But the villas are empty. No humans in sight.
I know they have not evacuated, because even a whiff of War and I being here in this area would conjure soldiers from all around, in their ridiculous efforts to try capture one of us. No, I suspect War has killed the humans in this small area.
I limp up behind him, narrowed eyes fixed on his stiff back, then settle myself on a lounger.
As I begin dragging the cloth over my sensitive legs, littered in bruises, War keeps his contemplative stance.
“Why are you still here?” I ask.
Ripples of tension run up his spine. He turns his head to the side, not far enough to look at me, but far enough to show me that he listens.
That damn glittering town casts flecks of light over his tan face. I'm almost mesmerised. Almost.
“You could have left,” I continue, “after you brought me here. Don't you have your own duties to tend to?”
He looks back at the town.
I have cleaned my whole left leg before he finally speaks.
“Fragments are piercing back in my mind,” he tells me. “I know more of my soul every hour than when I did at the beginning of this life.”
Distantly, I recall how it first felt to awake to the sound and song of the sirens. One soul, shredded, scattered across a hundred worlds and beyond an infinite afterlife, clawing their way back to the body to which they belong.
Cutting into my thoughts, War turns to face me, and leans back against the barrier. His boots cross at the ankles, but the hardness of his marble eyes betrays the deep thoughts clashing behind them.
“You once asked me who I am.” War pauses, jaw clenched tight. Then, he admits, “I am not one of Them. I am a Fallen One, and it is us who have chosen humanity’s fate.”
I glide the cloth over my leg and look down at the sheer hem of my dress.
“Why?” I ask him.
“Why,” he echoes faintly. “We have seen this happen too many times. We have watched as the humans were offered more chances than they are worth. Attempts at salvation, all ending the same way. This world cannot be saved if humans are. Their souls belong to us.”
Us, I think.
The Fallen Ones, he means. The rulers of the Dark Place, the afterlives, the Never-Ending River.
As food is to humans, as humans are to me, we are to the Fallen Ones—a source of power, a cycle that can never be broken.
“And mine? My soul?” I look to him for answers.
I do not find any.
War looks away, and after a long moment, says, “I cannot find Famine.”
“If Famine is quiet in the bond, she does not want to be found.”
But even as I say it, I know it can't be true.
War has orders to find her, I have orders to take him to her. But in the bond, it is only me and War. Not even Death is as strong in the bond as me or Shadow, who are both already so weak.
War is thinking the same as me. He says, “It is only us. Why?”
“That is Death,” I say with a shrug. “You can feel him when he wants you to feel him, and no other time.”
A shadow drifting through the connection.
Grim-faced, War advances on me and takes the cloth from my hand.
I watch him warily as he sits on the end of the lounger, then rests my feet on his lap.
My muscles jump at the intimacy. My breath catches in my throat as he begins to wipe away the blood from the soles of my feet.
Surprisingly gentle, War takes his time and, above all, avoids meeting my eyes.
“Is this what happens to you?” he asks. His voice is quiet, and holds a curiosity. But his face is all sharp and cutting lines. “In the bond,” he explains, “it is as though you are disintegrating. Pieces, breaking away to rot.”
For a long moment, I study him. “Yes.” He pauses when I finally answer. “I feel it too. Our tether breaking apart. You told me on the boat you would have delivered a harsher, fiercer punishment for what I did. But this ... this is my curse. Tell me it isn't cruel.”
War says nothing.
In silence, he washes my feet, then moves around to the spine of the lounger and, as I stare at the glittering town ahead, he washes my back.
I take his kindness for convenience.
War is a cruel and ancient soul, who feels no guilt or regret. No compassion. Yet, he feels enough to show me kindness.
I let myself relax against him, knowing now that he is not so unlike like me. Because feeling isn't just for humans—humans do not hold the monopoly on emotions. And for once, I can say proudly that I am not ashamed of my emotions.
But I am sharp enough to admit that some emotions cause weakness, and the pity I gave Addie was a weakness.
If I survive this mission, I’ll be sure to never make the same mistake again.
My eyes begin to shut on the thought.
There is something therapeutic about having someone wash me. I have never felt this before, no one has cleaned my wounds before, no one has cleaned my skin before, not even Death.
I feel myself slumping against him. I can't stop it, and a mysterious part of me doesn't want to.
As I slip away to the abyss where I will meet Shadow, not knowing when I will wake again, I feel War’s fingertips brush away blood from my hair.
I go, knowing that when I wake again, it won't be over yet—not my disease, not my mission, not Death’s plans, and certainly not War and his promise to end me.
A promise I have not yet forgotten.
426 B.C.; Athens.
That terrible thing happened again one night.
They lay together after Hella confessed a dark secret to Death. A secret that intrigued Death and set a fire within him, a fire that could only be doused by her.
Hella revealed her pleasure. The pleasure that filled her after she took her master’s life.
The sickness was too slow. She took the matter into her own hand. Her master became too drunk, whip-in-hand, and crooned her name throughout the house.
But Hella didn’t hide from him.
She waited at the top of the servant’s staircase.
