Date: 2017-10-29 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy; Short Stories; Romance; Paranormal; Fiction; Anthologies; Adult; Dark; Science Fiction Fantasy; Adult Fiction
Description: Once upon a time, a young woman takes redemption into her own hands; a man’s precarious fate is twisted; a lover plots a bloody vengeance; a castle born from night fulfills a lifelong destiny. In Fairytales of the Macabre, Olivie Blake brings you four stories of romantic noir, each one an improbable foray into dark comedy, seductive horror, and above all, the inescapable temptation of love.

Fairytales of the Macabre

Olivie Blake

Copyright © 2017 by Olivie Blake.

Cover photography by Aurora Sinclair.

Illustrations by Little Chmura.

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author.

For MR. BLAKE, whom I love,
and have no plans to murder.

( … for now.)

TABLE of CONTENTS

Pins and Needles

The Animation Games

Fates and Consequences

Sensual Tales for Carnal Pleasures

Exclusive Preview: Masters of Death

Author’s Notes and Acknowledgements

PINS and NEEDLES

The first time she sees him he’s fourteen years old and he looks, absurdly, like he’s going to a job interview, or to pursue a mortgage, or to undertake some other weighty task that she’s seen adults do and she wonders for a second if he’s impressive, or if he’s just dressed that way.

He meets her eye, and he doesn’t smile. He smirks , boldly, as if he knows she’s looking, and it takes approximately one indignant thud of her heart to know that he’s probably not a nice boy, and further, that he’s not impressive at all.

Or, at least, she’s no longer impressed.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

“You know,” he drawls—he drawls, always, every time he speaks, slow and syrupy like the words are dripping from his tongue and she, oh , lucky she that she is, is meant to catch them in her hands, smiling beatifically, blissfully, euphorically—“if you want to go out with me, Masters, you just have to ask.”

She scowls as viciously as she knows how.

“Fuck off, Charms,” she says, and it’s the first time she says that word— fuck —and it fits so violently in her mouth that she tries to memorize the shape of it. “Go suck a dick.”

Dick . That’s a first, too.

He doesn’t look surprised; he looks amused, and astonishingly, it makes her even angrier.

“So you’re a bad girl, are you?” he asks. “Funny. Might’ve fooled me.”

“Go to hell,” she retorts.

Hell . What a day.

He grins.

“See you around, Val,” he says, and she hates him, she hates him, she hates him.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

“Miss Masters,” the teacher sighs, “Mister Charms—”

“Mister Beaufort,” they mutter in response, refusing to look at each other.

“You’ve been classmates for nearly two years. Can we perhaps put our differences to rest?”

“No,” they snap in unison.

“She’s a bitch,” he says.

“He’s a cunt,” she says.

“Detention,” the teacher sighs.

Fuck you, she mouths, and he smiles, and she hates him.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

He’s laughing with his moronic friends when it happens, and she only comes over because she can see there’s someone else sitting there; an object, she knows, of amusement.

“Daniels,” she ventures slowly, pausing. “Is everything okay here?”

When she locks eyes with him, she sees that Daniels is pale. He’s chubby, too, but he was chubby before she walked over, so that observation isn’t fully relevant. But then she remembers the narrow-hipped menace that Charms is (and that his phallus-toting lacrosse bros are) and realizes that perhaps it’s not altogether unrelated.

“Charms,” she begins, her mouth pursed. “What are you doing?”

“Waiting for you to come ‘round, Masters,” he replies silkily, and his friends make lewd, distractingly unsubtle gestures.

“You know,” she says, “you could really do with a swift kick to the plums, Charms.”

“As ever, Valentina , your mouth becomes you,” he counters with ease. “Shall we see what else it can do?”

There’s a pause, and then something shifts. Something turns mean.

She’s always hated him, but now she wants to break him.

She wants to ruin him.

“Come on,” she says to Daniels, disguising her wrath and saving it like currency, tucking it in her pocket to use on a more worthy day. “We have better things to do.”

“Like each other?” one of Charms’ horrible apelike friends asks, his mouth far too wide for his aggressively freckled face.

