Ashes to Ashes

by Carrie F. Shepherd

  -19-

  “Thank you.” Iladrul smiled at Sezja as she sat his plate of food before him on the table.

  She didn’t smile in response. She never smiled in response. She served him because it was her duty to do so. As she would have served whatever boy whose father had purchased her for his pleasure.

  When she turned away from him, he sighed. Jeanir, who had been watching the exchange between the pair of them, lowered his face to hide his grin.

  As angry as he had been when Wisterian had told him that his daughter would be gifted to Iladrul, he was, now, extremely pleased with the pairing. He thought, given the way Iladrul looked at the child, that the young Prince might be falling in love with her.

  Her disinterest in him, Jeanir believed, only served to fan that flame.

  Iladrul was a boy who was used to getting what he wanted. Though Jeanir suspected the child was still innocent, this included pretty girls. That a doxy—his doxy, bought and paid for—held no fascination for him was probably extremely frustrating and confusing to the lad.

  Prince Trevor, who had also witnessed the exchange, put his fork in his mouth and smiled around it. As he did so, he met Jeanir’s gaze and gave him a friendly wink.

  “Excuse me.” Jeanir smiled in return as he found his feet. “General Balean? If you don’t need anything else from me, I think I’ll retire for the evening.”

  “No.” Balean, who had seemed distracted for the majority of the day, muttered. “Nothing.”

  “Very well.” Jeanir bent his neck to Iladrul. “My Prince.”

  “Good night, Jeanir.” Iladrul replied with a thin smile.

  Slipping out of the tent, Jeanir felt his smile return as his gaze fell upon his five children. The boys, as they ever did, surrounded the girl, asking her questions about the manner in which Iladrul had treated her during the dinner service.

  “You shouldn’t gossip about your Master.” Jeanir used his gruffest voice so that they would believe he was admonishing them. “It might be he who slips out of the tent.”

  “Forgive us, Father.” Macentyx bit at his bottom lip. “It’s just that, we’ve seen the way he looks at her and—”

  “And it is his right to look at her that way.” Jeanir reminded him before turning to Sezja. “Would it ruin you to pass him a kind word or a smile?”

  “I don’t wish to encourage him.” She lowered her gaze.

  “It’s your duty to encourage him.” Jeanir sighed. “Honestly, Sezja. You could do worse than earning the love of a prince.”

  “There are plenty of free girls who want him to do his dirty business with them.” Jeavlin muttered under his breath. “Let one of them deflower him.”

  Jeanir frowned at that. “You stay out of it.”

  “But he’s right, Father.” Sezja replied with a pleading quality to her tone. “I don’t even find him fair.”

  “Then you’re a fool.” Osete spat. Jeanir started. He raised his gaze to see that his son was now wearing a horrified expression on his face and that his cheeks were blazing red. “I mean . . .”

  “We all know what you mean.” Macentyx’s lips thinned as his expression hardened into a disgusted scowl.

  Jeanir could only shake his head. He’d had no idea that any one of his sons had a bending for males. Though, given Osete seemed more at ease with his mother than with Jeanir, he supposed he shouldn’t be surprised.

  “Fair or not, he’s your only option for ever finding someone to love you.” Jeanir reminded them. “All five of you.” He flicked his eyes over his sons’ faces, marking the discomfort that they found at that statement. “Give him the opportunity to do so.”

  “We’ll try.” Haidar crossed his arms over his chest. He always had been the brazen one. “But no promises that we shall love him in return.”

  “You will.” Jeanir, who had once served a God who, by all accounts, was a monster, understood the truth of those words. He understood them far too well. “You’ll find you don’t have a choice if you mean to survive.”

  The children all lowered their gazes. He’d spared none of them any details as to his own plight so that when the day came that they were to serve masters of their own they would be ready to deal with the hand life had dealt them.

  “Yes, Father.” Macentyx promised him on all of their accounts. “We’ll do our best.”

