In the Veil of Shadows

by Logan Keys

  She moves this way and that, her hips sway in a sultry swing that I swear she did not know before this moment. The swing of her legs had once been to cover ground, to march to battle, and now the thighs are soft, ample, and I shift in my chair thinking about how they’d looked on either side of me before.

  Was I mad for stopping her in my bed?

  Indeed.

  Just to poke the bear, I return to my reading, saying, “Do start with those red bound ones just above you.” My voice is light as a feather. “Strategy, by Ares. You’ll enjoy those.”

  She tries to look uninterested but as I return to my reading, my mouth quirks to see her lift the book I’d suggested anyway and move to her chair.

  It doesn’t pass me by that I’ve begun to think of it as “her” chair.

  Gaea becomes so engrossed that she doesn’t hear me leave. I go to my rooms and I undress for sleep and rest I don’t need. However, it’s a habit I use, a sort of meditation, and of course, my thoughts turn to the woman downstairs and her sweet smelling odor. It isn’t long before a small sound brings me from my thoughts---dark thoughts that have stirred me into discomfort.

  The door to my chambers slides open. Gaea is there, and she’s got a plan, I can sense it. She’s grown quite bold over time. I can’t remember when I’ve been completely alone for very long since she moved in.

  She comes to my bedside with her hands clasped, the picture of innocence. “I hadn’t realized you’d gone to bed. I thought I’d say goodnight.” And she lets her gown drop to the floor.

  “Gaea.” I sit up.

  She moves to sit next to me, naked but not at all the same woman who’d been in the cell before. She’s changed so much with power. “I know I have gotten soft.” Gaea wraps her arms around her middle. “Is that it? I’m more than you bargained for?” She smiles. “I thought you gods loved your fat little bellies. Those pictures of the maidens on your wall, they’re incredibly fluffy with pot bellies. I’m not quite that far gone, but isn’t that to your taste?”

  “Gaea,” I warn.

  She puts her finger to my lips leaning over me. “Do you not desire me as I am? I need to know. No one has seen me with this new body. I expect it is quite a shock. I don’t recognize myself in the mirror even. She is a stranger to me looking back, taunting me with her jiggly self, it’s obscene. And what I want to know is,” she reaches for my mouth with hers, “do you still desire me as you did in the cell?”

  Gaea pauses and does not press. This time she is not demanding, or angry, this time she is vulnerable. All of the others, I can handle, but not this… Not Gaea putty in my hands.

  I kiss her back, pulling her onto me to show her proof of my want. Proof that her new body sets me on fire as much as her old one had. Proof that nothing will stop me from ending this game that we play, despite that I’ve promised myself to make sure she wanted me, and wasn’t trying to rule her situation.

  Either way, I am lost. Lost in black silk hair gliding over my naked chest and plump mounds bumping and smothering me as she moves to sneak beneath my covers. She mounts me once again as it seems I’m destined to be ridden like a stallion.

  I do not stop her as she tames me with her hips, punishing me for dismounting her a time or two in my fervor. In my tremendous passion. For her. For everything that makes her stubborn, and willful, and brave enough to take on Zeus.

  And there is thunder in her eyes now as if she’d stolen some of his power before.

  Eventually, we find a rhythm, with eyes on eyes, hands linked together, pushing each other to the breaking point and descending from the heavens where we’re hiding together, untouchable.

  In the end, it was me looking down as she tossed her head and begged me to keep going. In the end, it was a kiss for thrust and thrust for kiss until I couldn’t tell which of us had begun to shout louder. I am no longer her protector, am I? I’m the one opening her to her most vulnerable.

  After, sated beyond any satiation I’ve ever endured, Gaea rises to leave (now it is she who longs to hide from me) and I throw my head back and laugh and laugh. I rise, dressing, ignoring her strange look before she closes the door.

  I have no need to rest. No tryst will wear me down as much as build me up. Her frown was my own yesterday.

  We have conquered one another, and now we see what insanity we have invited.

