Gods and Monsters, Books 1-3: A Dark Gods Bully Romance (Gods and Monsters Box Set)

by Klarissa King

  I huff and stuff the shells in my skirt pocket. They clink when I curtsey at the kind-eyed trader.

  He laughs then bows deeply.

  “G’day miss,” he says before I turn to rush back down the pier.

  But I don’t make it a single step before I trip over the bags of seafood at mother’s feet. That’s what she trades.

  ‘Family business’, my brother calls it.

  But my family business sent me sprawling on the pier, front-side.

  “Watch yourself!” A pair of black scuffed boots are in front of me.

  I squint up at the new traveller. The sun makes him glow like a lantern at night.

  With a smile, the new trader bends to lift me up.

  Mother cries out—“No!”

  I feel mother’s bony fingers hook onto my shoulder just as the trader lifts me to my feet. Then, everything goes really, really quiet.

  Too quiet.

  I frown at mother.

  Her hand is still firm on my shoulder, and she has her other hand curled around the new sailor’s bare wrist. He doesn’t wear a ribbon, I notice.

  But he does look at me.

  His eyes are wide, sparkling like the stars do at night.

  His glow is fading. It’s going into my shoulder, creeping along my collarbone like it’s trying to move across me to get to my mother.

  The sailor turns his gaze to mother’s grip on his own wrist and he looks confused.

  “I’m sorry.” Mother is speaking to him. She won’t look at me. “I can’t help it,” she says. “Please, I have children—”

  “Avsky,” he hisses at her.

  She pulls me away from him.

  I stagger back and have the sudden urge to bury myself in her poufy skirt layers. I don’t like the way this sailor is looking at her.

  I look back at the kind-eyed trader who wears the ribbon. But he isn’t kind-eyed anymore. He pulls out a long sword the same dirty silver as my hair, and he lifts it—

  “Mother!”

  My scream carries in the wind as the blade cuts through the air. I try to push her out of the way.

  I’m not quick enough, and mother shoves me onto my back.

  Blood cuts above me in dots.

  The sword slices her front wide open, and lets crimson fly through the air like a murder of crows.

  It wasn’t for years until I truly understood what had happened that day.

  Those sailors had been aniels. Shadows of what the Gods were. They’d killed my mother in front of my very eyes, then left me to weep over her lifeless body until Moritz dragged me away well after sundown.

  My whole life, that was where my fear was directed.

  Aniels.

  Never had I thought—never would I have believed—that I had to feel the chilling fear of a God in my bones. Because I never once expected that my path would cross with a God.

  5

  A ship of any sea-travellers should have terrified me.

  The memory of my mother’s blood cutting through the air should have sent me spiralling into insanity, or at least a feverish desperation to kill myself before I could be taken to Scocie.

  Moritz wanted me to be afraid. He prodded me towards terror in hopes that I would isolate myself one day, remove myself from any threat of ever being discovered.

  Does he know yet? Does my brother know what has become of me?

  On the small isle of Zwayk, dock nights were the only joy that we saw.

  Ships came, and parties started. That was the way.

  And I was a sucker for musical songs whistled from fine wooden flutes and passionate dances done to the beats of drums, stolen kisses in the dark with men I would never see again was the cream on the pie that was dock night.

  Only, this dock night had ended in the way I never truly expected, and Moritz had always feared.

  I’d been a fool. But knowing that now didn’t change anything. I was still a captive of aniels.

  The cold caved to my weakness and in the dank, damp cell, I pulled the course blanket over myself.

  These work clothes weren’t meant for voyages across sea.

  Already, a strap on my sandal had come loose, and frayed fabric parted to small tears on my harem pants. I wasn’t sure I even wanted to know what the back of my top looked like.

  I couldn’t face a God like this.

  I had to be dressed properly. The way that women dressed outside of seductive dancing and entertaining.

  It was stupid, but I wished I had my dresses with me. Poufy petticoats and boned bodices, lace-up boots and stockings.

