I know what is coming. I have been waiting for it.
“I am not giving up the necklace.”
She hid it well, but I knew it must be on her mind.
“Nia, it throws off the balance of magic throughout the realm. But forget that, even. Look what it has done to you. Come now. What would your old self think to see you now? And of what’s happened to the village?”
“I thought you of all people would understand,” I snap. “Are you not a champion of the passions?” I gesture to the men outside.
“These are not the true passions of the soul. They are false, and they are feeding on you. They are hurting the entire realm. Just look at all that is happening.”
I cross my arms and stare at her petulantly.
She sighs.
“I knew where this would end. But I had to try.”
She flutters her wings and floats to the door. “I am disappointed, Nia. Greatly so.”
A thick mist of guilt surrounds me as Peri watches me for a moment. Then she is gone, and it is just me and the child. The guilt condenses in thick, swelling drops of fear that cling to everything.
Forget her, the necklace whispers. Who is she to tell us what to do?
I am afraid to answer.
I slowly fall into new rhythms, caring for the girl. I learn how to feed her and swathe her, how to turn tears into giggling coos.
I name her Varya.
And everything continues on. But now when I bring men to my bed, I am too aware of the child. Everything has been tinted a new color since she arrived. Her very presence makes the entire world different. And the world I have created here in our home is no place for a child.
Peri’s warning clings to me.
So I take the necklace off. Just to see.
It is mostly a relief when the men drift off to other things. But then motherhood sets in like a fog.
The girl never stops crying. I hardly stop crying.
Her needs are bottomless, and I am not enough to fulfill them on my own. A film builds between me and the rest of the world, between me and the girl. I cannot connect to her no matter how I try, and she is like a stranger, an invader in my home and my heart. Worst of all is the vast emptiness that takes me over. It is as if I am trapped at the bottom of a deep, deep hole, and there is no one to even hear my screams for help. But I am determined to be present for her. Determined to start doing things right.
I keep waiting to snap out of it, for things to settle into a better place. But it never comes. It goes on like this for days. Weeks. Until I can no longer bear how I am failing her.
Why are you putting yourself through this pain? the necklace whispers. You are not meant for it. We both know how this ends. Come back to me.
I don’t try to fight it this time. I forfeit to its will. I am too weak on my own—it is better for Varya that I go back to what I was.
****
The peace from the necklace slips back into place like it was never gone. The war, the girl, all of the pain falls away. The men come back. It is just as it was before.
Behind the necklace’s protective hum, I am impervious to the realm falling apart around me. Impervious to the child’s shrieks. I go through the motions of caring for her, but she cannot reach me through the necklace’s veil anymore. I do enough to keep her alive, to keep her quiet. It is not like the emptiness that walled me in before. This is a comforting detachment, as if Calipher’s wings were wrapped around me, shielding me from it all. Sometimes the men play with her.
It is somewhere in this time that I begin to notice my face. Years have passed, but my face had not changed at all. It still belonged to that young, wide-eyed girl who dreamed of touching Calipher’s wing, and barely dared to do it. It does not match the weary woman I have become. Looking at this face is like peering into the past, almost like time traveling, except that I cannot reach out and fix any of it.
It unsettles me. I try not to look at the mirror after that.
The girl grows faster than I can believe. Have I become so detached from the passing of weeks, months, years? When she was small, her eyes were the only thing that give her away as inhuman. But as she grows, so do her abilities.
One morning I catch her floating buttons off the floor. Another day, I hear her giggling wildly in the kitchen. When I reach her, she is snapping her fingers together to create little poofs of whooshing shadow. Then there is the time she wakes up with my face, and she cannot put it back to her own. All day long my too-young face stares back up at me with her blank eyes. It resets to her own chubby, tear-stained face in her sleep that night.
I love my beautiful, strange girl. But it puts me on edge, these emerging powers inside her. And even when she is not playing with her magic, she is often in the way. She asks questions I would rather leave alone.
“Mama, why are the men always coming?” she asks me one day.
Her blank eyes are wide and eager.
“That is not of your concern,” I tell her.
“Why?” Her head tilts, her little curls swinging around her face.
“Because it is Mama’s business.”
“You do business with the men?” she asks.
“Of a sort,” I reply.
“Why?”
Always the why’s. It gets to where my spirit flinches every time the girl opens her mouth, afraid of what she will ask now. The girl can reach me under the necklace’s veil in a way nothing else can.
“For the necklace,” I tell her. I hold it out for her to see. “Is it not beautiful? Someday, when I die, it will be yours. Then you will see for yourself.”
Deep down under the necklace’s veil, something inside me recoils at the thought.
When the girl is five, Peri returns, one last time. She tells me she is taking the girl with her. That she will care for her as she did for me as a girl.
Am I the same failure as a mother that my own was?
I should be sad. Or angry. Something. I try to muster the signs of the emotion. I hug the girl close and say I will miss her. But I do not ask Peri not to do it. Behind the haze the necklace has wrapped me in, all I can feel is relief.
