by Jodi Lamm
A new thing crouches by the shore and traces letters in the sand with her finger. Behind her, her creator-god repeats the letters she makes and helps her sound them out. He laughs when she confuses them, but praises her more generously than a proud father when she gets them right. His name is Jas. And she is called You.
“You stay here,” her god says to her. So the new thing holds her knees in a dark, little sea cave, and the tide advances. She spends her days in the womb of that place, swallowing seawater and clinging to the rocks. She stays put as she is told, but the face of her god fills her thoughts and warms her while she drowns again and again.
She goes over her alphabet, she practices her words, and she waits.
“I opened my eyes, and your face was the first thing I saw,” she says to her god. “You are the sun to me.”
Every time the tide recedes the sun comes back to her. And touches her. And kisses her. And teaches her. He brings her clothes to wear and shows her how to put them on. She wears them even when she waits in the sea cave, like some ridiculous mermaid, because they remind her that the sun will return again, soon.
Her god draws closer and closer to her each time she sees him. He interrupts their lessons sometimes, and burns her skin with his fingers. She feels his desire along with his shame.
“Why are you afraid?” she asks him.
“Because I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Are you hurting me?”
“I think so.” But still he kisses her, and still he draws her to himself.
Chaos is like swallowing too much seawater and needing to take in more. Chaos is drowning. Agony. Intoxication. Chaos is want.
***
Maddy took her head in her hands and groaned. Someone echoed her in the dark.
“Will.” She crawled toward the still bound and gagged man. All the while, a whimpering voice in her head said, You can’t. You aren’t capable. You can’t. You can’t.
When he was released, Will unfolded his long limbs and pulled his gag down around his neck. “Madeleine, is it you?”
She inspected his body with her hands to make sure he wasn’t injured.
He allowed her intrusion with a chuckle. “You can always ask, you know. I can hear you. Everyone can hear you now.”
She squinted in the dark to see him, but the visions of her past were thicker than the visions of her present.
“Maddy? Did you hear me? Maddy?” Will’s voice echoed in congress with another.
You can’t.
She tried to shake the memories away. “Where is Jas?”
“He went after the duke when you lost consciousness.” Will caught Maddy’s arm before she could run after Jas. “He won’t catch them. He’s chasing the royal coach on his own two legs. Probably, he misses having four about now. It’s best to wait for him here.”
You aren’t capable of love.
***
A man with fish-scale eyes is shouting, “What have you done? You idiot! You pathetic, hot-headed boy!” He shakes the creator-god by the shoulders. “You lied to me. ‘It fell to pieces,’ you said. You should have buried it. You weren’t supposed to give it life until we both understood the consequences. Now…” His voice is terrible. “We’re all dead now. We’re all dead, unless…”
“Father, I love her,” says the god. “And she loves me. I can’t destroy her.”
And the smile that grows upon the man’s face betrays his intentions. “Please, James,” he says. “She is as incapable of love as she is of disobedience.”
So the seed is planted.
***
“I remember everything,” Maddy said, absently.
Will scooted away from her.
“I won’t hurt you,” she said.
“Are you sure?”
She took his hand in the dark. “I’m still trying to figure out where the feeling they call ‘chaos’ came from. It isn’t as clear as I thought it would be.” She paused, realizing how ridiculous what she was about to say sounded. But then, this was Will. He forgave her everything. “I think it was about love.”
“Of course it was.” Will’s voice fell.
***
The creator-god should be saying goodbye, but he isn’t. “I don’t know what to do. My father is right, isn’t he? But… I love you. I don’t want to live without you. Is it true you can’t love me back? Have I been abusing you, forcing you all this time? Did I create chaos in you already?” His forehead touches hers. His hand rests upon the mark on her thigh, hesitating. “What if you could love me back? Maybe you could love me…” He pauses and breathes into her ear. He is only an echo of himself, but his meaning rings clear. “Love me.”