  Given where I lived and how little coin I earned, my dresses weren’t spectacular. Peasantry forced them into dull shades of old parchment and faded blues that showed distant stains from too long ago. But any one of those tired dresses would have done two things for me in that cell—flicked away the nerves of how ghastly I would look to a God and also, keep me warm enough that my teeth would stop chattering.

  I’d been in the brig for hours before anyone came to distract me from the chill. When they did, I hardly knew what to expect.

  Footsteps padded quietly down the soft-wood steps.

  I strained my eyes on the narrow passage that curved towards me.

  Jasper strolled into the light of the weak lanterns.

  He didn’t look at all like he’d been in a scuffle or chase. His black waist-length coat hugged his lean body closely, buttoned by white pearls.

  Whoever his God was, it was one who spared no expense on luxury. That much I could tell from his coat and the ironed breeches whose hems were tucked into silver-laced boots.

  My voice was ragged, “Where’s Ava?”

  While I was drifting in and out of consciousness as they carted me onto the boat, I remembered Ava being dragged along with me.

  I remembered her screams.

  Jasper came to a stop at the bars, dark orange light from the lanterns licking up his face. The warmth he had about him back at the party—before everything went ass-up—still swirled in his toffee-coloured eyes. He wasn’t harder in the way he gazed at me now, and the awe had vanished somewhere between my theft of his power and now.

  Now that I knew what he was, his lazy threatening nature just seemed so subtle. But it was there.

  “Ava is fine,” he eventually said.

  His hand was gloved, I noticed. It gripped onto a salt-eroding bar as he tilted closer to me. Not that it did much good. I was planted in the middle of the cell. The aching cold had gotten to my bones and I wasn’t sure I could move if he opened the door and let me run free.

  “That’s not what I asked,” I challenged.

  At least, I tried to scrape up some gusto into my voice, but it was cracked and broken. I hadn’t had water since before the party.

  All that was left in my dry mouth was the potent aftertaste of chevki.

  He dodged my question again. “I’ll admit, I’m surprised your first question is of her whereabouts. You and Ava didn’t appear close at the celebrations.” The leather of his glove creaked as he shifted his weight, letting the lanterns illuminate a wicked grin plastered onto his face. “Tell me, does she often steal your men?”

  Sometimes.

  “You were not my man,” I spat. Though, I tugged the blanket tighter around myself. “And she didn’t steal you,” I lied with a shrug. “As I remember it, you’re the one who stole us.”

  “After you stole my power.” Jasper’s grin gleamed like pearls under moonlight. “But we’ll get to that in time.”

  A chill bolted to my stomach.

  He meant a God would get to that in time. Someone I wouldn’t survive.

  “Your friend,” he went on, “holds my power in her body. I want it back.”

  His grin didn’t falter, but a darkness took over his eyes and I was suddenly back on the pier, staring into the once-kind-eyed aniel who cut my mother down with a sword.

  “In the meantime, I don’t wish to keep you locked up in the brig. Wouldn’t want you to get sick
or die before your time, would we? We’re on a heavily guarded and patrolled ship in the middle of the Dark Sea. Nowhere for you to run, little thief.”

  My fingers curled until my nails cut deep into my numb palms. I only knew I began to bleed when I felt the warmth of it spread over my hands.

  The Dark Sea was not water that anyone would want to touch let alone dive into.

  Beneath the completely black surface were hundreds of beasts, created by the Gods long before they made us. Anyone who ever sailed in a small party across the Dark Sea, or somehow ended up overboard … Well, they were never heard from again.

  Whatever beasts lurked beneath the wood of this ship, they had a taste for flesh—human or aniel, it didn’t matter. Only the Gods were immune to them and the terror they inflicted.

  There goes my plan of swimming across an entire sea towards safety on a foreign isle.

  It wasn’t much of a plan, but hope can be a foolish thing sometimes.

  Jasper sensed that I understood my situation—that even out of this cell, I was still caged.

