Still

by Camilla Monk

  Lily’s . . . gifts? I mentally pictured her, standing among her grandpa’s notes and books. The table, the ancient spells she wanted to understand so much. I heard her desperate wails in the Libro again. Not fear, not horror. A plea. You beg, lay all you have, all you are at their feet in exchange for the fulfillment of a meaningless human wish.

  It was Faust who said it. I could never have; I could barely breathe as it was. “Lily,” he asked, his voice pure velvet. “Was it Lady Montecito who called him?”

  Her lips trembled. Perses chuckled, keeping her close to his body. “Leonora begged like a child for someone to give her more than bandages to wrap her decaying body into. But she could barely read our words, and much less understand them.”

  His laughter stopped as his gaze locked on Lily. “Lily, on the other hand, had nothing but her grandfather’s notes: old, incomplete spells carved in stones by the many worms who’d called my name over the centuries, but I heard her voice, begging me to avenge her grandfather.” He closed his eyes briefly as if heavenly music were playing in his head. “And I saw a path. She had something the others didn’t. She understood . . .”

  The hidden nature of things that so few humans understand, I mentally completed. Like Massimiliano, straight-A Lily had a mind made to learn, brilliant enough to pierce secrets none of us were supposed to.

  Faust snorted, his nostrils flaring in disdain. “Or rather, you saw that she had located the table. You saw that you could use her and Katharos, to seize what you were forbidden to.”

  “No!” Lily’s angry scream sliced the air. “You don’t understand him! No one does!”

  “One learns a few things about human and divine nature in two millennia, Lily,” Faust reminded her softly.

  She bared her teeth—Lily McKeanney roared at another human being. “You roam alone! Forsaken by all! How can you—” Her breath faltered as she forced her rage out. Tears welled in her eyes, rolled down her cheeks. “How can you ever understand what it is to love someone and be loved, so completely?”

  She was making my own eyes burn, and at that moment, I hated her so fucking much for reminding me that she was loved—had always been—and even that couldn’t stop her from blowing it all. “What about me? All that shit about a second chance?” I glared at Dante, Perses, or whatever that cancerous assbag wanted to be called.

  Her lips mouthed, “I’m sorry” but I barely heard the words.

  Of course she was sorry. Everyone was always sorry; billions of people who were sorry but didn’t give a shit who they had to step on to get what they wanted.

  “You know what happened to me? You know what I fucking am?” I yelled, clasping a trembling hand over my stomach. “Did he tell you about the black hole inside me?” I shouted. “Do you understand what your path did to me?” I wasn’t sure this was about eternal gods anymore; maybe it all boiled down to that old wound between us now, and as usual, only one of us could win. This time, though, the stakes were a notch higher. I wouldn’t just end up sleeping on a bench if I lost.

  “Em, we don’t have to fight,” she whimpered, huddling in the safety of Perses’s arms. “He doesn’t mean to hurt you. You don’t understand what he wants—”

  “Emma understands perfectly, as I do,” Faust retorted coolly. “She came here to save you.” His eyes narrowed. “But you don’t need any saving. Do you, Lily?”

  “She does,” Perses replied. “From humans’ greatest enemy.” His gaze swallowed mine, soft and infinitely cold. “Emma, all I want is for Lily to live a long life.”

  An immortal life. The words rang loud in my head. I thought of Lady Palombara who’d lost Massimiliano because he was mortal, and he was willing to destroy himself to live just a little longer until he could figure out how to give her a child. I wanted to believe Perses was just an eternal turd, but . . . it was possible for ancient gods who were but shells of their former selves to love too. Lily was the one he wanted to use the table for, to give her the most precious gift of all: true immortality.

  Faust’s jaw tightened. “So she can spend eternity in Tartarus with you? How long can you remain incarnated on Earth when the rest of you is chained there?”

  Perses’s dark irises expanded like wells of pure fury. Faust had hit a sore spot, and the answer was probably: not long.

  He squeezed Lily’s shoulder. “I need her at my side. Faustus, you of all people should understand the meaning of eternal loneliness.” His expression warmed a fraction, as if a sliver of humanity existed deep inside him. “What I want to give Lily . . . I could offer to Emma as well, as a reward for your obedience. Think about it,” he crooned. “I don’t need anything else. Help me with this, and you’ll never hear about me again.”

