39. Jaiyana

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

JAIYANA

I sat in a simple living room I recognized from my past. Blue couches accented the simple light and airy space, which looked nothing like Drukpa’s fortress. Photographs of Bradly Cooper and me together hung on the walls. He was a good-looking guy. A few inches shorter than me, he had a trim waist and broad shoulders. I knew he was pasty white, but his California tan and jet-black dyed hair made it hard to distinguish his ethnicity.

Until this moment, I never realized how much he was trying to make us look like a matching set.

A painting done by him hung above the fireplace. He was an artist. We met while he was in college, and I was pretending to be in college again because that’s what girls who looked my age did. Over the last twenty years, we’d traveled the world together. He called me his muse, though his paintings weren’t of people but the world around him. With my help, he’d made a fortune. He never needed to work again.

My gaze moved to the man next to me on the couch. Brad wasn’t that college kid anymore. His twenty years of tanning and expressive face left wrinkle lines and a few darker spots he should probably get checked out by a doctor. The roots of his dye showed not only the blonde underneath but strips of white.

“Brad,” I said. “It’s time. You knew this was coming.”

Brad didn’t move or react.

I reached out and gripped his hand. “I’m immortal. I need to leave this area and start again.” I squeezed him. “I love you too much to let you join me. You will age, and I will not. And you will resent me for it. People are meant to grow old together, to die together. It’s what gives life meaning.”

Brad looked up at me. “You give my life meaning. You Jaiy. Only you.”

I shook my head. “It might feel like it now, but memories fade. You’ll find a new muse.”

Suddenly, I wasn’t just sitting in this living room but countless others. Little square after little square popped into existence, each with a slightly different decore and a unique man to match.

“You’ll be happier without me.” Every version of myself said the same thing to every man. I’d meant it every single time.

I cried, not in the memory, but me, the person watching, because they had been. Every single one had gotten over me, had a second life, and died with their loved ones. Everyone except Brad.

My memory became the cream and blue living room again. Fast as a snake, Brad punched my stomach. The memory version of me felt the physical pain before realizing the object in my ex-lover's hand was now embedded in my gut. I couldn’t move, and my magic responded as if called from miles away.

A portal appeared behind Brad, and Marduk stepped out.

“It’s done,” Brad said. “This better work.”

Marduk put a hand on his shoulder. “Our deal is complete. Jay’s strong. You have six weeks, at most, to find a permanent solution until her mind becomes her own once more.” He pulled out a slip of paper. “And as agreed, the key to something more permanent.”

My hatred for Marduk burned, adding to the betrayal from the man I’d spent the last twenty years with. I tried to move my arms, but my body was so heavy.

Brad took the paper and unfolded it. “Gorm’s Casket?”

“I’ve watched Jaiyana’s every waking moment since she tricked me.” Marduk grimaced. “Only twice did she fail to harness the power she sought, and only the first time was she stupid enough to leave her mistake behind. In a few more minutes, the crystal will take full effect, and her mind will belong to you. After that, she will answer any question you desire.”

Brad squeezed the paper. “I don’t even know what Gorm’s Casket is.”

Marduk laughed. “Then I suggest you figure it out. You’ve already given me what I want, mortal. Jay’s fate is merely my entertainment now.”

Marduk’s portal opened again. His perfect hair and glowing white eyes held mine as I felt my will leave my body. My grimace relaxed into nothing. Marduk laughed, and his portal vanished.

“Jay?” Brad asked.

I blinked a few times before smiling. “Yes, honey?”

Brad’s face brightened. “We need to find something. Will you help me?”

I cupped his cheek. “Of course, baby, anything you need.”

Time sped up. A montage of my life played before my eyes to the song of Girl on Fire – Losing My Identity. I betrayed friends, broke into buildings, and used favors from other immortals I’d been currying for centuries. Brad took me to a cabin he built just for us, far away from the world. We made love as if it were the last time we’d ever see each other. The memories slowed until we sat at a table with Gorm’s completed casket resting between us.

“We need to open it and connect it to the spell before I lose any more of my mind,” I said.

Brad hesitated. “You love me, right baby?”

I smiled. “Always and forever, how could you think anything else?”

Brad closed his eyes as if steeling his resolve before opening them and gripping the box. “Always and forever.”

As one, we lifted the lid. Darkness seeped out. I pushed my hand forward, chanting and funneling the power, not into my third eye, the source of my magic, but into the object, Brad had embedded into my abdomen. I couldn’t see myself, but I watched as Brad’s face drained of blood. His lips twisted, and his eyes filled with tears in response to whatever fight he saw on my face.

The moment my lover, the man I trusted to sleep at my side for two decades, realized he’d made the wrong decision twisted his face into a dark sea of regret and pain.

He lunged, covering the box with his body to try and stop the magic. But once a spell was in motion, it couldn’t be stopped, only redirected.

I screamed.

