Still

by Camilla Monk

  She covered her hand to stifle a giggle. Faust didn’t laugh. He looked fucking sad as the old memory washed over him, and it made my heart ache for him. I set my teacup on the table and brushed his forearm awkwardly. It seemed too intimate to take his hand, and I wasn’t sure how to let him know that I got it, that there was nothing funny about hitting rock bottom so hard you jump from a bridge ten times in a row. His muscles twitched when he felt my touch, and he turned his head my way and smiled a little.

  I eyed Palombara angrily. Maybe it was funny for a supernatural being like her because human lives made no sense to her anyway . . .

  “They do,” she replied, once more reading my mind like a prompter. “Much more so than immortal lives; in fact, humans seem to shine brighter in their short time, like shooting stars.”

  Silence stretched between us as I gave up on speaking and thought my next words. Very poetic, and also totally useless. If you don’t know what’s wrong with me, just say it, and we’re done.

  Her unfathomable eyes reached deep under my skin. “Such temper . . . but you’re right, Emma, enough chitchat.”

  Ryuuko’s cup rattled in her saucer as she placed both on the table. She stared at the window behind me, purposely avoiding my gaze. “You act tough. But are you strong?”

  Lady Palombara’s lips pinched to stifle a laugh. “Oh, more than you could ever imagine, my love.”

  The little dragon’s almond-shaped eyes became suspicious slits, but she thankfully shut up.

  Faust leaned back on the couch, his arms crossed and told Palombara, “So, you believe I’m right?”

  Palombara’s soft smile grew mischievous. “On occasion.”

  “Right about what?” I asked, my pulse picking up. We were getting somewhere at last, but I was no longer sure I wanted to take that trip . . .

  Lady Palombara set her cup on the coffee table next to Ryuuko’s and laced her hands over the blue velvet of her ample dress. “Faust is worried that, at the moment, you might be the Omega. Or rather,” she pointed at my chest, “that the Omega might be located inside you.”

  Faust swallowed, a twitch in his fingers the only cue to his inner tension. I caught Ryuuko’s eyes widening a fraction. A cold sweat dampened my T-shirt. It was bad. It had to be bad, like . . .

  Palombara’s features pinched in confusion. “Oh no, it’s not Ebola; magic or otherwise.”

  I gulped slowly. “Please stop doing that and tell me what I got. Am I cursed? Is it a curse?” How did you even catch that in the first place? And why?

  “It’s not a curse, and you’ll be fine, Emma,” Faust reassured me, with a tremor in his voice that pretty much advertised the opposite.

  “You’re going to live a long and fun life,” Lady Palombara confirmed. I didn’t miss her fleeting wince, though. “A very fun life.”

  Okay, now I was panicking. “I don’t understand any of this, but I know you’re basically implying I’m gonna get in a lot more trouble than I already am.”

  Her head lolled in hesitation. “Yes. Say, Emma, do you like theoretical physics?”

  “Uh . . . what?”

  “Theoretical physics,” she insisted.

  “I dropped out from high school.” I shrugged. “Straight F student here.”

  Ryuuko pursed her doll lips. “I graduate from Tōdai. Twice.”

  “Under two different names.” Lady Palombara laughed. “But we’re not here to brag.”

  “Good for you,” I mouthed at Ryuuko, with an eye roll I hoped spoke volumes—even though I had no fricking idea what or where Tōdai was.

  “I never had much patience for studying either,” Faust remarked—to rescue me, I gathered, judging by the way he had meticulously annotated his disc covers in braille, it was quite the opposite.

  “We’ll try to keep it simple for everyone, then.” Palombara folded her hands back on her lap and enunciated slowly, “To almost everything in this universe and any other, there’s a beginning and an end. An Alpha and an Omega.”

  “Like A to Z,” Ryuuko added, with a pointed look my way.

  Man, that bitch really thought I was dumber than a rock . . . I shot her a nasty glare but allowed Lady Palombara to go on. “All you’ve witnessed, Emma, Lady Montecito’s abilities, Faust’s power, or even mine . . . all this ‘magic’ as some people may call it, originates from a unique source, a beginning. That place is a forbidden dimension we call Othrys. Othrys is where old titans, like me, took form, a very long time ago.”

