Mind, we were only two days away from the North of Scocie, so I wasn’t feeling the urgency the way Damianos was.
“We got our asses kicked,” I said, giving up on the winds. I turned my back on the water and leaned against the barrier. “We lost four, the pair of us almost died—”
“Gods don’t drown,” he said wearily, something he’d assured me time and time again, but it didn’t change that I knew I was drowning. I’d felt it in my bones and I’d thought of the Keeper, how she might take my soul to her ponds.
“Well I was drowning,” I bit back at him. “I was almost crushed in the lighthouse—”
“Your powers saved you,” he cut me off again, his look just as exhausted as mine. We were getting on each other’s last nerve.
Never would have thought the crow-holder, the handsome mysterious man who slipped into my bedchamber at night, would make me want to rip out spines with my bare hands. Mainly his.
And Ava’s while I’m at it.
I ran my hands down my face, then shot him a tired look. “You’re not listening, Damianos. They’re stronger than we are. Even with my father’s power, I don’t think we’re ready to stand against them—”
“Stop underestimating your power—”
“Stop fucking interrupting me,” I snarled.
Close-by, Adrik glanced up at us from the step he was slouched on. Jasper looked down on us from the sail he was perched on, Ava tucked to his side.
For days they watched us argue without ever having a conclusion. We couldn’t agree on anything or have a simple chat without it turning into another bicker session.
“Prince Poison has a power we’re not immune to,” I explained, hooking Damianos’s simmering gaze. “I can’t put his poison into you or my bracelets. Even with more, new and ancient power, I don’t see a way around that. His poison can kill us—”
I held up my hand as he made to interrupt.
“Or,” I went on, “debilitate us long enough for him to find a way to kill us. Trust me, I’ve suffered his poison enough to know how strong it is. We need, no I need, storage. Bracelets, ancient artefacts.”
“We have none of those.”
I turned my gaze away from his weary presence.
The urge to cut his throat open was clutching me.
I pushed away from the barrier and wandered around him, my calculative gaze rinsing over the few worshippers who survived.
Lada didn’t make it. She died in the rubble, I assumed.
Some of the surviving worshippers mopped the deck, others played cards on empty barrels.
“Don’t we?” I asked quietly.
Damianos came up to my side. His inky presence darkened me as I watched a young worshipper scrub the barrier opposite.
“I just need something to put the Prince’s poison into,” I said, as if speaking to myself. “Maybe it doesn’t have to be an object.”
“You would do that?” His voice was a quiet whisper at my ear. He slid his hands around my waist and pulled me back against his chest.
“I’ve done it before.” I shrugged. “I don’t mind doing it again if it means…” I trailed off as it struck me. I just didn’t mind killing again, no reason tagged alongside it.
Damianos hummed curtly, then brushed a kiss down the length of my neck. “So we will use the worshipper if we must.”
“That’s what they’re for, isn’t it? Our aid.”
I felt his smile form against the sensitive skin of my neck. “Exactly. Now, come to the quarters with me.”
I rolled my eyes, a small smile playing on my lips.
We spent the next two days much the same. Bickering, fighting, and time in the captain’s cabin.
3
Finally, the northern shores of Scocie crept up the view from the ship.
It was on that day that Ava broke her silence.
She came to me as I watched the horizon bring my father’s resting place to me.
For a while, she just stood quietly by my side and I was snatched back to when we first watched Scocie climb up the horizon together, at the length of a ship.
Guess much isn’t different now.
Exhaustion clung to me just by how close she was. I shot her narrowed look. “Do you need something?”
Startled, she threw me a bewildered stare. Hurt flickered over her brown eyes that once looked so warm to me, but now reminded me of brittle old tree bark.
“I made myself clear,” I told her, and looked back at the shore coming up to us. “And so did you. There’s nothing more we have to say to each other.”
“You’re wrong.” Her voice was small, and I detected pebbles of fear under the flatness of her tone. “I have to say what I think, or it will eat me up forever.”
“Better speak fast, then. My patience is already raw.”
The warning was there, but it could have turned into a dark threat any moment. Ava wasn’t safe from me anymore. My urges reared up around her. I wanted to hurt her, make her suffer for hurting me.
And the closer I got to finding my true self, the harder those urges fought to break free.
“Lissa,” she said gently, coaxing my attention to her. “I-I don’t think you should go through with this. This, this… fusion between you and your father’s bones. It’s not natural. It’s dangerous.”
“Oh, have you done it?”
Her mouth tilted into a frown. “You know what I mean.”
“No, I really don’t.” I faced her with my blank stare. Sea mist gathered on my white knuckles, as if to kiss the anger brewing there. “Why don’t you tell me what you really mean.”
“I … I’m.” She paused and licked her lips, as if to gather little flecks of courage she might find there. The sight had me itching to tear out her tongue.
I curled my hands at my sides and clenched my jaw tight. I needed her unharmed.
Untouched.
She guaranteed Jasper’s loyalty for now.
Assuming he really did care about her, but since he made sure she was on the ship before anyone else, I was guessing I’d been partly wrong about him this whole time.
