Finally, she just blurted, “Fortuna said that Leon knew a spell that would bring the gods back. Not just bring them back, but channel a god into him. His body would be a prison for one of them, and their magic. He was going to put a god in her, too. That’s how he plans to take over not only his kingdom and my own, but all the known world.”
Elric froze in her grip, his muscles so tense it was as if he had turned to stone. He pulled away from her slightly, his face expressionless as hetook one shaky step, then another, before he landed on the bed with a low moan.
“What?” she asked. “That’s not possible, is it?”
“I…” Elric dropped his head into his hands. Bowed over like that, he appeared to be a man who had lost everything.
She sank down onto the small bench seat before her vanity. “It’s bad, then.”
Her words weren’t a question. She could see it in the arching of his shoulders and the way he’d stopped breathing.
She didn’t know how long he was lost in his own memories, but eventually he straightened and blew out a long breath. She’d never seen his face so pale or the furrows around his eyes so deep.
“The gods did not walk into this realm fully formed, Jessamine. I know the legends suggest that we were omnipotent our entire lives, but that is not true. I kept my original name. Elric Hellebore. That is who I was before…”
He paused, and her heart twisted in her chest.
“Before?”
“I was just a man.” He looked down at his hands, spreading his fingers wide as though his palms held some secret. “I don’t remember much of who I was. It makes it hard to… remember. When you take the powers on. But every god is more a figment of creation than a physical being. The power is immense, but it is impossible to contain without having a form. I don’t know who the first god was. I don’t think my siblings remember either.
“All I know is that when I was created, I woke up without a single thought in my head. No memories of who I was. I only pieced together some bits of who I used to be because of the people I encountered and how they reacted to me. Did I have a family? A wife? I have no idea. One moment I was dead, and the next, I woke with more power than I knew what to do with.
“It was infinite. All the darkness and shadows that spread through mybody like veins. I could see everything and nothing at the same time. It’s very natural for gods to react with confusion or rage when they ascend. And then I had the choice of what I wanted to be and who I wanted to serve me. But I was very young. There were many gods already, and when my sister made me, there weren’t a lot of realms left.”
Jessamine gasped. “Which sister?”
“The Crone. She created me, although we do not call it giving birth. That was…” He blew out a long breath and curled his fingers into fists. “That was never part of becoming a god. So when you say he wants to channel a god, that is not what he’s doing. He’s going to take the power that was once here, a power that should have disappeared with my siblings, and he’s going to put it in his body so that he becomes a god himself.”
There were no words. Only silence that stood like a veil between them and the world who did not know that the gods were awakening. That a man who had killed so many people was only going to give himself yet more power…
“Oh,” she whispered. The word shook with fear. “So he’s…”
“He’s going to make himself a god, yes. And if I had to guess, he is going to seize the strongest power that he can—the Warrior King himself. It is an end to all things if he succeeds.”
But that would mean the entire kingdom was lost. That would mean that no matter how hard they fought, no matter what they did, they would fail. Because that was a power that they couldn’t fight against unless… Hesitantly, she asked, “Are you more powerful than—”
“No,” he interrupted. “No, I never was.”
“What if we sacrifice—”
“No, Jessamine.” He lifted a shaking hand to his hair and ran his fingers through it. “No, there is no way to make me more powerful than my brother was. The Warrior King was the best of us, and for good reason. We were all just replicas of his greatness, striving to be just as powerful. I certainly did.”
Well, that made everything even worse, she supposed. She’d beenthinking it was terrible that he was going to use a god, because someone like Leon shouldn’t be able to channel a creature like that. But to know that he was going tobethe god?
She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t get the air into her lungs fast enough, and everything felt like it was crumbling, until she didn’t know how to continue forward.
Tears welled in her eyes, tears that stung because she didn’t see how they were going to fix this. And so she looked at him, watching to see her powerful, capable god who knew how to fix everything, and she waited for him to reassure her. For him to tell her that everything was going to be all right.
But he just looked back at her. Those bleak, dark eyes didn’t see a way forward any better than she did. They stared at each other like they’d already lost, and she simply could not suffer through that.
“Elric?” she asked, her voice very quiet.
“Yes, nightmare?”
“Is there anything we can do?”
“Not that I can think of right now.”
