Yet still I smiled, then raised my hands to the ceiling, threw my head back, and laughed.
I felt wonderful.
Stronger than ever before. Filled.
A shuddering breath behind me disrupted my concentration. I whirled to find William lying on the ground, his cheeks gaunt and sunken, his gray face almost white. His eyes were milky, and his mouth hung open. Each breath rattled his chest, and his limbs twitched and convulsed like a marionette at the mercy of its master.
In that moment, it was as though scales fell from my eyes and I saw with clarity for the first time in far too long. I saw why William’s strength had slowly waned in this place. Why he grew weaker and paler as we descended. Why he worried that I used my powers with such levity.
He’d lost strength after every conjuring, concurrent with the force of my will, and had never once recovered, despite insisting he was all right when I had asked otherwise. My father had suggested I might act with greater care, but I’d been convinced of the righteousness of my quest, selfish and deluded in my denial of what was happening before my eyes.
William could not regenerate his life essence in the depths of hell as he could upon the earth’s surface.
I was killing him.
31
The Encore
I dropped to my knees at his side and turned his face toward me, searching for a sign of recognition. How had I done this again to someone I loved? How had I not realized?
I leaned over and kissed his brow. His skin felt cold and dry and yet coated with sweat.
“William?” I placed my hand on his chest and was struck by a horrifying thought—and exhaled with deep relief when his heart still beat beneath my palm. “What can I do?”
I saw no recognition in his eyes, no sense that he had heard or understood. Could I heal him somehow? Was there not some way for his medallion to assist? But no—his talisman had long since been drained of heaven’s favor. My folly had been to not pause and consider the reason.
“Why?” I whispered and brushed a lock of his hair from his beautiful, restful face. “Why do I do this to the ones I love?”
Because you are a wicked creature, replied my inner self. Because you are more like your sisters than you’re willing to admit.
Cerberus came alongside me then and lay down next to William. He licked the prince’s face before proceeding to clean his own stained paws, but William still did not rouse.
“What am I going to do?” Cerberus’s round eyes flicked to mine and away again, arched in worry as only a dog’s eyes can be, but he offered no suggestion. Not that I had anticipated one—he might have been a guardian, but he was also a hound.
I had come here to find my mother and nearly killed my beloved in the process. We were not far from where I believed her to be—just over the next ridge, past the towers, and down into the pit—but William desperately required assistance. If we turned back now, how would we make the journey home? How could we possibly reach Acheron’s shores alive?
On the other hand, if we found my mother, there was a chance, however slight, that she might have retained some of heaven’s favor while wrongly trapped in this place. She was so radiant, so pure a being, that surely not even the clutches of hell could dull her shine. Even a single spark—a drop of heaven’s grace—might raise William to his feet. It might even be enough to make escaping this place a possible feat.
I had no choice but to carry him with me.
I slid my hands beneath his body, bent my knees, and lifted, surprised to find the weight of a full-grown man light in my arms. Cerberus rose too, and barked, swinging his snout toward his back.
“No,” I said, understanding. “I dare not. I doubt he has the strength to hold onto your back, and I have nothing with which to fasten him there. I might conjure a spirit to bring a rope, but I dare not attempt that either. I’ve already done enough harm.”
I expected tears to prick my eyes, for my stomach to roil and my head to pound, but instead I felt stronger and calmer and inconceivably powerful. Part of me wondered—it horrifies me to admit—whether I actually cared about William and what I’d done, or whether I was going through the motions out of rote expectation.
But I did care, no matter the lies that place fed me in the moment, because I pressed onward through the valley of snakes with Cerberus by my side, crown prince in my arms, and the tattered corpses of my stepsisters left behind.
The necromantic dead shrank back as we passed. Even they appeared disturbed by the sight of me, for I saw many hide their hands or bow their heads, unwilling to look at me full-on.
We reached the edge of the valley soon enough, and as I stepped from the serpents onto the path of the small rise that would take us into the final basin, I heard a chorus of voices rise behind us.
We will see you soon, mistress, they said. My true brothers and sisters. The family I had never asked for nor wanted, but to whose fate I was now bound by virtue of these forbidden rites.
I prayed it would not be too soon.
32
The Final Descent
I clutched William tight as we crested the rise and looked down toward the final stretch of our journey. The basin that led to Cocytus was just beyond the towers that surrounded its edge.
I glanced at William. He stared straight ahead, unseeing, but he still breathed his labored breaths and his limbs still twitched with signs of life.
My mother would know what to do. She would cure him. She had to.
I steeled myself for the final descent and down we went. Another shroud of mist, so prevalent in this world below the surface, hovered around the base of the high towers and obscured the rim of the central pit.
But as we drew even closer, entering the mist and proceeding slowly toward the center, it occurred to me that perhaps I had been deceived by distance, that my eyes had crafted a truth based on experience and the shapes of shadows. Up close, the towers appeared less like towers, and more like the shapes of people. Tall, massive people.
Giants.
