Chapter 22

CHAPTER22

“My sister married and mated. How does it feel?” Aglaope asks as we stand together in the shadows of a balcony. It’s been only a day since our escape from the Nephilim in Cairo, and already my wedding seems like it happened a week ago. I make a mental note to ask Imani if there’s any such thing as Shadow Realm honeymoon destinations. I smirk as I imagine the travel brochures she could provide. Come for the fog! Stay for more fog. Creepy tripod not-dogs included.

“Kind of surreal, I guess,” I answer honestly with a shrug. “Like we haven’t had a chance to just settle into any state of normalcy yet. Or maybe batshit crazy is our new normal, I don’t know.”

Aglaope’s lyrical laugh warms the space between us. “‘Batshit crazy’? I think it will take me some time to adjust to that imagery.”

We share a smile as I scrutinize her features, looking for any hint of discomfort or weariness, but I find none, even though I imagine it must be a hard process to adjust to a world that has changed so much over time. “What about you? What do you feel, being here as a whole person and not a reaped soul?” I ask.

“Many things, I think,” Aglaope says. “Sometimes, it feels like the echo of a nightmare, the kind that clings to you long after you wake.” I gnaw at the edge of my lip as I nod, looking away until Aglaope’s hand runs down the length of my arm and she smiles. “But other times, I feel as though I am in a dream. Seeing you once more, and so happy, it fills my heart with warmth.”

We break our gazes from one another and look down at the sounds of battle practice in the circular courtyard below. We’re in building called Imhas, meaning ‘strike’. I smile as I recall Ashen’s response when I questioned the translation for Bit Akalum, or ‘House of Food’. ‘Does what it says on the tin,’ he’d said. Much like Imhas.

The training yard we overlook is free of the obstruction of fog, protected from the rolling mist by a glass domed roof. There are three floors of balconies rising above the rust-colored sand where the elite Shub Lugal soldiers flow through a sequence of drills. The courtyard has been divided into quarters, and every fifteen minutes, the soldiers rotate to the next quadrant to complete their exercises. In one, they spar in hand-to-hand combat, no weapons. In another, they train with swords, pairing up to strike at one another in graceful, sweeping manoeuvres. In the third, the soldiers stand side-by-side near the center of the circle to shoot arrows at targets lining the stone wall. At the fourth and final quadrant, they practice tai chi, which is both unexpected and beautiful among the controlled violence of the other sections. Ashen and Cyrus travel the circle, working with a handful of other high-ranking soldiers to coach the Shub Lugal through their drills.

I watch Ashen’s lethal form as he weaves through the groups while I lean against a pillar of black marble, sipping a cup of warmed, spiced blood from a thermos I’m sharing with my sister. There’s a long silence between us and it’s lost some of the comfort I remember from a long time ago. Back in the day, we used to sit with no words between us for hours on the beach, waiting for ships to pass. Our silence used to feel sacred. Aglaope’s quiet presence, the waves crashing against the cliffs that flanked us, the sound of gulls…it was a gentle hymn, even without our enchanted voices. Now, it’s as though that sea has crept between us in our years apart, and all I want to do is cross the gulf to recapture all that time we’ve lost. But I’ve lived so much in those centuries, done so many things that might only sweep us further away from one another. And she’s suffered a hell I cannot understand, in a place I’m now supposed to lead, though I’m still not sure how.

A heavy, thoughtful sigh passes my lips as I turn away from the scene below to face my sister. “This is probably the very opposite of what you expected from me.”

Aglaope tilts her head, regarding me with her inscrutable onyx gaze. “You mean, your status here in the Shadow Realm?”

I nod, looking down into my cup as I swirl the blood within its confines. “Yes. But not just that. It’s everything. The friends I’ve made. The love I’ve found. The path I took to get here.” It takes a long moment before I can meet her eyes. “When you saved me on Anthemoessa, I did as you asked. I took the sword you fell with and went to where you had trapped Barbossa Sarno. He gave me a spell in exchange for his freedom. When I got back your cottage, there was a Reaper there. I killed him. But it was a mistake.”

My gaze falls away to the courtyard. Though the Shub Lugal live separately from the Houses in their own barracks, surely some of them must have once been assigned to House Mushussu at one time. Some would have known Hakan. Maybe ate with him at Bit Akalum. Maybe they danced with him to Tessa’s haunting voice.

I’m sure Hakan meted out as much sorrow and fear as any demon, but my mistake still burns like a hot pin in my chest. When I first realized I killed the wrong Reaper, that regret only stung out of worry of being caught as a bounty here, especially with the very real threat of Ember hanging over my neck like a guillotine. But now? Now, I look at the demons and wonder where their darkness came from. If they ever wanted it. Maybe it’s not really just their nature. Maybe the weight of all our misconceptions keeps them trapped in the shadows they never asked for.

Aglaope says nothing, just waits as I swallow down these thoughts that seem to dry my tongue and dampen my lashes. “Barbossa sold me out to the Shadow Realm years later,” I say, my voice low. “Ediye helped me fake my death to escape the reaping. I killed Sarno, eventually. When the time was right.”

“Do you regret it?” my sister asks as she takes my hand.

“No,” I say. “I don’t.” And I can’t reconcile it with what I feel now about my other actions. I still think he deserved it, and every time I see Bobby’s face in memory, laughing at me through the flames as I suffered at the stake, the satisfaction of his death between my hands is like a soothing balm for the burns that seem imprinted on my soul. But maybe we all deserve to die, in the end. I’m the villain in his family’s story, after all.