“Clever,” she mutters back, and turns.

“Val,” Charms purrs sweetly after her. “Call me.”

She stops, her fingers digging tightly into Daniels’ arm.

“Ouch,” Daniels hisses.

And then she has an idea.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

She steals one of his t-shirts from the locker room. He’s always shirtless, anyway; she doubts he’ll even notice. It’s one of those expensive things that looks like it should be five dollars but is probably at least fifty, and as if she needs another reason to hate him—as if she might ever run out—she adds that to the mental checklist.

Overspends unnecessarily , she thinks, and then checks it off.

The hairs are unfortunately all too easy to acquire. It’s a boarding school, after all, and the boys’ dorms have far less security than they should, and when she’s snuck a few from his bedroom and then ripped a page from his worn copy of Catcher in the Rye for good measure—which is of course a book that he owns, she thinks with a groan, mentally adding likes Catcher in the Rye to her hatred list—she skips back to her room, pulling out the small sewing kit her mother had given her to do useful things.

You know— useful things . Like fix buttons, or destroy a man.

It’s a little bit of a crude design but she manages it, and when she’s finished, the miniature t-shirt-sewn version of him waits expectantly for her attention, but she feels that she should be creative.

She tucks it under her pillow.

She waits for inspiration.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

She doesn’t have to wait long. They’re seventeen now, and as far as ages go, she’s fairly certain it’s the height of idiocy. Besides, he simply cannot bear an hour without tormenting her, or someone else, or the rest of the world entirely.

“Careful,” he says to Daniels, knocking deliberately into him. “Watch where you’re going, would you?”

Daniels trips.

Falls.

Hisses as his knee scrapes the sidewalk, his mouth contorting in something that is probably more misery than pain.

“Sorry,” Charms calls, with a laugh that rings of insincerity.

She walks slowly back to her bedroom.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

“Hey,” he calls to one of his stupid friends; the one whose eyes are too close together to appear any form of trustworthy, but whom she is confident will probably end up in sales. “Lee, I was going to—”

She tightens the bow she’s tied, knotting the twine around the doll’s feet, and looks up, waiting.

Charms trips.

Falls.

Blinks, dazed, as he looks down, noting that his shoelaces have been tied together.

He frowns, and around the room people are laughing that quiet, guilty sort of laughter; the kind shared by a collective audience when they know that what they’re doing is wrong.

The kind, she knows, that Charms is used to leading , not causing.

“What the fuck?” he says, more to the palms of his own hands than to anyone else. He looks up, seeming to seek her out in the room, and she wordlessly tucks the doll back into her bag.

“Careful,” she calls smoothly to him, rising to her feet. Across the room, Daniels is hiding a rather satisfied smile.

Her skirt is folded up in the corner when she stands, and she takes a brief pause, smoothing it down.

By the time she leaves the room, Charms is still sitting on the floor, staring at his shoelaces.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

The next day he says something to a younger student, the boy who does the morning announcements, and she doesn’t know exactly what he says but she sees the boy’s face fall and drain of color and she feels it is her responsibility as a citizen of the world—as a fellow human being —to smooth it over, and so she stabs gracelessly at the doll and Charms walks directly into an A/V cart, ruthlessly stubbing his toe.

“FUCK,” he roars, and immediately earns himself detention.

She clicks her tongue, shaking her head.

“Language,” she tuts obnoxiously to him, and he glowers at her, a wave of his too-perfect dark hair falling momentarily onto the span of his forehead.

“Bite me, Masters,” he says.

“Now that’s a thought,” she murmurs, and he stares at her as she walks away.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

How does she sleep at night?

A couple of different ways.

One: comfortably, knowing that he deserves it, and that his punishments are small but unquestionably just.

Two: on her back, with her eyes open.

Okay, so she doesn’t sleep. Instead she thinks, imagines, wonders; thinks about what he’s doing, imagines how else she could make him suffer, wonders how it would feel if she could ever tell him just how thoroughly she owns him. She tucks her hands behind her head and stares at the ceiling and pictures his face: pictures the way his faultless arrogance crumbles when she bruises him, the way his too-quick mouth is finally silenced when she makes him bleed.