She waited for him to stagger up the steps to her.
Hella shoved him. She watched him hit every step on the way down. And when he laid, broken and bent, at the final step—she smiled.
And she watched him die with that cruel, silent smile on her face.
That smile was shared by Death himself before he climbed on top of her between the grapevines.
Chapter 22
My body is the animal on a butcher’s bench. Carved and cut, all over. The stink of rot seeps out of my pores, stronger than the stench of the pus.
Propped up on the dusty pink couch, I distantly pick at a healing scab on the back of my hand and watch War stoke the fire.
For a being with no previous life as a human, he knows much about their ways. Too much, I think.
War rests the poker on the mantle-place and stares into the fire.
“How much longer will you be this poorly?” He gestures to Shadow as though my wheezing steed is me.
Shadow sleeps through most of the disease—a luxury not afforded to me or the humans.
“For as long as the plague has me,” I mumble.
War turns to study me. Today, he doesn’t wash my feet.
Since that day on the lounger, he’s kept his distance. Even now, he wears a guarded look of stone as he leans against the mantle, arms folded like a crossed shield.
“The humans are already falling to your pestilence,” he says. “It is released—You should have been at your full strength a week ago.”
I roll my bloodshot eyes, a small smile playing on my mouth. It is just like an arrogant beastly male to think he knows my own existence and curse more than I do.
“Did you, in all your Fallen One importance, ever hear about my Black Plague? Or the Black Death?” I turn my condescending smile on him. “Bubonic Plague, perhaps?” At his unshuttering look, I scoff and stop picking at my scab. �
��A disease so great, contagious and fatal that it has earned many names and still takes humans to this very day.”
“Are you seeking praise?” he asks coldly.
My laugh is weak, daring to steer into a coughing fit any moment. “From you?”
Lazily, I flick my hand.
“My most successful plague plunged me into an agonising month of paralysis,” I say. “Even now, I swear I have never been as close to death than I was during those days. I truly feared then that that plague was my last.”
War tilts his head, appearing bored as he scrutinises me. His raven hair falls to his temple, the strands so black that they shine as deeply as his solid eyes.
When I was human, I would have lusted after him. And if he’d been the one to stride into my vineyard that night, life would have ended the way it was supposed to.
Instead, I gaze at another creature I am forbidden from wanting, with a sudden urge to play with fire.
I hide my thoughts and look out to the balcony.
A brewing storm outside has the doors shut on the grey sky. Still, I like the patter of the rain cracking into the glass.
“Pestilence,” I go on, “is who and what I am—a curse. And I am made to suffer it for as long as the disease needs my body. Only when it leaves me do I regain my strength and my steed.”
“Your steed?” War cocks an eyebrow, crimson swirling in his dark eyes. He tightens his jaw, shadowed dimples carving into his cheeks.
I let out a long, deep breath. “Take away my strength and steed, leave me with nothing but suffering and loneliness.”
That is how it has always been.
I rest my head on the arm of the couch. “My plague can only reach as far as Conqueror travels—but none of that keeps you from leaving.”
His lips thin into a line, the same pink of the couch. Chest free of his leather armour, War unfolds his arms and fixes the black sweater he found in the villa.
On a rail near the fireplace, his armour dries after a thorough wash. Parts of my dress are draped there too, clean of blood and pus—now, a sheet that wraps around me wears the rotten stains of pestilence.
We may be Horseriders, but we apparently enjoy cleanliness as much as the other creatures of this world.
“I stay,” War begins, choosing his words carefully “because I need you.”
It’s my turn to raise eyebrows.
Bewildered, I stare at him.
“At your full strength,” he amends. “Then, you will help me locate the Conqueror.”
I sigh. “Why? It all ends the same. You will release the bloodthirst I saw at the church.” Fleetingly, I think of the soldier who turned his gun on himself—but not out of his own will. “Conqueror will unleash her famine, and Death will collect the souls once we are done. Then, you and I will face our battle.”
He smiles. A true one—that quickly falls, and he turns his back on me. War grabs his sword and, as if to remind me of the weapon, he drops into a chair and cleans it with a rag.
“Famine, as you know her, is expecting me.” He keeps his eyes on the silver blade sprawled over his lap. “But as I know her, she is expecting me to join her before we hunt down your beloved Death.”
I swallow. Hard and dry.
“Together,” he drawls, “we will end him.”
Now, War lets a cruel smile grace his heartbreakingly beautiful face and watches me sweat out my poorly panic.
I shut my eyes, breaths coming out ragged, and claw through the bond. I can’t find him.
Death is silent to my calls.
Quickly, my frantic search through the thin tether wears me down. Even opening my eyes becomes a task that tightens the grip of unconsciousness on me, and I feel myself slipping.
I have a suspicion that War, who still wears his gut-wrenching smile, wanted this; me, to fall to my own despair and fear, to fall without Death.
My lashes lower into my blurring sight as stillness weighs down my body. I look at him, that arrogant beast of a creature.
But I’m surprised as I notice his eyes have softened some, as though he lets his shield slip away when he thinks I’ve fallen already.
I haven’t.
