by SM Reine
The dying wasn’t going to stop if Seth didn’t talk to Marion.
No matter how little he wanted to talk to her.
Seth was prepared to cross the balefire and face legions from the unseelie army, or Raven Knights, or whoever was protecting Marion that night.
But there were no unseelie. Dilmun stood empty.
Except for a single soul.
At first, Seth didn’t recognize that soul. It was close to death. So close. Years away, days away—he wasn’t good at measures of time on such short scales.
But it was coming for her.
Marion was about to die.
The limitations that James had placed upon Seth meant that his omnipotence was as limited as his physical form. He couldn’t exist in all moments as he had before the ash heart. He only existed in the moments when people shuffled off the mortal coil.
So he didn’t see all the moments in Marion’s life. He didn’t see the war she was waging, the games she was playing, or what she was thinking.
Only her death.
Marion sat upon the feet of a towering statue, her hair expertly styled and her makeup flawless. Her cheeks were streaked with moisture. Her eyelids were red.
He appeared in front of her.
Startled, she looked up. When her pale eyes focused on Seth, the emotion was instantly gone from her face. Magic sighed and there were no signs of her tears, not even a single displaced eyelash. No magic could keep her voice from cracking when she spoke.
“Seth.” She stood up. But she didn’t climb down from the base of the statue.
“Hey.” He glanced down to make sure he’d assembled a vision of himself properly. For the moment, Seth looked like…well, himself, generally. Brown-skinned and -muscled and wearing a long-sleeved black shirt that didn’t bare his wooden heart.
She drew in a long breath. “You’re substantiating on Earth without my intervention. You’ve learned to focus better.”
“I sought expert help.”
Marion’s hand crept back to Metaraon’s shin. “Excellent. I’m glad to hear it.” She didn’t sound glad. “Where have you been with these…experts?”
“A conservatory.”
He could tell she knew what he meant by the way she paled. Even Marion couldn’t control the flow of blood to her cheeks, or lack thereof. “Interesting.” Her tone remained neutral.
And then she was quiet.
Waiting for him to speak first.
There were a lot of things that Seth could have said. They had a lot of loose ends between the two of them. But that topic was too big to broach, so he stuck to safer subjects. “I know this statue,” Seth said, jerking his chin up at Metaraon. “He used to be in the Nevada desert. It held one of the gates to Eden.”
“What were you doing there?” Marion asked.
“I was trying to stop Elise from hurting Rylie.” It was so long ago that it almost didn’t seem worth remembering, aside from the climactic detail. “Elise killed me on those feet, not far from where you’re standing.”
Marion’s hand flew to her heart. “Oh.”
“Want to come down and talk?” Seth asked. “I’d rather not hang out here, for reasons you can probably guess.”
She shook her head. “This is why I’m here. This is my father—this is Metaraon. I want the statue as a—well, as sort of a keepsake, but…”
“But?”
“The wards on Dilmun are active. As a half-human, I’m not angel enough to break it free of the wards. Irohael said he would help if my legion protected him from demons, but my legion won’t come either. I could get the Raven Knights using my authority as Steward of the Winter Court, but it would infuriate Konig. I’ve been sitting here for hours, trying to think of a solution.”
And crying on her own.
“We could find a solution together if you come down,” he said.
Marion took a step forward. And then two steps back. “That’s all right. I’m doing fine.”
An obvious lie. Probably the most obvious lie she had ever told.
“If you won’t come down…” He appeared upon the base of the statue. He’d have climbed if he’d been capable, but all it had taken was the intent to be standing beside Marion, and he was.
She wasn’t startled. Her memories had truly been restored, and she had grown up alongside cosmic beings. Even Charity, kind-hearted as the revenant was, twitched at half the things Seth did. Marion didn’t. He almost felt normal around her.
“You said you didn’t want to be up here,” Marion said.
“I want to talk,” he said.
Her eyes were pinched at the corners. “If you ask the questions you want to ask,” she said softly, “I’m afraid you won’t like the answers.”