  I glared at him. “What about Lily? Will she vanish too?”

  She gripped Perses’s arm a little tighter like he was her raft. “Em, even that tiny drop of Chronos’s power inside the table would be enough to break his chains.” Her eyes begged me. “He could live free, after being trapped in hell for so long.”

  There it was, the detail in Perses’s happily ever after. The table’s power wouldn’t just serve to make Lily his bitch for eternity, it would release a monstrous god-killer, a titan nasty enough that no one wanted him out—and for a good reason. I already knew what Faust had to answer to that.

  A sorrowful smile ghosted across his lips. “I’m sorry, Lily. You don’t measure the significance of what he’s asking. Chronos’s power can’t be unleashed.” He seemed to hesitate before he told her, “There can be no exception, no deal.”

  There went our plan to unseal the table and transfer its power to the nut; with Perses standing ten feet away, it would pretty much be suicide. I glanced at the pile of blackened ashes on the ground, fighting a shudder. If we couldn’t unseal the table for Lily’s psycho-god-boyfriend, and there was no hope to beat him either . . . This was probably our last stand. Like, really the last, and I didn’t want to die here, at barely twenty. I searched Faust’s taut features for any sign that he had some sort of backup plan.

  “Emma.” My gaze snapped to the gentle asshole I’d known as Dante less than an hour ago. He held out a hand to me. “You have nothing to fear, Emma. I know yours is a heavy burden, but there’s no need for us to be enemies. I don’t know what Theia told you, but”—he shook his head with a boyish smile—“I’m not as terrible as some would like you to believe.”

  I inched back, closer to Faust. “Oh yeah, you are.”

  That didn’t deter him. “I knew you’d lead Faust to me, just as I know he came here thinking he would defeat me with that ridiculous armor and an empty, powerless baetylus.” Perses didn’t give me the time to panic over this revelation. His arm shot out to call the shadows.

  “Faust!” I shouted to warn him.

  He raised his cane, as he had against Montecito. This time the spear couldn’t make it through, crashing against Lady Palombara’s indestructible crochet work instead. But the impact itself was powerful enough to send Faust flying backward and slamming into the lab’s windows. A star-shaped crack bloomed where he’d hit the shatterproof glass, and he slid to the floor, coughing blood all over the golden vest.

  I ran to his side, falling to my knees to check on him. Obviously, that wouldn’t kill him, but air wheezed from his throat like he could barely breathe from the strength of Perses’s blow. Meanwhile, the shadows drew back to coil around their master. He was through negotiating. There wasn’t an ounce of mercy left in his eyes. “If he won’t do it, you’re going to unseal the table for me, Emma. Because if you don’t . . .” the shadows slithered back toward us with a vengeance, circling Faust like vultures. “I will flay him. And when he heals, I’ll do it again and again, until you can’t stand his screams anymore.”

  “Please . . .” Lily’s whimper broke through the emotionless hum of his voice, and the maddening whisper of the shadows. “I’ll follow you there,” she sobbed. “I don’t care about being truly immortal if I can stay with you.”

&
nbsp; He mellowed, bent to brush his mouth to hers feverishly. “No. I want this for us.” His voice grew husky, desperate. “There’s a path. I see it.”

  There’s a path. I clutched Faust’s crimson-stained coat, feeling sticky blood transfer to my fingers. Lady Palombara had said no one could ever see the truth of their own path. Maybe Perses was the one who had it all wrong. Faust’s cane still rested in his right hand, his fingers clutching it tightly. He would be okay; he could do this.

  “I’m doing this,” I murmured, for him only to hear.

  Whether Faust had heard me or not, whether he was ready or not, it was too late to back out. With one last stroke to the golden fleece for good luck, I got to my feet and told Perses, “Okay. If all you need from me is to touch the table long enough to break the seal . . . I think I can do that.”

  He flourished a hand to the massive slab of granite. “I would be eternally grateful.”

