Chapter 18

Avar

D ressed in black pants and a white blouse with her long, dark hair swept into an elegant bun, Maddy looked very different from the girl I knew in Purgatory who wore bright, breezy gowns and had windswept hair.

Collected and business-like, she peered at the screen of her tablet, then verified the box labels in the delivery truck parked in the alley behind her restaurant.

Hiding behind the stinky dumpster, I drank in every detail about her. Whatever she wore, she looked beautiful, like an angel to me. No, far better than an angel, because Maddy was real—fragile, vulnerable, yet incredibly resilient when driven by a purpose.

Maddy held the door open for the delivery man to roll in the dolly with the boxes. As he entered the restaurant, just the two of us remained in the alley. She furtively glanced at the dumpster over her shoulder, as if stealing a moment from her reality to look into our past .

I shrank back, curling into a ball the size of a cat. It hurt to compress myself that much, but I couldn't risk Maddy spotting me. It wouldn't be fair of me to disrupt her life again. It wouldn't be fair to me to get the intoxicating pleasure of her attention only to give it up again. I had to be patient and wait.

Only waiting was getting increasingly harder to do, and coming here to catch glimpses of her didn't make it any easier.

The slam of the door behind her as she entered the restaurant was like a stab of a cold blade through my chest. Yet I already knew I'd be back again because not seeing her filled me with a much more excruciating pain than a stab of a blade.

Returning to my mountain didn't lessen the pain. It only increased the longing.

Keeper greeted me with a purr and a brush of his head against my ankle, then headed up the path to the kitchen.

"I just fed you before I left," I reminded the cat, already knowing that he'd weasel a snack from me before dinner anyway. It was hard to stay firm with him as he got increasingly cuddlier the more I resisted. "Cute little bugger," I muttered, determined not to follow him to his food dish.

I once heard a saying during one of my past visits to the human world "When parting from a loved one, the bigger burden falls on the one who stays. " It had never made more sense to me than it did now.

Maddy might be gone from Purgatory, but the memories of her remained on my mountain. My space was no longer my own. Anywhere I went, from the entrance at the bottom all the way up the spiral path to the very top, I was reminded of her.

The mountain trembled unexpectedly, alerting me to an uninvited visitor.

Maddy was right. A doorbell would've been less of a nuisance. But then again, with her gone, the visits to my mountain grew rare again. This was the first time someone had come over since her departure.

I opened the door and came face to face with Invi.

"What are you doing here?"

"Greetings to you, too, brother." He slithered in without waiting for an invitation.

I waited for all of his seemingly never-ending tail to get inside before closing the door.

"What do you want, Invi?"

"Do all visits need to have an agenda?"

"No. But yours usually have."

Realizing I wasn't following him up the path to the kitchen, Keeper turned back. At the sight of Invi, the cat hissed, puffed his tail, and hid behind my legs.

"What's that?" Invi stared at the animal.

"A cat." I lowered a tentacle and scratched behind Keeper's ear to calm him down. "Don't worry, Keeper. Invi looks scarier than he is. He doesn't eat cats. Frogs, maybe?"

Invi seemed too shocked to feel offended. "Since when do you have a cat?"

"Since Madison brought him from Nerifir."

Keeper had become another constant reminder of her. I should've gotten rid of the creature long ago. Being a pet owner had never been my aspiration. But aside from the cat's unhealthy obsession with food, Keeper didn't bother me much. I'd made a small opening for him near the front door. He'd come and go as he pleased, roaming the mountainside and exploring the foothills at night, then sleeping in Maddy's room during the day. Sometimes, he'd join me on the patio in the evening, his presence easing the loneliness of the sunset hour for me.

Invi's eyebrows returned to their previous position, and his lips stretched into a grin that promised nothing good for me .

"You traded a woman for a cat?" he gloated.

"Fuck you." I turned to head up the path. "Don't let the door pinch your tail on the way out."

Of course, he didn't leave, following me up the path, instead. "Where are you going?"

"To feed the cat," I snapped. "I should get a dog next. A vicious one. To keep you off my property."

A dog wouldn't help. I'd have to trap and train a pack of werewolves to successfully guard my mountain against Invi's invasion.

"You can't stay here all alone for the next century or so, Avar."

