I swallowed and stared at him for a long time. I’m not exactly sure what there was between us, but now? Now I was worried that whatever there was between us vanished the moment I defeated Grollshanks and I wasn’t sure it would return until Caleb… I don’t know? Manned up?
It wasn’t even that I’d won. It was that I displayed so much power that it scared him. He wouldn’t say it, but he would always be on tip toes around me. He would always have it in the back of his mind that maybe I could kill him, which was stupid because he could totally kill me. From what I’d seen during his fight, he was way faster than I was.
I sighed. Life was suddenly very black and white. What I needed right now were some shades of gray. “I’m going to go now. You stay here and rest.”
“Sure thing. I’m just going to lie around for a while. Maybe learn a bit of culture, do some sightseeing, maybe take in a cinema. I hear the orcish battle-plays are all the rage,” Caleb said with a smile that didn’t quite touch his eyes.
I bent over him and kissed his forehead. Outside, I slumped against the wall. It hurt. It hurt so much, it was like my insides had been ripped out. Tears fell down my face, and I struggled to wipe them away. I really liked him. Really, really liked him and now, now I didn’t know what he thought of me. He was the first person to really be my friend after Dirge’s death. He was the first person I ever really cared about as me, as Lillim. Sure there had been Joshua… but that wasn’t even the same.
I swallowed and took a deep breath. I don’t know how long I sat there, but it must have been a while because when the female orc came out of the room she seemed surprised to see me there. She sat down next to me and put her hand on my knee.
“It will be okay,” she said in a voice that was strangely comforting, like warm hot chocolate on a cold day.
“I don’t think it will be,” I replied.
“Your mate will eventually understand. Once, I surpassed my mate, too. He got very angry and stormed around. Eventually he came to be happy for me. He will learn to trust you again,” she said, smiling at me as she stared off, remembering the moment.
“But I haven’t broken his trust. I haven’t done anything.” I shook my head and felt tears start to slip down my cheeks. How could he hate me? Didn’t he know how I felt about him? How the thought of losing him was so bad, I was pretty sure it would kill me? How I would have slaughtered every last orc if it meant he was safe for just one more moment?
“Were you honest with him about the extent of your abilities?” The orc smiled at me. My frown gave her the answer. “Even if you were, things would have still ended up the same when he saw it for himself. Time will heal this wound. Soon, I think. He does care for you, even a silly old orc can tell you that much.”
22
To say that Zef, the Black Prince, wasn’t pleased would be an understatement. In fact, if not pleased was a city the size of Cleveland, Zef would be about… Jupiter. I guess I had that effect on people. Hey, it’s not like I want to burn down every bridge I come to. It just comes naturally. In the future, I was going to make a concerted effort to not burn down said bridges, especially when said bridges lead to help from supernatural beings like Zef.
Still, stealing his éclair was probably unnecessary. But it was sitting there all chocolate-covered and delicious looking. As soon as I saw it I couldn’t even remember the last time I ate anything substantial.
Without even thinking, I grabbed it off his plate and shoved the entire thing in my mouth. Now he was staring at me like he was trying to will me to death. I was fairly sure he wasn’t actually succeeding because I was pretty sure I was still alive. Time would tell.
“That was my éclair.” His voice was neutral and empty. It was the type of voice that would normally send me running to find the nearest bed to hide beneath. Today though, today I was having a bad day.
“I’m fairly certain it isn’t something you’re supposed to be eating,” I said after swallowing. There was chocolate all over my fingers. I wiggled them in front of my face, trying to decide my next course of action. Though, I’ll admit, it was kind of rubbing it in.
“I am reasonably sure that éclairs aren’t on the list of things anyone is supposed to be eating,” Zef replied. He was still in his chair, but he was now peering at me altogether differently.
“See. I just took one for the proverbial team.” I nodded to him and started to suck the chocolate off my fingers one by one.