  I took hesitant steps toward the table. Beyond the flare of the surgical light, Lily’s silhouette shook in Perses’s arms as she watched me lower my palms to the table. I flinched under the flare of the surgical light kissing the concentric circles of ancient characters. Through it all, Perses’s eyes were on me, in me, searing me.

  I registered the cool contact of granite under my fingertips, and the tide of time rose and pulsed inside me. At first, I thought I saw the signs swirl before my eyes again, like the first time I’d touched the table. But I had it wrong: there was nothing random about the movement. The circles were spinning fast in opposite directions, aligning the characters to form words and speak long-forgotten secrets, that only Faust was allowed to know. I didn’t understand the whispers echoing in my skull, but I knew, in my bones, that I’d broken the seal, and the power flowing through my blood was forbidden.

  The table, the Alpha, the source, all spiraling toward a single point, the Omega. Me. Inside me. I tumbled into blessed darkness and soothing silence, the room blurring fast around me as I started to absorb Chronos’s power. I couldn’t move my hands, couldn’t even feel them anymore.

  My senses returned with a flash of pain as I flew away from the table and crashed to the ground, rammed by Perses. I blinked up at the glittering sequins above me. The surgical lights. He’d shoved me across the room before I could suck in the precious power he wanted so bad. I had this weird thought that I’d just been roughed up by an actual titan and I was probably gonna die—if it wasn’t done already. But then, I realized the light wasn’t just coming from the ceiling, it was a blinding blue flow pouring all around me from the table. Perses’s dark silhouette stood against the glow. His hands were on the table, touching the forbidden power, and somewhere in my head, Lily wouldn’t stop crying.

  I managed to roll to my stomach and saw Faust lying in the corner of the room, moving as if we were on a boat, sailing on the roaring sea of Chronos’s power. He raised his cane. A purple flash tore through all the blue, that swelled into a sizzling ball of . . . pure energy, something abstract I could feel zinging all over my body, in my teeth, my heart. I had no strength to smile, but a little part of me wanted to. Faust had done it: no more blue light, only the purple glow of his brand new baetylus, sealing Chronos’s power.

  Perses probably understood too late he had underestimated Ouranos’s nut. He whirled around to face Faust, his eyes blazing. Literally. That’s when Lily should have taken the hint—when the stars in her boyfriend’s eyes caught fire, when his skin started to crack in places from the ancient power it tried to contain in vain and he lit up like a fucking Christmas tree. Or maybe the true deal-breaker should have been when his voice grew unnaturally deep and boomed ominously in the cavernous vault of the lab, and he roared at Faust, “Know your place, slave!”

  I struggled to get to my knees. I tried, tried with everything I had, but I couldn’t find in me the secret strength Lady Palombara thought I possessed. I wasn’t even worthy of that shitty Kylo Ren cap, incapable of stopping Perses’s spear of shadows as he hurled it at Faust.

  This time the Golden Fleece wasn’t enough. Faust’s scream of agony tore through me at the same time that I saw the cane spinning away from him. The hellish flow of power had stopped. The table was silent again, just a dead disc of stone. Similarly dead, the nut had stopped glowing, and only a few bolts of electricity still arced here and there in the lab. I scanned my surroundings, my heart pounding like a marching band in my ears. Lily lay curled into a tight ball near the table, unmoving, and Perses . . . Perses stood a few feet away from Faust, the shadows coiled around his hand like a gauntlet.

  My gaze traveled from the cane resting on the ground, to the trail of blood connecting it to . . . “Faust!” I let out a broken scream, crawling toward Faust’s severed right arm, and his prone form lying next to it.

  Perses extended his arm toward the cane. When I saw it slide across the blood-soaked floor of its own volition, called by the shadows, I found the strength I needed at last, felt it thunder in my legs. I leaped forward and managed to kick the cane all the way across the room.

  Crap idea. Perses turned his flaming irises to me instead. In his fist, the spear of shadows stretched again, ready. “I’ll take care of him later,” he growled, his eyes darting to Faust’s maimed body. “For now . . .”

  Yeah. For now, it was my turn. I scrambled back, my hands and feet slipping in a sickening mixture of Faust’s blood and Montecito’s ashes. Dark red coated my fingers, my sneakers as my back hit a wall. Panic crushed my lungs as Perses closed in on me, the shadows howling in his hand. A snarl bared a row of sharp white teeth. “I wanted you to come back. I wanted this moment . . . to measure my strength against absolute darkness. Can you give me that, Emma?”