“Ashen told me what Barbossa’s father and the werewolves did to you in their revenge,” Aglaope says, as though my thoughts have blended with hers. “I am truly sorry, sister. I did not realize that the ripples of my actions would cause so much harm to you, when all I ever hoped for was to protect you.”

I turn to Aglaope fully, holding her stoic gaze. “Why did you do it, sister? Why did you make that deal with a masked man and then Davina? What did you hope to gain?”

Aglaope’s eyes shift between mine, as though she’s checking for something she seems to decide she can’t find behind them. There’s a melancholy slant to her smile when she lets go of my hand to bring it to my cheek, tracing my skin with affection. “Our freedom.”

“I don’t understand. We left Anthemoessa whenever we wanted, when we had the means. We could go where we pleased.”

“But without our memories, we were never truly free,” she says, her voice colored with a note of determination as though her aim never died all those years ago when she did. “We have always been trapped by the absence of our origins. Why were we left there? Why did our families abandon us? Were we always immortal creatures, or did they make us that way? What if we were supposed to fulfil a greater purpose that we could not remember? Without truly knowing, I always felt that we were in danger. The other vampires we created when we left the island, they were never as powerful as us. They were never the same.” Aglaope looks down to the courtyard. Arrows whistle to the targets. Swords clank and crash against one another. Grains of sand abrade the soles of heavy boots. Aglaope is the only one here who hears the symphony like I do. “I wanted to be sure we could be truly free. When Sessum offered me that in compensation, I could not refuse.”

A drum sounds below from a hidden recess in the shadows and the soldiers rotate clockwise to the next quadrant. Ashen follows the group who were practicing with the bows, glancing up at the balconies. He can feel my presence and looks in our direction, but he can’t see us. I step just a little into the light and he gives me a slight nod, a hint of a smile that I return as I lean against a pillar, the cool stone pleasant against my temple. Aglaope comes forward to stand beside me and we watch as the next round of drills begin.

“I got this for you,” Aglaope says as she lays a small, forest green box on the railing. “A wedding gift.”

I look to my sister, and she smiles as I take it and open the box. A gold ring rests in the center, a square cut amethyst stone surrounded by salt and pepper diamonds that match my engagement ring. “It’s beautiful,” I say as I slide it on the ring finger of my right hand.

“Ashen allowed me to go to Anthemoessa with a guard to bring back amethyst from the cliffs on the west side of the island. Do you remember the gems there?”

I laugh as I look down at the polished stone, turning my hand in the light. “Of course. Parthenope used to make those beautiful earrings from them with the gold she scavenged from the sailors she killed.” I hold my hand in a fist close to my heart. “Thank you, sister. I love it.”

Ashen glances toward us. I hold my hand up and twinkle my fingers. He flashes a brief smile before focusing back on coaching the group practicing with their swords.

“A Reaper in love with a vampire,” Aglaope says with a grin as she shakes her head. “Only you would wind up in such a circumstance and get away with it.”

“I do love getting away with things.”

Aglaope chuckles. “I know, sister. You always have. Perhaps some things do not change, no matter how much time passes.”

A whistle sounds from below, its pitch different from the other arrows.

My sister’s grip is a vice on my wrist. The cup falls from my hand, spilling blood and the scent of cardamom and honey and anise across the floor, spattering across my shoes. Aglaope wrenches me toward her as an arrow lodges in the pillar where my head had been leaning, the shaft swaying, the stone cracked beneath its silver point.

My eyes are wide when I meet Aglaope’s gaze. The red vampiric gleam of protective rage shines back in hers.

Chaos erupts below and breaks the spell of fear and fury between us. We turn to the yard just as Cyrus kicks the back of a demon’s legs, sending him to his knees in the dust of the archers’ quarter as soldiers with swords and arrows point to my attacker. Ashen stalks toward the demon, the aggressor’s mouth twisted in a bloody grin from someone’s punch.

The rage I feel from Ashen is a mirror of my own. It’s reflecting beneath my skin, heating my flesh. Crimson light films my vision. I fold my hands into fists and press them to the stone railing. “Gassan tiildibba me zi ab,” I yell into the courtyard. My voice fills the space like a cauldron. I smash my fist against the stone. “Alsi kunusi.”

Queen that gives life to the dying.

I have called upon you.

Flame erupts on Ashen’s sword and smoke surrounds him, but through it we still see the slash of his blade across the demon’s stomach. The man screams, that grin twisting into agony as Ashen reaches into the wound and pulls out a handful of viscera. Intestines tumble into the dust and Ashen grabs my attacker’s hair with his bloody hand, forcing the demon to look down as he then grinds his organs beneath the heel of his boot. Ashen whispers something to the demon that I can’t hear, the sound drowned by the man’s distress. The Reaper shoves the aggressor to the ground. Zida rushes from the shadows, Ashen moving out of her path as she draws back and strikes the man across the chest. She draggs him through the circle toward an arched door, his intestines trailing in their wake like pink rope as his weakening wails climb the stone walls.

I meet Ashen’s gaze, the waning fear in his eyes coloring their depths with a brighter flame than rage. I try to give him a reassuring smile, but I can’t seem to bring it to life.

“Perhaps some things cannot change, no matter how much we wish them to,” Aglaope says.