“Gaia,” I whispered, awed.
The mother of mothers. The ultimate God. The one who, according to the skripta granted the other Gods the gift of creating life. And so, aniels and mortals were made. Sea monsters and crabs. Every living thing in this world all stemmed back to her.
I never worshiped a God. Not when I would learn about them as a child in the village, or when my mother read from the skripta to me at night before the lanterns faded too far.
I always feared them.
Yet somehow, I found myself gazing up at this brilliant dark-skinned face with all the wonder I could muster, and only distantly aware that I slipped off a warped pearl from my rusty old bracelet.
I dropped to one knee and I planted the pearl in the middle of her over-crowded shrine.
In answer, the portrait inclined her head, as though thanking me.
If there was such a thing as a Beniyn God, she was the proof.
I bowed as deeply as I could before I moved on.
Some of the portraits ignored me entirely. But then, there were the ones that tickled me with fright as they either sneered down at me or, in the case of Swordsman of Scales, winked at me. Not a God one wished to be noticed by.
Even in his portrait, the Swordsman was draped in thick furs and tight leather armour, as if ready to spring out at me and rip out my heart to rest on his bloody set of scales. If the scales moved, misbalanced, he would bark a laugh cruel enough to only ever be heard in the most gruesome of battles, then chop off my head with his blunt sword.
I kept moving, avoiding the eyes of the definitely wicked Gods, until I found him. Perhaps the wickedest of all.
Prince Poison.
He was staring down at me already, as if he’d been waiting for me to reach him—as if his portrait recognised me. His expression shifted into something like faint curiosity, yawning over a chasm of eternity.
I glanced down at his shrine and the shelves where the offerings were placed. Candles flickered crimson and black, illuminating the dozens of fresh white plums piled atop glass plates. All sorts of offerings were laid out for his portrait from jewels and fruits to worn clothes, folded neatly, and chunks of hair held together by pieces of twine.
His offerings were one of the most abundant in the worship room. Then, it might have only looked that way given that beside his portrait was a bare one.
The face had been burnt off of some years ago. Faded black edges curled into the scorched frame. There were no shelves or candles for this God.
“Phantom.” The forbidden word slipped from my tongue before I could stop it.
My knowledge of the Gods might not have been the best on Zwayk, but it didn’t matter who you were or where you were from. We all knew about the banished God, Phantom.
“A traitor,” came a voice behind me, smooth like silk.
I spun around, suddenly alert. Not even when I saw that the newcomer was Jasper did I relax.
I’d spoken a forbidden word.
It was a crime punishable by death in the firepits above the Gods’ mountains.
Jasper held no chains in hands to take me away in, though. And the faraway look in his eyes didn’t seem too threatening. He slowly advanced on me, his eyes never parting from the scorched portrait.
“A God to be forgotten over time,” he said. “And you have more pressing matters than lost stories.”
He snapped out of whatever memory had had its clutches on him.
Jasper’s eyes were suddenly sharp. He gestured for me to follow him to the middle of the room.
I followed quietly, caution spiking through me, my skin prickling into little stones.
I’d never imagined a worship room would have a granite table planted in the middle of it, holding odd objects that definitely didn’t fit the overall theme around me.
Fatigue wore me down. “What matters do I have?”
Jasper stopped at the table’s side and surveyed the items spread out over it. He didn’t answer.
“I’ve already done what you brought me here to do.” I came up behind him. “I gave you your power back. I explained my story to Prince Poison. What more do you want with me?”
Jasper paused, his gloved hand hovering over an ancient-looking necklace. Its aged metal framed a green gem, too dark to be an emerald, too polished to be older than the necklace itself.
Beside it sat a dusting of white sparkly powder in a coal bowl, and there was an array of daggers whose hilts were worn-down and beaten over years.
Jasper looked over his shoulder at me, wearing a weary look that glinted his eyes with amusement.
“An avsky can meet one of two fates,” he said. “A death sentence, or to be … kept.” He chose that word carefully.
It stirred a surge of sickly panic in my gut.
“Kept?” I echoed faintly. “Like a bird?”
To this, Jasper said nothing and wandered around the table until it was wedged between us.
Did he mean what I feared?
Did the Prince want to keep me?
But of course, it made sense. Sort of. I mean, the gifts suddenly made sense. The room shared with Ava. The maids who brought us meals and, well, the fact that I was still alive.
Yet—
“What can I possibly do for him?” I blurted out in a flurry of words strangled in whispers. Panic had me gripping the edge of the solid table. “Am … am I … an anie—”
I couldn’t ask it. It was nonsensical, preposterous, and wholly arrogant to even think it.
Jasper latched onto my thoughts and said the word I was too cowardly to speak. “Aniel?”
His mocking smile was enough to bring heat to my cheeks.
“No,” he said. “Aniels are born from a piece of their maker. We are crafted by their very hands over many moons, and we forever carry a piece of their souls within us.”
Maybe that, I wondered, was why there weren’t nearly as many aniels as there were mortals. What Jasper called a God’s soul was really their power. And there was only so much power to give. Like a mother—there was only so many lives that she could create before her own ended.
