Chapter 40

ChapterForty

Gluttony worked to get his home in a better state for her. Katherine deserved the best. She should have a castle full of silks and beautiful stained glass, not the haunted house he lived in.

But that took a lot of time and effort. There were few people who were willing to come work for him, less and less as the time went on. So Gluttony found himself doing a majority of the work. Which, surprisingly, he didn’t mind.

The new blisters on his hands were as expected, he supposed, and he was quite pleased that his body could still work so hard. After all, he had spent a thousand years not doing... anything at all.

Or perhaps it was just his natural desire to be a glutton for punishment. He did very much enjoy the aches and pains that came with fixing his home.

It also gave him an option to leave the castle more as he traveled farther and farther from it. Not so far that he couldn’t return if he needed to, he was very aware that there were people looking at attacking his castle at any point. But so far, they were allowed to remain in peace while they remained far away from anyone else.

He knew this was a gift, and a rarity that would likely be broken soon enough. And in the meantime, before they were attacked, he wanted to make sure that Katherine was as comfortable as possible.

Today, he was returning with an armful of silken sheets. They had destroyed theirs. The memory made his head spin, and it was far pastime that he gave her sheets better than ancient homespuns.

Whistling as he entered the castle, he started toward their bedroom to surprise her. She’d be so happy with the color, as well. His Katherine preferred brighter colors, he’d found out. She enjoyed light splashes of yellow and rose, bright patterns and vivid hues that whirled through the mind’s eye as she walked by them.

The sheets he’d found were a bright shade of green, the same color as her eyes. The merchant hadn’t been all that interested in selling them to a demon, so Gluttony had taken matters into his own hands.

The moment the man turned around, he stole the sheets and ran.

As a true royal did.

But he only made it halfway to their room before he heard a horrible sound. The wrenching sob broke his heart. He’d never heard her cry like that.

Gluttony couldn’t remember if he’d ever seen her cry at all. Katherine was stronger than most, and she took what life gave her without an ounce of complaint. Even after all she’d endured, she still found ways to smile.

Sheets forgotten, he dropped them onto the floor as he charged through the hall, seeking out the sound in every room that he came across.

“Katherine!” he called out, nearly frantic now to find her. “Katherine, where are you?”

Why wasn’t she responding?

His thoughts spun out of control. What if the people from the village had come while he was gone? What if they had attacked her instead of him, as they had the last time? He might find her curled up in a ball on the floor somewhere, incapable of being fixed because he was the fool who thought she needed better sheets.

But then he heard it. The soft shuffle of movement from a room just beyond and he burst into it so quickly that the door slammed against the wall. Dust rained down on their heads, falling like snow on top of his hair and down around his shoulders.

He was frozen in place by the sight in front of him. His heart stopped in his chest and every muscle in his body locked.

Katherine sat on the floor, her crimson skirts pooled around her like blood. Her hair fell in a waterfall down one side of her shoulder, shielding the little soul she held in her arms. Tear tracks had left red marks down her lovely cheeks, and those pretty green eyes had turned to chips of glimmering emerald as she cried. She didn’t even look up at him. Not once. Instead, all her attention was on the soul that leaked down to her lap until she gathered it up again.

“Oh no,” he muttered, before walking into the room.

Spite. The poor little spirit should never have stayed here. It should have gone back to the town where there were plenty of emotions for it to feed on. And in truth, he’d thought it had returned to that darkened village.

He hadn’t seen it in such a long time, and he’d been the fool who assumed it was fine. That it had gone back to the feeding grounds that were so close.

He’d never thought it would come to this.

Crouching beside Katherine, he placed his hand on her shoulder and gently squeezed. “When did you find it?”

“It was just lying there in the corridor.” She sounded more than upset. Hysteric, perhaps. Her words were a little too loud and too frantic. “I thought maybe it was just resting, because Spite hasn’t been itself for a very long time, you know? I thought maybe it was just pausing for a little rest and then when I leaned down to touch it, it just...” she hiccuped. “It didn’t move, Gluttony. Not even a little. It didn’t even flinch when I picked it up and you know how little it likes to be held.”