  “Good.” He raised his hand and ran his finger along Sezja’s cheek. “You don’t have to bed him given he isn’t going to force you to do so. But can you not, at the very least, be kind?”

  Though it clearly pained her to do so, Sezja gave Jeanir a nearly imperceptible nod. It was the best that he would get from her and he knew that.

  “Good.” He leaned forward and kissed her forehead. “Now, all of you, off to bed. We have many miles to trek tomorrow, and on swift feet.”

  “Yes, Father.” They all said in unison.

  “Osete.” He flicked his eyes to his son. “Go to Iladrul. Serve him this night and well. If you do so, who knows what friendship may blossom between you?”

  Osete swiftly lowered his gaze. The other three boys exchanged a distasteful glare with one another. “Yes, Father.”

  Knowing he had done everything that he could for his children, for the nonce, Jeanir left them to find his tent.

  -20-

  Zamyael had just been readying herself for bed when she heard the knock on the door. Frowning, she pulled a robe over her shoulders and made her way to answer it. When she opened it, she did so with an irritated frown.

  Until, that was, she saw Ishitar, and his dog, standing on the other side.

  Her frown immediately turned into a grin. “Ishy. Your Da isn’t home.”

  “That’s alright, my Lady.” He replied, smiling softly before leaning forward to kiss her cheek. “I’ve come to speak with you, if you don’t mind the company.”

  “Not a wit.” Her smile grew. She stepped back, pulling the door with her. “Please. Come in. Let me fix you something to drink.”

  “I’d like scotch if you have any.” He replied to that as he slipped into the door. The dog looked up at her with its strange, mismatched eyes before following him in. “Make it a double.”

  “A trying day?”

  “A very trying day.” He smiled at her as he watched her close the door and walk toward the bar. “Will you speak candidly with me about something, my dear Lady?”

  “Always.” Zamyael replied, looking over her shoulder and giving him a very open smile. “You know that.”

  “Loki told me that you were my wet nurse when I was a baby.”

  She swiftly looked back to the glasses and poured two generous servings of scotch. When she turned to face him it was with guarded curiosity. As she handed him his glass she said, in a tight voice, “That’s correct.”

  “Why?” He asked. “And why, really, were you forced to live as a male before your trickery with Parsiphany occurred?”

  Sighing she indicated Ishitar’s favorite chair. “Please. If we must talk about this, I should feel better doing so sitting down.” Ishitar smiled at her and took a seat. She followed, taking a delicate sip of her scotch before asking, “Why is this important to you? After all of these many moons?”

  “Because I know nothing about either one of my parents.” Ishitar replied. “Noliminan hardly acknowledges my existence, and Lucias abandoned me to Da and Azy to be raised. I want to understand why neither one of them wanted me when I was a babe.”

  “If you believe that Lucias didn’t want you to raise on her own then you are sadly mistaken.” Zamyael replied softly. “Giving you away to Zadkiel was the hardest decision that she has ever had to make in her overly long life. You out of all of her children . . . You’re the only one that she was allowed to birth.” She looked swiftly away. “Until now.”

  Ishitar shook his head, choosing not to respond to the majority of that pretty little speech. His lips, as they always did when Loki and the babe in Lucias’ belly was mentioned, thinned. “Yet she did
choose to give me away.”

  Zamyael couldn’t refute that. She lowered her gaze and sighed.

  “Yes, Ishitar. For her war against your father’s beliefs and orders. And, it must be said, to protect the army of angels and demons that had run to her for succor from the cruelty dealt them at the hands of their Gods.”

  Ishitar took a drink and said, “Lucias is cunning.”

  “Ta.” Zamyael agreed. “She is.”

  “And Noliminan?” Zamyael felt her brow furrow. “Is he insane?”

  Zamyael frowned at the question. He had asked her for honesty and she had promised to give it to him. “Perhaps, if he were, then his actions would be forgivable.”

  Ishitar’s expression softened slightly as his eyes danced over her face. She raised her gaze to meet his.

  “No, Ishitar. Your father is not insane.” She began toying with one of her braids. “I believe that he is simply paranoid.”