"Why not? It's not like you leave your swamp that often either."

"Why would I leave it? It has everything I need."

"Yet, here you are. You climbed all the way up here. What for?"

"Like I said, to keep you company, now that your human companion is gone."

I held my breath against a sharp pain in my chest as we passed by Maddy's old room. Maybe I should've gotten rid of it. But I simply couldn't do it, clinging to every trace of her that I still had left.

Invi ran his gaze up the stairs to the glass bubble over her old living space. The human sized table still stood in the middle with the few trinkets she'd found in my storage cave. I never finished clearing out the cave where we had worked together. Without her, loneliness reigned in there.

"I can't believe you let her go."

The accusation in Invi's voice poured anger over my pain, fanning my emotions into a flame. I growled, my hands fisting at my sides, my tentacles lashing. Keeper jumped on one of them, trying to catch it, but missed, twisted in the air, and landed on all fours.

Invi laughed.

"I can see how a pet can be entertaining."

I stroked the cat with the tip of my tentacle, then trailed it along the path, wiggling the tip.

Keeper crouched low to the ground, stalking the tentacle like prey. As I dragged it past him, he jumped again, then rolled to his back, with the tip of my tentacle caught in his sharp claws.

I winced. If I had skin, it'd now be torn and bleeding. Keeper was cute but vicious, like all cats, I imagined.

"He likes to play." I petted Keeper's head before continuing up the path again. He jumped to his paws, joining me on the way to the kitchen in hopes of getting a snack, no doubt.

Thanks to the cat, my anger at my brother dissipated. All that remained was a tendril of melancholy and longing that never left.

"You won't understand, Invi, but I'll try to explain anyway. I love Madison. I love her so much that her pain hurts me, and her happiness makes me feel fulfilled. I didn't trade her for a cat like you say." I shook my head as he smirked. "I didn't even trade her freedom for a relic like she thinks I did. I bought her happiness, and I didn't care what it cost me, because it's the highest treasure of all."

We reached the top room, and Invi took in the kitchen I'd built for Maddy. It remained intact as I had no heart to demolish it after she left, even as it was practically unusable for me, with the counter height being just above my knee.

Thankfully, I didn't need to eat, and Keeper didn't care whether his food was cooked or raw. I cut a slice of meat and chopped it into smaller pieces for him.

Curling his tail under him, Invi watched me from the table where the belt that Maddy wore on her trip to Nerifir still lay. I hadn't completely emptied it yet, fearing the memories and the emotions it would bring. Ever since Maddy and I returned from Nerifir, it'd been nothing but a whirlwind of emotions.

"They say love can bring the highest pleasure," Invi said. "Looking at you now, brother, I would argue it can bring the deepest sorrow too. Was it all worth it in the end? Falling in love only to lose it like that?"

Was it worth it?

Were the brief moments of intense pleasure when Maddy was close by worth the long centuries of solitude suspended in wait now that she was gone? Would I have done it all over again if I knew how it'd all end?

"Yes," I said without hesitation. "I'd give everything I have for just a moment of the true happiness that Maddy gave me."

Folding his arms across his chest, Invi gaped at me.

"You, the Sin of Greed, would give?"

I nodded confidently without a hint of regret about the choices I'd made.

"It'd be a fair trade for me."

Indi didn't stay long. I let him make his way down to the exit on his own while I picked up Maddy's belt from the table and emptied its pockets and pouches.

A pale blue stone fell onto the table next to the stuffed snake. I didn't remember packing the stone and lifted it to my eyes for a better look.

Having finished his food, Keeper sauntered past me, probably on his way to Maddy's bedroom for a nap. The sunlight glistened in the gears on his collar. The polished moonstone between the gears remained pale in the sunlight. It glowed its brightest on a full moon night, when its magic was the strongest, strong enough to bring a goddess into the world of the living .

I turned the stone from Maddy's belt between my fingers. Did she bring it from Nerifir and forgot to tell me? A lot had happened upon our return. I didn't even put everything away right after as I usually try to do. Had I even locked the transcendence potion properly? I couldn't remember.

The delicate, shimmering moonstone was beautiful even in the daylight. And I wondered whether its power could do for a sin what it'd done for a goddess.