Still, he went to her on Phantom’s orders and he stayed to keep her on the game-board we all sat around. Little did he know, he’d become my pawn.
“I’m afraid,” she confessed, looking down at my hands loose on the rails. “If you do this to yourself, take your father’s power and essence—I’m afraid of what you’ll become. A mon…”
She couldn’t bring herself to say it again.
Monster.
My smile was dark, so dark that she hesitated then took a small step back.
“Ava,” I said with a buried laugh. “I’ve already become it.”
4
Midday mists collected droplets of seawater on my cloak. I wished I wore heavier clothes for this journey.
Most of my belongings were ruined in the lighthouse rubble, lost to power and stone. I wore the same light blue dress as the one I battled in, and it wore the reminders in its tears and stains, like bruises that never faded.
Ava stood by the rails, nerves etches on her face. I watched her out the corner of my eye.
She picked at her nails, a nervous habit.
Adrik and Jasper were coming with us to the shore, as well as a handful of surviving worshippers.
Ava was to stay onboard and I didn’t miss the opportunity. If I got the chance, it would be a good time to kill Jasper—when we were buried in the Wild Woods. Problem was, if I was to do it, I had to be discreet. Damianos was, after all, fond of Jasper, his only true aniel.
But then, I asked myself what the point of it all was? Did I still nurture a violent hatred for Jasper, now that Ava and I had severed our ties?
A part of me wanted him to live, if only to smile and watch him break her heart like I warned her about.
Bitterness settled on my face as Jasper walked through my line of sight, over to Ava. He swept her into an embrace that raged my insides.
His faint murmured words
carried on the sea breeze.
Then, the breeze carried with it a sharp scent of freshly brewed coffee from the captain’s cabin that I’d come to know well in days past.
I turned to the stairs as Damianos descended. Today, he was Phantom. He moved like a shadow, skirting the stairs, ink and black shadows lashing all around him.
I saw a God.
Last night, in the sheets with him, I saw a man.
Even when I got down and dirty with the Prince, I never saw him as anything other than what he was. Damianos had a side to him that was softer than I expected, softer than any side even I had.
I liked it.
A small smile tugged at my lips as he caught my eye. He watched me, pinning my gaze, as he came up to our small travel-group.
When Adrik sank the ship, the small row boats were lost. And in our escape from the Prince and the Watcher, we hadn’t the time to bring them back from the depths of the sea. So those of us who faced the Wild Woods were to swim to shore.
Adrik was the first overboard.
Fastened to his back were bags of foods that wouldn’t spoil in the seawater, and some camping gear that we might come to need.
No one knew how deep in the Wild Woods my father got before he died. But as the ship swayed with the current, anchored down, I could feel the early touches of power in the air.
I shadowed Adrik overboard, sinking into the water as I descended the rope-ladder.
Ice-cold water lifted up to my waist as I let go of the rope. I pushed away from the ship and twisted around to follow Adrik through the water.
Jasper jumped overboard, forgetting the ladder, and splashed behind me. In a blink, I was drenched.
I glowered back at him, plans of his gruesome death reigniting.
When everyone was on shore, we headed for the cusp of the woods. White trunks sprouted up from the black grass here. It was lovely, I thought, in a haunting way. The leafy branches were grey, like shadows, and danced in the still air as though a breeze whispered secrets through them.
But they kept a secret, one I had to peel away in the form of bones.
As we trekked through the Wild Woods, I caught up with Damianos who led the way and asked, “How do I take the power from his remains?”
I knew it had to do with his bones, and fusing them to me somehow, but the how was the part I was unsure about.
Damianos sidestepped a dangerously black puddle of tar on the wood floor. It was mostly covered by leaves, but the longer I stared at it, the more I noticed how it gleamed with winks. I wondered how bottomless that puddle was and how many lost souls were trapped in it.
Did it connect to the Keeper’s ponds?
“His power is in his bones,” Damianos told me. “You drain essence, and his bones are an endless reach of power. Connecting them to you will give you an unlimited source.”
“I drain,” I agreed, mind on the endless tar pool. “But I can’t use essence. I can only take it.”
At least, that was before the lighthouse. Before I shattered the windows with a burst of rage, before I saved myself from the debris that wanted to crush me, before I wielded the wind as though it was my own.
Damianos had the ghost of a smile on his lips. “For now,” he said. “But with your father’s power, you will do more than you ever thought possible.”
I’m afraid of what you’ll become.
“Will it change me?”
He studied me coolly. The ocean-blue of his eyes were lights, illuminating the shadows of the woods.
“Do you want it to?” he asked.
I shook my head, not in answer, but in confusion. “I feel myself slipping away more every day.”
Damianos moved in front of me. Blocking my way, he forced my face to align with his.
Looking down at me, he asked, “Where is your brother?”
“In the ground,” my answer came out instantly. “Dead.”
Triumph flickered in his icy blue eyes. “You are yourself,” he said, chucking a finger under my chin. “If you weren’t, your mind would still be lost to your broken soul. The more united you become, the more you are yourself.”
So, this really is me.
Could be worse. I could be a bottom-feeder, like Adrik, or a devilish weakling like Jasper.
