Page 26 of The Endless One

“I don’t want to just try. I want to win.” She shook her head. “I want my revenge.”

“I know, nightmare. I would give it to you if I knew how.”

He didn’t know the words to give her confidence against the gods. Most knew fighting them was folly, but he truly believed she was one of the few who could do this. Few alive knew much about the gods, and Elric acknowledged that he was the one who knew the most. But even when he was living with these other gods, he had never thought about overthrowing them.

He was the weakest of them. The only one who had been made centuries after the rest of them, and if he wasn’t careful, they would trap him in that realm of nothingness and never allow him to return. That was what they told him.

Tightening his arms around her, he promised, “I will do everything I can to help you. Together, we will figure out a way to stop what he has begun, and we will bring this realm back to what it should have been. With you on the throne of your own kingdom and this one begging for your mercy.”

She leaned back against his chest and lifted a hand to point off into the distance. “Right. Then what would you make of that?”

He followed her pointed finger to a strange light across the sea. He hadn’t realized that the kingdom of Orena wrapped around them, but now he could see that they were on the bottom of a half-moon shape. The castle was way out there in the distance, about as far away as they could get from Ajax. The building was lit up by a ball of bright blue lightning that crackled around it.

“Oh. That,” he muttered. “Yet another spell Ajax is using to get his will done. But I don’t have the faintest clue what that could be.”

He had seen a lot of spellcraft in his days. Witchcraft more than any, of course, but he had seen what the priestesses were capable of. He hated their blood magic more than most. At least the people who worshipped the God King were more likely to self-flagellate than they were to create beings made out of sinew and flesh.

“You don’t know what it could be?” Jessamine asked, and then shook her head. “That’s worrisome.”

“Everything is worrisome when it comes to him. I suppose we could try to be in his head. What could Ajax want?”

“He wants another goddess at his side. A queen. That’s what he told me, at least, and I don’t see any reason why he should lie to the woman he was torturing.”

Jessamine lifted both of their hands and rubbed at a spot on her chest. He wondered what she meant when she said there was something inside of her. She’d been muttering that when she had her panicking moment, but he hadn’t sensed any other goddess or god that had taken residence in her body.

He prodded at their connection again, hoping to find that warm light that was always like a tether between them. Perhaps even hoping that it had been building itself back up the longer they were together. But there was still nothing there. Just a blank space where he had always been able to feel her before.

That was concerning, too. But at the very least, he could hold her a little tighter and say, “You do not have any foreign goddess inside of you, Jessamine. I would feel it. I would know if I was in the presence of another like myself. You still feel like you always did, just… without a connection that should be there still.”

“Does that mean I’m not a gravesinger anymore? Is that what he took from me?”

He stilled. The fear that moved through his body was hard to think through. Did it mean that? He didn’t think anyone, god or not, could remove the birthright of a gravesinger. They were born with a unique ability to call upon a god such as him whenever they wished. Surely Ajax couldn’t do that.

“I don’t know,” he murmured. “All I know is that if I wanted to find you in my realm beyond, it would be infinitely difficult to do so.”

“Can you ask them?”

“Who?” His brow furrowed in confusion.

She looked over her shoulder at him, all dark eyes that were too big for her head and concern on her features. “The other gravesingers. Could you go into that realm and ask them if I am still one of them?”

Yes. He could.

He could go into his realm and learn what had happened to her, but he didn’t know if the other gravesingers would even talk to him. They hated him in life, and even more so in death. Not to mention time had worn away at who they had once been.

“They are not people anymore,” he replied. “They are the impressions of what they once were. Conversations with them are near impossible. They only know the deepest of emotions that cannot be wiped away with the passage of time. Hate. Fear. Guilt.”

“And yet, they helped me. I remember speaking with them before. They guided me when I needed them most, and I…” She seemed to hesitate for a moment. He could feel her entire body shaking. “I need to know, Elric. I have to know if he stripped away the last thing that was mine.”

“You are so much more than just a gravesinger.” But that wasn’t what she wanted to hear from him, apparently.

He could feel her stiffening in his arms, as though the words were an insult. “I have nothing left, Elric. I started this journey losing my kingdom, my crown, and my mother. Then you came into my life and you gifted me witchcraft. A magic that I had never thought I would ever have. And I was grateful for it. Because in doing so, you made me something new again. You gave me hope. Something I could cling to that was far beyond just ruling people. I could be more than that. I could have a people and a home and a coven where I belonged.”

His heart broke at her words. Because he knew what was coming next.

“Without being a gravesinger, what am I? I’m not a witch. I’m not a princess. I’m just Jessamine. A woman who doesn’t know who she is or what her calling is, yet again. Every time I think I’m finding my footing, the world rips the rug out from under me, and I’m sent tumbling into the madness of not knowing what’s going to happen next.” She leaned forward and put her chin back on her knees. “I guess I just don’t know where all this leaves me, and I’m afraid it leaves me alone. Again.”

“You will always have me.”