After that, time loses the little meaning it had left. Everything bleeds together into a single stream.
I tell the men to take the mirror away. I cannot bear to stare at my too-young never-changing face anymore. It is no longer a face I can recognize, unchanged by all that life has done to me. It is like being a stranger in my own body.
The men come and go, and I bask in Calipher’s aura. The more I bring the men to my bed, the stronger it grows.
The war between the realms continues, I suppose. The men bring me stories about the horrors it is wreaking across the realm—fields burned down, cities destroyed, battlegrounds that tear Terath open. But it does not touch me. The necklace sings me into a peaceful stupor, keeping me separate from the rest of the world. It is all too distant and removed to matter.
When I finally hear word the war is over and the gods have subdued the rebels, I cry for the first time in ages. The First Creatures have been banned from Terath forever. I let go of one last drop of hope that I did not realize I was clinging to. How will Calipher ever come back to me now? Part of me didn’t even realize I still wished for it until then.
Memories of him begin to haunt me. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, and it feels as though he has just whispered in my ear. I am sure he is there, but when I sit up and look for him, the room is empty except for whatever man is at my side that night.
****
I tilt my head back and close my eyes. One of the men I brought in runs his hand over my side and leans forward to graze his lips over my shoulder—his name is Joseph, I think. It makes it easier to think of Calipher when I close my eyes.
Always, I think of Calipher.
His fingers trace down my body and undo my robe. The second man presses into my back as he pulls the robe away. I lean back into him, take in his warmth.
Calipher was not war
m like this. Calipher was cool and smooth, like marble. I remember this, I know it, and yet I can only barely remember how he felt against my skin.
There are so many of the men now. Taking them two at a time sometimes has become easier. I cannot afford to let the rage build among them—I may see the world through a thick haze these days, but I remember what happened to Ferris. I remember my mother. Besides, it pleases the necklace. When I bring the men to my bed it swells with joy, filling me with a tingling pleasure.
Suddenly the air grows tense, like thread strained too tight. Then, I catch a glow of light from the corner of my eye.
A new feeling cuts through the necklace’s haze to me—no, a very, very old feeling. A deep, quiet peace, like a stream trickling through the woods. It makes the necklace’s haze feel stale and false by comparison.
My heart whispers something I do not dare think—no, that is impossible.
“Nia.”
Calipher.
I freeze. I am afraid that if I turn to look at him, he will disappear.
But the entire room floods with his aura, and I cannot resist him long.
“Leave,” I order the men. They pick up their robes and join the others outside.
I wait until the door creaks closed behind them, then slowly sit back and turn to him. He is just as perfect as ever, his smooth glowing skin and his softly curling hair and strong, outstretched arms. His feathers are completely black now. Like midnight.
“Calipher!” I run to him, not bothering to find my robe. “You are here, you are really here.”
His arms wrap around me and all I can feel is the intense peace only he can give me. It makes me woozy, and I hear myself babbling.
“They said all the First Creatures were summoned back, and then they lost the war and the gods banished them from the realm. I thought I would never see you again. I thought…I thought….”
The truth is, I have hardly thought anything in so very long. My words drift away from me and all I can do is press against him. The necklace rubs between us, scratching against my chest.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he murmurs into my hair. “Some of the others were able to resist and break free, and I tried, oh Nia I tried, but it was so hard to break free from Her Will.”
I had heard rumors about such things—Firsts who still roamed Terath, lost and alone, too far fallen to be called back. I blocked them out, unable to bear the questions it brought to the surface about Calipher, and why he had not come back to me.
“You are here now.”
“Yes….” The steadiness of his arms falter.
“What is it?” I ask. He used to tell me everything, every fear, every question, every thought.
“Nia, the town. They say things…I did not want to believe them. But the men outside. The men in here.” He gestures to the bed.
My throat tightens. “What about it?”
“My parting gift. It has harmed you.” He looks down and traces a finger over the brilliant emerald on my chain.
My chest flushes an angry red around it. I step away.
He does not like us.
“Harmed me? Hardly.”
The inches of air between our bodies prickles with intensity. Even just this is enough to separate me from his aura. The necklace’s potent buzz fills the void.
“But Nia….” He reaches a hand out toward me.
He made us what we are. The necklace vibrates through me in biting sparks.
I pull away from him. “What have you heard? What is wrong with what I have become?”
He watches me thrash like I am a wounded animal in the forest that he cannot help.
He shakes his head. “They say you have lost yourself.”
“If I lost myself,” I snap, “it happened when you left me here, all alone, with the world falling apart around me. The necklace saved me.”
“But Nia. The men outside…the men in here.” he glances to the fools near the bed, still fumbling to get their clothes back on. He shakes his head. “I am so sorry.”
I narrow my eyes. “Sorry for what?”
Calipher looks away.
“Sorry for what, Calipher?”
I’m yelling now, my voice throwing back off the walls and out the windows into the night. I’m angry, so angry I could explode.
“It is my fault,” he replies.