  I listened with a deadpan face, feeling like I’d just popped in a cult meeting. Except no one in this room was crazy, I knew it now. “So, Othrys is where magic basically starts. It’s the Alpha,” I repeated hesitantly. “And the end is the Omega, and that’s . . .”

  She smiled, and pointed a finger at my chest, without touching it. “Here. Where all magic ends, and none can exist.” She plunged her strange swirling gaze into mine. “Essentially a black hole.”

  That was not how I expected my day to unfold when I’d shoved Faust’s cat off my face this morning. But I took it pretty well—mostly because I barely understood what she was talking about, save for the fact that something inside me sucked magic like a vacuum. I’d have taken Ebola instead, at that point.

  Ryuuko’s fists clutched tight on her lap as if she were scared, but Faust remained his usual laid-back self, which helped me keep it together. I managed a stiff smile. “I’m a black hole? I mean, I know I’m not exactly a ray of sunshine, but—”

  Faust shook his head. “You’re not a literal black hole; rather, let’s say you contain a tiny one within yourself, capable of absorbing the power emanating from Othrys. That’s why my power or Montecito’s can’t affect you, and it’s also why you were able to disintegrate Lucius’s external envelope; it was nothing but a spell that could not exist at your direct contact.” He took my hand gently. “My body, on the other hand, remains human, even though its healing abilities are not. I probably wouldn’t be able to heal while in contact with you.” He seemed to realize what he’d just said the moment the words crossed his lips. Shock registered in his eyes.

  “I could have killed you,” I breathed. “I touched you after Montecito stabbed you with the spear. I’m sorry . . .”

  “Don’t be. Could explain why it took me so long to heal this time though,” he mused. “But I don’t know if you could truly kill me.”

  “She could absorb you, which would amount to the same,” Palombara casually warned him, oblivious to the look of horror on my face. She was talking about me like I was some sort of monster—Pac-Man, basically.

  A million questions whirled in my head, which all boiled down to two simple words: “But why?”

  Palombara caressed her lips with her thumb, gazing at me fondly. “The greatest of all questions.” Her chest heaved in a quasi-shrug. “To the most powerful gods, the past, present, and future form a single, simultaneous reality that’s clay in their hands. The laws of Othrys predict that the Omega must exist at any given moment and that it could be any point of any universe, but if someone chose to place it inside you, there must be a reason, indeed. There is always one.”

  My face twisted in dismay. “But that’s just a bunch of philosophical bull . . . shoo. You’re not actually answering the question.”

  “Perhaps you need to seek the answers within yourself.”

  “Oh, come on! You have no idea, right?”

  The beat of silence that followed was an answer in itself. I deflated on the couch and tried to put my thoughts into brittle words under Faust’s sympathetic gaze. “This makes zero f—” I caught myself when her nostrils flared . . . “fricking sense. This makes no sense. Why would anyone, a god, a titan or whatever, want to put that thing inside me?” I motioned to my stomach with trembling hands. “Why didn’t they stick it into someone who actually cares?”

  Lady Palombara tilted her head at me. “But you do care. In spite of all that divides you, you care about Lily.”

  I went rigid. “How do you
know . . .”

  Her lips curled. “You hide your memories almost as well as you do your thoughts.”

  You’re not wandering aimlessly . . . In my mind, the living room and the tea cups blurred into the sunny streets of Rome. I saw Lily again, running into me near the coliseum—or had it been the other way around? Lily taking me to visit the site, where I’d met Faust. That cumsock Dante cancelling my booking because he thought my guesthouse wasn’t good enough. Lily inviting me to see her lab the day after. The table, Montecito.

  Perses.

  There’s a fate written for you: you’re going somewhere, and you’ll influence other lives on your way. Things can happen a thousand different ways, you can make a thousand different choices, but eventually, they’ll always lead you where your path is taking you.

  My hands moved to rest on my stomach as if they might feel the black hole there. A place where Perses’s power could no more exist than Montecito’s.

  A solemn, sorrowful mask fell over Palombara’s gentle expression. “You have felt his presence.” Not a question, but a statement.