The mist dissolved, and I saw clearly what the vapors had hidden this time. Above the rim of the pit rose the torsos of giants, visible from crown to belly, the rest of them hidden deep within the pit in which they stood. I feared to approach them as I worried that they intended to guard and ward us from the entrance, but they remained as still and immobile as stone.
They looked fearsome all the same. One stood with a chain wrapped about his neck and chest, and another with a silent horn between his hands, raised to his lips.
“Now, giants were upon the earth in those days, for after the sons of God went in to the daughters of men, and they brought forth children, these are the mighty men of old, men of renown,” I recited as I walked with Cerberus by my side. “Oh, William. I don’t know if you can hear me, but I wish you could see the creatures we approach. They appear neither friendly nor hostile, and it’s truly a wonder.”
As I spoke, a gentle stirring caused the earth to tremble, and my heart crawled up to the center of my throat. Still, the giants didn’t move or speak. Rather, Cerberus and I drew closer to each other and to the pit, traversing the rim until we found the path that wound around its inside. The barest hint of light shone far below, which at least offered a small measure of hope that there was a bottom and it was not wholly shrouded in darkness.
As I stepped foot upon the path, a rush of anxiety crossed from one side of my skull to the other. I knew not what awaited us, but it would be nothing good.
No, that was not correct. My mother and her goodness surely awaited, but I didn’t anticipate with eagerness making the acquaintance of the ones who’d swept her into their clutches and whisked her here for their own design.
When we finally reached the base of the pit far below, I couldn’t resist the urge to look back the way we’d come. All around us were the giants’ feet and legs. As I gazed, another gentle rumble seemed to shape words of warning: “Watch how you step.”
&nb
sp; “Did you hear that?” I asked Cerberus. “I may have need of your nimble feet—or your large ones, for that matter.”
Cerberus licked my hand and I tightened my grip on William. The base of the pit had brought us to another tunnel, through which shone yet another muted gray-blue light. As we walked, the path curved gently to lead us to its mouth, the light growing stronger until we reached the threshold between the tunnel and a bright cavern—but in that moment, I paid no mind to the cavern’s full appearance, for as soon as we stepped inside, the light banished the darkness to reveal the slick surface under our feet … a lake of ice, smooth and clear as glass, which might have been beautiful if beneath its surface were not the upturned faces of the wretched dead.
These shades held their mouths open in eternal screams, hair splayed about the crowns of their heads. Some reached as if to break free from their prison of ice, others had hands at their sides as if resigned to their fate.
Their eyes, however, were clamped shut.
Cerberus barked once, and I pulled my fascinated gaze from the frozen lake to take in the space around us. When we’d descended, I’d worried I might come face to face with the Adversary himself and be struck down or burned alive or torn limb from limb in an instant.
I could never have even imagined we’d land on a frozen lake in the lowest depths instead. And I had expected even less to find myself in a cavern with a wide, arching ceiling. It rose as high as a cathedral, and the frozen lake encircled a small, rocky islet in its center.
Floating above the rocky islet, emitting a brilliant blue-white light—a radiance that illuminated the entire space with its unearthly glory—was a white-robed figure whose hair streamed behind her head like blessed ribbons in a soft summer breeze. Her skin, pale and gleaming, was an echo of the very same skin I saw each day in the mirrors of my own home. Her smile was gentle enough to soothe the deepest hurts, to cure all wounds of the heart, to mend a spirit of brokenness that had barely survived the world’s unconscionable evils for many years.
Yes, I tell you the truth of what I saw there. The figure was none other than my mother, and on seeing her face, I fell to my knees and wept.
33
The Shattering
The tears poured from my eyes, falling on William, dripping onto the lake’s frozen surface. Cerberus licked at my chin, and I did not mind. After a time—I know not how long—I found the strength to rise to my feet.
She and the islet were at a distance, but I thought I saw that her eyes were closed, as if in deep sleep or meditation. I hoped that she slept or rested, for that would mean she didn’t suffer in the way I’d feared. Why she would be kept prisoner at such a depth if not to endure torture is a question that should have crossed my mind. I should have asked myself why she rested with a peaceful smile on her lips while inside the bowels of Hades, why she wore a pure and spotless white shift in a place where blood and bile and pestilence covered every face and surface.
Instead, I took one step toward her, moving with care over the slippery surface of the lake—and screamed as the corpse beneath my foot opened its eyes.
I stepped back, but the corpse did not move. It only watched. Looking, staring. I stepped to the side, intending to move around it, when the next corpse I trod upon also awoke, its lids snapping open like one startled by a crack of lightening.
With a gasp, I stepped around this one too, and the next, and the next, until it seemed the entire lake watched me with wide eyes that followed as I passed.
I focused on my mother, on her angelic face and wondrous radiance, and my heart flittered in my chest, beating a rhythm of anticipation, of knowledge that I had nearly completed my quest to make our family whole once more.