“Do not pity me,” I whisper. “For I will slaughter you if you dare harm him. And then, you will know true suffering …”
I’m gone.
I’ve fallen.
Only the memory of War’s smirk follows me into the abyss.
Chapter 23
The Abyss
In the abyss, I float.
Shadow becomes a fluid being here—he is next to me, all around me, yet detached and quiet. Even here, he’s not truly with me.
But the bond is.
It crackles through the black nothing, whispers shuddering over me, and I think of the after moments of lightning.
Death is here.
I understand him—as clearly as I would if he was whispering into my ear.
“You were gone,” I mutter to my dark Death.
I can almost feel his obsidian eyes piercing into me.
‘You should not be with him,’ Death hisses, the sound of snakes circling me. ‘I have waited to isolate you in the bond for too long. Time is running out, Hella.’
“War—” My voice is all strangled groans and raspy breezes. “—He and Famine … They’re going to end you.”
‘I am aware of their plot. I have my own in place, fret not.’
Silence shivers for a moment, and the moment is wrought with thickness so heavy that I shift, restless.
Then, he finally speaks. ‘I have found it…’
I writhe, harder. “What did you find?”
‘Our way out of this,’ he says. ‘Existence beyond this one. Freedom, Hella.’
It’s difficult to feel much here. Numbness is all that belongs in this place. A numb loneliness. Death is peeling that apart to reach me, and it brings nothing but pure discomfort.
Still squirming, I manage, “H-ow? I … I won’t be strong for…”
I trail off. Time is an untouchable concept here.
Death’s power still shoves me into awe; he gathers all the darkness in the abyss and, slowly, an inky form gathers near me. Only darkness—no face, no bone-white hands. A shadowy cloak.
‘Meet me,’ he commands, whispers snaking all around me, ‘where it began.’
The vineyard.
‘Yes.’ He reads me and my mind through the bond as easily as he reads my eyes outside of the abyss. ‘But this does not come without sacrifice, Hella.’
“Sacrifice…”
The word lingers in my mind. I’m unable to grasp it completely. Not unlike grabbing at smoke with my hand.
Finally, I catch enough and manage to scramble to awareness in the abyss.
I ask, “What more do I have left to give?”
‘Shadow.’
He speaks that one name with the ice of an arctic breeze.
‘I have found a gate. To pass through, we each must sacrifice a love.’
In this suffocating place, fury lights up inside of me. No longer writing, I thrash.
“No!” The darkness rattles with my rage. “I won’t—I can’t!”
‘He is a mere steed,’ spits Death. ‘Without you, he does not exist. Hella—’ He pauses, voice softening into something pleading. ‘—this is our path to freedom. We can be together. As we were always supposed to be, from the beginning. Become a Fallen One with me, my sweet disease.’
“Nothing could turn my hand against Shadow.”
The anger spreads through the abyss, strong enough to shudder even Death’s darkness—the figure starts to peel away into wisps, buckling under my rising fury.
“He is my only constant,” I growl. “My love, my companion, my child. And I would rather die with him than spill his blood and live with you.”
Silence crackles between us.
Then, finally, the shadowy figure shatters into black glass fragments. Before the pieces can sweep through the abyss again and submerge me in total da
rkness, Death speaks—
‘So be it, Pestilence. But when you fall in this life, remember that I offered you a way out.’
“And when you leave me behind to die,” I spit, “remember that you chose yourself every time in the lives we have shared together—remember that you were the one to betray me every time.”
Death lingers for a fleeting moment, the fragments suspended all around me.
‘Please,’ he begs, so softly and lovingly that my entire soul flips. ‘If you will not come with me, come to me—find me where I first found you. My love, my dearest, sweet disease … let me say my good-byes.’
Before I can speak, he’s gone, and glass shards explode into billowing clouds of nothingness, and I fall back into the abyss … with my Shadow.
Always, with my Shadow.
Chapter 24
I kneel beside the fireplace, Shadow’s head on my lap.
Gently, I stroke him.
Our strength pieces back together in strips, and with each strip, another sore heals.
It’s been days since Death came to me in the abyss, and for days I have waited for War to be gone long enough that I can talk to my steed.
This morning, War has discovered a liking for the balcony-bathtub. Any way for him to pass the time.
Shadow gazes up at me with one bloodshot eye. He hasn’t spoken since I revealed Death’s visit.
I speak in a voice as gentle as my strokes; “Scythe was afraid of him at the river. I suspect Death has known a way out of this life for longer than he wants me to know.” My face sours. “And he seems to forget what he did. Death fools himself into delusions. This curse isn’t why we cannot be together—his turn to the Siren is why. His betrayal.”
Slow and agonising, Shadow blinks. “Pessie—” His voice chokes in broken wheezes. “—why did you deny him?”
I feel my twisted face smooth into something bewildered. “What are you saying, you silly beast?”
“Death is offering what you’ve always wanted—to be free with him.”
I shake my head. “Not at this cost.”
Feared Fables Box Set: Dark and Twisted Fairy Tale Retellings, (Feared Fables Box Sets Book 1) Page 43