Love,myLove, had a child?
And a happy one at that. This plump boy grinned without his front two teeth.
I almost hated the child as his mother scooped him into her arms. She squeezed the boy, spinning him in a quick circle as he giggled, kicking and squirming to be free.
Jealousy was an unbecoming emotion, and it wasn’t one I was prepared to handle.
I’d arranged marriages, fought off fathers, and killed husbands.
But a son?
I turned away, though I wasn’t sure where I planned to go. I couldn’t spend twenty-nine years searching just to leave because she was fine without me. Unless it was the kind thing to do. The noble thing.
And then she spoke.
“How is my love today, Little Rabbit?”
My head whipped back as if she’d spoken my name—my true name. Fuck nobility. I looked at her through the veil knowing she couldn’t see me. She had no idea I was there. And yet…
“We’ll play a game, you and I…”
Yuka’s eyes had sparkled at the prospect. She’d been so certain that her soul would recognize me, just as I did hers.
Hares.
Snow hares, to be exact.
It wasn’t exactly evidence, but…
She’d looked at her son—the extension of her soul—and called him her love, her Little Rabbit.
And maybe this is what it was like to survive as a mouse who fed on crumbs. Perhaps this was why birds roosted where once grain had been spilled. It wasn’t a clue, not exactly. This wasn’t a password. But…I was an addict, and she was my drug. I clung to the word with indescribable desperation.
So, I remained.
It shouldn’t have sustained me, but I’d cling to the dagger’s sharpened edge of hope until it sawed my fingers to the bone.
She didn’t know me in this life, and I could use that to justify tending to some long-neglected obligations. I forced myself to strike what passed for balance, since I’d had none with Yuka. From the moment I’d met her in her last life, I hadn’t given hera single moment alone. Yuka hadn’t had the peace to receive a papercut, even if she’d wanted one.
This version of my human had already walked the earth for nearly three decades. She’d made it this far without me. Perhaps I could wean myself from my addiction by finding the barest of moments to leave her unprotected, as I had in lives prior.
I had obligations to my kingdom that I’d thoroughly abandoned for some time.
Visits to my realm were in minutes instead of days—half an hour, on average. Forty-five infernal minutes if I was pushing it. It would give my human time alone in the human realm and offer me the chance to stay abreast of Hell’s activities. My father was pleased with reports that I’d made contact with indigenous deities and at least one high-ranking member of the Celtic pantheon. He was less pleased with my reputation for tearing through unknown territories without doing my princely duties, and we reached a compromise that satisfied us both.
I could continue my station topside, but from this moment forward, I would introduce myself as Hell’s representative and establish positive relationships with the land’s entities, whether or not my human was there. In return, he would hold his tongue about my obsession—one that drew Hell’s only heir far away for centuries at a time in the heat of war—and we would share an excuse for why I spent so much time away from our realm.
I was the traveling face of Hell, and I was to conduct myself as such.
“After all,” he’d said, “you’ve been with this human of yours on and off for…what is it? A grand total of less than two centuries, when you combine her lifetimes. That’s an excusable drop in the bucket. I’ll defend you, my son, if anyone says otherwise.”
He meant well, but my human was no drop in the bucket. She was a storm.
I’d abandoned my citizenship, as far as I was concerned. Returning to her side felt like coming home, whether or not she knew I was there. One lungful of painfully clean air, a single pearly shimmer, and I was where I was meant to be.
It didn’t hurt my sense of belonging that her body moved every time I entered the room. She responded to the preternatural shift each time I arrived, whether consciously or not. Another crumb in my nibbling diet: she knew my energy. Absence made the heart grow fonder, or so I was told.
And fonder I was.