“Aniels are children of the Gods,” he went on, fingering the cover of a leather-bound book. A skripta. Maybe one of the first ever written. “And you were made in a mortal body, by a mortal.” He lifted his lead stare to mine. “You are no aniel.”
I swallowed, hard, and picked at my fingers. A nervous habit I might have lifted from Ava sometime.
“So what am I?”
Jasper’s cruel smirk returned. “I told you already. You, Valissa, are an avsky.”
An abomination.
I felt the weight of my heart in my chest. And still, I was no closer to knowing what made me what I was.
Maybe he was right—maybe that was all I was. An anomaly that sprouted up in the throngs of mortals spread out over the Commos Isles.
Disappointment was quick to sink into me and deflate my shoulders, like a puppet whose master had abandoned it.
Jasper set down the book he’d been flicking through.
“We are not here to answer whatever questions you have,” he said. “We are not here to pander to you or your fears. Today, you will train—and that is all.”
A frown twisted my whole face into something awful, like a puckered raisin. “Train?”
“Trained pets,” he said darkly, “live the longest.”
All the colour drained out of my face.
“Now—” Suddenly wearing a charming smile, Jasper pushed the ancient necklace with the green stone across the table, followed by a simple silver ring. “—begin.”
5
‘Training’ was a loose word that carried little weight and a lot of expectations. That was what I learned in my first lesson.
Jasper wanted me to hold both the book and necklace in each hand and—
‘Do what you do.’
Not the clearest instructions from the one overseeing the lessons that had been suddenly sprung on me.
No mentio
n of my family, no talk of what I was or why I was this way, not even a guarantee that Ava and I would be safe for at least a while. Nothing came out of his pale lips other than those instructions.
So when I finally threw the book and necklace onto the table and cried out a frustrated sound, Jasper had no right to wear that puckered look of disappointment on his face.
“You won’t tell me what I need to do,” I groaned and threaded my fingers through my hair.
For a moment, I shut my eyes and focused, not on the ancient artefacts, but on calming myself down.
Monster itched to come out and give it whirl.
I didn’t trust her leading the way, and regaining control of her grew harder each time—unless I passed out on the floor of the Prince’s warm sitting room, that is.
“Again.” Jasper barked the order at me so abruptly that I flinched and dropped my arms to my side. “Try again.”
“Try what?” I snarled. “Try holding two mouldy old pieces of junk for another few hours?”
“Do what you do,” he hissed at me. His brown eyes flickered amber, like a wild beasts’ savage gaze, and I shivered.
“Fine.” Courage failed me and my voice flattened into something like a mouse’s squeak.
I snatched the book in my clammy hands first. Before I reached for the necklace, I paused when a thought struck me.
Feels like honey…
That was what Jasper’s power had felt like on his hand.
Honey.
The power that had lingered in Ava had felt the same, only diluted by other dewy things like an overly moist baked bun. And, if memory served me well, the corridor leading Prince Poison’s sitting room had smelled like honey.
I bit down on the inside of my lips and inhaled through my nostrils, long and deep. Then, I nodded to myself.
I can do this. Maybe…
Jasper’s fierce stare burned into my face as I cupped the book in my hands and shut my eyes. Trying my best to tune out his loud presence, I used that strange reach inside of me and prodded around the leather cover.
No honey detected.
It felt like … ink and death, buried deep beneath the dust of time.
Time ticked by us. There was no clock in the room, but I heard a restless sigh come from one of the too-vocal portraits and the rustle of Jasper’s coat.
It was useless.
My face was sour as I opened my eyes and tossed the book onto the table.
I answered Jasper’s expectant stare; “I can feel power inside of it, somewhere. But it’s…dark. Too dark for me to see it.”
It made little sense even to me. Explaining how my power worked to an aniel when I didn’t even know how it worked wasn’t only difficult but exhausting.
Monster ached to smack his face off.
But then, I caught movement over by the entrance.
Jasper traced my wide stare.
Leaning against a column was Prince Poison. And he didn’t look pleased. A cruel look was set on his striking face that chilled my bones and curled my toes.
His gaze drifted downwards to the gifts I wore. The table blocked my bottom half from his sight. After an icy once-over, he stared me dead in the eye again, and I felt my insides solidify.
“Weak.”
One word, he spoke. One word from a God who spared me—for now, at least. And it was a word that shredded my insides to pieces.
I touched my eyes down at the table as they started to wet.
He might not have seen the tears prickle at my eyes, but there was no hiding the beetroot shade my face had gone.
I didn’t have to bow my head in shame long, because in a heartbeat, the Prince’s boots hit the marble floor and the noise drifted away. He left.
There was a quiet, stiff tension that had settled in the room. Even the portraits were still.
I glanced over my shoulder at the Prince’s portrait and I finally understood that saying, If looks could kill, best wear goggles.
Jasper called my attention back to him.
“Some of us never get approval, yet we seek it our whole lives,” he told me in a quiet voice, too quiet for the portraits to hear if they were—or could—listen. “It is our driving force.”
