Pure Requiem

by Aja James

  “That wasn’t half bad, pretty boy. But yeah, it does sound like you broke a couple knuckles. Probably a boxer’s fracture. You’re a Pure One, ain’t ya? Or a vamp? You’ll survive.”

  I cradle my right hand in my left, holding it against my stomach, taking deep breaths to deal with the pain.

  I’ve never wounded myself through voluntary violence before. Violence was always forced upon me. A broken hand from punching someone is a whole new experience that I’d rather not repeat.

  “Where are we?” I ask, looking around.

  “One of the healing chambers,” the little fiend responds. “Not the official one where Rain does her business. This is more of an infirmary where soldiers go for quick treatment and rest if we’re wounded from battle or training.”

  “How did you get me here?” seems like the next logical question.

  “Tristan carried you here. He came through the entertainment room right after you passed out. Your vitals were fine, and your nose stopped bleeding, so we decided your blackout wasn’t cause for alarm and got you here. Rain came by a little later and checked you with her zhen. You’re fine.”

  I shiver at the thought of that needle-like hair, the kabuki doll face. The Pure Ones’ healer freaks me out a little. (A lot.)

  “Why are you here?” I accuse, glaring daggers at her, as if it’s her fault her jaw collided with my fist and broke it.

  She makes herself more comfortable on the narrow bed next to mine (I didn’t even realize I was sitting on one) and considers me in silence for a while.

  It’s a new look on her. Consideration and silence.

  “I figured we needed to talk when you woke up, An-Nisi,” she finally utters, her eyes filled with something…I can’t really read.

  “Stop calling me that,” I snap, a broiling fury bubbling like scalding tar through my chest, steaming up my face.

  “What do you want to be called, then?” she asks, her tone soft rather than combative for once.

  I don’t want her to call me anything. I don’t want to talk to her at all.

  I hate her, I hate her, I hate her!

  “Okay.”

  I don’t even realize I spoke out loud until she says that, her face perfectly accepting.

  “I’d hate me too if I were you,” she adds, her voice small.

  Something twinges sharply in the left hemisphere of my chest.

  “Just…go away,” I grit out, turning away from her.

  “Let me bandage your hand, yeah? It’ll heal faster.”

  I open my mouth to argue, but for some reason I don’t. I want her gone, but a strange part of me, probably those damned memories that are waking up, also wants her to stay.

  She rummages around and comes to sit on my bed, wordlessly taking my hand in hers, and efficiently wraps it up.

  “It should be healed in a few hours, at the rate you Immortals heal.”

  Grudgingly, I ask, “What about your jaw?”

  Her full mouth tilts at one corner as she looks up at me.

  “What about it? You didn’t even crack it. When you wanna learn how to throw a real punch one of these days, let me know. I’ll teach you.”

  “Pfft,” I mutter dismissively, a flush tinging my cheeks from embarrassment.

  Gods! I’m useless. Can’t even knock out a little girl half my size. And a human besides!

  “I deserve it,” she murmurs so quietly I almost don’t hear. “I deserve a lot worse for…what happened in our past. I’m sorry.”

  My chest suddenly fills with acid. Furious, broiling tar shot through with acid. What a lovely cocktail of feelings to contain behind my ribcage.

  “You’re sorry,” I echo.

  “Yeah,” she says simply, staring into my eyes with those creepy owlish orbs.

  “You’re sorry.”

  I don’t know why I keep repeating that statement. I’m not entirely sure why I’m so fucking angry and…hurt.

  Fucking hell, I hurt so bad I can’t breathe!

  And I remember.

  I remember everything.

  She continues to stare at me, her eyes wide with distress and sorrow.

  “You’re sorry!” I roar, shoving her with both hands suddenly and hard enough to make her fall off the bed, landing on her ass on the floor in a tangle of midget limbs.

  “I tried to save you! I did it to save you! I let myself get fucked in every hole, torn apart from the inside out by five men for hours to spare you! And w-when it was done, and they left me in the dirt like rotten, pummeled, bloody meat, and a-all I wanted was a-a friend, and y-you…”

  I choke through tears, my throat raw, my heart pounding with pain and fury. I gulp a breath, then another. I can’t breathe.