***
“He commanded me to love him,” Maddy said, staring at the darkness above her. She was weary, and the man beside her was too quiet. “I think I wanted to obey him, but couldn’t. So I was afraid. I was drawn to Jas and afraid of him at the same time. I wanted to love him, though I’d never wanted anything before. Is that chaos?”
Will squeezed her hand, but didn’t answer. She thought she heard him swallow the way a man does when he’s trying not to cry. No, that wasn’t right. Will was stronger than that.
“Is it chaos when someone continues to want something they know they can never have?” she asked.
Will cleared his throat. “I would say so.”
“His Grace offered to save me from Jas, from annihilation, from everything. He said he could extend my life indefinitely, give me a home and family, and the comfort of ignorance. All I had to do was let him name me.” Maddy stared up into the blackness. “It was a trick. I can see that now. Only Jas could give life to the prince, so I was created as something to trade: a life for a life. His Grace made sure Jas was lonely, destroyed all his friendships until I was all he had. He knew Jas would give me life, knew Jas would wake the chaos in me. He knew exactly how this would play out from the very beginning. And Jas walked right into the lion’s mouth.” She groaned. “But why?”
“Because he loves you,” Will muttered. “And love makes people stupid. It doesn’t matter whether the person you love could ever love you back. You’ll still follow them everywhere. You’ll still do anything for them.” His voice caught in his throat. “You’ll bash your head against a wall for eleven years…”
And with that, Maddy saw the complete picture. Will’s presence, his unending patience, everything he did made perfect sense to her. She wished she had seen it sooner, but how could she have? By nature, she was not a creature who understood love. She only knew duty. Will had no duty to Jas, yet the Titan enslaved him without even trying. Was that why Jas distrusted his friend? Was that the seed of his anger: the guilt of not being able to return that love?
“You’re in love with Jas,” she said.
“Pretense is such an ugly thing, isn’t it?” Will stood, and rather than let go of his hand, Maddy followed his lead. “The truth finds its way to the surface, no matter how deep you try to bury it. No sense in hiding forever. We are what we are. And James is… a fool.”
Maddy threw her arms around Will and held him tighter than she ever had. Now that she knew her own chaos, she was even more dangerous than before, but Will stayed with her. He didn’t struggle to escape. He didn’t recoil at her touch. She’d thought such a thing impossible to her. Now she cried for joy because she’d been proven wrong. Someone trusted her. Someone believed in her, even after the gate that kept her benign was flung open. The longer she held Will in her arms the more she wanted to keep him forever. He was everything she wished she could become.
“I have to go after Jas,” she said.
Will held her at arms length. “Why?”
Maddy gritted her teeth. She didn’t want to betray Marcus, but the weight of his secret was too much for her. One confidant: no one would deny her that. “Swear to me you won’t tell anyone.”
Will nodded in the dark. “Of course.”
“Especially not Jas.”
“What is this about?”<
br />
She took a deep breath. Will would keep her secret just as she would keep his. “My brother is cursed.”
“Cursed?”
“A spell he used to bind himself to me went horribly wrong. I don’t know what it was, but he let something awful go into him and he won’t be free until I belong to him. I have to find Jas. He might know how I can choose a new master.”
The more she spoke, the tighter Will squeezed her shoulders. “That doesn’t make sense.”
She was frantic, shaking. “Marcus is some kind of sorcerer, I think—a powerful one. He cursed himself somehow. He needs to own me in order to be free of the beast.”
“There’s no curse that results from a binding spell like that, and certainly not one that can be broken by owning a golem.”
He didn’t understand.
“I have to go.” Maddy wrenched herself away from him and started to run.
Will grabbed her hand and stumbled after her. He was panting by the time they exited the mausoleum, and in the moonlight, Maddy could see the panic on his face. “Listen to me. Listen!” He shook her. “This is a trick. There’s no such curse. Madeleine…”
She stopped pulling and pleaded. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I have to do this. Please. I want to believe in my brother.”