  “What does he have to be paranoid about?” Ishitar asked. “Everything that exists that would stand against him does so by his creation and treatment of it.”

  “I honestly have no idea.” Zamyael admitted. “But it’s always been so.” She shrugged. “I suppose that he’s paranoid that Lucias will realize just how powerful a Goddess she is and overtake him.”

  “If the two were to war,” Ishitar asked, “and I mean really at war, not just playing at kings’ castles with one another,” Zamyael nodded, “could she best him?”

  “I believe that you have just posed the ultimate question.” Zamyael smiled at him.

  His eyes began tracing the lines of her face again. She felt herself swallow under his regard. She wasn’t entirely sure what he was trying to discover. She knew him well enough, however, to know that his questions were not innocently posed.

  “Why were you, really, forced to live as a male?”

  “There are some things, Ishitar,” she warned him, “that you might not want to truly know about.”

  “Perhaps I need to know them.” Ishitar replied. “I have a choice, Zam. I can become my father. I can become my mother. Or I can simply become me.” She smiled at that. “I’d prefer to become the third person and I can’t do that if I repeat the mistakes of my parents.”

  Maybe so, Zamyael thought, But that statement alone proves that you are very much your mother’s son.

  “I was forced to become a male because your father has a penchant for raping woman.” She told him candidly. “You’ve seen that for yourself.” He nodded. “Which is why I must now hide from him.” She shook her head. “I was born a Goddess.” He nodded. Loki must have shared this with him too because he didn’t seem surprised. “I was meant to be Lucias’ wife.”

  “Lucias was living as a male by then.” Ishitar muttered.

  “She was. Yes.” She agreed, though hesitantly. “What spurred her to live as a man, according to what Lucias told me, was that the pair of them tried to have a baby amongst themselves for many ages but were seemingly unable to. So they created Raziel and me to take on that burden because they had no choice.”

  “Then you weren’t really born.”

  “No.” Zamyael replied. “I was created from Lucias and Raziel was created from Noliminan.”

  “I understand.” He nodded.

  “Lucias, newly forced to live as a male, still lived very much in her feminine energy when I was young.” She lowered her gaze. “And so, she was patient with me. She waited for me to fall in love with her before she attempted to . . .”

  He reached for her hand and squeezed it. He didn’t let it go. She loved him for that.

  “Before she would, as a man, take you to her bed.”

  “Ta.” She smiled at him. The smile faded fast. “Noliminan was not so patient. He took Lucias’ empathy for little more than feminine weakness.”

  “Because you weren’t doing what he had created you to do and he took it as defiance.”

  “That’s right.” She couldn’t bear to look at him. “And he decided that if Lucias wouldn’t force me to do what he had created me to do than he, himself, would.”

  “He forced your virginity to him.”

  “He did.” She nodded at him. “Lucias was furious. They fought. I’ll spare you the details of what came next because it is ugly and because it all amounts to the same thing. Noliminan finally decided that the best way to put me in my place so that he could continue to have at me without Lucias’ interference was to turn me into a demon.” She flapped her wings to make a point. “Lucias, in response, made me male so that Noliminan would no longer covet me.”

  Ishitar’s eyes narrowed slightly and his brow furrowed. “I know that you love Lucias.”

  “I do.” She smiled at him.

  “But don’t you think that her turning you into a male for the sole purpose of cock blocking Noliminan is just as horrible as Noliminan turning you into a demon to punish her?”

  Zamyael started at that. She had never looked at her plight in quite that manner. She had always believed that what Lucias had done to her had been borne by Lucias’ love for her. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—believe otherwise now. “Lucias didn’t—”

  Ishitar sighed. “Perhaps I have the wrong of things, my Lady.”

  Zamyael swallowed and nodded. She lowered her gaze.

  What if he’s right?

  “Thank you for talking with me, Zamy.” His tone was gentle.