  Gaea

  The apprehension Thanatos must have felt before melted away under my crazy plan, but now… what is there but doubt to hold me? This manor is a cold prison even if Thanatos is a warm lover, but the two crashes together by morning as if the sun and the moon are trying to rise at the same time. Unlike Thanatos, I still crave the sleep of a human. It’s not real rest for me, more a resetting of my mind. I enjoy feeling like not everything is changed, and so after our love making, I’d curled up in my bed and slept like the dead for once.

  I wake now to realize the world is always as it was, cruel and unyielding, because I am still here, and I am still locked away from Alastor, forever shaded in the shadow of the gods. I had wanted Thanatos like I had wanted a new sword—craved him with a mania I can’t quite explain—and the more he’d played reluctant suitor, the more I challenged his boundaries. But once I’d wielded that sword, would I then want a better one someday? Would I become jaded because this sword—though his sword was very, very nice indeed—is my only choice?

  Like a castle wall guarding the keep, I’d found my way inside to steal into his passion. A thief who searches inward, but why not away? To be free. That should be my passion and I will not lose focus again.

  Thanatos has left and won’t return for a long while. I dress slowly, unsure of what the night revealed to me, and more so, what it hides. I find the mirror and wish to see my brother, but wait, in thought. Wondering why I torment myself so much?

  “How do you like your new life?”

  I spin around to find the woman from before—the one who’d given me the bow and led me into the underworld—standing in Thanatos’ manor watching me with a peculiar expression.

  “Why do you look sad, child?” she asks me, coming closer, touching my hair, noticing the change in me. “A god-weapon is something unique indeed. Are you not happy with your new life?”

  “Why are you here?” I ask, knowing that the gods only tamper with what can be gained.

  “That is a good question,” she says, tapping her chin. “A better one… why are you here?”

  “Thanatos keeps me here. It’s for my protection.”

  “Does he?” She moves to the chaise and lounges, lying back, her keen eyes missing nothing, landing on the mirror before she smiles. “Can you not protect yourself? Why would a weapon need protection?”

  “Perhaps,” I say, unsure of any of it.

  “What about your people?” she asks with a pretty tilt of her head. “Could you not protect them with this new power? Your brother, his kingdom. Your friends.”

  “From whom?”

  “From other unlawful killings,” she says quietly searching her nails as if there is something extra important to be found in her cuticles. “Your keeper will be claiming them as we speak. Many. He brings souls of people you knew, even now, to the underworld. He does not stop what is being done. He does not even tell you that your villages are under attack. Is that how you want to live? A traitor to the very humans you loved?” She waves a hand and the mirror changes to one of Alastor’s villages.

  She’s right, there is a battle, and people are dying. There are fires, and I turn away as a soldier grabs a young girl and rips her robes preparing to use her.

  When I look back, the mirror has shifted to a view high up on a hill where an Adonis watches the pillaging with glowing eyes. A god is behind this and he surveys what he’s wrought on my people with satisfaction.

  “Who is he?” I demand in fury, but when I look, the goddess is gone.

  I am alone.

  It only takes moments for me to decide what I must do. I have the power to stop this. I leave
the manor into the rolling fog, only pausing at the stables to saddle a horse. It is not a normal animal, but something that must be able to shift between the lands of mortals and gods alike. Its eyes are green amethysts, and its hooves are made of silver. It is larger than any horse I’d ridden as a mortal. The black coat is the only thing familiar, and it feels like the soft coat of a real horse.

  Calling for the animal to go, I lean over his thickly crested neck and urge him onward. He immediately leaps forward, his hooves starting small fires in his wake from metal on stone.

  I sense the boundary as we enter the woods and fly through it towards a black mist. It feels wet on my face as we meet the skies for the mortal world.

  I don’t have to search long as the burning is seen in the distance with ease. When I ride up to the village, I gasp at the greed, lust, and devilry on the faces of the warriors who are dragging those alive out to bind them in chains.

  Their faces are slack, unseeing. This is god-magic at work.