  The sincere spark of friendliness reignited in his eyes and he pulled away from the bars.

  My eyes followed him around the corner of the cell until he stopped at the barred door. From his belt, which held a few sheathed daggers and a pistol, he removed a hoop laden with keys.

  The jangles of the keys were all that filled the brig as he slowly sifted through the dozens of keys one at a time.

  “You’ll find Ava on the deck.” He plucked an iron key out from its many lookalikes. “You’ll share a cabin for the rest of the journey.”

  He brought the key to the door.

  My breath hitched, frozen in my throat. I stared so hard at the hovering key that it was a wonder my eyes didn’t bleed.

  Then it hooked into the lock and, with a long look at me, Jasper turned it. The clang rattled even my bones.

  I hoped there were better blankets in the cabin. If I was to be marched to my death, kept alive only to undo my theft, then I would go warm.

  Jasper was hooking the key hoop back onto his belt when heavy boots rapped down the stairs.

  Both of us turned to look at the narrow passage leading in from the steps, and a heartbeat later, a man staggered to a stop in the brig.

  He was huge. He was so wide that his arms grazed the rusty bars and his scraggly dark hair brushed the dewy ceiling.

  He locked his gaze on Jasper and, distantly, I placed his face from back at the shore. He was the one who knocked me clean out.

  My jaw clenched and my eyes narrowed into slits like those of a snake.

  “A ship is approaching.” The burly meat-headed aniel moved urgently towards Jasper. His faint glow betrayed him as an aniel.

  Fleetingly, I wondered why he glowed now and why some aniels glowed not at all.

  Was it something that happened when they were on high alert? Like the aniels on the docks when my mother was killed.

  Threats might surge their power.

  “Flying red sails, Kapten,” he added gruffly.

  Jasper looked startled. “Red?”

  The flicker of panic only lasted a second, and I wondered if I’d imagined it, or if the untrustworthy lantern lights were playing tricks on me.

  Mind, I hadn’t eaten or had any water since before the party. And the Dark Sea was at least a two-day journey from Zwayk. So maybe I was in need of some self-care, rather than obsessing over aniels and their facial expressions.

  Jasper looked back at me, torn for a second. Then he ordered the beefy one, “Take her to her cabin.”

  Jasper left, moving quicker than he had back at the shore when he was chasing me.

  Red sails weren’t good. Even I knew that, and I’d never sailed farther than fishing distance from my home isle.

  Only the Gods’ ships flew coloured sails.

  The rest of us went without sails or settled on whites and blacks with symbols threaded into them.

  But colours were for those who belonged to the Gods.

  Mother once told me that my father sailed to Zwayk in a ship flying gold sails. But I never found out which God gold belonged to.

  Dads are like dust…

  Pink was the colour of Lover Lust.

  Mortiz swore he saw pink sails once, kissing the horizon on an especially cold morning of the Frost Season. To this day, he still insisted that he saw it.

  I didn’t believe him. Not then, not now.

  Grey belonged to the Keeper of Lost Souls. The God, to some, was one of the kinder ones, and so she was seen as a Beniyn God, not a Malis God. But just because she wasn’t one of the worst, didn’t mean she wasn’t terrible in her own right. After all, grey belonged to her because it was the colour of souls lost in the seas, or those she had taken personally into her fold.

  But red sails were undeniable.

  They belonged to one of the worst of the worst. A Malis above all others.

  Prince Poison.

  A God so cruel and terrifying that, as the realisation dawned on me that his vessel was nearing us, a wave of sick washed over me. I wondered if it was his fleet—another ship, whose sails proudly flapped in the winds, to escort us to Scocie.

  Word might have reached Prince Poison already. The Gods were known for using eagles and ravens to carry messages across the seas. He might have already known about me and what I did, so sent the other ship to accompany us.

  The waves of sick took on a life of their own, and soon I was doubled over on the mouldy floor of the cell, heaving.

  Sick slapped onto the wood boards between my hands. Another pulse shoved me forward and I was spewing out whatever was left in my stomach. Mostly bile. Droplets of it stained my hands and there was that lingering burn in my throat.

