“You should listen to the aniel,” came a soft voice behind me.
I jolted on the spot and fell onto my side.
As I craned my neck, I saw the wispy God glide towards me. Her tattered grey dress clung to her silvery skin, and seemed to drip pieces of souls at her bare feet.
“It isn’t wise to be so close to the souls,” said the Keeper of Lost Souls.
She gave a grin so perfect that my muscles tensed into bolts beneath my skin, and I wondered if she was just about ready to drag me into her pond or eat me alive.
“Even my fellow Gods fear these waters,” she said.
I kept my wary stare on the Keeper as she came to kneel at my side. If I wasn’t so frozen in place, I might have trembled.
The Keeper turned her suddenly-distant gaze on the ripples upsetting the pond. At her distracted moment, I looked back at Adrik with wide eyes—help me eyes.
All I saw of him was his back as he ran away from the ponds and disappeared over the bridge.
My heart sank.
Fucking coward.
“What soul are you searching for?” asked the God. “A lover, lost at sea? A mother, drowned in a storm?”
I studied the side of her vacant expression, her eyes looking like stone pits that never ended.
“No one. I just … I saw a woman,” I said carefully. “She was in chains. I was trying to help her, but then when I got closer … she was gone.”
I didn’t know whether I just made the worst mistake of my short life with that lie, or saved my ass.
I couldn’t risk the Prince checking my blood memories and seeing that I knew more than I let on.
Or did Phantom’s shield reach the letter he’d left for me as well?
It was getting harder to keep track of the things I could and couldn’t say, the things the Prince knew and didn’t know, the information my blood betrayed and kept hidden. Even Ava knew so little about me now.
A full, long life at the palace seemed a nightmare.
Wearing a small, secretive smile on her white lips, the Keeper raked her fingertips over the surface. Ripples appeared, more violent than what they should have been under such a gentle touch.
As the ripples cleared, a shadowy figure rose up from the depths of the water.
I blinked, startled.
It was the woman from the drawing. An exact image of her.
I let out a steadying breath. “That’s her.”
Still with that creepy smile, the Keeper just watched me.
“Is she alive?” My voice shivered with the rapid beat of my heart.
The Keeper shook her head. Damp hair clung to her temples. “Not for centuries.”
“Who is she?”
Her smile turned toothy.
More like fangs.
“Do your dreams not tell you?” she crooned.
I paled. More than usual, I mean.
The kind of pale that came before sick or fainting, the kind where veins become visible beneath the skin and you’re forced to wear too much powder to hide blotchy complexions.
My kind of pale.
“I will keep your mysterious secret. I will answer the questions you have,” the Keeper said, earning a choppy exhale from me, until she added darkly, “for a price.”
I sobered. “What kind of price?”
“Your soul.” It was startling just how casually she laid out her offer, as though she was bartering for a mere cup of tea.
“Once you are dead, of course,” she added with a gentle look my way. “Souls that have matured are much more nourishing for my ponds. Yours is a prize indeed.”
“What if I don’t die in water?”
That was the tale of the Keeper. She took the souls of those drowned in the sea, sailors and sunken ships, even children who slipped in puddles and cracked their heads open.
She took from the water just as she gave to it.
“You need not die in water,” she told me and reached out for my soft hair. A shudder seized me as she ran her fingertips down the soft strands. “All I need is a piece of you now to take your soul later.”
“What makes you so sure I will die?”
For all either of us knew, I was like a God or an aniel that way. I wouldn’t be mortal.
I might live for all eternity.
It was a striking thought all on its own, and I had trouble shaking it from my mind.
“You came looking for her,” she said and gestured lazily to the chained woman in the water. A shadow of what she’d once been. Completely unmoving.
Is that what will happen to me if I take the deal?
Did she take the deal?
And what did the woman in chains say about my future? The Keeper seemed so calmly sure of my death since I was seeking the mystery woman out.
If this wasn’t a double-edged sword, I didn’t know what was, because now, I had to know about her.
Before I took the deal, I watched the wispy God study me. Silence wrapped around us like ribbons.
She was as dangerous as she was enthralling. And yet, she was meant to be a Beniyn God.
“Is this why Gods don’t get close to the water?” I asked. “They don’t know if they’ll walk away with answers or a debt.”
Her smile tickled my stomach.
I had the uncomfortable urge to melt against her, let her cold arms embrace me forever.
“I will give you the answers you seek,” she promised.
“But how can I trust that you will?” I argued, though my conviction was weak. “A soul for answers that might be poor, that’s a bad trade.”
Keeper turned her gaze on the chained woman, keeping her dead ghostly form just below surface. Teasing me with her image.
“She was once a God.” The Keeper’s gaze turned soft as she watched the shimmers rinse over the dead ghost. “A Second God.”
I arched my brow, desperate to cling onto scraps of resolve that I didn’t possess. But I had to make sure the information was worth my soul.
I mean, it was a soul.
Sure, I wouldn’t be needing it after I died, but I didn’t know what the Keeper intended to do with it when that time came.
