Page 54 of Mortal Desires

“Who?” he shook his head, confused by my change of subjects.

“Anora—my familiar.”

“Oh. The rat.”

“She’s a mouse.” Then I thought about it for a second. “Wait, unless we need to kill her or something.”

His lips twitched at the corners. “She’s bound to you, so she’ll be bound here once you are.” He looked away for a second. I felt like he was hiding something from me. “No animals come to the underworld.”

I frowned. “Why?”

His eyes wandered over the water. “There are no pets in the afterlife. People often think pets don’t have souls because they are less. That’s not true. Animals are so pure, so inherently good, their essence becomes part of the earth again. They aren’t doomed to pursue existence anymore and they are better for it.”

Without thinking, I turned to face the gates again, even at a distance its light was too bright.

“Like them? The ones accepted beyond the gates?”

“Acceptance was always the reward. Accept mistakes and hardships the same way one accepts happiness. To understand it’s part of the journey and each journey is part of something far bigger and brighter than one’s skin.”

I slowly turned from the gates. “Will you ever be rewarded?”

“I don’t have a soul, Pilar. I’m a thing. An idea.”

But he was my soulmate. Moment by moment, day after day it became obvious my soulmate was Vicious. Before I could think more about it, the boatman stopped and Vicious asked, “Are you ready?”

My silence must have spoken volumes, because Vicious curled his arm around my waist and took me from the boat at once, placing me on the shore.

“Nothing will happen to you; you’re not at risk. I only ask that you don’t tell them much.”

He spoke with so much certainty, his eyes pinned on mine, his body too close. I craned my neck to look at him, his face was in the shadows of the black cloak and hood.

“Ok, let’s go,” I replied breathlessly.

He surprised me by taking me by the hand as he escorted me away from the river. A thick forest covered the ground in front of us, the roots of each tree as thick as the trunk and the leaves big enough to cast shadows in the already dark underworld.

A zing ran down my spine followed by an eerie feeling of being watched. Vicious squeezed my hand. “They know we are here.”

With each step, I regretted coming more and more. When I said I wanted to explore, I just meant beyond the palace. A quick stroll to watch a couple of people fucking, that’s all. Not this.

To Vicious, a tour of the underworld meant something else. From the bright gates to my mother’s skull, and now to this place where my shoes sunk into the mud.

“Ugh,” I complained.

“You want me to carry you?”

I furrowed my brows and shook my head. Vicious was being too nice. This god said he was going to torture me for eternity and now he wanted to carry me around so my shoes wouldn’t get dirty?

“Do I have a magical pussy?” I blurted out.

I’d have wished my own death if this wasn’t exactly the place I’d be sent.

“Excuse me?” he asked, not as alarmed by my question as he should be.

I cleared my throat. “You’re different today. Less engaged in the whole torturing thing than you were before.”

He chuckled. It was raspy, low, and powerful. I felt from my head to my toes. “And you’re wondering if your cunt is powerful enough to make me change my mind?”

I hummed, non-committal. Of course I knew I didn’t have a magical pussy. There was nothing in the Morales Coven books about magical pussies. How unfair if we in fact did, but we were stuck with shitty relationships?

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