Frowning, I studied Jasper, studied the faraway look on his face.
“Remember what they are,” he added. “They are not your parents, not the loves of your life. And mortals, they care for the least of all their creations.”
6
“How can they expect you to do that?”
Ava was livid. She paced the room, door to curtained window, and ran her hands through her hair too many times.
“You’ve only ever used your … your… you-know.” She paused to gesture at me wildly. “Power or whatever you want to call it. You’ve only used it, what, twice in your life?”
“Three times,” I corrected quietly.
She barely broke stride.
I sat on my bed with my feet tucked under my bum, and picked at the leftovers from the lunch that the maids brought to us a little over an hour ago. They would be back soon to take away the trolley of plates and pitchers.
“—and they expect you to master it all of a sudden?” Ava was still shrieking around the room.
It was amusing.
For the first time since we were snatched from Zwayk, I wasn’t drained to my core, and didn’t have to worry about saying or doing the wrong thing that might end up with my head on a platter.
And I finally felt like Ava was inching back to herself.
“I mean, did they see you after you returned Jasper’s magic?” Ava stopped with a huff at the trolley and snatched the last doughy roll from the breadbasket. “I did,” she carried on. “Shit, I thought you were dead. Or going to die. Either way, the last thought on my mind was, Hey! Let’s force her to do more and expect the world in a day!”
“Same.” I cheered her with my half-empty glass of burgundy wine. It was foul and sour and made my mouth feel all slimy, but it helped numb some of the exhausted panic that’d been building up inside of me for days now.
Monster was due to explode at any moment. The longer I could keep her subdued, the better.
“So what are you supposed to do?” Ava threw herself onto the foot of my bed dramatically.
I sipped at the potent wine. “In my lessons?”
“In your lessons, in your lifetime,” she said with a flourish of the hand.
“Jasper wore gloves the whole time, and he made sure that he was out of reach.” I shrugged.
“Obviously whatever it is they want you to do, you have to do it without touching a person with power.”
A hum was my response.
“You can’t touch Jasper.” Ava shifted onto her bum, mirroring me, and hooked my gaze tight. “What can you do?”
“Sit here, let them feed and dress me, and wait for my death sentence.”
Ava’s mouth bunched to the side.
She was quiet for a moment. A long one.
We both knew there was no way out of this. Not that we could see, and didn’t involve our gruesome murders.
I set the glass down on the tray and sighed.
Ava was trying. Trying to distract us from what was coming, trying to help me make sense of what might be our only way out of certain-death.
I threw her a bone. “Those things on the table—” Ava instantly perked up, and hope lit up her eyes. “—were older than we are. I mean…older than mortals, I think. I could feel it when I touched them.”
“What did you feel?” she whispered.
“Death.”
So much death. On the book, in my mind. All over.
“And ink and secrets and…an eternity.” I shook my head as if to shake off the thoughts. “I can’t describe it. I can barely understand it myself. But whatever Prince Poison expects of me, it’s got to do with power in things, not people.”
“Maybe he needs you for something big.” The flames of hope burned brighter, turning the hues of her eyes to burnt rus
t. Her mind churned behind those bright eyes.
Pity sank my gut.
Desperation didn’t serve us well at all. Hope was just disguised desperation.
Prince Poison didn’t need me for anything. I was only feeding Ava’s will to survive. Her hope.
And I heard Jasper’s words echo in my mind—
An avsky can meet one of two fates. A death sentence, or to be kept.
Kept, like a bird, like a pet.
There was no denying the Prince had some form of interest in me. Intrigued by my inexplicable curse. And while that kept me alive for the time being, it came with an expiry date.
I pushed the tray away from me and fell back onto the bed. “What did you do this morning?”
I had to take my mind off the inevitable.
“Stared out the window for most of it.” Ava’s thoughtful expression faded to a lonely boredom. “You know, a lot of crows fly between the palace and the hill. I saw at least a dozen of them within an hour.”
A small smile kissed my lips. Crows were my favourite.
Sometimes, I wondered if I was their favourite too. Always, I found them in the sky, or on a post, perched in a tree, on the sails of a ship. And now, they had found me tucked at the rear of a palace that was carved into a bone hill.
As Ava told me about her agonisingly slow morning, I wondered how long they expected to keep her locked up in this tight, stuffy room with nothing to do and nowhere to go.
She was only here because of me. And it was all about me, wasn’t it?
Ava was leverage.
If I did anything stupid, like try to run or attack, I would suffer for it, but so would she.
That was the kicker. Because if Ava fled the palace, I didn’t think they would spend much effort on hunting her down.
I would be destroyed. She would be … disregarded.
Ugh, Monster was rising. Getting in my head. Making me think things I shouldn’t.
My jaw tightened as I fought back against the impulses crawling through me.
Push her off the bed.
Take the knife to her throat.
Remove the leverage, then worry only about yourself.
I shoved Monster back down into the dark pits where she belonged.
Gods and Monsters, Books 1-3: A Dark Gods Bully Romance (Gods and Monsters Box Set) Page 8