Jasper studied me, hard. The orange glow of the fire made him look deadly. “What if you’re wrong about the waterfall?”
I’m not.
I feel it calling out to me.
It’s in my bones, an echo across time and space, bringing me to it.
“I know where his bones are,” I said, adamant. “Just looking at this map, I’m drawn to the waterfall. I see it when I close my eyes. Unless you have any other idea where he might be, I suggest you listen and keep your trap shut.”
If he wanted to bite back at me, he didn’t show it. His face was blank as he gave a curt nod of respect, the kind aniels gave to Gods.
I smiled all too sweetly. “We should rest. We’ll need the strength for the long hike tomorrow.”
With that, I left them there by the map and disappeared into my tent. I had my own tent, but that didn’t stop Damianos slipping inside sometime during the night.
He got under the thick, damp-smelling blanket with me. Adrik had done his best to dry out our clothes and supplies when we made it to the shore, but his power only stretched so far, and though everything was dry enough to use, the stink couldn’t be banished.
I turned on Damianos and melted against him as I searched for sleep again. His faint coffee and sweet scent was my anchor.
“I can feel it,” I told him. “Power in my veins, like a throbbing that won’t go away. It almost hurts.”
He draped his arm around my waist and held me to him. “You are close to your father now. His power is calling out to yours. We, the daemons, are meant to do this—take power from our godly sires.”
I flopped onto my back and brought my hands up to my face. For a beat of silence, I just studied them, the creases on my palms, the course skin along my knuckles.
All the while, Damianos brushed his own knuckles along my jawline. “Of all the possibilities of my equal, I am glad it is you.”
I looked at him, hollow pits for eyes.
Once, he felt like home, he ignited something inside of me that I now craved to feel again. But every day I felt just that bit emptier than before.
“It could have been anyone,” he said. “Syfoner could have sired a man, a different woman, anyone else. But I was given you.”
My lips pursed.
Given.
I was given to no one.
I am no one’s gift.
“Will I ever feel as deeply as you do?” I wondered aloud.
My words cut him, deep. He hiked up an eyebrow and studied me with gleaming blue eyes.
I missed the Prince’s eyes.
I missed the Prince.
And still, I didn’t feel for the Prince as deeply as he felt for me. Even if he did mean to hurt me.
“We live eternities,” he eventually said. “Lifetimes to let feelings grow.”
“Or never feel at all,” I said, thinking of his mother, of how her love for the Prince faded after some lifetimes. It made sense.
Can love withstand time?
Or does it fade, like the Zealot’s interest in mortals?
“We get as close to love as we can,” said Damianos.
The problem with that was, I didn’t think I was that close to love with Damianos. But I might have been that close with the Prince.
6
After we packed up the campsite, the trek took us all the way to midday and beyond, and I was still no closer to knowing what I wanted.
Just hours from the waterfall, anxiety was building up in me and I felt the air thin. No matter how many deep long breaths I took, I was robbed of air.
Once I had my father’s power to draw on, I would be forced to make a choice I wasn’t sure I could make. I would be forced to stand against the only man I’ve ever truly felt something for. Well, not so much a man, more of a God.
My feelings for the Prince might have been laced with poison, but they were stronger than I expected. And it was only now that I walked with Phantom that I realised how much I did care for the Prince. The way he cared for me—something toxic and dark and hungry, but deep and strong.
With Phantom, it was hollow. An echo of a home I never had, but always craved. It was fabricated, a plan thought-out by my dead father when he set out to make me.
I was given you…
I could have been anyone, and Phantom would have seduced me with promises of finding myself and my freedom. But I wasn’t free. It was just an illusion. Now, I’d been made to choose, and I was more trapped than ever—I was trapped between two sides of a war.
Haunted by my doubts, I followed the God I hastily sided with into the thicket of the Wild Woods, where the black grass turned crimson, like blades of blood.
We reached the waterfall hours earlier than we expected, before the night started to stain the sky, and it was magnificent.
It was almost worth my choices up ‘til now, just to see the foamy water fall down in a rainbow of colours and merge with the pocket of water beneath. We stood at the murky shore of the pond, eyeing the water, as though we would find my father’s bones glinting just beneath the surface.
And I did.
No one else but me could see them.
I pointed to soil-bed of the water, and in my own bones I knew that was where he was laid to rest by nature.
“Are you certain?” Damianos didn’t sound convinced as he scrutinised the patch of waterbed I pointed to.
“It makes sense.” A look of understanding dawned over Jasper’s face. He looked at me, awed, for a moment. “It’s the Hole of Health.”
I frowned at him. “The what?”
“The Hole of Health,” echoed Adrik. “A legend. It’s said that only a God can find the waterfall. Once the water touches the pond, it brings healing and strength to Gods who seek it out.”
Damianos set his mouth into a grim line. “I should have known. Syfon came here to be healed, find strength in his body and power.”
“Well, he was too late,” I mumbled.
