by Jodi Lamm
“I don’t know. There’s something… I don’t think all his hatred comes from me. It’s too violent.”
“I’ve seen the fire in your dreams.”
Jas groaned. “That wasn’t hatred, Madeleine. That was… something else.” He lay down and made a pillow of his arm, hiding the color in his cheeks. “You’ll keep me safe though, won’t you? Madeleine? Even when you belong to him…” He yawned and closed his eyes. “You know… I’ll always…”
Maddy held her breath and waited for more. She crept around the fire and put her ear to his mouth, but he never said another word.
How long she lay beside Jas while he slept, Maddy could not tell. Deep down, she wished she could curl into him the way she had when he was the stag. She fingered the chain that hung around his wrist and considered taking it, but Jas’ talk of spirits and possession gave her pause, though it shouldn’t have. As it stood, she was already possessed by a Titan, wasn’t she? Still he was only one soul, and she knew him. She closed her eyes and let the fire’s glow paint the insides of her eyelids a brilliant red. When her body began to warm all over, she opened her eyes again to see why.
Marcus sat across the fire and circulated the air again. Maddy remembered the days she used to sit before the hearth with him. She would pretend to read while watching him illustrate or sew the binding of a new book. He rarely said a word to her on those nights, but he didn’t need to. His silence was her home.
She propped herself up on her elbow to watch him.
“You’re awake,” he said, when he had come out of his own thoughts long enough to notice her staring.
“I don’t want to sleep.”
“You don’t have to.”
Maddy crawled around the fire to sit beside him. He was as cool and sullen as the Marcus she knew in years past. The beast is asleep, she thought with a smile. “Why did you never tell me we were the same?”
“I wanted to. But I didn’t know what the Titan would do to us, or whether you would even believe me. And the light in your eyes—that almost human light—I didn’t want to see it die.”
“Is it dead now?” she asked, afraid to hear his answer.
“Nearly.” He turned to face her. “But I’m going to bring it back. It’s not too late for you, Maddy. As long as your creator lives, you have the chance for a soul.”
“But it’s too late for you,” she said, studying his eyes.
“Much, much too late.”
“Because your creator is dead.”
“Long dead, yes.”
“Simon.” She whispered the name as though it had some special power. “Another Titan. What was he like?”
At first, Marcus snapped, “He was a nightmare I try not to remember.” But then he softened and answered, “He was clever, ambitious, proud I suppose. He never spoke to me except to command me. I was just an accomplishment to him.”
“I’m sorry.” Maddy looked at the ground.
“No, no. I shouldn’t be short with you. You’re only curious, aren’t you?” He slid closer to her and put an arm around her shoulders. “You have a right to know about me if you’re going to give yourself to me. And whether I like it or not, knowing about me is knowing about Simon.”
Maddy watched Marcus twist his face into an expression that looked almost kind, which made her want to wriggle away from him. Marcus was severe, always severe, and that was how she liked him. Any attempt on his part to be anything else was too obviously counterfeit. She decided not to look at him. “How did you learn to escape him?”
He sighed. “It was an accident. I wanted free of Simon, but I didn’t know how to do it. I had planned to use his library, collect every piece of information he had, in order to learn how. But my temper… or his temper rather—the one he kept hidden from everyone else—overrode my self control.” Marcus squeezed her shoulder. “Does this bother you?”
She shook her head and leaned against him to reassure him. He was going to tell her a story—she knew it. And it was a story she had longed to hear even before she knew Marcus would be the one to tell it to her, even before she knew what it was about. Because even though the story was his, she felt as though it were hers, too.
“Simon was a manifestation of the demiurge,” Marcus began, “the kind of monster-god we now call a Titan. He was a creator and destroyer of all things material, but he could not fashion a soul. That’s the nature of the demiurge. But Simon didn’t like limitations, no matter how natural they were. He was determined to overcome his. He wanted to ascend to true godhood, and if he couldn’t, he would at least find a way to make the world believe he had. Everything he accomplished was to that end.