“After the vilas grew in numbers, the First Gods fractured the one land into pieces, spreading the mortals out,” she said. “The Second Gods rose up when the Firsts created the isles.”
“Why fracture the land at all?”
I should have been more careful not to prod us in the wrong direction.
A history lesson was fine and all, but I needed to know about her. The mystery woman in chains.
If it was true that she was once the Prince’s pet, could it also be true that she was a Second God like the Keeper said?
The Seconds were seen as lower Gods, beneath the Firsts, but to belong meant to be seen as a possession—like me, or aniels.
“To isolate the vilas,” she answered. “It is easier to control their numbers before they become a plague on our beautiful world. So long as they remain small in numbers, they are unimportant.”
The Keeper smiled at the chained woman. “I was the first to see her crawl out from the molten core of our world. More came with her, but she was beauty encompassed. Prince Poison agreed. He could touch her. But after a time, she broke his poisonous heart.”
The Keeper slid her smile to me. It was loving.
My heart fluttered, completely under her spell.
I remembered the same warm feeling when I first saw her. Then, I would have done anything for her.
Now, I was willing to sell her my soul.
She brushed a strand of hair out my face and tucked it behind my ear. “Let me help you, dear Valissa. Say yes to my offer and let me tell you all about Aphrodite.”
Aphrodite.
A voice was nagging at my brain, nipping and scratching away. Fear fluttered in my heart, and that name muttered over and over within the fleshy walls of my body.
But it was all drowned out by the warmth flooding me at the Keeper’s touch.
&nbs
p; “Ye—”
“Valissa!”
9
The Prince was storming over the bridge.
His stony face was more furious than panicked. It was his gleaming eyes that betrayed his fear.
My heart jumped at the sight of him.
For a split moment in time, I suspected he cared about me. But then, reality cracked through me like a strike of lightning.
It wasn’t me he cared about—it was himself. I was almost lured into an eternal bargain with the too-charming Keeper of Lost Souls.
I almost sold myself for a piece of information.
The Prince couldn’t stand the thought of not possessing me entirely.
I didn’t know who to be more disgusted with. Two Gods. A Malis and a Beniyn, yet two evils.
The Prince stormed towards us.
I scrambled to my feet with a quick glance at the bridge. Adrik was standing there, stiff and paler than seafoam, and he was looking right at me with worry lines etched onto his face.
My brows knitted into a frown.
The Prince snatched my arm and yanked me closer to him. Behind me, the Keeper slipped away into a pond, like a morning mist dispersing into thin air.
He hissed down at me, “What were you thinking? Do you know what could have happened if I didn’t come to you? Do you recognise the danger you were in—”
“I wasn’t told that I’m not allowed to come to the ponds,” I cut him off. “If it’s so dangerous, why wasn’t I told that?”
He reeled back at my interruption. His sculpted eyebrow hitched.
I snatched the moment for all it was worth. “I thought I was under your protection.”
“You are,” he practically growled at me. “But that does not ensure your safety, Valissa. Adrik will face the consequences for bringing you here, I promise you. Now, you must promise me that you will not return to these ponds without me by your side.”
I shrugged and threw a lazy glance at the shimmery grey surface. The woman in chains was gone, melted into the wisps that tangled below.
“Yeah,” I said. “I promise.”
The Prince took a deep breath through his nostrils and let his tight muscles unwind.
He studied me, quietly. “What brought you here, Valissa? The first time I showed you these ponds, you were afraid. Why return?”
“I’m on borrowed time.” I turned to look out at the mass of ponds and pools, stretching farther than I could see. “I figure, why not see as much as I can in the Land of Gods before you kill me.”
“Are you so certain I will?”
I watched the wisps shimmer up at me.
Fleetingly, I wondered if those excited glimmers were a warning from Aphrodite herself.
Run away from him.
Run as far away as you can.
His glacier eyes burned into the side of my face.
Avoiding his question, I kept my gaze ahead and asked, “Who came before me?”
I could almost feel him blink, startled and confused.
He took a determined step closer to me. “What are you asking?”
“The woman before me. The one you could touch.” I lifted my weary gaze to his lively one. “Isn’t that what you could do only once before I was brought here? At the festival, you said I was the only vilas you’ve bedded. So there was someone else, wasn’t there?”
“I do not see how she would matter to you.” He cocked his head to the side, studying me like I was a foreign-lettered note. “Is this mortal jealousy?”
“No.” I shook my head almost sadly. “I’m not jealous. I’m scared.”
He ran his fingers through my hair with a tender touch that felt sincere.
Smoke and masks.
He said, “Afraid of what, sweet monster?”
“You. Maybe you killed her. Maybe you’ll kill me too.”
His hand dropped from my hair. “I should be cautious in future of the things I share with you. It appears you have a tendency to overthink.”
I snorted and rolled back my eyes. He meant think. Not overthink, just think.
The Prince would be all too happy to have me as a mindless puppet whose strings he could carry around with him.
But Damianos…
For all he was worth, I truly believed he liked me just the way I was.
A little wicked. A little fucked up. A little cruel.
And free at heart.
That’s what I yearn for.
Freedom.
