We wouldn’t be lovers. Not in this life. I wasn’t her savior. I wasn’t her spirit guide. But I held tight from my place behind the shadows, noting every time she poured a glass of mead and left it on the windowsill, knowing it was for me.
Spring flowers, summer heat, autumnal leaves, and winter’s snow came and went.
Every year on her birthday, she would return to the riverbank, and we would share a drink. She kept her health and fortune and was too clever to ask how or why she’d been chosen. Her words were a careful dance, and one I respected. Her message was clear: her obligation was to her child, and for him, she could love or serve no other.
“You’d never serve me,” I’d chided quietly.
She’d smiled. “Then, you’d be a step up from motherhood.”
I fought the answering smile. She was not born to be a mother, rather, became one as a product of her time and culture, and excelled within it. Perhaps she would not have chosen togive birth if her paths had been laid before her, but her Little Rabbit was here, nonetheless.
And while I could count my days with her on two hands, I learned as much about her story and mine as I had in every cycle before.
Brigid was right.
We had not been thrust together to learn a lesson.
We were history in the making.
Chapter Eleven
ANOTHER AND ANOTHER AND ANOTHER
Imelted into the silken luxury of royal silks, blankets, and pillows. I’d nearly forgotten what quality bedding felt like, given that I was laying in a bed I’d famously vacated. No one seemed to reject their crown with the same flourish as Hell’s least grateful prince. I folded my hands behind my head, eyes open, but unfocused, as I gave myself a rare moment of solace in my room.
“Your Highness?” A quiet voice sounded from beyond the door to my palace rooms.
So much for my solace.
The royal chambers were ostentatious, which made walking to the door a chore. I sat up in bed and threw it open with the flick of a wrist.
“What?”
Two members of my father’s legion stood in the doorway. He commanded seventy-two, with two thousand in each, all wispy, smoke-like beings, all eyes and shadow and bowing apologies. They hardly inspired the sort of trembling and fear one wouldexpect of one hundred and forty-four thousand clad in weapons and tooth and armor when brute force was required, but for everything, a time and place. I preferred my legion work in whispers.
“Out with it.”
“The King requests an audience,” said one.
“Your sister is present,” said the other.
The tight, thin line of my lips conveyed enough for the pair to scatter. Their message was not unexpected. I’d awaited an intervention for some time. I’d prepared myself for a larger discussion with my father.
Izi inserting herself further into the narrative, on the other hand?
It was a struggle to keep my fists unclenched and my expression unbothered as I made my way past the ancient architecture, beyond the fountains, through the dining halls and modern wings and galleys of such and such grandeur before I approached his throne room to the most horrid thing Hell had to offer in the loveliest package.
The Soul Eater.
The first emotion to replace my ire was loathing.
I hated the woman-adjacent horror who sat outside his office. She sat prettily behind a desk, though the tiny barrier was to make visitors feel comforted by a false sense of distance, rather than any sort of administrative duty. She was the most terrifying security the courts had to offer.
Her golden hair belonged in wheat fields, not on a living being. Her blue eyes should have been set in a doll’s face, not on hers. She had the sort of innocence that tipped the scales beyond uncanny and into threatening. She was the absence of scent, of sound, of air. It was a quality of all Soul Eaters. Crafted by something from the Primordial Monster Realm and loyalty sworn to our court’s royal family, she was of no direct threat tous. Blood oaths prevented her from turning her abilities on my father or me.
The spelled shackles did little to put me at ease.
“Your Highness.” The Soul Eater, no name beyond her formal title, stood from her desk and clasped her hands in front of her pale blue gown before offering a curt bow. So ladylike. So unrepresentative of her ability to dislocate her jaw and prolong razor-sharp teeth and devour anything before her into utter annihilation, ending worlds and dynasties and any immortal being that hadn’t attained the sovereignty of godhood.