“One day, he asked me to lift him into the air. He wanted the people to think he could fly.” Marcus laughed. “I did as he commanded, and when the people saw, they fell down and worshiped him. He was so proud of himself. I scoffed at his pride, but it didn’t really make me angry until I realized he had a right to it. He had created me, after all. Then I… I dropped him. And the fall broke both his legs along with my own. Still I can’t begin to tell you how satisfying it was.”
Maddy shivered at Marcus’ violence, but part of her hated Simon as much as he did. And she realized part of her hated Jas, too, because he had ordered her to love him and woken her chaos instead. He had forced his will on her heart, and because she was his own creation, he hadn’t considered it wrong. Only now did it bother him, only after the damage was done.
“Simon was humiliated.” Marcus smiled to himself, lost in his own story. “But more than that, he was terrified because he had seen how he no longer controlled me, how I’d defied him. I think he suspected I would outlive him. Before he died, he tried to erase me. I bit his fingers as he reached for me and took part of one away in my teeth, bone and all. The old man died from his injuries, but I was healed. When they buried him, I kept the tip of his finger. Later, I boiled the flesh from it and saved the bone.” Marcus paused to read Maddy more closely. “You’re disgusted.”
Maddy shook her head. Even though she couldn’t deceive him, she knew he needed to see the lie.
Marcus frowned and went on. “The day Simon died, I became completely my own and tasted a hellish freedom. I was utterly lost. My body stayed in a constant state of panic. My mind was full of meaningless drive, full of need, but for what I couldn’t tell. Then, one night, a thief took all my possessions, including the bone from Simon’s finger. Suddenly, I had direction. I had identity. I knew to whom I belonged, even though I hated it. That’s when I discovered the thief’s scars, his marks in myself.” He lifted the leg of his trousers to show her a long gash across his right shin. “I still have some of the deeper ones.
“I began to plan how I might be free, or as free as a creature like me could ever be. I stole back my little piece of Simon. I weathered the hell of belonging to no one until I found a child. Then I set the bone into a ring and gave it to her to wear. Her ignorance was my freedom. She never understood how I belonged to her, and being so young, her scars healed quickly. Before she grew into an adult, I learned to resist her, took the ring from her, and gave it to another child. Nearly two thousand years I lived that way, jumping from child to child.
“The day Frieden attacked, I belonged to an older boy who thought I was a djinni and wore my bit of Simon on a string round his neck. But I had stayed far too long with that boy, and my instincts had grown soft. The day the airships dropped bombs on our city, I was so far from him… I couldn’t protect him.”
Marcus closed his eyes and fell silent for a moment. If Maddy hadn’t believed him incapable, she would have thought he still mourned the death of that older boy. She would have considered why he let the boy grow up as much as he did before searching for a new master. She would have considered love. But Marcus, like her, could not feel sentimental about a master he no longer served.
He stared into the fire and continued. “When General Lavoie arrived to assess the damage, he saw me crawling on my belly, reaching for that ring
around my dying master’s neck. Even after so many years of living, annihilation terrified me. When the general asked me why I wanted to rob a dying boy, I panicked. I told him I was a slave, that whoever owned the ring owned me, and that I had to die when my master did. He must have thought it a strange desert custom. But he took pity on me all the same, and he pulled the ring from my master seconds before the boy stopped breathing. When General Lavoie said, ‘Now you belong to me,’ he saw how quickly I recovered. I was so grateful to him I told him everything. I gushed like a baby.” Marcus chuckled. “Probably the result of belonging to so many of them. And though his queen forbade the existence of creatures like me, the general kept me. He wanted me to protect his wife. They had no children, so I became a son to them, and they became my first family.