Something the Prince can never give me.
The Prince slid his naked fingers along my chin, then forced me to turn my face to align with his.
Running his thumb over my lips, he raked his darkening eyes over me. “She was a God, and more beautiful than any living thing I have ever seen,” he told me. “Ever.”
I felt a stab in my heart at his words.
His thumb paused in the centre of my lips and he added pressure. I fought back a wince at the bite of pain and forced my look to steady.
“I loved her.”
My breath was snatched out of me and I gazed up at him. Though I felt all these horrible things for him, and I wanted little more than to tear off his skin, that confession hurt. It ached my black heart.
“What happened to her?” I tried to keep the hurt from creeping onto my face. “Did you kill her?”
“No,” he said and dragged his thumb down my bottom lip, taking it with him. “Phantom did.”
I jerked back, leaving his hand to hover between us.
The Prince watched me darkly and let his hand drop to his side. Suspicions glittered in his murky eyes, and I cursed myself.
Such a fucking fool
I shouldn’t have reacted. I shouldn’t have given any hint of familiarity with Phantom, especially not when the Prince already knew about the crows and dark fog that had been in my bedchamber.
Such a fool!
I tried to cover my mistake.
I placed my hand over my beating chest.
“Sorry,” I sighed. “I guess I’m still in the village sometimes. We can’t speak that name.”
I think I made it worse. I definitely didn’t make it any better.
The Prince scrutinised me from beneath lowered lashes.
“A Second God, Syfon,” he began, his voice clipped and dark, “stole her soul and experimented—he tried to channel her soul into Phantom to increase his power. It failed, and the Keeper of Lost Souls took pity on the fragments of soul she found across the palace grounds.” He looked to the pond we stood by. “What is left of my love remains forever in these waters.”
It was a sad story, one that should have piqued my suspicions with Damianos. But in truth, I just didn’t believe him.
Prince Poison is lying to me.
He couldn’t have been more obvious if he were me. Terrible liars, the pair of us. Or maybe we just read each other so easily now.
Either way, I knew it in my gut. He was trying to turn me against Damianos.
It wasn’t working.
Even if Damianos killed the Prince’s love, it didn’t change anything. I knew from experience how easy it was to rack up a death toll here. Besides, he was still my only way out of the palace and I wasn’t about to let my escape plan slap into a pond of lost things.
And the Prince had just confirmed something that changed everything.
He really should have taken his own advice to be careful with what he mentioned to me. He just supplied me with the weapon that would bring him down to his knees.
If it was the truth he told me, that meant Phantom and Syfon killed a God. If it wasn’t the truth, there was still a dead God in the pond I stood by.
Either way, that meant there was a way. A way to destroy the Prince if it came to that. Because in the end, I was a woman who needed freedom.
I was no one’s pet.
“That’s a terrible story,” I murmured. “I can see why it isn’t in the skripta.”
He hummed curtly, his whole focus stolen by the pond as though he could see
his lost love under the grey and silvery surface.
“Phantom has destroyed much,” he said. “Yet he plans to destroy so much more.”
I shrugged. “He’s banished. What can he do, really?”
“Replace his companion, Syfon.”
As I looked up at him, I found him staring at me already. A silent studious stare.
“Syfon is gone,” he explained. “Some think he destroyed himself, others say he was killed by Phantom. Whatever the truth, Phantom cannot challenge us without someone to replace his lost companion. Someone like you.”
I arched my eyebrow, fingernails cutting into my sweaty palms. My heart skipped a beat, then fell into a rapid rhythm.
“Me?”
The Prince spoke with the calmness of icy seas before a storm. “Syfon could take souls, you can take essence. But unlike Syfon, you cannot hold onto what you take. You must channel it into something—or someone.”
“Phantom,” I whispered. I knew this already from the stolen scrolls, but I couldn’t let him know that. “He’s a …”
“A vessel. A vault.” The Prince looked down at my hands. “A bracelet.”
I paled.
“If Phantom ever got his hands on you…” he trailed off.
The Prince breathed a soft sigh and took my bracelet-covered hand in his. He traced his fingers over the beads that pulsed with power.
“You wouldn’t survive the torture he would inflict on you. He would kill you rather than see you defy his wants. And he wants a war.”
I understood the Prince’s desire to kill me, now. Removing me—my power—from the world meant to remove Phantom as a threat. He would stay banished … until another one like me came along.
“Why haven’t you killed me yet?” It was a sincere question, one whose answer I hoped to repair the crumbling bridge between us.
But Prince was ever the bastard I thought he was.
“I consider it every day.”
I chewed the inside of my cheek and nodded slowly, a darkness rising up inside of me.
Better kill you first, then.
10
A peculiar thing happened on the way back to my bedchamber.
Two worshippers were passing and, as normal, rushed to press their backs against the wall as if to pretend they were invisible.
Well, that was normal when they were in the presence of an aniel. But what was peculiar was that, as Adrik and me passed by, they bowed … twice. Once for the silent Adrik, once for me.
Syfoner: (A Dark Bully Romance) (Gods and Monsters Book 4) Page 5