“Do not get so self-righteous on me. You have hardly been Theia’s good little angel through all this. All I have done since you left is what you said you wanted for me—to wear this necklace, and let others love me since you were not there. You were not there, Calipher. You were not there.”
I want his cheeks to flush, for his face to crumple into that terrible frown, for him to yell, for him to throw something—anything to show he will fight for me.
All he does is nod, his eyes fixed on the floor.
“You are right. I was not there, and that is what you needed most from me. I have failed you. I have failed you most terribly.”
“Please, Calipher, ”
I don’t know what I’m trying to say, only that I’m suddenly very afraid of losing him all over again. Losing him forever this time. It was one thing to be separated from him, but this look in his eyes. It’s an entirely new kind of loss.
“We can fix it. Tell me what to do. What is it that you want from me?”
“I don’t know,” he replies. “I really don’t.”
“I will do anything. Do not leave. Not again.”
He looks into my eyes and I beg him, empty my soul out to him. His expression softens.
“Maybe. Maybe it is not too late.” He stretches out his hand. “Nia, give me the necklace. We will destroy it. Maybe then, maybe your heart can heal and we can be us again.”
“The necklace?” My hand grabs the emerald instinctively.
You too, Calipher?
He gave this to me, and now because he does not love how it worked out, he wants to just take it back? Perhaps he should have thought of that before leaving us. Before stealing another god’s magic to mess with. Before disappearing for ages, only to judge what we did in his absence, the necklace hisses in my mind. And then I realize—I am saying it all out loud, too. Screaming it, and thrashing out against his impenetrable chest. When I finish, the air swells with hateful silence.
When he finally speaks, his voice is devoid of emotion.
“It is not only about the necklace, Nia. I know.”
His eyes widen, as if implying something of great significance.
“You know what?”
“I know about Varya. I know where—who—she came from.”
His voice breaks over the name. His face twists in an expression I have never seen on him before. Rage? Heartbreak?
Sleeping with Bastus was an entirely different kind of betrayal, to him.
“This is different from the others, Nia. The others were all because of the necklace, because of the heartbreak I left you with. I know that. But Bastus, Nia? The necklace would not have worked on him.”
It is as if all the weight of emotion I have hidden from all these years grows too heavy all at once. The support gives out, and it all comes crashing down on my head.
“Gods,” I exclaim. “What do you want from me?”
“Tell me it is not true,” he begs. His eyes are frantic.
“Calipher, you do not understand. It wasn’t like that.”
What was it like, then? I snap back to myself. I try to find the words to make him understand, to make this all okay, but I cannot find a single one to hold onto.
Meanwhile, his expression is draining, as if his emotions are leaking out of him.
“Calipher, you have got to understand, please.”
But it is already over.
All the terrible things we have said, and now this too. I can see it in his face. This is broken far beyond repair. He did not come to reunite. He came to see if it was all true.
The rage explodes inside me all over again. I am angry at him for
coming here. Angry that he broke Theia’s rules all those years ago. Angry at him for loving me, and angry at him for leaving me. Angry that it took him so long to come back to me, and angry that he is here at all.
Angry at myself, and all my weakness, every step of the way.
I am so angry I could explode. The emerald burns hot and bright against my chest.
His face is solemn. All the heartbreak and anger are gone from it, tucked away with his other emotions in some safe place I cannot reach.
“I am sorry, Nia. You are right. I have ruined it all,” he says.
He speaks slowly and gently, as if to a child, who could not possibly know enough to truly understand.
“It is too late for us. But it is not too late for you. Please, take the necklace off.”
“We will not!” Before I can respond, the necklace speaks through me. “You cannot separate us! We are one now.”
My voice is a hysterical hiss. I am like a puppet as it fights for its claim on me.
But I agree with the words. I cannot go back to what I was before it. I remember what it felt like, that deep endless hole inside me, a pain I could not crawl out from under. I will not give it up again, not ever.
Calipher stretches out his hand and begins to murmur an elaborate chant. A current vibrates through me, and the necklace seizes onto my soul, opposing forces at war within me. A gasp escapes me.
I glare back into his glazed-over eyes.
“No!” I cry.
“No!” the necklace bellows.
“NO!” My will and the necklace’s sync, like a cart’s wheel aligning into a worn track through the dirt. As the word tears through me and out of me, a stream of sparks flies from my outstretched hand and sends Calipher crashing backward into the wall.
The power is coursing through every particle of my body now, waiting, eager to be used. I wait, my chest heaving, for Calipher to try again. But his wings just droop as his eyes run over me one last time.
“Oh, my Nia.” He shakes his head, his eyes brimming deep disappointment—or is it fear? “I am so sorry.”
He reaches out and I flinch, afraid he will go for the necklace again, but he simply strokes my cheek. A rush of pure peace washes over me, and for just a moment, it drowns out the strange power that flooded me. I close my eyes as I lean into his hand, into the stillness. The aura shrinks away, and when I open my eyes, he is gone.
Rain, Chronicles of the Third Realm Wars #0 Page 9