“Part of Charlotte died when her husband was killed. I felt it because I belonged to her at the time. Then she started drinking more and more, and I stopped feeling anything at all. When the duke brought you to our doorstep, I began to believe in destiny. You gave me such hope. If your creator was still alive, you might be able to free us both. But where was the illusive Titan? He wasn’t among the soldiers who brought you.”
Maddy whispered, “Jas,” and Marcus flinched at the sound of that name on her lips.
“I was tempted from the start to avoid him altogether,” he said. “A Titan could destroy us both, and I didn’t want to risk losing you. But we had to find him. You had to defy him. You needed a voice. The quickest way to find your creator was to send you to him. If I belonged to you, I would be your protector, and I would feel any danger to you in time to save you from it. So Charlotte agreed to give you her husband’s greatcoat. She ended her protection and released me from her service. It was another year until I found the courage to finally let you go.”
“Why did you wait so long?” Maddy asked.
He shrugged. “Would you believe it was because I loved you?”
Maddy shook her head and gestured to where Jas lay sleeping. “You only thought you loved me because of him.”
“It’s true. I hadn’t expected to suffer his scars while I belonged to you, but I did. I still do. I probably feel them more keenly than you do.” Marcus frowned. His eyes seemed to swallow the fire as he stared into it. “But that’s why I want you. When you give yourself to me, we will be free of his influence. And if we belong to each other, no Titan can harm us. Any mark made or erased on either of us will instantly heal.”
Maddy caught her breath. “You want immortality.”
“I want a choice. I want my own life, my own death, my own love, and my own pain. I want to be free.”
“And you’re certain I can give this to you?”
“Yes,” he hissed, like that old serpent from the first story he ever gave her. “When I give you a soul, we can erase all the scars of our masters and create a superior self of our very own. Together, we’ll be complete, perfect…”
“Like a god,” Maddy finished for him. She knew how this story went.
“Not like a god,” Marcus said. “Just human enough to resist one.” His eyes darted to Jas and back again.
Resist him? Maddy watched her master breathe deep in the superficial peace of sleep. Part of her didn’t want to resist him, but was that really her desire or just the nature of her slavery? Did she have any desires of her own? She reached her hand into the fire and held it over the flames. Her skin boiled and healed again and again. She stared down at the blood on her petticoat. Jas’ blood. She suffered nothing of her own. If one’s self was made up of the marks life left behind…
Maddy thrust her hand further into the fire. “I am no one,” she said, just to see whether she felt the jolt of it. But she didn’t feel anything long enough to really feel it, just like the blisters that formed on her hand and healed before they ever left a mark.
“Together we can be someone,” Marcus said.
She shook her head.
He pulled her hand from the fire. “I promise.” He pinched her chin between his thumb and forefinger and forced her to look into his eyes. “Trust me.”
“But you’re the serpent,” she whispered.
His eyes grew wide. “Is that how you think of me? Am I a devil to you?”
“If he’s a god,” she glanced back at Jas, “and you’re offering me so much to betray him.”
“Do you remember how you answered me the day I gave you that story?”
Maddy remembered. Years ago, long before her world had become more twisted than any of the stories she loved to read, Marcus had asked her why she thought the woman trusted a serpent over her god. Maddy had answered that the woman did not trust the serpent at all, but that she knew it was a devil in disguise. The woman chose to go with the devil because what does a god need? A god already has everything. And a devil is a lonely creature. So the woman stayed with the one who needed her more.
And in the end, hadn’t the devil been true to her? Hadn’t she gained knowledge and terrible freedom? Hadn’t she been made complete and given her own suffering?
“I need you,” her serpent-brother said. “I need you to be whole.”
In the end, hadn’t he offered her a soul?
23: Six Arrows
Maddy slipped the ring onto her littlest finger. It had been made to fit a child, but it felt heavier than any piece of jewelry she’d ever worn. She turned it over in the dwindling embers of the fire, gazed into its pearl-like ornament, and wondered whether anyone else who had worn this ring knew it was the tip of a dead Titan’s finger. Probably not. She turned her hand over again and stared at the gold ropes that made up its band.