  “Show yourself!” I scream sensing the god I’d seen in the mirror.

  I turn a circle, crying out again as he appears from behind a hut. His face alights when he sees me. “I knew I’d draw you out.” He rubs his hands together. “Then it’s true. You’re now the bow of Ares?”

  “Who are you?” I demand.

  He gives a small bow, bending his extreme height, folding his lithe body in half. His golden hair is blowing from his face on a god-wind. His smile is devious and charming. “I am Pothos. And we are in need of a weapon to kill an immortal. And now we have you.”

  He motions to the men who leave their prisoners to surround me on my horse. Pothos strides towards me, disappearing and reappearing at my elbow to grip my arm.

  I’ve come unprepared for what I should do facing a god and I react like a human, with a meager struggle against his iron grip.

  Pothos yanks me from my horse, pulling me down with ease. He places a finger under my chin, chuckling with mirth. “How sweet it is to see you try.” He has his men take the horse with them and I see that some of them return to having their way with the women in chains.

  “Come,” Pothos says, leading me away from the village.

  “Why are you letting them attack my people like rabid dogs!” I shout.

  He elegantly shrugs, ignoring me as if I’m insignificant.

  The screams of the suffering blot out everything else in my mind. My thoughts race for an answer to the chaos. I try to focus. My people will be dead by morning unless I do something.

  Picturing the bow, how I’d wanted it before to kill Zeus, I think of drawing back an arrow—I visualize it.

  Pothos lets go of my arm with a hiss. I turn to face him in surprise.

  “You little monster,” he spits, glaring at his hand and then me. “You burned me!” His skin bubbles with blisters where he’d held me, and though he seems to try to heal himself with thought, the wound remains. Pothos holds it up with anger. “You’ve… deformed me!” His face twists with rage and he strikes me, the blow knocking my head back.

  I fall to my knees, pain radiating through my body, but this is nothing new. I have taken a hundred blows. I have fought and won a hundred battles.

  I rise to my feet, my own anger growing.

  Now, we have an audience. His warriors have come to see the gods fight. Other gods have appeared, one of which is clearly related to this one. “Brother,” he says quietly. “What is the meaning of this? Thanatos has warned us, has he not? She is his.”

  Pothos spits on the ground. “She’s mine,” he says.

  “I am no ones.” I rock back into a fight stance my body fluidly remembering such a thing. “Touch me again, Pothos, and you will suffer further branding.” I have found the bow within me—the life of it—through my veins. It makes my blood sing with the song of vengeance.

  Pothos waits for no one, he comes at me, his long body striking me in my middle, forcing me to the ground. His shoulder bashes my face, splitting my lip as his hands wrap around my throat.

  He’s covered me on the ground, his lust thickening the air. He puts a hand between us, grabbing the fabric of my dress in his hands. “Should I brand you as well?” he hisses.

  Deep inside of my body, a build of power has grown.

  Pothos is staring into my eyes, his greed blinding him to what is right in front of him.

  And that is how the god of desire meets his death.

  Power seeps from my pores all over my body, pushing out and into him. It hones in on his center and it corrodes his core until there is nothing more.

  “Make way!” Power booms like thunder. “I will take you all with me if you do not part!” A familiar voice is drawing near, the words crackling the air.

  The body of Pothos is pulled off of me, and I see Thanatos there, his face stricken with fear. “Gaea,” he says, lifting me to my feet.

  He doesn’t pause in his duty, however. His eyes remain on me even as he chains the residue of Pothos’ soul, binding him, forcing him to stay dead.

  Once the god is secure, only then does Thanatos rush to my side. “Are you unharmed?” he asks.

  But I smile at him, touching his cheek. I’m high with power when I kiss him, giving him the feel of the bow like a lure to his own power.

  He is surprised, but now it is I who must do my duty. “I used the weapon. Gods like dogs may hunt me, but now they know my wrath!” I shout.

  The brother has not backed away. He is waiting, anger seething, seeming like he might attack me for killing his kin. His fury is met by Thanatos’ own anger. “Eros, if you value your eternity, you will flee.”