“Mother,” I whispered in the silence of the cavern. I dared not speak much louder, for her resplendence gave the aura of a holy thing whose presence is to be revered.
My heart grew full to bursting. My limbs quivered with a need to act, to free her with my power, and I nearly lost hold of William as nerves and excitement loosened my grip on a great many things. I hesitated to pause for even a moment before racing to meet her, but the weight of the man in my arms reminded me of other obligations.
Would freeing her do him further harm? I might have to call my power and thereby draw more of William’s strength, and he was already too close to gone. But would he tell me to act regardless? We’d come this far, and he’d willingly accepted the possibility of sacrifice…
This is your beloved, I scolded myself. How could you even entertain the thought?
As I have mentioned, my grip on a great many things, both physical and within my own mind, seemed to be unraveling as I stood there on the ice with the dead under my feet and the lost piece of my heart finally in sight.
I made a decision and lay William down on the ice. I took off my outer garment and folded it into a square to rest under his head so that he might have a measure of comfort—and also so that he wouldn’t roll over and see eyes staring up at him from beneath the lake’s frozen surface.
When I stood and turned to approach the rocky islet, heart pounding in my chest, my steps faltered. Someone else had joined us, someone who hadn’t been here moments before.
“Hello, Oliroomim,” I said. He stood at the base of the islet with his arms by his sides, silent and scowling. “Have you come to help or hinder? I didn’t call you.”
At least, I didn’t think I did.
“I know,” he said, and crouched where he stood. “But I wanted to see.”
Curious. “See what? I came to find my mother, and find her I have, just as I vowed. Will you help me free her? Do you know how?”
Oliroomim rested his fists under his chin and grinned his sharp, toothy smile. Flecks of red between his teeth were a stark reminder that he was not a human child but a corrupted spirit, no matter how he might choose to appear to me. Perhaps he’d been innocent once, but after all I’d seen and experienced in this place, I didn’t think any being, living or dead, could remain pure here for long. That was why I needed to free my mother immediately, before the malevolence of this place gained a foothold.
“I don’t know how to free your mother,” he said. “Because she isn’t here.”
Ah, the poor, confused spirit. “I know you want nothing more than to deceive me, that you’re upset I brought the Almighty’s warriors into your domain, but I’m neither ignorant nor blind. Look behind you, Oliroomim. She’s right there. I know, I intended to allow you your eternal rest—”
“—you never keep your word, wicked mistress.”
“Yes, I do, but in coming here I had no choice.” I folded my arms to address him like a child, since he insisted on acting like one. I didn’t want to waste time, but I also saw no value in being difficult. “I had to act.”
“There’s always a choice,” he hissed. “You know how your summons disturbs our eternity.”
I had heard that before. “I’ve never once called you again by name since the day you returned my brother to me, and you told me yourself that in this place, you have a choice. So, will you help me now?”
His scowl slid into another slow grin, widening unnaturally across his face. “Yes, it’s my turn to make a choice,” he said. “And I choose the mistress whose promises are always true.”
I shook my head and gestured to the silent, empty cavern. “There’s no one else here but us. Choose as you like, but I’m here to save my mother. If you’re not here to assist, please step aside.”
“Your mother is not here,” he repeated, and I grew weary of his games.
“Look behind you, spirit, and see.”
“Oh, no,” he said without looking. “I know who is there, and she is so pleased to see you. So very pleased. She has been waiting a very long time.”
“Who?” I gestured once again to the empty space around us.
“Why,” he said, rising to his feet, “your other mother, of course.”
Icy tendrils of dread close
d around my insides and I looked up at the luminous figure of my mother. Unconsciously, I reached for her. As if sensing my presence, her lids flew open like those of the shades trapped in ice. Her eyes widened and her lips parted in a gasp, and though I rejoiced to meet her gaze and see recognition upon her face, she reached out to me with a look of pure and utter horror.
In the silence, I saw her cry out without sound, the words forming on her lips but unheard through some barrier. “Ellison, no!” As the final syllable left her lips, her image burst into flame and was consumed in the space of a breath.
And in her place, laughing with a sound so grating I clapped my hands over my ears that they might not bleed at hearing it, appeared the monstrous, black beast I had last seen two years ago when she toppled into the yawning pit of the Abyss.
Because I had opened that pit.
I had sent her there. Here.
And now, I stood in the very place I’d given to her as her domain.
“Oh, child,” Celia said. “I have been waiting for you.”
34
The Necromancer
My mother is not here. My mother was not there?
No, Oliroomim had lied. He must have. He was a liar because he hated me and thought me a liar, and he searched for any means to deceive me.
I suppose my first thought at seeing Celia alive and well in her own domain should have been one of fear, but I couldn’t see past the deception that my mind insisted the child spirit had crafted.
The image of my mother’s shade, screaming and reaching as if to warn me, replayed over and over in my mind. Anger grated the back of my throat, already so near the surface from dealing with Charlotte and Victoria. Was my entire life to be a repeat of something I thought had been finished and done with years before?
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