  Everything fucking hurts!

  “You…you said…you said…”

  She launches her tiny, sturdy body at me, knocking me back. Her arms squeeze me so tightly I thought she was attempting to strangle me to death to make me stop blubbering. But then she’s murmuring beside my ear, her face buried in my hair.

  I feel wetness that’s not my own, tricking hotly through my hair, mingling with my own tears as they leak uncontrollably down my face.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry…” she repeats in a fervent litany, as if that will help the words sink in.

  I don’t know how long she holds me, or how many times she repeats the words, but finally, my tears cease, and my breaths come and go in shuddering but subsiding gasps.

  And still, she continues to hold me, her arms tight around my neck, her face in my hair. She’s so tiny she’s practically sitting in my lap. Rather belatedly, I realize that I’ve been holding her too.

  “I’m sorry,” she repeats again, and I shudder one last time.

  “It’s my biggest regret. A regret I’ve carried through all my incarnations. I don’t know how many I’ve had; I don’t recall them in detail. But I’ve always felt a profound, horrible kind of sadness. I think I searched for you in all my lives. Just to say these words: I’m so fucking sorry.”

  I try to push her away again but she doesn’t let me, hanging on tight.

  “When I was recruited as a Chevalier, Sophia took one look at me and said that I have a restless soul. I’m human, but I’ve had many lives. It’s unusual to say the least. Only immortal Pure souls are reincarnated. She says that even though I don’t have a Pure soul, my soul won’t rest until it finds what it’s looking for. You.”

  “Well you found me. You can kick up your heels, wither and die now,” I grunt with as much spitefulness as I can muster, acting like I mean it.

  I do mean it. I do.

  But really, I don’t.

  And she knows it too, because I feel a small smile against my cheek.

  “I will, don’t worry. I’ll definitely die. If not right this second, then for sure at the end of my short, human life. Most likely I’ll die a lot earlier than that in some grisly death, given my job as a Chevalier.”

  “A really gruesome death,” I concur.

  “The bloodiest, vilest, most painful demise,” she adds almost comfortingly.

  “I hate you,” I mutter.

  But the way I say it sounds almost like “I love you.”

  “I know,” she sighs. “I looked for you afterwards, I did. I looked everywhere, but you left the village, and I didn’t know where to find you. If I’d come to my senses sooner, maybe I could have…I don’t know. I died regretting it. Every life I’ve lived, I regretted it.”

  “Why…” I gulp down a fresh surge of splintering pain.

  “Why…”

  Why did you break my heart? Shatter my soul? The pain of losing you was far greater than the pain of what those brutes did to me. You were all I had. My only friend in the world. My only family. Why did you abandon me too? WHY?

  She loosens her arms a little to put her forehead against mine.

  “Will you listen to my story? I want to explain. None of it is an excuse. I just want to explain.”

  Jerkily
, I nod, taking a deep, bracing breath.

  “You see, I wasn’t always an orphan,” she begins, her first words making me stiffen in full attention.

  This is important. I need to understand.

  “Children aren’t supposed to remember things so early in life, but I do. Or I did. I remembered my parents. Not what they looked like, but my mother’s scent, my father’s laughter. We lived in a small hut on the edge of the village. I don’t recall what they did for a living, but I remember crawling after chickens and rabbits in the patch of grass in front of our hut.”

  Before I realize what I’m doing, my hands start making soothing circles on Liv’s back. My instinct is so strong to comfort her, that I’m helpless to fight against it.

  “I remember one night, there was a knock at the door. Mama had just put me to bed, but I wasn’t asleep yet. Papa went to open the door, but there was a terrifying shout. Mama ran towards the commotion, and I heard her scream too. And then there was silence. Dreadful, awful, tomb-like silence.”

  I wrap my arms tighter around her, my breathing coming faster just like hers, as if I feel vicariously what she feels in that moment, in that memory. She’s so frightened. So small and scared.