  I try not to sigh a womanly sigh, even as my enemy is bound and chained right near me, but, for me, death would take gods to the underworld.

  Eros does not move. “You would not be taking my brother if it weren’t for your concubine, Thanatos.”

  The air itself seems to slow. The wind dies to nothing and Thanatos sends a chill to the entire village, maybe all of the human world. His message is clear. “Speak ill of Gaea again, Eros, and I will come for you tonight with my scythe.”

  Eros pales and with a sad glance at his brother’s soul, turns to mist before our eyes.

  Thanatos brings the horse to me, and he urges me to get on. “I cannot stay?” I ask. “Even to see my brother.”

  He shakes his head and I look down from the hill towards the kingdom of my brother. It is not home any longer. I realize that now. And it would bring suffering to his door should the gods decide to attack me once again. I nod at the worried expression on Thanatos’ face, doing anything to ease his concern.

  “I will go,” I say, and smile at the relief that he sighs out.

  I kick onward towards the in between, but this time, I do not think of it as my prison, but rather, home.

  Thanatos

  It’s not just anger. Anger can be squashed. It can be pushed aside. It isn’t just fury that I felt. It was fear, and anger, and frustration, and sadness, and regret, and guilt, and then finally joy that Gaea wasn’t in fact stolen away and raped or abused by Eros and the like—it was all of it together, and a feeling I shall never forget for eternity.

  It is as if everything coils around me as Gaea’s future is coiled around my own. Because to live without her, I now realize, would be impossible.

  “You’re angry,” she says as I pace before the fire.

  “I am beyond angry,” I say quietly. I am so many, many things that I am afraid to speak and give any of them power.

  “I saw that my village was in trouble.”

  I turn to glare at her. “It is not your village anymore.”

  She sighs in the face of my anger. “What would you have me do?”

  We war together, she and I, with our eyes. Finally, she wins. Doesn’t she always? “It was your right to leave.” Her shoulders sag as Gaea does not relish the victory. “But let me be clear,” two strides and I am before her. I can smell the battle still on her skin, and I touch her, pulling away from t
he leaking power. Her wounds are small, a scratch here and a cut there. I touch her despite the pain and heal her. I want to kiss her, but instead I confess my thoughts as if they were sins. “I have never felt as mortal as I did today.”

  She searches my eyes in confusion, in wonder. “Is that such a terrible thing?”

  I touch her cheek. “In ways. I felt so very lost when I found that you were gone.”

  She covers my hand with hers. “And I am here again.”

  When I do not stop staring at her with my brow furrowed, Gaea laughs. “I am fine, oh god of death. You would be the first to know if I were not.”

  “You are not fine,” I say, angry all over again, but with myself. “Because I saw you wish for your home. I saw you long for your people. Fighting for them, wishing to return. But I cannot let you go, don’t you see? I cannot bear for you to be open to the attacks of ones like Pothos who will not stop until they can claim you.”

  “And goddesses too, I imagine.”

  “Any. All. Everyone with power only longs for more.”

  Her mouth quirks on one side. “And is that why you have claimed me yourself? Is it true that you let the gods know that I am yours?”

  I wave a hand at that. “To keep you safe.”

  Gaea’s eyes move to the mirror, and they gaze with a longing I can only hope to hold some day. “You are right, Thanatos. I do miss home…”

  I sink to my knees before her and her eyes widen. I clasp each hand, feeling undone, anchoring myself. “Tell me what to do. I can’t bear the thought of you hating me. I cannot live chasing you across the lands every time you leave. I set you free, Gaea, Warrior Princess, god-weapon, but I know that I will go mad if you choose to leave.”

  Gaea drops down to her knees, and her small hands grip my face, hers twisting into sorrow. “I do wish to be free, Thanatos, but… Death, oh my death, why have you come for me?”

  And she kisses me with sheer desperation, and I kiss her back, pulling her into my arms the same as we had done in her prison cell, only, this time, I do not—will not—let her go.