  “Of course.” She replied, meeting his gaze again. She realized, as she did so, that he still held her hand. She squeezed his. “The day that Azrael pulled you from my arms was the second worst day of my life.”

  The first, of course, being the day that Lucias had taken Zamyael’s ill begot dathanorna from her in order to protect her and the child.

  “Well, I’m here now.” Ishitar replied. “And I will let no one come between us again.”

  Knowing Ishitar’s parents far better than Ishitar did, Zamyael doubted that he would have much say should he be ordered not to see her any more.

  Still, looking upon his handsome face, his expression stern and hard, she took comfort in the fact that he intended to fight for her should it come to that.

  -21-

  Iladrul lowered himself at the makeshift vanity to remove the delicately made crown from his brow.

  It was a pretty thing, made of solid bronze and looped in delicate filigree patterns. At the center of his forehead it swooped downward and curled into a tear drop. Within the tear drop of brilliant white light pulsed whenever it touched his brow.

  Once, when Iladrul was young, he had asked his friend, Gregor, to wear the crown to see if the light would pulse. It hadn’t. Nor had it when he had asked Faunus to don the bauble.

  Looking at himself in the reflecting glass, Iladrul found himself longing for his friendship of old.

  Gregor had been one of the few boys who had ever treated Iladrul as just another boy. With Gregor, Iladrul could romp and play rather than practice at swords or politics. They would wrestle in the hay together or ride horses, bare back, through the forest.

  Even though their friendship was forbidden, Gregor’s father, a joyful angel named Zander, always welcomed Iladrul into the stables on the rare occasions when Iladrul was able to escape his duties to visit his friend.

  Until, that was, about ten suns past.

  On a very lazy summer afternoon, Iladrul had left the other lads to their play in search of more lighthearted fun. He had gone to the stables to visit Gregor and Zander had eagerly let him in.

  Earlier that day, Gregor had convinced Zander to tie a swinging rope to the rafters of the barn. While he had been doing so, Gregor gathered the unbound straw that was kept in the cellar and piled a goodly amount of it together so he could fly from the rafters and fall, safely, to the ground below.

  When Iladrul arrived, Zander was very stern that the young Prince should not put himself at risk by engaging in this kind of play. So, Iladrul contented himself to sit on the edge of the rafters, cheering Gregor on as he took m
any a running leap to the rope, swung wildly through the air, up into the sky, where he would let go and then fall, laughing, into the soft mound of straw below.

  Being a young boy, Iladrul, of course, could bear the watching of such frivolity for only so long before taking Gregor’s lead. It had been as he was hoisted as high in the air as gravity could possibly allow him to go, with his limbs flailing as he fell, that one of Titheron’s soldiers had come to stable his horse.

  In the typical, over reactive fashion of Iladrul’s father, Zander—who hadn’t even realized that Iladrul had disobeyed his order not to play on the rope—had been dragged to the throne room to be berated for allowing Iladrul his moment of unprincely play. As his punishment, Zander’s wings had been severed from his body and nailed to the entry of the stable wall. The bones of them still hang there as a grisly reminder to all what may happen to those who disobey the set social boundaries between the classes.

  “Bygone days.” Iladrul told his reflection as he curled a lock of his copper hair around his finger.

  Behind him, a shadow shifted. He raised his gaze slightly to find Osete watching him intently. He blushed slightly and offered the doxy a stiff smile.

  “I was thinking of an old friend.” He explained.

  “Yes, my Prince.” Osete replied, his tone gentle.

  “The blonde elf who cares for our horses.” Iladrul sighed. “He and I used to play together.”

  The confused expression that crossed Osete’s features could not be denied, though he didn’t voice the obvious question. He, better than anyone, knew that the social classes did not mix.

  “But that was many sun cycles gone by.” Iladrul muttered. “I haven’t spoken with him in ages.”

  “Shall I fetch him for you?”

  Iladrul started at the question. His lips thinned as he shook his head. “I’m not allowed.”

  “Forgive me, my Prince,” Osete lowered his gaze slightly, “but no one would be any the wiser.”