  Finally, I brought my hazy gaze up and found the beefy aniel standing by the unlocked door. Sometime during my sickness, he’d opened it and propped himself against the bars, ankles crossed along with his arms, and watched me.

  He looked amused.

  “Don’t blame you,” he said. “If I was you, I’d purge myself to death rather than meet the God that awaits you.”

  I cringed, both from his too-true words and the bile coursing through me.

  Looking away, I muttered, “Are you allowed to speak that way about your creator?”

  His beard twitched as he sneered. “Who says we’re all born of the same God?”

  My brows pinched. I hadn’t the faintest clue what he meant, but I found that I didn’t give a damn. I was being shipped off to my death—literally. The last thing I cared about was aniel politics.

  He swaggered into the cell and, with a firm grip on my thin arm, hoisted me to my feet. I swayed with the ship. Standing up brought a whole new dizziness and I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t vomit all over him.

  Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad. He might strike me down for it, and I would leave this life peacefully.

  “Get a move on,” he gruffed, then dragged me out of the brig to my cabin, the next floor up.

  For the first time in a long time, I willed Monster to take me over. The same Monster who was born that day on the pier, after I watched my mother’s blood spatter the air. Ever since that day, I’d suffered a constant craving to spill blood the same way.

  Monster came with a downfall, but with her in control, my every emotion was sanded down to a hollow nothingness.

  As Monster, I was cool and distant. I needed her to numb my fear into an echo of self-preservation. Anything that saved me from this bone-rattling terror I felt.

  But my fear was too great.

  Monster didn’t come.

  6

  For two days, I stayed in that cramped cabin.

  Ava came and went often, but she rarely spoke to me. I think she blamed me for her ending up here, which wouldn’t be entirely off the mark. It was me who channelled Jasper’s power into her body—and it was because of me that she was trapped on this boat, too.

  Though, on the second day I started to doubt whether she was as
trapped as I was. She almost seemed to enjoy leaving the cabin to wander up on the deck.

  ‘It’s like we’re sailing over black sand.’ That was one of the few things she’d said to me, and it had been about the Dark Sea.

  Ava’s bravery surprised me. Maybe I was a little jealous of it, too.

  I was afraid to leave the cabin and walk among the worshipers and aniels. But she couldn’t wait to run out of the too-small room at first light.

  When Jasper found me, I was alone in the cabin, perched on the rotting windowsill. The glass was boarded up, but through the narrow gaps I caught glimpses of inky black crows flocking over a blue sky.

  “The view is better from the deck.” Jasper’s silky voice slipped through the cabin, and I thought of slippery snakes. “You aren’t in the brig anymore, Valissa. And as I said before, I have no fear that you will throw yourself overboard. Not with what lurks beneath the blackness.”

  “Mm.” It was a grunt-hum hybrid that twitched my shoulders.

  I didn’t care about the black sea or the monsters lurking beneath it…

  Well, I did actually. Overboard was death. A gruesome, agonising death that would have ended me up in the hold of a God anyway—Keeper of Lost Souls.

  That fate wasn’t all that different to the one I was facing.

  At least this way, I could keep my slippery grip on that dwindling bud of hope still flickering inside of me.

  “Ava is up on the deck,” he added lightly.

  I just wanted to watch the crows in peace.

  Jasper didn’t seem to give a damn. As I looked over at him, he was settling himself on the over-cushioned chair that was shaped like a flattened egg on stilts. Looked horrendous, but was surprisingly comfortable enough to fall asleep on. I knew from experience.

  Numbness clung to me. “Which God are you taking me to?”

  I watched as surprise pulled up his brow. A calm studious look hardened his face after a pause, and he relaxed on the egg-chair.

  “The one I belong to.” His eyes were as guarded as his tone.

  Belong to…

  “Do you belong to the same God as that chubby aniel? The one that’s in desperate need of a shave and manners.”