“Was he?” The ghostly tint to Damianos’s voice startled me. As I watched him study the water like it was a beast ready to emerge, he said, “The water preserved him. It saved him in a way—for you.”
I blinked at him, stunned to silence. Then I watched the water ripples with a whole new look—caution. I didn’t want to go anywhere near a body of water that might kill me for someone to come in the future and take my power.
“It’s a pond,” I said, as if to convince myself. “It can’t possibly do that—it can’t think.”
Jasper agreed, “It doesn’t have to. It has no mind, but it is eternal. Older than the First Gods, older than the land. This pond … it’s not the waterfall we are tracking.”
Adrik and Jasper shared a look, then in a blink, Adrik was drawing out the map from a satchel, and spreading it over the muddy shore. We huddled around it.
Adrik’s fat finger rested on the spot our camp had been last night. Then he dragged it around, tracing our footsteps through the woods, to where we should be—an unmarked spot of the map, hours away from the waterfall we were trekking to.
“How’s that possible?” I asked.
Damianos studied me with haunted eyes. “It revealed itself to you. You must have been calling out for it.”
I tapped my finger on the map to where we were headed. “I was looking for that waterfall, same as everyone else.”
“No.” Damianos’s gaze seared into me, as though he was searching for my secrets. “The story is, the Hole of Health is the cup of all power in the world. It reveals itself to Gods who seek it out, but they must be lost at heart. Not any God can find this pool of power, it has to be one who will find their journey and preserve the balance of the world. It must be the world’s warrior.”
“You’re the only one who can see the waterbed,” added Jasper. “And your father is in there. It’s you who the water is calling to.”
I pulled back from the map and looked at the innocent, inviting gleams of the ripples. Dangerous, just like a God’s affection—something I fell into
too easily.
“So,” I said with a grim look. “Who’s going in to get the bones?”
Not a chance. That was how I felt about going into the water. It just wasn’t going to happen.
I was no warrior of the world. This ‘chosen by the water’ tale was getting under my skin, and I wasn’t having it.
“It must be you,” Damianos said. “It presents what you seek, only to you. If it wanted someone else, you wouldn’t see what you see when you look at it.”
“I volunteer Jasper to get the bones,” I said and folded my arms over my chest.
Jasper paled visibly.
“See?” I shrilled and pointed accusingly at the aniel. “Even he looks sick at the thought of going near that water. And you want me to go in it?”
Damianos advanced on me slowly. “We need those bones, Valissa. We need them to win this war.”
“Shame.” I shrugged. “I’ll just take my chances without them—argh!”
Damianos lunged at me.
He pinned my wrists to my back and flipped me around. I landed with an ache on my front, mud squelching beneath me, and then I was heaved up.
“Let me go! Damianos please—”
“You might want to take chances, Valissa. But I take none.”
“I could die!”
“Another risk I’m willing to take.”
Damianos tossed me into the water.
7
I’m drowning.
This time, I’m really drowning.
Ice-cold water forces its way into me.
Water ropes around my limbs like restraints and drags me down to the soft bed of packed dirt.
I lay at the bottom of the pond, still. No room to fight, no space to writhe.
I just lay here.
I close my eyes, and the water lulls me to sleep.
In my dreams, I see memories from the flesh, bones and blood of my father.
They come in flashes. Pictures that move from one image to another.
In the first flash, I see my mother. She stands with a young white-haired man whose fetching smile is as youthful as it is divine.
Syfoner.
He meets my mother at the market on an isle I do not know. Its land is smooth, its shores are sandy and its seas are a sparkling blue. Much closer to Scocie than our pitiful isle.
Mother is holding a cart of fresh fish and, wow, it hurts to be reminded of just how pretty she was. Severe brown eyes slit along her heart-shaped face and her lips are like fresh roses. Her wood-brown hair falls into plaits and twists, and her breath-taking smile is reserved for the God before her.
With his devilish charm, she thinks him an aniel if she thinks of it at all.
My heart wrenches as the memory cracks and pieces together again, a fresh one, one without my mother.
A youthful Damianos stands in front of Syfoner.
The room is familiar. With a blow to the gut, it hits me. My bedchamber at the palace, this is what I’m seeing.
I can’t decide if it was cruel or kind to assign me that room, my father’s room.
Damianos’s face is twisted with fury, looking nearly deranged. A mad-man.
“You know what I want,” he says icily.
Syfoner, covered in familiar bruises—the Prince’s poison—reaches out his blackening hands in a desperate plea. “We have no time. They are coming for us. Save me no and we can survive this.”
Damianos’s mangled face looks like that of a beast’s. “Where is your child, Sy? I will take the poison freely once you hand over its whereabouts.”
“You’re mad! The child will be a legacy, not a tool in a war. Never a slave to your ambitions!” Syfoner lets out a heavy breath. “If you do not do this for me, I will die. We will die.”
Damianos’s face hardens. “Only you will. And I leave you with the promise that I will find your child one day.”
Phantom disappears in a sweeping cloud of smoke. He leaves Syfoner behind, alone, poisoned, and with a promise grave enough to drain all the colour from his face.