“One of these days, Lillim, I am just going to take that big sword over there and shove it down your throat,” he said, motioning toward the giant masamune that hung on the mantle above his head. Zef smiled and stroked his black goatee with one hand. “I’m sure you want something. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here. Just tell me what it is so that, as lovely as this little visit is, we can end it.”
“I’m looking for my father,” I said, glancing around to see if there was any milk to go with the pastry, but I didn’t see any. Who eats pastries without milk? What was he, a barbarian?
“Is that some kind of proverbial thing? I’ve long since had some theories on who your real parents might be. One involves a pack of wolves.” He raised an eyebrow.
I suppressed the urge to smack the Black Prince, especially because I stole his éclair. Which, to be fair, he could have stopped if he really wanted to, couldn’t he? I mean he was a Lord of Death after all. He was at least as powerful as the Blue Prince. That guy could stop time.
“No. Not proverbial. I’m looking for the Blue Prince. He has taken my father’s body,” I said as I shuffled from foot to foot for a second.
Zef quirked his head to the side and several thoughts flashed past his eyes. A long sigh escaped his lips. “Stealing Sabastin Callina’s body is a bit ballsy, even for the Blue Prince. Now he’ll have to deal with your mother, and she’s a well-known psychotic. Not to mention the entirety of the Dioscuri. Then there’s you.” He paused and rubbed his chin. “No one wants to deal with you.”
“Are you trying to say I’m somehow worse than my mother and all of the Dioscuri?” I asked, raising an eyebrow in disbelief. “I find that incredibly hard to believe.”
“You’re missing my point.” He shook his head. “The Blue Prince is up to something, and for some reason, he thinks it has to do with you. If I were you, I’d be trying to figure it out.”
“I am trying to figure it out. If I knew what it was, I’d have stopped him from stealing my father,” I growled in irritation. “Now, I just need to know where he is. Please.”
“Have you talked to Warthor about what the Blue Prince is doing? He might have some ideas.” Zef seemed amused, and I didn’t know why. In fact, it was pissing me off. The Blue Prince had been pretty thorough in disrupting my entire life and beating everyone I cared about into a pulp. I’d killed the last guy who did that, and while I wasn’t certain, I was pretty sure he had to know that. So what was his deal?
“I don’t need any planet ending ideas. I have a plan. I’m going to hit the Blue Prince had and keep hitting him until he is dead. It’s not complicated,” I growled. I was starting to get annoyed with Zef, Black Prince or no.
“It is a rather simple plan. How well did it work out for you last time you went up against the Blue Prince? And before you ask, yes I know all about what happened,” Zef said, spreading his arms.
“Not as well as I’d have liked,” I admitted sheepishly.
“The Lords of Death are not supposed to interfere with each other. That’s been written in the rule of law for so long it might have always been that way,” Zef said as he walked over to me and put his arm around my shoulder. He pulled me down conspiratorially until our foreheads were nearly touching. “But hypothetically. If someone were to venture into the part of the nether known as The Blue, that someone might be able to find the seat of emotion. That’s the throne from which the Blue Prince rules. It might be a place to find him. It’s where I’d look.” He stared at me for a second. “Hypothetically,” he added after a moment.
> “And hypothetically, how would someone defeat the Blue Prince in a more permanent sense?” I asked.
“That’s impossible. There must always be a Blue Prince. It always has to be someone. Someone has to sit on the throne of crazy and make sure everyone else doesn’t go too crazy. You heard that term ‘crazier than a bagful of cats’ right? He’s the bag.” Zef smiled, his teeth flashing in the light. “That’s why all four of us exist, Lillim. I am the Lord of Death, and my counterpart Rhapsody is the Lady of Life.”
“Well, if that’s the case, the Blue Prince has a counterpart, too.” I swallowed and my eyes got as big as saucers. “No… Morgan, the Red Queen? That’s his counterpart?”
Zef nodded, his eyes gleaming like torches. “She is.”
“Well damn,” I said. Morgan was the hardest to find of all the Lords of the Dead. Unlike Zef, Rhapsody and even the Blue Prince, I was pretty sure no one had even seen Morgan in like a thousand years. Finding, and getting her help, was likely this side of impossible.