“Why?” But before Maddy could answer, Will dropped his hands to his sides and answered himself. “Because love makes people stupid.” He sighed. “And you want to love him.”
“Please, don’t make me fight you. I swear I won’t let anything happen to Jas.”
“I know. It isn’t James I’m worried about.” Will took her hands in his. “Just remember that love doesn’t guarantee anything. Believe in your brother, if that’s what you need to do, but brace yourself. Be ready for betrayal. You, more than any of us, can’t afford to lose control.” He stared into her eyes a long time as though trying to read some foreign script written there. Then he gave up and shook his head.
“The palace is that direction.” He pointed up the road. “He will have gone that way. You can catch him easily, I think.” Then he pulled Maddy into his arms in an embrace she recognized as goodbye. “Listen, doll. I know James. If he loves you, he won’t be able to harm you, but if I’m wrong… I’m going back to see your mother because she must be worried, and I’m going to tell her you’re safe.” He let her go. “Don’t make me into a liar.”
Had she stayed a moment longer, Maddy would not have been able to leave him. So she nodded, took a deep breath, and turned to walk away.
21: The Insubstantial Slave
The night wind never stung her lungs or eyes. She never felt the weight of her body in her bones or the strain of her muscles as they worked to propel her forward. Still Maddy was weary. Had she ever been anything but prepared for betrayal? Even when her mother and brother were all she knew in the world, she did not trust them. And she was tired of it. Tonight, for a change, she wanted to believe in someone. She wanted to fight for someone else, even though that fight might end in loss. Her creator had ordered her to love him; she would choose to love Marcus instead.
Just when Maddy began to think she would never find Jas, the full moon laid his shadow out along the road. She could see the difference in him as he approached, now that she remembered how he had been at seventeen. He was no longer her fairy-tale footman, no more a golden boy. His face was drawn with years of worry and regret, his footsteps as heavy as those of a man walking to his own execution. But the execution he dreaded was not his own. Maddy understood that much when she saw the glint of a carving blade in his hand.
Jas stopped as soon as he recognized her. “Anxious for oblivion?” He sounded every bit as miserable as he looked.
“Where’s the prince?” Maddy could hardly breathe.
“With his father. And William?”
“He’s gone back to my mother.”
“Just the two of us then.” Jas frowned. “Let’s get off the road. Follow me.” He hopped the ditch and started into the forest.
Maddy followed him.
“Are you afraid of me?” he said, refusing to look back.
“No.” She lied.
“Why did you come after me?” He pushed aside the brush and held it for her. “I have only one thing left to give you. You know what that is.”
She could not mistake him, the gloom in his voice. He meant to kill her.
He stopped when they reached a clearing. “Madeleine.”
Her name on his lips made her back away. Suddenly, he was the most frightening thing in the world. What if he destroyed her before she could save Marcus? What if he got her back under his control? What if… She backed into a tree.
“Sit.” He commanded her as though she were a dog, and she obeyed. Her fear of him overrode her new power of will.
Jas knelt beside Maddy with the carving knife. “This will only hurt for a moment,” he said. “After that, you won’t feel a thing.” He opened her greatcoat and slid her petticoat above her knees. His hands were shaking. He seemed to drift for a moment, and in that pause, Maddy felt the fire overwhelm him. He pressed his fingertips into her skin and mumbled something she couldn’t understand. When she did not respond, he said it again. “Fight me.”
“What?”
“Fight me off and run. Don’t you want to live?” His voice grew shrill when she didn’t move. “Fight me! You’re a thousand times stronger than me! I’m already a monster; don’t let me be a murderer, too.” He stood and began to pace, tapping his carving knife against his leg. “I can’t think. I can’t think any more. Run, before I change my mind!”
But Maddy couldn’t seem to lift herself from the ground. Her heart thundered inside her. She was sick. She was suffocating. She’d lost her voice. She knew it.