“Do you like it?” Marcus smiled.
The moment Maddy had agreed to give herself to him, he had torn through the cuff of Soeren Lavoie’s greatcoat and retrieved his precious ring. He presented it to her the way any lover would present an engagement ring. But this ring meant that he, the most powerful golem in the world, would take Maddy’s damage, feel her pain, and that she had agreed to it. Soon, she would give herself to him in just the same way. She wished she were only getting married. This kind of union was far too complete for her comfort.
While Maddy stared at her new ring, Marcus leaned closer until his forehead was almost touching hers. She was careful not to back away. “Do you mind?” he said. “I love you so much, and I can’t promise it will last. I want to show you while I’m able.” He looked so lost. “Is that wrong?”
Maddy didn’t have an answer for him because she was even more lost than he was.
He frowned when she didn’t respond. “I’m asking if it’s all right to kiss you.”
“You already kissed me once.”
“I mean a proper kiss.” He traced her lips with his fingers, and she turned her head to avoid him.
“It’s just a kiss, Maddy.” He tried to laugh.
But Maddy knew it wasn’t just a kiss to him, and that made everything more complicated. “I wish I could love you,” she said.
“But you can’t.” He sat back. “Not really.”
She couldn’t even look at him. For years, she had dreamed of having exactly what he was offering. She had wanted to keep him him all to herself. She had secretly wished he would never marry, that he would stay with her forever. But even now, wanting to love someone did not mean she could. She didn’t want him to kiss her because she didn’t want to experience the emptiness she knew would follow it. She didn’t want to have proof that, for all her determination to love him, all she could ever do was pretend.
Marcus watched her closely, and she knew he could feel her apprehension. He said, “When you have a soul, you’ll be able to love.”
“Will I?”
He nodded and pulled her into his arms.
“But you won’t,” she said. “Not without Jas.”
“I’ll do my best to remember how.” He kissed her cheek, her forehead and chin. “I promise.” He pulled her so close she could almost feel the fire in him. And when he moved to kiss her mouth, she did
not tell him to stop.
Before Maddy could begin to regret her own inaction, Marcus froze. “Someone’s coming.”
Maddy strained to listen, but heard nothing.
“It’s your idiot courtier.” Marcus leapt to his feet and pulled Maddy up after him. “He’s calling for you. He must be on the road. Come on!” He dragged her through the trees, never minding the brush or the branches. They tore out of the forest, onto the road, and ran toward the sound of a voice Maddy could now just barely make out.
“James! Madeleine! Where are you? James!” Will’s voice was frantic.
“Mother.” Maddy ran ahead of Marcus. “It’s mother!” When she came upon Will, the look on his face told her all her fears were true.
“Thank god, Madeleine.” He threw his arms around her. “The duke has taken your mother’s estate with a small army. He says he won’t let Lotte go until someone brings James to him.”
Marcus pulled Maddy away from Will, saying, “Why would he do that?”
“How should I know? We’re the only ones who know His Grace’s precious wooden son isn’t what it appears to be. Maybe he realized that with James in his custody and the rest of us dead, he’d have his secret in check.”
Marcus clenched his teeth. “Wooden son?”
No one had told him. Will seemed shocked that Maddy hadn’t shared everything with her brother, but she had forgotten all about the prince the moment she learned Marcus’ secret. Nothing else mattered after that.
Will explained, “The duke created a golem in the shape of his and Her Majesty’s late son. It seems the rumors of a secret prince were not so far-fetched, after all. He used Madeleine to ensure James would give it life.”
“Is he telling the truth?” Marcus turned to Maddy.
“He is,” she answered.
Marcus growled and squeezed Maddy’s hand too tightly. “I’ve had enough of this. Let’s go, Maddy.”
“Wait.” Will blocked their path. “I don’t know whether he has the prince with him. It could be dangerous for you, Lavoie, especially if he thinks you know the truth.”