“Then I won’t ask. I don’t think I have to.” Seth stuck his hands in his pockets. He was more corporeal than he’d been since Lucas Flynn’s death. “You should know why I’m confused.”
“You’re confused because you’re naïve. You should simply accept that I am being the calculating monster that everyone hates.” She lifted one corner of her mouth in a smile, trying to make a self-aware joke as only she could.
“I know that’s not true,” Seth said. “You’re still you, Marion—with or without memories.”
It looked a little bit like Marion was melting. Her face was crumbling, brows creasing, lips twitching, chin quivering.
She drew in a long breath.
She let it out.
Her face was empty of emotion again.
“If you wanted to talk, you’d have sought me out months ago. Something has changed. What do you want, Seth?” she asked.
So it was going to be like that. “Your presence in Dilmun’s enough to trigger all of the wards here, not just those around the statue of Metaraon. LCI can’t get into Sheol. Adàn and Arawn are at each other’s throats.”
“Why is your reaction to discuss it? You could will me away from here. You could will all of the shifters into Sheol too.”
“Not without making this deteriorate.” Seth put his hand on his chest.
Marion lifted her fingers tentatively. “May I…?”
He lifted his shirt so that she could see it. The ash heart was less grotesque than the exposed bone he used to show. It spanned from the hollow of his collarbone down to his ribs. “It’s from the Tree of Knowledge in the conservatory. It’s limiting my omnipotence. If I do anything cosmic in the mortal worlds, it’ll break.”
“And then what happens?”
“I go back to the other gods,” Seth said. “Once it’s gone, I’m gone, and I’m not coming back. I made a deal with James to get this.”
Marion’s fingertips traced lightly over the wood, barely brushing it. If the ash had borne hair, it would have stood on end. “Gods, Seth. You should never make a deal with James. Not for anything.”
“Some people are worth it,” he said.
Time hung suspended in that moment. Seth had never seen an instant that stretched as long as the one where Marion’s eyes lifted to his, from barely inches away, with her lips parted as she exhaled. It sounded like he’d punched her under the ribs.
She clenched her hands into fists at her side. “So you’re asking me to leave, and don’t plan to force me to do it.”
“No.” Seth dropped his shirt. “I won’t make you do anything.”
She nodded slowly. “I didn’t realize my presence in Dilmun would cause problems. I truly just want this statue. It’s the only thing I have of my father’s, aside from his eyes and terrible attitude.” She squared her shoulders and stepped back. Right out of Seth’s reach. “Let me see if I can remove this without Irohael.”
Marion had brought a box with her from the Middle Worlds. Its exterior radiated with sidhe magic, but when she opened it, magecraft flowed from within.
Seth stood aside as she set out candles, salt, ribbon. Traditional tools of witches. “I didn’t know you could do magic like that,” he said. He’d seen lots of other witches performing ritu
als, but Marion only ever seemed to gesture.
“You’re omnipotent,” she said. “You should be able to know anything about me that you want.”
“The ash heart limits my omnipotence as much as my cosmic powers.” Seth rubbed his fingers over his chest. Now that he was more corporeal, the joining of wood and bone ached. “I’m still a little omnipotent, but only around the times when people die. I wouldn’t be able to see any of your rituals unless they killed someone.”
He’d sort of meant that as a joke.
The haunted look Marion gave him quickly stopped his smile.
Seth reached into her future. He probed her mortality, even though common sense told him it was the last thing that he wanted to do.
Her death happened somewhere cold. Very cold.
Not Dilmun.
“The problem with casting ethereal magic in Dilmun is that proximity to Sheol creates interference,” Marion said, snapping his attention back to the present moment. “Dimensional transference magic is an ethereal specialty, but I can’t do that here due to the wards, ironically enough. I’ll have to use traditional magic instead to remove the statue. Perhaps I can physically shrink it—I’ve removed smaller artifacts from Dilmun.”