Again, he squeezed her shoulder. Taking a deep breath, he readied himself to tell her about the end of spirit’s lives. “There was nothing here for it to feed on. I wondered why Spite had remained when it knew how easily it could get food in the town. There is so little of its emotion to find in this castle.”

She sniffed. “Was it too weak? Is this our fault?”

She looked up at him with those big, water filled eyes and he felt his own soul fracture. “No, sweet.” Gluttony smoothed a tear off her cheek, chasing the droplet with his thumb. “No. We could have brought it back to the town, perhaps. And maybe it was too weak to return to its usual hunting grounds. But Spite chose to be here with us.”

“I don’t know why.” Katherine sniffled again, looking down at the little creature. “It should have gone home. It could have left at any point.”

He couldn’t understand it either. But he’d seen the life wasting away from Spite. The dark cloud of a creature had slowly turned into something pale and lifeless. A fraction of what it had once been. Even its ability to speak had left.

He reached out with his hand and gently pressed his fingers into the white mist. Perhaps, if he was lucky, he could usher its death along. Gluttony had consumed spirits before, and though that wasn’t part of his life anymore, he could do so again if the creature wished. It was a fitting end to a creature who had fed off of others. To be eaten wasn’t a dishonor amongst their kind.

But when he touched Spite, there was still the faintest thrum of magic. A power that wasn’t like the creature he had touched so many times before.

A surprise.

Eyebrows raising, he stared down at the little spirit and muttered, “It cannot be.”

“What?” Katherine asked. “What cannot be?”

He reached for the spirit, letting the liquidy mist pool through his hands as he scooped up the spirit into his grip. He was less gentle than Katherine, so it didn’t slide away onto the floor. Instead, he made sure that it was carefully cupped, but firmly trapped.

Lifting the spirit to his eyes, he peered into the mist and said, “It shouldn’t be possible.”

“What shouldn’t be possible?” Katherine snapped. “You’re acting like you’ve found some wonder of the world.”

“Because I might have.” Slowly, he stood and started out of the room.

“Where are you going?”

“To the lab.” Because he wasn’t actually seeing what he was seeing. It should be impossible. Spirits were spirits, that’s all they were. Only he and his brothers had changed, and that was unusual in its own right.

Although Greed would disagree. Considering he had given two spirits physical forms, and that alone was supposed to be impossible. So there were deviations to the rules, but this rule was one that wasn’t supposed to be possible at all.

Katherine trailed along behind him, wringing her hands every time he looked at her before finally breaking through her silence the moment he deposited the spirit onto his table.

“What is going on?” she asked, rounding the table so she was right in front of him. “Are you going to answer me or not?”

“Not,” he muttered, grabbing his glasses and sliding them onto his nose.

Apparently, that was the wrong question. Katherine snatched his glasses off and dangled them out of his reach. “Explain, demon.”

He sighed, pinching his nose before resolving himself to answering questions while he did his investigative work. “Spirits are born a certain way. We are spirits of an emotion, this much you know. But it has been rumored that a spirit subjected to a certain amount of emotion can turn into another.”

Her brows swept together in a frown. “Explain better.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do,” he grumbled before grabbing his glasses back from her. “A spirit of justice who loses a war repeatedly will eventually become a spirit of vengeance. A spirit of hope who only sees death and dying will eventually become a spirit of despair. It is a very rare phenomenon to happen, and usually only happens to spirits like myself and my brothers. Stronger spirits who have been around for a very long time. Spite is a very young spirit.”

He glanced down, frowning at the creature, who was now nearly as white as snow. He had to admit, this was the most likely circumstance. This little spirit had done a lot of work here. It had tried very hard to break both of them with its spiteful words and had managed with Gluttony many times over. But it had never broken Katherine. And it had spent a lot of time with his lovely human.