“Is this your way of punishing me?” Jas stopped pacing and pointed his knife at her. “It’s terrible, can’t you see? I don’t want to do this. If I could take your place, I would—a thousand times over, I would. But I’ve seen how people will use you. It’s too much power for anyone to have. I have to destroy it.”
Maddy didn’t dare say a word. She couldn’t take her eyes off the hand that held the knife.
“No, it’s too late. I know what I have to do,” Jas said, and his calm at that moment was far more frightening than his hysteria. “There’s only one way to destroy all the weapons together.”
That was when Maddy felt the familiar buzz under her skin and finally knew it for what it was: the culmination of her entire life, as though everything in the world were coming to an end. Jas meant to die. “Wait!” She sprang to her feet just as he put the knife to his own throat. Her instincts overcame her fear. “I’ll find the prince and bring him back here! I’ll sit still and let you erase us both! Only swear you’ll go on living! Please! Please, Jas.”
“You don’t understand.” He backed away from her, one hand out as though that would stop her. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t erase you. I…”
Jas didn’t need to finish. Maddy heard what he couldn’t say more clearly than everything he could. He loved her, maybe clumsily, maybe childishly, but he loved her. He could never destroy something he loved so much. And she couldn’t love him back, not on her own, not really.
Anyone who saw Jas’ face just then would have sworn he was already dead. “Now all the pain will go away,” he said, and he closed his eyes for the blow.
But Maddy remembered her hope in that moment, and she screamed his name as though the volume of her voice would determine the swiftness of his arrival.
The wind roared through the forest, strong as any hurricane. And Maddy smelled sweetness in the air—almond and honey. “He’s here,” she said, turning her face to the sky in ecstatic relief. Then the world went quiet. A warm breeze circled her and dried the tears still clinging to her eyelashes. And as though he had always been there, Maddy’s savior stood beside her. Marcus had arrived.
Jas tried to stay on his feet, but pieces of storm knocked him down again and again. The ver
y air, it seemed, wanted to keep him on the ground. So he gave up and stared slack-jawed at the boy with quicksand eyes. “What are you?” he said.
“I am nothing to you.” When Marcus spoke, the forest hushed itself like an audience the moment the curtain is raised. “But I’ll never let you touch my sister again.” He smiled. “I’ve been waiting a long time for this moment.”
Jas put his hands to his throat, and Maddy felt the pressure of drowning in her lungs. Marcus was taking the air from the Titan, just as he had done to Father Androcles. She tried to call to him to stop, but she couldn’t make a sound. When she saw Marcus fall to his knees and put his hands to his own throat, Maddy knew he suffered with them. Jas lunged at the opportunity, stuck his knife into Marcus’ chest, and scrambled away from him.
Marcus lifted his head, and suddenly, all of them could breathe again. “What’s this?” He pulled the knife from his chest and chuckled. “Thank you. I’ll keep this.” Then he turned from the stunned Titan and started toward Maddy. His wound was not bleeding. “You found your voice.” He smiled and used his free hand to pull her into an embrace. “I’m so glad you called me.”
Maddy couldn’t respond. She stood awed in the face of the powerful stranger she had lived with so long. “You… You’re amazing.”
Marcus flushed at that. His brilliant smile and proud eyes were so foreign on that usually indignant face, Maddy hardly recognized him. She even felt herself smile with him a little. But when Jas rose over his shoulder like a horrible golden sun, she screamed. Marcus whirled around just in time to see the Titan take hold of his shirt. And then there was fire. It devoured Marcus as though his clothes had been soaked in alcohol.
Marcus leapt back. The wind blew furious and cold. For a moment, the orange, licking flames turned red. Then they shrank and vanished, leaving Marcus with a few charred tatters for a shirt.
“Fire magic?” Marcus said, backing away from Jas. Maddy laid her hands on Marcus’ bare shoulders. His skin had not burned.
Jas held out a shaking hand. “Give me back my knife,” he demanded and pleaded at the same time.