“I wouldn’t be too keen on finding her either,” Zef said, and with that, he poked me between the eyes with his index finger.
It hurt. It hurt a lot. I opened my mouth to say something, but before I could, the world started spinning. I reached out and grabbed onto him for support as the room spun faster and faster. My hands slid off of him like he was made of butter. I dropped to my knees and shut my eyes. The whoosh-whoosh of the room spinning around me filled my ears.
“What did you do to me?” I squeaked and concentrated on not losing my lunch.
“Regretting eating my éclair now, aren’t you?” Zef said. He started to walk off, and with each step he took, the strange spinning sensation disappeared. It stopped so suddenly that I was almost scared to look. I took a deep breath, steeled myself, and opened my eyes.
“Damn it.”
23
Buckets of iridescent water fell from the sky, magnifying and amplifying everything. Blue-white shadows stretched along the hazy scenery. The rain splashed against the earth and churned the surging river to my left. The tall grass that grew next to the river danced whimsically in the wind, as though uninterested in the plight brought on by the rain.
Fields of fruit rippled, flashing like the light bulbs on a Christmas tree. The fields trembled, sighing in the wind. Lightning exploded overhead, filling the field with white sparks instant after instant. A monster’s roar echoed from far off and thick plumes of reddish smoke rose upward in the distance. On my right a red brick road wound itself through the field.
Standing there, amidst the fruit and the flashing, was a small girl. She shimmered like a deep-sea fish. She held a slender hand out, beckoning to me as though she was waiting here for a long time. I knew this girl. This was the White Queen. Rhapsody was here to see me. I remembered how well that went last time.
It was then and only then I realized I was really here, in this place. I shivered in the rain. Now that I was aware of the rain, it drenched me. It went down the back of my overcoat and chilled me to the bone. It sort of amazed me that Rhapsody’s crimson hair was not plastered to her face. She was still dry, untouched by the monsoon that swirled around us.
Being in this place was like being in one of those giant clams, the kind that can seize and dissolve an entire person. The air was slippery, soft, and, very briefly, I wondered how it would feel to dissolve.
“Come quickly! You’ll melt!” Rhapsody cried before turning to run heedlessly through the multihued fields of fruit. She passed through them easily, the clouds’ teardrops shining on her body like glittering gemstones.
Her laughter filled my ears, piercing the wind’s roar and shaking the whole of my world. Only a moment ago, I was in Zef’s chambers having some kind of panic attack. Now I was here, wherever here was.
Rhapsody’s tiny body was disappearing into the distance. She definitely was not waiting for me any longer. I ran after her, the leaves of the field brushing against the sleeves of my trench coat. She stopped once I caught up with her and turned to grab my arm. Her touch was as cold as ice. Part of me wanted to shrug off the iciness of her touch. Another, more rational part of me thought that might be a bad idea.
“It’s always so quiet here,” she said, waving her hand about and twirling like a ballerina. Her toe caught in the mud, and she stumbled. I reached forward, seizing her tiny body before she fell. The fruit seemed to be watching us.
“I can hear everything breathing now, even the fruit is breathing. Do you hear it, too?” she asked, looking up at me as she squirmed out of my arms. I glanced warily at the field and almost cried out when the field took a deep breath. Its breath rose up around us in a sweltering mist.
In the mud beneath my feet, thousands of spindly insects scurried back and forth between broken stalks of grass. Their breath reached up, too. It was suffocating. Everything here was alive in the most literal sense, and to be honest, it made a tremor run down my spine. It was, quite simply, not how things ought to be. The wrongness of the place was nearly overwhelming.
Like an eruption from a rotting corpse, the mud burst open and flowers, their petals a pale, nearly translucent blue, puckered up.
“What is this place?” The words rushed out of me before I could stop them.
While Rhapsody was dry just a moment before, she was quite suddenly drenched from head to toe. She bent down next to me and smiled, thick strands of hair matted against her face with mud. Her face was pale, exposing the tiny veins that pulsed under her skin. Goose pimples sprouted from her flesh.