“Or at least, I thought it was a younger spirit,” he muttered. Peering down at the mist, now actually able to see better with his glasses, he searched for the little specks of darkness that should be in the mist.

“What are you doing now?” Katherine asked, her hands coming into view to help hold the spirit, even though it wasn’t moving.

“I’m looking to see if there’s any remaining part of its original essence,” he muttered, prodding the white mist with one of his metal rods. “If it isn’t changing, and it’s dying instead, there should still be specks of darkness. Shadows of its former self. We could save it, perhaps, if we gave it enough food. There isn’t enough here. Don’t get that into your head, Katherine. Neither of us are capable of enough spite to feed this spirit.”

He felt more than saw her pout. She would do anything to save it, he knew, but that didn’t change their situation. Even if they ran to the town and set it loose, Spite would likely die. There just wasn’t enough food.

However... “Do you see any darkened spots?” he asked. “I want to be certain that what I’m seeing is what is actually happening.”

“I only see a white mist,” she said, meeting his gaze over the weakened spirit. “So, what does that mean?”

Pulling off his glasses, he set them on the table and leaned back in shock. “Then it’s changed.”

“Into what?”

He almost shrugged and said he didn’t know, but... he did. And he knew exactly why it had changed. “Spite spent a lot of time with you, didn’t it?”

“No more than it did with you.” Katherine frowned. “Maybe a little more time. It was always popping up when I didn’t think it was around. Why? Is that important?”

Very, actually. He leaned forward and huffed out a breath. “You devious little monster. It knew that being around you more and more would likely force it to change. That’s why it was always lurking around you, and I bet it was around you more than you were aware of. It was soaking in your emotions, your essence, trying to force itself to change.”

“Why?” Katherine shook her head, as though dislodging those thoughts. “And what did it change into?”

“Compassion,” he replied with a quiet laugh. “It changed into a spirit of compassion and I think that is entirely because of you. Because it knew you had so much of the emotion that you could live with it. Be its host. It would experience life in an entirely new way if it possessed you, and it knew that I wouldn’t say no if it wanted that.”

Of course, this was the spirit’s plan the entire time. A spirit’s life was infinite as long as there was a source of its emotion to feed off of. But they were still spirits. Unable to experience life like the humans, nor were they able to truly enjoy living.

They only got a taste of it. Every now and then, the emotion would change to a slightly different flavor, but they weren’t actually living. Spirits were on the outskirts of both life and death. Living in an in-between that was both unique and exhausting.

Spite had wanted to live. Perhaps it had been this emotion for a very long time and now it realized just how imperative it was to experience life. And now, as weak as it was from changing, there was only one other option to save its life.

“It wants me to be its... host?” she asked. “That can’t be right, Gluttony. Spite never mentioned possession or anything along those lines. It cannot want to live inside me.”

“It does,” he murmured, nudging the little spirit until it rolled closer to her. “Otherwise it will die. If you don’t allow it to live inside you, with you, experience living through your eyes, then it will die here and now. It didn’t want to ask because it didn’t think we would agree to it.”

“Well, I don’t even know what it would do to me!”

He hated this part. But now he knew how his brothers had felt. “It will make you immortal,” he replied, meeting her gaze. “No wound will remain. No sickness will take you. Life will be forever, with you at my side, frozen in the same state you are in right now.”

And for a time, they stared at each other. Katherine’s thoughts played across her features, like he was reading the pages of a familiar story. Disgust, fear, denial, and then finally acceptance as her gaze flicked down to the tiny spirit. “And doing so will save it?”

“It will.” He reached across the table to cover her hand with his. “Immortality is no easy choice, Katherine. Don’t rush this.”

She straightened her shoulders. “Choosing to save a life is the easiest choice to make, Gluttony. No matter the cause or what might happen, I would do anything for those I love. So what do I do next?”

And who was he to deny her? He got to keep her forever and she... well, she would find out what it truly meant to be a god.