  “I’m not sure. I mean, I’ve seen the Spear of Shadows, and I’m pretty sure Montecito used it, but—”

  “You’ve felt it,” Palombara repeated slowly. “And this suffocating power is only a speck of him, dust lingering in his wake. If he ever were to return . . .”

  Faust’s eyes briefly squeezed in silent horror.

  “What would happen?” I asked, a growing pressure squeezing my throat, like an invisible hand strangling me.

  Outside, the sun had set. I hadn’t noticed. When had Lady Palombara’s living room grown so dark? Seconds ago, I’d seen her and the others clear as day, and now the only thing I could make out clearly were her eyes. The shimmering specks in them. As I realized for the first time that her pupils looked in fact like dark galaxies, Lady Palombara murmured, “Let me tell you a story.”

  Lady Palombara’s voice drifted in the darkness, fraught with regret. “In a different world and a different time, we, the old titans, fought a war that shattered the earth and burned the skies.”

  The air around had grown cold, and that feeling, that shiver up my spine, it was just like . . . I freaked out and jumped from the couch when I realized it was the same as when we’d entered the Libro. I felt Faust’s warmth near me, clung to his voice as the roar of an ancient battle threatened to cover it. “There’s nothing to fear, Emma.”

  And yet . . . whereas the Libro’s memories had carried fire and death, they couldn’t compare to the blaze ravaging Lady Palombara’s. Thousands of shadows crashed against each other in a sea of flames, tore each other apart with otherworldly screams.

  “Like my brother Chronos had turned against our father Ouranos in another age, our own children turned against us for control of Othrys,” Lady Palombara murmured through the chaos ringing in my ears. “Zeus believed our reign had to end, so the age of Olympus could begin.”

  The howling shadows collapsed one after another, speared and slashed by shimmering figures. Faceless gods wearing blinding golden armors.

  “Chronos lost his mind trying to retain control of his realm,” she breathed, a cutting edge to her voice. “He sent his armies against Zeus’s, and unleashed the worst beast of all, Perses, the God of destruction, son of our foolish brother Crius.”

  A lone shadow emerged from the hell of the battlefield, dominating the writhing hordes at his feet. He tossed a gigantic spear across the compact mass of tangled bodies that tore a monstrous hole through the chest of one of the golden-armored Gods. I saw Faust again, wounded in the same fashion by Montecito. I needed no confirmation to know I was witnessing the power of the Spear of Shadows, an integral part of Perses. My hand fumbled for his in the flames surrounding us, grazing his palm. He laced his fingers with mine as Palombara went on.

  “But we were to lose, and nothing could have changed what had been written. Chronos knew it better than any of us, he who saw all.”

  Before my eyes, Perses eventually collapsed in his turn, crushed by a shimmering tide as she said, “After our defeat, we were cast away to rot for eternity in Tartarus.” Whipped by powerful winds, the scorched battlefield became dust, then a cold, dark desert where ragged ghosts roamed across a rocky immensity. “Those of us who managed to escape found shelter in the worst hell of all . . .” At the edge of the inky night sky, the sun pierced through an incandescent horizon. Dawn’s coppery light licked temples and ruins, paved streets, and rickety market stalls, swarmed by a colorful and sweaty crowd. Earth. Rome.

  Lady Palombara sighed. “Chronos refused that supreme humiliation. He sealed what was left of his power in the table and vanished, leaving it to immortals such as Faust to guard his legacy. I chose to roam the earth and eventually summoned the remnants of my powers to create this peaceful dimension, a retreat outside of time to spend eternity. As for Perses . . .” Her voice faltered, allowing through a sliver of genuine fear. “Zeus buried his remains in the depths of Tartarus, and for a very long time, I believed him to be trapped there with our brothers and sisters.”

  “But there’s at least a part of him that escaped to Earth, and when someone tries to summon the Spear of Shadows, they’re actually channeling that,” I completed, remembering Faust’s earlier explanation as Palombara’s vision dissipated and the living room reappeared around us.

  Faust’s hand jerked instinctively to brush the hole in his T-shirt. “Montecito is under his control; she made it very clear that she hopes to unseal the table for him.”