  “I called out to them, but there was no answer,” she continues in a whisper. “I clambered off my cot and toddled to the front of the hut.”

  A seismic shudder racks her body.

  “There’s a beautiful strange woman in my home. Her eyes were pitch black. Monstrous. Her mouth, chin, jaw…they were all coated and dripping with blood. She clutched a beating heart in her hand. And she ate it right in front of me, staring into my eyes. I know she saw me. I know it. But she didn’t care. Blood spurted everywhere when she chomped down with sharp teeth. I couldn’t make a sound for the horror of it.”

  Liv suddenly pulls away from me, her eyes unfocused, lost in the memory.

  “And then…and then…when she finished devouring the heart, she started transforming. Slowly, her face and body changed. And…and…she became my mother. This monstrous thing became my mother.”

  Shit. No wonder she hates shifters. But I don’t know of any shapeshifter or animal spirit who eats hearts, for fuck sakes. At least, not in their humanoid form.

  “I couldn’t believe it,” she whispers, as if speaking too loudly will somehow conjure the memory into reality. “But before I could do or say anything, she left as suddenly as she came. I called out to her, thinking maybe that was my mother. I didn’t want my mama to go. But then I felt the wetness that was oozing across the dirt ground of our hut. And I saw the two bodies by the door.”

  Liv looks into my eyes then, her own round with terror and sorrow.

  “Two husks. Cadavers. One with its chest torn open. One simply shriveled as if it had everything vital sucked out of it. They were wearing my parents’ clothes. That…that thing had killed them. I remember…I remember…”

  “Fuck,” I utter unhelpfully. I don’t know what else to say.

  She shudders and gasps against me, crumpling like a rag doll. She’s not as strong as she wants others to believe.

  I know this intimately. I’m the same. Maybe we’re kindred spirits after all.

  “It’s no excuse for what I said to you after I saw you shapeshift. I just…I just…”

  “Shh,” I murmur against her buzzed hair, stroking her back in circles again.

  “It’s over. It’s past. I’m glad you found me. I’m glad you told me. Rest now. No more talking.”

  I say the words to soothe her, but the moment I say them I realize that I mean them. I forgive her. It’s what friends and family do when they hurt each other, I think.

  So I do it too. I forgive her.

  She’s obediently silent for a long while, her breaths deepening as she drifts to sleep.

  But before she completely gives into slumber she says, “Can I still call you An-Nisi?”

  “Mmm,” I murmur noncommittally.

  I don’t think I can be anyone’s “blue-green heaven.”

  “Will you be here when I wake up?” she whispers.

  “Yes,” I answer.

  “I’ll be here.”

  It’s the least I can do when Liv just gave me back a piece of my soul.

  Chapter Eight: Hear My Words That I Might Teach You

  *TAL*

  I have just finished cooking a simple meal of steak and potatoes when my Mate bursts into our apartment, breathless and agitated.

  The door clicks shut and automatically locks behind her.

  I await her words in silence. I suspect I know what has caused such a stir.

  After a long pause, she says, “You are the talk of the day, General. First in the training hall, then by volunteering for a death mission. Shall I congratulate you on both?”

  I can tell she is trying to rein in her temper. Her words are enunciated in hard, staccato syllables. She is extremely “pissed.”

  I try not to bristle at her aggressiveness and sarcasm.

  First, because she’s never taken this tone with me before. Never. Despite her greater strength and powers, her innate predatory instincts, she’s always been my “little one.” My kitten to protect and cherish.

  Second, I can feel her fear like a gaping wound. She’s lashing out because she’s afraid. I understand it. I want to comfort her.

  But at the same time, I am a warrior. This is my role. She cannot keep me in a safe box like a pet. I realized in the past couple of days that I am not content to live a “normal” life.

  “Come here, ana Ishtar,” I coax, keeping my voice low and soothing, opening my arms.

  “No,” she barks immediately, stubbornness and defiance ringing in the sharpness of her tone.