Seth rubbed the back of his neck. He felt chilled by looking toward Marion’s death. “Sure seems like all your knowledge came back with your memories.”
She didn’t look up from a candle as she lit it with her fingertip. “Yes. It did.”
“Would you change it if you could?” Seth asked. “If you’d had more of a choice, would you have refused your memories?”
Marion considered the question in silence as she continued to build the circle. She lit more candles. She wrapped cord around a bundle of herbs.
Finally, she said, “When the last world was new, and the Old Gods were young, your predecessor encouraged Eve to eat the apple. Lilith hoped to enlighten Eve to Adam’s sins. To eat an apple from the Tree of Knowledge is to open your eyes to the truth of those you love—to their ugliness, their mistakes, the disgusting habits we hide from one another.”
“So Eve ate the apple,” Seth said. That was what human mythology said.
“She didn’t eat it. She loved Adam, and to love, we must have faith. We must be willing to overlook the truth.”
“What’s the truth here?”
“Adam was a murderer, a madman. Had Eve eaten the apple, she might not have been vulnerable when Adam came to kill her. Which he did.” Marion’s fingers encircled her neck, as if imagining a noose.
“So you’re happy that your memories are back.”
Marion filled a bowl with water from a glass phial. “I didn’t say that. Eve died, but she died in happy ignorance.”
“You wouldn’t be happy like that.”
“The alternative isn’t pleasing either.” Marion set the bowl down, and her circling brought her back to stand in front of Seth. She sprinkled salt to close the perimeter of her spellwork. “You’ve eaten the apple. You know my sins. You must know what Konig and I have been doing.”
“I’ve got a few ideas,” Seth said.
“I told you that…” Her throat worked as she swallowed. “I said that I love you, and I left you for another. I know how much it would have hurt you.”
“I mean, it wasn’t fun.” He shot a lopsided smile at her. “You’ll have to get worse to impress me.”
A tiny smile crept over her mouth, as if she couldn’t resist it. “Please don’t inspire me to compete with Rylie. I’m very competitive. Trying to be better at breaking your heart would be a terrible thing to win at—and I always win.”
“Look, the kissing, the marriage… It’s not breaking my heart. All right? You don’t love Konig. You’re only with him because you need something,” Seth said. She didn’t speak. Her smile was gone. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
“Gods, Seth.” Marion turned away from him. The dress dragged behind her, twisting and sparkling like the arms of a galaxy. “It doesn’t matter. You’re only here until James takes you back.”
“We’ve got days, at least. I can do a lot in a few days if you let me help. I can’t fix all your problems because of my limitations, but there has to be something I can do.” He couldn’t keep from touching her anymore. His fingers twined with hers. “Something bad is coming. Let me save you.”
“I can’t be saved.”
“You don’t know that,” he said.
But he knew the truth. He knew that Marion was going to die somewhere cold, and somewhere dark. Somewhere a lot like the Winter Court.
“I don’t think I want you to save me. I think I want to spend your time on Earth with you.” Marion stepped toward him tentatively, tugging on his hand until there was no space between them. “Just the two of us, alone, in an eternity that lasts a few short days.”
It was easy for Seth to imagine. Between his ash heart and proximity to the Voice of God, his head had never felt any clearer.
They only had a few days. Weeks at best.
And then what?
What was it James had said about lonely gods? Loneliness would drive a god to madness.
There was a reason Seth had decided to spend his life as Lucas Flynn alone. He wasn’t avoiding pain because it hurt. God, lots of things hurt. Werewolf bites hurt. Bullet wounds hurt. Tattoos hurt. Pain was something he could do forever.
This would be something else completely.
“We can’t, Marion,” Seth said. And he tried to make it sound like he hadn’t just taken a thousand years mentally exploring the possibilities.
Marion turned away. She shut her box of spell supplies with a loud click. “I can’t shrink Metaraon’s statue. I neglected to bring the right crystals.” She kicked the new line of salt to ruin it. “If you want to help me, then very well. Move the statue of Metaraon and I’ll vacate Dilmun.”