  “I remember that . . .” I frowned. “She kinda sounded like she was hearing voices. Is he calling her long-distance from Tartarus?”

  “No,” Palombara replied, a twitch of her lips chasing the grief weighing on her features. “A titan’s external envelope might seem similar to a human’s, but we do not possess a heart or a brain in the same sense human beings do. We are in our entirety, at every moment and in every place.”

  I tried to wrap my head around the concept. “So, he is in Tartarus, but since Montecito summoned a small part of his power, he is also in Rome at the same time, and he’s kind of . . . stretching across two dimensions?”

  “For the sake of clarity, let’s say yes,” Palombara acquiesced.

  “Okay.” My head bobbed slowly as I digested this new barrage of information. “And we know he wants the table. Montecito said he promised her he’d use it to make her truly immortal.”

  Palombara shook her head with a sigh. “The lure of eternity. Always . . . Since the dawn of mankind.”

  “It’s kind of easy to say that when you’re immortal in the first place,” I shot back. “You’ll never know what it’s like to want more time.”

  “We do know, Emma.” Palombara’s gaze met Faust's, both filled with unfathomable sorrow. “The time of our loved ones is sand in our hands.”

  He gave a faint nod. I thought of Silvio, who must be over sixty, of the women Faust had maybe loved over the centuries, of the friends he’d watched grow old. Lady Montecito on the other hand probably didn’t care for anyone except Lucius—she’d kept him young at her side after all, and he clearly worshipped her in return. “Perses is already immortal, though,” I eventually said. “What’s in it for him?”

  Faust’s nostrils flared, but he remained obstinately silent. He wouldn’t reply if it meant saying anything about the table . . .

  “Power,” was Palombara’s simple reply. “The power to break his chains, to control the flow of time. See the future and shape it.” She gazed through the window, at the now darkened park, asleep under a smooth blanket of snow. “Enough power and enough anger to make many more mistakes . . .”

  I crossed my arms, my lips pressed tight. Perses and Montecito were a match made in heaven; two frustrated psychos dreaming big. One of which happened to be the remnants of an old god. What the fuck could go wrong? I eyed Palombara. “Can’t you send him back to Tartarus? Or, I mean, cram the part of him that’s sticking out back there,” I wondered alo
ud, illustrating my suggestion with a shoving motion in the air. “You’re a titan too, and you seem . . . pretty powerful.” I flicked my wrist at the living room surrounding us and the park beyond, hoping she’d get my point.

  “Only you know how to do that, Emma,” she replied softly.

  I got to my feet, pacing in front of the coffee table. “More chosen one shit? Is that really what we’re going for?”

  “Language, young lady,” Palombara reminded me, before her eyes fell to her half-empty cup of tea, the green hue reflected in them. “Even if Ouranos had seen it fit to bestow me with the power to annihilate, there’s too little left of me to defeat the Spear of Shadows—and Faust doesn’t have that power, either. The Omega, however, could swallow Perses into nothingness.”

  “And he knows it,” Faust said. “Montecito reached out to Emma. She claimed there was a place for her at Perses’s side.”

  A tendril of fear stirred in my chest at the memory of that bitch’s victorious smirk as Perses’s shadows imprisoned us. I went to plop myself back on the couch at Faust’s side. “Montecito said I could break the table’s seal. Is it because of the Omega?” A vision of my palm resting flat on Chronos’s Table flashed in my mind. “Can I really do that if I touch it for too long?” I asked, a tremor in my voice. I wasn’t sure I could process this—accept that there was . . . that thing inside me. It just didn’t feel real.

  Faust walled himself in silence for the second time, but I noticed the way his Adam’s apple rolled in his throat, and I started to wonder if he wouldn’t reveal anything about the table because of the contract binding him to Chronos, or if, maybe . . . he physically couldn’t.

  “It can,” Palombara answered for him. “For now, you’ve witnessed only limited effects of your power. If the Omega were to be unleashed against the table, it would first absorb the defensive power keeping the table sealed, then, likely, keep on absorbing Chronos’s power which lies dormant inside.”