  “Haven’t you done enough for the races? Haven’t you sacrificed and hurt enough? Why must you fight again? Why must it be you?!”

  With every word, her voice escalates in volume, until it cracks at the end like a whip, coupled with a despairing moan. She is close to tears. Perhaps her eyes have already welled with them.

  I cannot bear her worry and pain. But I will not change my mind. She must learn to accept it.

  “I want to fight,” I say simply, keeping my voice calm. “I am a warrior, Ishtar. This is my chosen role in the universe.”

  “You weren’t always!” she cries, taking a few steps closer, but not close enough to pull into my arms. “You were born a blacksmith’s son. You were gentle, peace-loving. You carved woodwork and—”

  “I was born a slave,” I interrupt softly, speaking what was always unsaid. “Not officially, perhaps, not claimed by any Dark household. But as a Pure One, we were all oppressed slaves back then, the lowest of the low. You know this.”

  I hear her take a shuddering breath.

  “I was a wood and metal worker because it was one of the few trades I could learn on my own. And the same for my father. I couldn’t read or write. It wasn’t until I met Ninti that I learned.”

  The breath she takes at the mention of the first Pure Queen, one of Sophia’s incarnations, sounds angry and heated.

  Ishtar is possessive and easily roused to passion. Even though she knows there was never anything between Ninti and I but friendship and comradery, she is jealous. When her veins had been pumped full of Medusa’s poison, this unfounded jealousy festered in her soul, turning her love to hate.

  I do not pause to reassure her. In this moment, I cannot find the patience.

  “We Pure Ones owned no land. We couldn’t farm and sell crops. At any moment, any Dark One or human could raid our homes and take our possessions, our bodies, whatever they wanted, and no one would stop them. You know this. You became my Mistress.”

  “I-I-” she struggles with words, gulping.

  I know I am hurting her. I hate it. But she must be reminded of the truth. She must understand who I am.

  “Perhaps, in a different time, in a different life, I would have wanted a simple path,” I press on. “It is true that I never wanted to become a fighter. N
ever imagined that I would lead armies, never mind a rebellion that would overturn a millennia-old empire.”

  Her breathing sounds increasingly agitated, as if she is fighting tears.

  I want to go to her, but my next words keep me rooted.

  “I never expected to succeed. But someone had to begin the fight. If not me, then who? Who should we have waited for to liberate us? In the four thousand years of my captivity since, I have often thought of this. What if I never joined, and then led, the rebellion? Would we still be Dark Ones’ slaves? Would I still be your Blood Slave? It would have killed me, in more permanent ways than anything Medusa has ever done to me, to be your whore.”

  “Tal…” she moans.

  But I am relentless. She must understand. This reckoning between us is long overdue.

  “Even if you never took another male. Even if you somehow avoided it. I would still be a slave. Never your equal. I love you beyond heaven and hell, Ishtar. But I cannot live like that. I am not built that way. I would choose death over slavery, even if my Mistress were you.”

  “Tal…” she gasps, moving a little closer, but still out of reach.

  “My other choice was to fight for my freedom,” I continue in the same low voice, breathing deeply through my nose to contain the roiling emotions inside.

  I must get through this without breaking. She must understand.

  “But that fight would lead to the destruction of everything and everyone you held dear. The Dark Ones’ entire way of life. I knew that. I had no illusions that somehow, miraculously, our Kinds would come to an understanding at the end of it, that suddenly, Dark Ones would recognize the equality and right to freedom of Pure Ones, and we would live peaceably in shared harmony.”

  A small whimper escapes her throat. She must be remembering the carnage and chaos. She never gave me the details, but I know she suffered greatly.

  Yet, still, I press on.

  “If I had not seen the extent of the bloody Purge after the Great War, I expected it. So my choice to fight led to the one person I loved above all else to lose everything. To suffer in the aftermath for countless years. I chose that.”

  “I chose your suffering, Ishtar.”

  We are both silent for long moments. Only our shuddering breaths can be heard in the eerily still apartment.