Page 112 of The Demon Prince

“No more than it did with you.” Katherine frowned. “Maybe a little more time. It was always popping up when I didn’t think it was around. Why? Is that important?”

Very, actually. He leaned forward and huffed out a breath. “You devious little monster. It knew that being around you more and more would likely force it to change. That’s why it was always lurking around you, and I bet it was around you more than you were aware of. It was soaking in your emotions, your essence, trying to force itself to change.”

“Why?” Katherine shook her head, as though dislodging those thoughts. “And what did it change into?”

“Compassion,” he replied with a quiet laugh. “It changed into a spirit of compassion and I think that is entirely because of you. Because it knew you had so much of the emotion that you could live with it. Be its host. It would experience life in an entirely new way if it possessed you, and it knew that I wouldn’t say no if it wanted that.”

Of course, this was the spirit’s plan the entire time. A spirit’s life was infinite as long as there was a source of its emotion to feed off of. But they were still spirits. Unable to experience life like the humans, nor were they able to truly enjoy living.

They only got a taste of it. Every now and then, the emotion would change to a slightly different flavor, but they weren’t actually living. Spirits were on the outskirts of both life and death. Living in an in-between that was both unique and exhausting.

Spite had wanted to live. Perhaps it had been this emotion for a very long time and now it realized just how imperative it was to experience life. And now, as weak as it was from changing, there was only one other option to save its life.

“It wants me to be its... host?” she asked. “That can’t be right, Gluttony. Spite never mentioned possession or anything along those lines. It cannot want to live inside me.”

“It does,” he murmured, nudging the little spirit until it rolled closer to her. “Otherwise it will die. If you don’t allow it to live inside you, with you, experience living through your eyes, then it will die here and now. It didn’t want to ask because it didn’t think we would agree to it.”

“Well, I don’t even know what it would do to me!”

He hated this part. But now he knew how his brothers had felt. “It will make you immortal,” he replied, meeting her gaze. “No wound will remain. No sickness will take you. Life will be forever, with you at my side, frozen in the same state you are in right now.”

And for a time, they stared at each other. Katherine’s thoughts played across her features, like he was reading the pages of a familiar story. Disgust, fear, denial, and then finally acceptance as her gaze flicked down to the tiny spirit. “And doing so will save it?”

“It will.” He reached across the table to cover her hand with his. “Immortality is no easy choice, Katherine. Don’t rush this.”

She straightened her shoulders. “Choosing to save a life is the easiest choice to make, Gluttony. No matter the cause or what might happen, I would do anything for those I love. So what do I do next?”

And who was he to deny her? He got to keep her forever and she... well, she would find out what it truly meant to be a god.

ChapterForty-One

Katherine took the weak spirit in her hands and stared at what used to be Spite. There was only the faintest grey mist between her fingers. The color was so light she almost couldn’t see it at all.

“Compassion?” she asked quietly, her voice filtering through the mist like a breeze. “I need to know that you actually want to do this. I don’t want to hurt you anymore than you already have been hurt.”

And with one giant move of energy, the mist rippled in her hands. It was trying. So hard. It wanted to tell her that this was all it wanted, because apparently Gluttony was right.

Spite had fought its entire life. Fought for food, for attention, to turn people’s will toward something dark and angry. It had done all it could to feed and affect her village. But in the end, it was still just an emotion. A spirit of something ephemeral that lived between the living and the dead.

It wasn’t a life she would choose to give to anyone. And this would be the ultimate act of compassion in giving this tiny spirit a way to live on. A way to experience life through the eyes of a human, which it had been watching for likely centuries.

Meeting Gluttony’s eyes one last time before everything changed, she smiled. “Will this hurt either of us?”

“It might hurt you.” He looked troubled, his brows drawing down in fear. “When Greed’s wife did this with a spirit not so weak as this one, she was ill for a week. He waited on her hand and foot because he knew how dangerous it was. She made it, though.”

And so would she. Katherine had no fear if Gluttony was the one taking care of her.

“All right, then.” She held the spirit a little closer to her face. “How do I do it?”

“Breathe it in,” he answered. “Varya consumed her spirit, swallowed it whole because Greed hadn’t done this in a very long time. He forgot what we did when we possessed bodies. And we did, when we were the same age as these spirits. Trying out a real form before we decided to create our own.”

Breathe it in. Like smoke.

A memory filtered through her mind. Before her mother had disappeared, Katherine could remember falling very ill. She’d been so congested that it made it difficult to breathe. So her mother had brought out a bowl of steaming water and draped a towel over Katherine’s head. Breathing in the steam had been uncomfortable, but it definitely helped the congestion. And throughout all of it, her mother had rubbed her back.

The memory of that calloused hand rubbing against her shoulder blades and reminding her that she wasn’t alone calmed her. Even at her weakest. Even when she wanted to lie down and just let the sickness take her, her mother had been there. Kind and quiet, a strong presence who reminded Katherine that she was loved and taken care of.

With that in her mind, she leaned a little closer to the mist of the spirit and inhaled. She breathed it in deep, feeling the coiling zap of its magic stretching through her entire body. It spread like roots of a tree, digging into her lungs and into her very being.

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