That was what I told myself as we kept pace through the thick woods.
When we were passing a bright green pond whose winks gleams with something malevolent, the early reds and pinks of dust were beginning to crawl up the sky’s edge.
Damianos slowed, falling back from the lead and joined me, trailing behind the group. Even the worshippers, packed full with supply bags and tents, kept better pace than me.
Side by side, we walked in silence for a while, listening to the eerie howls of the strange night birds in these woods. I saw one of them back at the willow trees, disturbed by our trek, and it took off in a smear of black much too wide to be an ordinary bird. Bigger than Phantom’s crows.
Damianos placed his hand on the small of my back. My muscles jumped in my skin.
No excitement sparked my nerves.
“What did he say to you?”
His question caught me off guard. Still, I knew exactly what he was talking about. It was the question burning inside of him for days, the flames that fuelled his outbursts, and threw anger my way.
It was the moment I shared with Prince Poison in the water, when I should have been fighting or fleeing, not flirting with danger. Maybe that was what I wanted. Maybe I wanted danger, not war.
“He asked me to stay,” I said, looking straight ahead at the others leading the way, trampling on the crisp black blades of grass.
The black should have reminded me of Phantom, his inky presence, his black ribbons. Instead, I found my mind drifting off to the Prince, how desperate he was to hold me to him, the wild kiss he ravished me with.
My fingers ached to touch my tingling lips. I shouldn’t have missed him, not after everything, but it wasn’t me. It was my heart, and it felt torn into two pieces—one for him, the other for my pride.
Not even a fragment left for Damianos whose hand on my back was starting to press tighter, as if to mark and claim me.
“He kissed you.” His hold on me was starting to ache my lower back. A bit harder and it would be a shove. “I didn’t see you fight back.”
Because I’m under his spell.
“I almost drowned,” I said, aloof. “I was confused, out of sorts.”
His hand slid to mine where it gripped, too tightly to be affection, to be anything other than control.
“If I find you are lying to me—”
I pulled my hand out from his grasp. “Threats didn’t get the Prince very far,” I spat. “Besides, you’re reading too much into it. He begged, I denied. That’s all.”
Silence plunged onto us, but I felt the prickles of danger—the revolting kind—simmer all around Damianos. He stayed by my side, walking with me, but it was stiff.
Fleetingly, I thought of a game of cards in the saloon at the stardust palace. My life wasn’t so unlike it, a deadly game of cards. Only, with the Prince it always felt like I was playing with him, I was his challenge, his opposition. Playing with him.
Others were the cards, like Ava and Roxhanna.
But with Damianos? He was playing against the Prince, and I was the card.
All the more, I wished I stayed with Prince Poison on the shore.
As the others got farther ahead, becoming shadows in the woods, I looked up at Damianos.
“He asked me to run away with him,” I said.
His eyes flashed bright blue, like diamonds caught in the moonlight.
“What would you have done if I did?” There was a challenge in my tone, suspicion in my slitted eyes.
The flash was gone, crumpled by an enraged look that he turned on me. “You were made for me. without me, you are incomplete. Never forget, Valissa, you need me more than I need you.”
Liar.
My fingers curled, it
ching to rip off his skin.
I walked ahead, feeling his dark presence licking at my heels, like shadowy blades poised to strike.
I got the uneasy feeling that the strike would come—and soon.
5
I’d always loved nightfall.
I loved the colours the sky turned, as though a God took a paintbrush stained blue and red and pink and purple, then smeared it across the sky like it was a blank canvas.
That nightfall, we set up camp.
Never trek through the woods at night. That was what Jasper said to me as he set up his own tent. I just shot him a dirty look and moved over to the campfire.
The worshippers that we’re huddled around it all stepped back to make room for me. Maybe they were afraid of me. It would give sense to their averted gazes if they were.
I sank onto a rough log and warmed my hands on the flames. Adrik dropped himself beside me, and I felt the log lift a little under me. The lug was too heavy for even a thick fallen log from a tree in the Wild Woods.
The look I gave him was one of judgement, but he paid it no mind. He fought with me none at all since we linked up with Damianos in the Lost Square. But I suspected that had a lot to do with him realising how brutal I can be.
Once the tents were up, Damianos spread out the map of the Wild Woods and pored over it with Jasper. I joined them when the flames started to simmer and most of the worshippers had fallen asleep by the fire.
“It’s another day’s walk at most,” said Jasper, his fingertip flattened on the waterfall marked onto the map. “If we head straight through where the cliffs part, we can cut that time in half.”
Adrik, rubbing his hands together, came up to us. He said, “If the bridge is still there. Been a long century since I was last in these woods. For all we know, the bridge is gone.”
It was meant to be just wood and rope connecting the two cliffs. If time had destroyed them, we would have to round back and restart our journey, adding on more time between now and returning to the ship.
“Take the safe route,” I said.
Damianos arched his brow at my order.
I steadied my gaze on him. “I won’t waste time for the chance of saving time. We know that if we go around the cliff, we’ll get to the waterfall before nightfall tomorrow.”
Monsters: (A Dark Gods Romance) (Gods and Monsters Book 6) Page 2