Again, the memory shatters like glass.
This time, it is the glittering pond and waterfall that builds in its place.
Syfoner is on the shore. He is on his knees, blood pooling all around him. Flesh is torn from his body, bone gleams crimson from the marred skin.
Dying, he plunges his blackened hands into pond’s mischievous water. He murmurs a chant beneath his breath, almost too low and quiet for me to hear. But I feel his words.
“Give my power to my child when she finds her way. If she is lost, guide her, show her the true enemies I was fool enough to trust.
“Give her my essence, my power, my bones, my flesh. Make her strong enough to become her own, and belong to no one.
“Give her the strength of a First, an unbreakable heart, and an unyielding ambition.
“Give her what I was denied, and what I died for.”
He falls forward, slumping into the pond.
Water reaches out like hands and drags him in.
He’s gone, and I float in his remains.
I wake, still in the water.
I feel … different.
Whole, somehow.
And fucking vengeful.
I want blood. I want it on my hands, on my mouth, staining me. I want blood to run red through the streets and lanes of the world.
The water loosens its hold on me.
I start to drift up to the surface.
As I float, hair waves all around me, my once white hair. Blood from the soil of this water stains my hair now—it’s pink, and I can feel the blood of many touching me. Connected to me, now, forever.
I’m slow to drift to the surface.
I raise my hands in front of me. The pink tips of my hair brushes over my knuckles, a kiss, a welcome home.
Black lines mark my skin, like toxic stains in my veins. But it’s no poison. It is pure power, seared into me.
I am a daemon, I am a God, but most of all—
I am power.
8
Jasper stands at the cusp of the water.
His stare is locked onto his maker, who just tossed a screaming girl into a deadly and ancient pond.
The water turns black and thick like mud.
Jasper steps away as the ripples surface and start to bubble.
The worshippers watch with horror-stricken faces. They are here, not just for Phantom, but also for who Valissa is expected to become.
Moments tick by, the air thickening and thickening, until the silence was deafening, and everyone wonders the same.
Adrik asks the question on everyone’s mind. “What if she doesn’t come back up?”
The sludge that the water has become is too thick to see through. No one can spot any hint of Valissa in the pond.
Phantom takes a step closer to the edge and peers down. Nothing moved, not even the eerily silent trees enveloping them.
“We will give it time,” said Phantom eventually. “It’s a process—it might take all day.”
“But if she doesn’t …” Jasper’s words slip away at Phantom’s cutting look.
“Then I will send you in since you are so concerned.” He turns his furiously calm face to Adrik, who drops his head. “You will enter the water after Jasper, and so on. I will send every one of you in until someone returns with the power I need.”
Around the pocket of muddy water, a chorus of bows ensue.
“Set up camp through the trees,” Damianos orders the worshippers. “We’ll give her until morning. If she doesn’t resurface, prepare yourself Jasper.”
Jasper’s face pinches as he keeps his low, submissive bow.
Damianos sweeps away through the trees.
9
I clawed my way out of the water and flopped down on the muddy shore.
I was in the water for a while, because now it was past nightfall. No one was here.
They had left me.
Power surged through my body like fires of fury. I forced myself o
nto my hands and knees, feeling an odd sensation on my head.
Slowly, I reached up a hand for my hair—and touched bone.
I cried out and scrambled back as though I could escape the horns on my head. Rushing back, I fumbled and fell back into the edge of the pond. The ripples showed me my reflection.
Stunned, I stared at myself.
A pair of white eyes stared back at me. Two horns twisted up from my blood-stained hair, crafted from the bones of my father.
I looked down at my hands. The black lines that had been there were gone now, faded to a dull peachy hue. Still, I felt the throbbing of the power inside of me.
I staggered to stand, my balance unsteady.
“Valissa?”
The familiar voice spooked me.
I jerked around to the mouth of the path where his shadow stood, collecting darkness.
I thought he left me here.
But though he didn’t abandon me to the pond, he did throw me in against my will. What was it I said about freedom and illusions?
Damianos stepped out of the darkness.
Sharp moonlight cut down at him, illuminating the stark shock on his fallen face. He took me in, from the pinkish hair to the horns coming out of my head.
“My father’s bones,” I mumbled, and looked back at the water. I couldn’t feel its call anymore. It was silent, like a vilas’ presence.
“Your eyes,” he said, and took a hesitant step closer. “I-I thought you were …”
“Dead?” My face twisted into a feral snarl. “You threw me in—I could have died, all for something I don’t believe in.”
I took a step closer to him, and power shuddered over the ground, disturbing the fallen leaves and twigs of the woods.
Damianos swept his startled look at the ground, and returned his step. “I never meant to harm you,” he said. “I only meant to make you stronger.”
My lip curled, my hands fisted at my sides. “Like you wanted to make my father stronger until you didn’t need him anymore?”
Monsters: (A Dark Gods Romance) (Gods and Monsters Book 6) Page 3