And so did the version of me trapped inside my own body. Lines of blood broke out on my skin. While fake me lived Brad’s fantasy, trapped me had been hard at work. The lines of blood connected into runes I’d drawn on the inside of my skin. They push to the surface, and blood burst out of me, ripping away everything that touched me. I fell to the floor, naked and bleeding from a fist-sized hole in my stomach.

Gorm’s Casket still billowed with dark energy, which tried to sink into my skin, only to find an impenetrable barrier.

I couldn’t move. I hurt. My heart, body, and soul throbbed. But I was myself.

Above me, the dark energies condensed into a swirling storm of grey and black. A pair of glowing red eyes emerged from its depth. The long-dead god whose power had been sealed, stolen, ripped apart, and then unleashed in the name of love took his first breaths in our world in over eight hundred years. He needed a body. I was supposed to be that body, but I fought, and now he couldn’t gain access.

Brad knelt by my side and rested the casket on his hip. “It’s the only way.” He gestured to the casket. “We have to get Gorm back in. The casket needs blood, right?”

I shook my head. There was no way to get Gorm back into the casket. But Brad already had a knife in his hands. He slit one palm after the other and turned, placing both bleeding hands on either side of the casket. He threw his head back, looking up at the darkness. “Go back into your container! You are no longer needed here.”

The sound of metal grating against steel, nails on a chalkboard, or even a saw cutting through steel… a thousand grating textures combined into a powerful laugh I knew would haunt my nightmares forever.

Forever is a long time.

It really is.

The darkness whipped into a whirlpool that engulfed Brad. A single tear ran down my face as I watched my ex-lover’s body age fifty years in seconds. Behind him, the god took the shape of a minotaur. Dark, cloven hooves connected to the complexed, dense muscle of a man. His leathery skin stretched over more stomach muscles than any one man should have. Although his arms were massive, they were human in shape, unlike his face, which protruded like a bull. A set of wicked, sharp, curved horns poked into the ceiling and dripped with familiar fluorescent-green power.

The god stretched and ran his hands across his new form. He eyed his casket and hovered his hand above it. Goopy, fluorescent-green liquid dripped from his fingers, disintegrating his old prison.

His gaze dropped to me. “I can’t touch you, but you won’t fight what you can’t remember.” He grinned, exposing his bone-white human teeth, and put a hand on Brad’s shoulder. “Do it.”

Brad’s ancient body fought to move. He blinked once. The whites of his eyes turned fluorescent-green and then red as Gorm took possession of his body.

“As you command,” Brad’s simple human tones mixed with the grating of the gods.

Brad creaked as he bent down and placed his hand above the hole in my stomach. Despite the lack of an object embedded there, the dregs of his original spell still laced my essence, making it hard to move. I met my ex’s gaze. For a heartbeat, the red cleared. A ribbon of Ley Line magic shivered against my skin. The red returned with a vengeance, and he gripped the spell and pushed with the new demonic power of his master. Pain like I’d never experienced before split my vision tenfold before my brain checked out.

I woke up in my apartment in Graeagle with no memory of any of it, just a vague need to get away from everything coupled with a deep sense of loss.

I opened my eyes, my real eyes, and stared up. A dark wood ceiling had a white strappy gadget of some sort hanging from it directly above me. “Is that a sex swing?”

“Jay.”

“Love.”

“Wiggles.”

Tyson’s chest rumbled at my back while my legs lay in Rehan’s lap. Lux and Ogden each held one of my hands, rubbing my palms like they had in Lux’s tower. Instead of asking questions, the four let me breathe and process, each caressing my skin and silently sending me support.

Past me might not have taken this moment. I had my memories back. We had enough information to move forward. But that isn’t who I wanted to be anymore. I needed to process…even if it hurt.

I unpacked everything, piece by piece, and sorted it. I didn’t get mad at myself. I didn’t judge myself. I acknowledge every emotion and let it exist. How much time it took didn’t matter. Only when my heart rate and thoughts calmed did I speak.

“How long was I out?”

“Not long,” Ogden answered. “Less than an hour. Is your magic back?”

Reluctantly, I pulled my hands away from Lux and Og and held them above my head. I cycled through my mates’ elemental powers before calling on my own. My fingers tingled, but no magic came. I tried to check for my mate marks, only to find the earrings in the way. I pulled them off. The crystals were drained of their color and cracked. I put them to the side and pressed my fingers against my mate marks, feeling both Rehan's wave and Tyson’s flame.

“I’m still cursed.” I met each of my guy's faces, and to my surprise, I saw relief. “And still marked.”

“So, our synchronized nutting did feck all?” Tyson asked.

I took a calming breath. “I didn’t say that.”

My inner voice started to speak, and I forced myself to open my mouth. “I was uncomfortable, vulnerable, and not in control. But you asked me to trust you, so I did, and you took care of me.” I hugged myself. “When we all came together, our connection tingled and grew. The curse rewarded me with my memories.”

I met each of my dragon’s gazes as ancient Brad’s words suddenly made sense: I knew you could learn to love, that you weren’t that cold woman who turned from me.

With my dragon’s arms wrapped around me, for the first time in a hundred years, I let tears for myself roll down my cheeks.