel the intensity coming out of his gaze. It was like a warm touch spilling over her hands and pooling in her lap where the book rested. “It is mine, after all.”
She looked down at the book, and it all made sense. Of course it was his. The black pages and black binding would only be for the Deathless One himself. It was a book dedicated to him, or perhaps written by him? She had no way of guessing what was inside the pages, but she suddenly saw them flutter against her fingertips.
The book unlocked. That easily. It stopped being so stubborn simply because he was glaring at it.
She opened the first page, feathering a light touch over the illuminated pages, which were meticulously designed. Demons ran along every page, twisting creatures with horns and tails that merged into dark shadows. Borders of ink stains were clearly intentional, as though trying to mimic the power he possessed. The writing was in a language she couldn’t understand, but the loops and swirls were hypnotic. And then, at her touch, all the ink disappeared.
She flipped through the pages, watching as words continued to disappear until it was entirely empty. A journal now, no longer a grimoire. With a small gasp, she closed it and opened it again, hoping the words would come back. But they didn’t. They were gone, like it was intended for them to disappear the moment her eyes started reading the words.
Closing it, she turned the book over and traced her fingers over the sigil on the back that had captivated her attention since the start. Its strange markings and harsh lines were not a sigil she recognized—Sybil had given her countless books on witch marks, but none of them looked like this.
It felt important. “This mark on the back. What is it?”
He leaned even closer, and she swore there was almost a hint of a lock of hair that fell in front of the shadowy visage of his face. “It’s a sigil. It depicts my name.”
“You have a name?” she asked, her voice incredulous. “What is it?”
“I have a name, Jessamine Harmsworth. There are many interpretations of it, many meanings. But in this realm and this time, I suppose it would be… Elric Hellebore.”
He moved away from her then, rounding the statue until he appeared again. He’d picked something up from the dirt at the foot of the statue, and tossed it back and forth between his hands.
Almost as though he was now ignoring her.
“Why haven’t you told me before?”
“I forgot I had one.”
“That seems unlikely. You’re a person, so of course you have a name. I just…” She shook her head again, stunned at this realization. “I didn’t think gods had names. I thought you were the Deathless One, and that was the end of it.”
He opened his hand and revealed an emerald-green gemstone in his palm. It had cracked in half at some point, ruined by time or perhaps a careless bootheel. But he gently placed both pieces in the eyes of the Crone. “We were all people once. A hard lesson for humans to learn, because to you we have always been gods. But there was a time when we weren’t.”
“What were you?” she asked.
“I’m not sure there’s a name for what we were. Not entirely human, if that’s what you’re asking. I don’t think any mortal could survive what we did to become what we are now. But not a god either.”
“Oh.” She hadn’t ever thought about what they were before they were gods. “Even the Crone?”
“Even her. We were close once. But power, greed, and madness can tear a family apart.”
That hadn’t been her experience. Her mother had always been the only person there for her. But then she remembered what she had seen in Benji’s memories, and she realized that perhaps she was wrong. Maybe her family had been torn apart from the inside out.
There was a darkness in this world. A darkness that she couldn’t fix,and the only person who had ever honestly seen it was this dangerous god in front of her.
She made up her mind and stood. The base of the statue was uneven, with cracks down almost every side. But she stood in front of him, gazing up into the shadows of his face, and she wanted to touch him. She wanted him to feel real.
So she didn’t think about it. She just reached out and cupped his jaw in her hand.
Bristles scratched her palm, and she swore she felt the faintest hint of a scar around his neck. One that matched hers, if she could look closely enough. She felt the ripple of another scar on his jaw under her fingers as he ground his teeth together at her touch.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