  I raised my arms to shield myself from Perses’s spear hissing toward me. I had a vision of one of the shimmering gods he’d killed in the past, saw myself torn apart in the same way. But this was different. When it started, I almost wished he’d pierced me and ended it instead. Just like when I had touched the table, I felt the shadows being drawn to me, inside me, and I couldn’t stop this unbearable flow ripping my body apart.

  My fingers clawed at the air in vain to stop the agony in my chest, tearing through nothing but smoke. I sensed him, one with the shadows, ever closer, until his forehead was pressed to mine. All I could see was the fire in his irises, burning deep within, and the spear in his hand, incapable of transpiercing me, endlessly sucked into my heart instead.

  “How much . . . can you take?” he ground out.

  I didn’t know. I could feel myself go, the pain too great, throbbing in every part of my body at once. Black crept at the edge of my vision. I thought of the table, of the darkness and the silence inside me. Like a pitch-black pearl nested in my heart, a secret place I might collapse into. A black hole.

  I didn’t consciously feel the pearl grow; I just had a glimpse of that infinitely dark bubble right before it engulfed us. The pain inside me stopped. I was . . . I no longer was. Everything and everywhere, pure silence and pure darkness. In the absence of light, I had lost myself and dragged Perses down the hole with me. I could still feel him, struggling in my depths, drowning. He was in me. He was me, an integral part of me.

  Hey . . .

  Hey, Em . . . Wake up.

  Wasn’t I already awake? The Ikea couch I sat in was familiar, fitted with stained red velvet. My pink duvet and pillow lay in a heap at my side. I slept here because, man, we didn’t have three grand to shell out on a two bedroom in New York. The box of my Cinderella 3: A Twist in Time DVD sat on the coffee table. The clock on the wall above our TV wasn’t ticking, and onscreen, Cinderella’s evil stepmom appeared frozen, holding the magic wand she’d stolen from the fairy godmother to go back in time.

  “Do you like it here? I thought you’d like it.”

  My gaze drifted to the little girl who lay sprawled across two red cushions on the floor, watching the movie. I knew her messy blonde hair and denim bib overalls, the gray sweater underneath. It was the only piece of cl
othing her dad had ever bought her. There was a drawing of Minnie Mouse on the front, and we never called him Dad at home, just Gabriele. The little girl rolled to her side and sat up to face me across the coffee table. Her big blue eyes studied me coldly. She couldn’t be more than seven . . . I looked down at my hands—adult ones, with a few scratches and bitten nails. I combed a turquoise strand away from my eyes. She was me, and I was her, in my mom’s living room in Brooklyn.

  She glanced at the still frame on the screen over her shoulder. “Bippity boppity boo. Bullshit. No one can turn back time.” She focused her cruel cornflower gaze back to me. “Except me.”

  I stared in incomprehension, struggling to tear through the white noise in my brain. “You . . .”

  She rolled her eyes and grinned, baring randomly placed milk teeth. “Me. I thought you wanted to meet me.” She quivered, balling her small fists. “Aren’t you excited? Don’t you have a million questions?”

  Slowly, my mind emerged. She wasn’t Em, wasn’t me. She was . . . Chronos?

  “Well, yeah!” She squeaked. “Obviously it’s not gonna be that poor Perses, ‘cause,” her voice dwindled to a secretive whisper, “you fucked him up.”

  Had I? Was she reading my thoughts too?

  She shook her head. “He never understood the nature of the Omega—now I think he does.”

  At last, thoughts clanked in place in my head. I stirred awake. “You did this to me . . . You put it in me!” I gasped.

  She gave an exaggerated wince. “Not exactly. But I knew it would be in you before time began, and I knew it’d be fun. I told Faust, you know. Ask him about that someday. Ask him what I told him.”

  “You told him . . . about me?”

  “Sort of. I thought it’d give him some sort of goal in life, waiting for you. But he didn’t really believe me.” She grimaced. “He freaked out when you showed up, huh?”