Page 94 of The Deathless One
“That’s a monstrous thing to say. If the infected can be cured, they should be cured.”
“And they will be, if they pay.” He stood, picking up his shirt but leaving it off. “Truthfully, I don’t give a shit about money, Jessamine. If it didn’t make our world turn, I would have renounced it long ago. But money keeps this place going, and I need this place to stay the way it is. I haven’t given up my entire life to see this fall apart.”
“You bartered my mother’s and my life for this?” The question was small and aching as she let it fly free. “To save yourself?”
As he paused in front of the door, she could see the man he used to be. The hesitance in his step, the way his right brow twitched with tension, and how he stuffed his hands into his pockets. He looked like his world had ended. Not from her words, but long ago. Months ago, when her mother had died in front of him.
“This isn’t easy for me, Jessa,” he replied quietly. “Making a choice like this ages a man. And I know there aren’t many years left. Perhaps it makes me selfish that I’m not willing to sacrifice those few remaining years for you or for her.”
She didn’t know what to say. This wasn’t the reasoning she expected. She wanted him to be a real villain. To tell her that he’d been plotting for years against her family, and that he’d never truly loved them.
“Can I ask you something?”
He nodded.
“How long did you know Mother had that book? And how did you know there was magic in it?”
He winced. “Oh, Jessa, you don’t want to know the answer to that.”
“You said that was why you were in the castle. Why didn’t you just take it and go?”
“Because of her.” He wasn’t looking at Jessamine, but off into the distance, like he could see her mother’s spirit standing somewhere close by. “She was a woman to be reckoned with, and the mission got blurry. I kept making excuses not to leave. It was better for me to be in the castle and have a royal in my back pocket, I told myself. I could still run things here through my second-in-command, while still being in the castle. And then there was you. A little girl with dark hair and eyes like a banshee. You both wriggled your way into my soul, and it was so hard to leave you.”
“Why didn’t you ask her to help?”
“Your mother hated witches more than the average person, and with good reason. She’d lost a lot of loved ones to spells and curses gone awry. That book was meant to be locked up for good. She’d have burnt it if she knew what I was there for.”
Oh, how ithurtto hear those words. Jessamine hadn’t known any of this. She didn’t want to know that he had loved them. It made all of this so much worse, somehow, because it meant that he had thought about this, planned it, and chosen to let them go when she had hoped for just a few moments that maybe he hadn’t wanted to.
“You’re wrong, you know,” she finally said, her voice thick with unshed tears. “Doing all that doesn’t make you selfish.”
She waited until he looked back at her. Until she could see the flicker of some hope in those eyes, like he thought it was possible for them to continue as they once were.
“It makes you a coward. And I never thought you to be one until this moment.”
The muscles in his jaw jumped before he gave her a curt nod. “I’m sorry to make you pay for my fear, Jessa. But I won’t give up my life. Not even for you.”
He left the room empty and cold. She wanted to scream and rage and fling things at the wall, but that was not who she was.
Instead, she sat on the crate in the frigid room as the night fell once more, with nothing but her heartbreak to keep her company.
His witch had not come. Not even a response from Sybil.
Elric paced like an animal in a cage. They’d moved him and the runes into a rather lovely room. There were enough beautiful items in here to make even a god feel comfortable. Black silk sheets covered a bed he had no intention of using. Mirrors on every single wall, marked with runes meant to reveal the hidden, though the markings were close to the one that would both summon and trap a god. The floor was clean and covered with a plush rug that he supposed would have cushioned his feet if he could feel anything. Twin couches flanked a large coffee table, while there were intricate silver end tables on either side of the couch that were so brightly polished they gleamed. There were even relics from the last time he’d been brought to life. A painting, a knife, a sword on the wall he’d given to a witch, all items he thought of with fondness.
All of it was meant to cajole a god into doing what they wanted, that old familiar ploy. These people had trapped him, and he hadn’t been caught like this since he was a new god. His eyes traced over the walls, but the runes that actually bound him weren’t in the room. The etchings around the mirrors were pretty, but they weren’t strong enough to keep him. So where was the spell?
The spell that fucking Callum Quen said he’d gotten by tearing a page out ofhisbook. The book he should have destroyed years ago, and yet the damned thing continued to come back and haunt Elric at every stage of his life.
He’d forgotten there was even a spell in there for containing a god. A spell that he’d written down with the intent to make his own followers more powerful in case any of the other gods attacked his coven, not to trap himself. How foolish to let it fall into the wrong hands.
The door opened, and he bared his teeth in a snarl at the sight of the man who’d trapped him. Callum Quen. The man had a lot of gall for someone who had angered a god.
“I will peel your skin from your body for this,” Elric snarled. “You are going to bow at my feet and whimper for death, but I will not let it take you until I have seen your blood slick the walls and your screams echo throughout eternity.”
“The fact that you think that’ll come to pass is impressive and yet foolish,” Callum replied.
He froze. The other man shouldn’t have been able to hear him, let alone look directly at him as though he could see Elric easily. No one could see the Deathless One without being either a worshipper or a gravesinger.