“This is The Blue,” she responded, looking at me, her eyes so big that they reminded me of two giant blue saucers. “It always rains here. Raindrops so thick, they are like the backs of bright black beetles.”
“This is The Blue?” I asked. The concept was so foreign to me, I could scarcely imagine it possible. “How could I be here? I was just with Zef.” I had the sudden urge to cling to something, anything, to keep from falling off the world completely. It was a totally irrational fear… I think.
“The Blue is part of everyone. You don’t need to go anywhere to find it. It is within you,” she said simply. She looked at me as though considering a very strange bug. Her eyes were so endless in their constitution that it was like they were trying to suck me in. The wind blew past, and she sniffed at it. “This is yours,” she said, holding one of the blue blossoms out toward me.
“I’m not sure I understand,” I murmured as I watched a particularly adventurous beetle scurry up a rock to escape the water.
“I don’t quite understand what you don’t understand,” she replied. The beetle seemed to think it was safe and ventured downward only to be swept up by the current of rainwater. Stupid bug.
I took the flower from her and sighed. The weight of the rain made my clothing feel like a thousand pounds. Even my overcoat, which normally worked pretty well at fending off things as mundane as rain, was soaked. How do you dry something that’s fireproof? I sucked in a deep breath and let it go through my teeth. This day was going to get worse before it got better, I was sure of it.
“So this place is different from the nether because it exists inside of us and has something to do with life energy?” I asked, not sure whether I was going to get an answer that would make me less confused.
“Yes. You see the rain?” Rhapsody asked, pointing at the rivulets of rain that cascaded down the slope. “That’s time. It flows like rain. Always falling and getting everything all wet and out of sorts whether we like it or not. Then, sometimes the clouds soak it up and the process starts over.”
“Okay,” I said. “I have no idea what that means. What am I supposed to do?”
“Grow… soak up the rain and grow. I can lend you my power if you like,” she said.
“And what do I need more power for? Every bit of power I have has only hurt my friends.” I shook my head as I said the words. I knew they were silly, but I’ll be honest, I still remembered the way Caleb had looked at me when I’d saved him. If R
hapsody was really offering me her strength, how much more powerful would I become? Would it be so powerful Caleb would never be able to forgive me? I swallowed, knowing it was a silly thought to have. Was I really weighing the fate of the world against what Caleb thought of me? And sadly, I knew I was.
“You are a champion. Act like one.” Rhapsody smacked me across the face and breaking my train of thought. The force of it rang in my ears. There would be one hell of a bruise come morning. “Champions do the right thing. Always. They slay their dragons. They kill their demons. They reach down and do the right thing because it is the right thing.”
She shoved me. I fell backward into the muck. The mud squelched beneath me as I fought to get up. Rhapsody turned on her heel. “If you decide you want my help, all you have to do is ask.”
24
I shook my head to clear my hazy vision, and when I looked up Rhapsody was gone. Morgan, the Red Queen stood in her place. The hard lines of her face drawn into a look that made it clear she was unhappy with her current surroundings. “Well, it’s about time Rhapsody left. And all this rain, quite a bore, eh?” she said and her words chilled me. Morgan was supposed to be the most dangerous, the craziest of them all. I’d heard that compared to her, Blue was the definition of sane and calm. And here I was, alone with her in crazyland.
She waved her hand, and the scene changed. We were both on the rooftop of a building, and what’s more, I was no longer covered in mud. My clothes were no longer sopping wet. That was a plus. Go, small victories.
“If this is where you tell me it is all in my mind, and I need to jump across the buildings I’m going to be very disappointed,” I said as I got to my feet.
Morgan quirked an eyebrow at me. Evidently, my nonsense was being dismissed, as it should be. She waved her hands over the expanse, nothing but buildings for miles and miles. I took a deep breath and glanced over the edge. It was a long way down.
The Lillim Callina Chronicles: Volumes 1-3 Page 34
