Page 73 of The Deathless One
With it, she could take her kingdom back a thousand times over. No one would ever be able to stand against her. Perhaps many would try, but they would cringe in the dust at her feet, writhing in pain as she forced them to feel what true power really was. They would die screaming beneath her heel, and she would revel in the sound of their pain.
But that was not who she wanted to be. Yes, her life would be easier. Jessamine would reach her goals so much faster if she stole his power.
But she wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she did. The man in front of her deserved the world. He deserved to live and feel the wind in his hair, if that was what he wanted. She couldn’t take that away from him, just like she couldn’t punish those men who feared witches because they feared what that power could bring.
“If I sacrifice you and take your powers,” she rasped, “then won’t I become exactly what those men who killed me feared? And if so, then aren’t they justified in killing me?”
Elric replied with a voice impossibly low. “Is that really what you believe?”
Her brows furrowed as she sought the truth in her heart. “Yes,” she replied. “I do believe they would be right to kill me. If I wanted to seize your power, truly, if I believed our story ended that way, then I would ask you not to raise me again.”
“You are the only person who can bring me to life. I would trade the suffering and the pain again to feel your world. To be alive, yet again. After all this time.”
She cupped his cheek, feeling the warmth and how electric he was to her. Who was she to say that he didn’t deserve to live? Though yes, there was the danger of what he might become. A god unleashed upon a realm that had been godless for centuries? It was madness to even consider.
But she wanted to. Oh, how she wanted to.
Instead, she tugged him closer and kissed him again. Sweet and lingering and long, trying to press her feelings into his very soul.
“I promise—” she started.
“Jessamine, make no promises in this realm. They are permanent,” he interrupted.
So she took her time thinking about the wording, and then nodded. “You’re right.”
He sighed out a relieved breath, only to suck it back in when she continued.
“Ivownever to sacrifice you, Deathless One. Not in this realm or my own.”
Elric didn’t know what to do with her after that. He couldn’t stand that she’d seen his memories. They were his burden to bear. He had chosen to be that person, after all, and even though the memories plagued him, he had still allowed those witches to do all that they had done.
He was grateful the magic in this place hadn’t shown her even worse. All the witches who had bedded him, used him for years until they decided their affections had finally run their course. The ones who had played with his emotions, and he had fallen for it.
Jessamine didn’t deserve to see those memories. She was too innocent, too kind. She would think less of him, and he was terrified of what that would mean.
Trailing his fingers over the thin line around his neck, he tried to forget how she had flinched in his arms as they reached that memory. It was the first wound. The most heart-wrenching and painful.
He’d thought himself in love with only one witch. She had proven her devotion to him time and time again, a worshipper who had never failed to be at his side, no matter what he asked of her. She had romanced him. Seduced him. Turned a young god into a plaything of her own.
And then she had brought him to an ancient cavern, under the guise of showing him her latest sacrifice. The witches had bound him with the magic he had given them. They laid him out on an altar, and she brought a knife down to his throat.
What a horrible connection he’d made with Jessamine. Already heropinion mattered too much, and it meant that no matter what he did, in her eyes he would always and forever be the man who was broken. Because he was. He had been. Shattered and unmade by so many people that their touch would forever linger. Staining his skin as his touch stained hers.
He passed his hand over her eyes and then pushed her soul back toward the land of the living. He had time before she reanimated. Her soul had a long journey to traverse.
It gave him time. Time to pull himself back together in the darkness after she had broken him into a million pieces. Time to heal the wounds of the memories that were right under the surface and had become raw again.
There was a problem with being the Deathless One. Even until the bitter end, he remained aware. So he felt every sawing motion as she worked her way through his neck, all the way to the bones at the back, and he remembered the sound of them snapping.
He didn’t remember his head hitting the floor, but considering the way Jessamine had flinched, some part of his subconscious did. She’d seen all of that. She’d seen his weakness for her kind.
None of these thoughts were helpful. He had to get out of this realm and make sure she was safe. And strangely, with the knowledge that she had seen his memories, he could pull out of the grip of this realm a little more easily. Every time he grew closer to her, he became more real.
Elric tried not to look too much into it. He manifested himself back to that awful alley where he’d found her broken and bleeding. Her clothes were pushed askew, apparently from someone rummaging through her pockets for whatever she might have on her dead body.
That certainly would be a problem. She had little in her pockets, but clearly they’d gone through her bag as well. Peeking inside, he let out a relieved breath as he noted they’d stolen the brass bowls but not the black book.
Elric leaned down and ran his fingers through her hair. In death, she seemed even more beautiful to him. The dark shadows of her lashes dusted her pale cheeks, which were nearly blue in the autumnal cold. She looked so peaceful, and he was about to ruin that the moment she came back.