Seth touched his chest again. Relocating statues was exactly the kind of cosmic thing that would shorten his limited hours in the mortal worlds. “Where do you want it?”
“Shamayim,” Marion said.
When Seth was omnipotent, he could have written entire books on the history of Shamayim. He could have begun that book with the origin of the atoms that eventually formed Shamayim’s trees and ended it with the dissolution of the universe upon the arrival of the next genesis.
The ash in his chest ensured that he did not have access to these details at the moment. But for a fleeting moment, while he exerted cosmic influence to relocate Metaraon’s statue to Shamayim, he glimpsed the history.
And he glimpsed that he and Marion were not alone in Shamayim seconds before they arrived.
Benjamin Wilder was chained between two trees.
Seth was so shocked that it took a moment for the pain to strike him. It felt like someone had swung a sledgehammer into his breastbone. He groaned, falling to his knees. “Damn.” He was solid enough to have sweat glands, and the slap of pain left him drenched. “Benjamin’s here. Why’s he here?”
“I told you,” Marion said. “I am the monster everyone fears.” She stroked her fingers briefly through Seth’s hair then moved to stand beside Benjamin. “It’s unpleasant to see him like this, isn’t it?”
He was wearing the same soiled clothes that he’d last been spotted in, and he was thrashing hard enough to make the trees flanking him shake. “No,” Benjamin muttered, eyes screwed shut. “Stop it. Shut up. Stop.”
Seth tried to look into Benjamin’s death. He expected it to show up in the near future—as in, the next few minutes. The kid looked like he was on the brink of heart failure.
But there was no death in Benjamin Wilder’s future.
Nothing but an enormous, yawning blankness.
Seth staggered to his feet so that he could look more closely at Benjamin’s pained face. No matter how hard he grasped for it, he had no sense of his nephew’s death. It wasn’t possible. Not unless his death had something to do with the impending apocalypse that Seth couldn’t see either.
“It�
�s been months since he entered Shamayim,” Seth said, kneeling in front of Benjamin. He put fingers to his throat to check his pulse. It was strong. Pounding.
“He’s been here the entire time,” Marion said with unsettling serenity.
“I’m going to trust that you’ve got reasons for this,” Seth said, peeling back one of Benjamin’s eyelids. “But you should get talking.”
“Look around.” She swept her hand, encouraging him to see beyond Rylie’s violently twitching son.
Seth turned to look into the aisles of towering scions that formed Shamayim’s forest. They were underneath the roots of one of those enormous trees. It didn’t reach into eternity the way that the Tree of Knowledge did, so this tree wasn’t special. Just huge.
Its colorless roots twined around a small lake the color of sap, which was filled with white stone spheres. Damp mist clung to everything. The air was still. Ethereal power hung over it all.
“Leliel has contained Benjamin within Shamayim since I emerged, bleeding, during the Battle of the Veil,” Marion said. “I’ve visited frequently. Leliel and I began conspiring before I lost my memories.”
For a woman who claimed that she was monstrous—a manipulative liar—that was painfully honest.
Seth’s eyebrows lifted. “All right.”
“Aren’t you angry?” she asked.
“No,” he said. He glanced at Benjamin again. He had a raging fever, and he was muttering under his breath again. “Okay, maybe I’m angry.”
This was Abel’s son—blood of Seth’s blood, a mortal bearer of the Wilder lineage. Even more importantly, he was just some kid. An innocent. He shouldn’t have been in chains.
Seth lifted a hand to free him. Marion rested her fingertips on the back of his wrist. “Wait. Hear me out.”
“He can’t be like this, Marion,” Seth said.
“Benjamin is intended to travel back in time to facilitate Genesis,” Marion said. “You died before much of Genesis happened, so it’s unlikely that you saw him. Historical records confirm his presence, however.”
“What? Rylie’s kid is supposed to make Genesis happen? No way. I can’t even screw around with stuff that happened before Genesis, and I’m a god.”