(Oh, don’t be dramatic. It was only a paper cut, and he’d been mimicking the substitute teacher behind her back, and wasn’t it his fault he’d been dealing so carelessly with the edge of a fresh page, anyway?)

She’d watched him bring his thumb to his mouth, sucking on it.

She’d watched his mouth.

She watched him.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

He asks Angelica Winters on a date on Tuesday. By the time Friday rolls around, he has a spectacular case of food poisoning.

“What’d you eat?” his friends demand, watching him slump into his seat on Monday morning with his shirt untucked, hair ruffled, cheeks colorless. “Holy shit —”

“Nothing,” he croaks, and then he looks at her. “Nothing.”

She swallows.

“Good look for you, Charms,” she calls to him, and his eyes flash.

“They all are,” he sniffs, and she scowls.

He spends all of third period throwing up.

They find him passed out on the floor after lunch.

He goes to the infirmary for severe dehydration.

She takes the doll out from her bag, smoothing her finger over the fabric of its cheek.

“Sorry,” she murmurs to it. “Maybe a bit too far.”

He comes back to school the next day with his usual smarmy glow, plaguing her with his buoyancy, and she hates him anew.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

For a week, she doesn’t do anything.

Not for lack of trying, of course. She watches, and she waits, but nothing happens.

He’s inexplicably nice to Daniels. She follows them after lacrosse practice and watches him hand Daniels a water bottle, offering it to him with a nod.

“Good scrimmage,” he says, and after a moment of confusion, Daniels permits a tentative smile.

She blinks, staring down at the doll.

When his friends toss a paper airplane at the librarian’s head, he scowls, admonishing them.

“Not cool,” he says. “Not cool.”

They gape.

She gapes.

“What?” he demands from them brusquely, and then his gaze travels across the room to find her. “Masters,” he acknowledges neutrally, nodding to her.

“What the fuck,” she breathes, and he bends his head without comment, returning to his studies.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

“Sorry about missing our date,” he says to Angelica, leaning casually against the bookcase in the far corner of the humanities library. He’s wearing a green sweater—his favorite, which she’s learned from having watched him for so long—and a pair of typically unwrinkled khakis, and it’s Saturday morning. “Hope it wasn’t too inconvenient.”

She holds the doll tightly, waiting.

“It’s fine,” Angelica replies. “Want to reschedule?”

He looks around, searching, and when his eyes settle on hers, she quickly tucks the doll behind her back, staring at her shoes and pretending not to listen.

“No, actually,” he says. “Sorry, but—”

“It’s fine,” Angelica cuts in, shaking her head. “I know you like Val.”

She swallows, backing away.

He turns. “I do, actually,” he says, without any sort of inflection.

Her eyes widen.

Her cheeks burn.

She runs.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

He finds her sitting at the base of her favorite tree and she doesn’t even bother to hide the doll she’s still holding in her lap.

“So,” he says, taking a step towards her.

She neatly stabs a pin into the doll’s liver and he doubles over, hissing in pain.

“Okay then,” he groans, coughing as she removes it.

“Go away,” she says, her gaze flicking to his. “I mean it.”

“Or what?” he drawls—he drawls , god, and her insides twist—and takes another step. “You’ll maim me, Masters?”

She says nothing.

She simply presses down on the doll’s chest, and he stops breathing.

She waits, and watches his face turn scarlet.

Then she sighs, and releases the doll.

“Jesus,” he chokes out, sputtering. “You’re really fucked up, you know that?”

She lifts a brow.

“Never mind,” he assures her hastily, falling down beside her and catching his breath. “I didn’t mean that.”

She purses her lips. “Yes you did.”

The corners of his mouth twitch upwards.

“Yeah, well, you are fucked up,” he said, “but I like it.”

She turns to him.

“Why?” she demands, unnecessarily roughly.

He shrugs. “Isn’t it kind of fun?” he asks.

It’s a good point, and she adds that to the list. He’s never been stupid, and she hates that; hates how quick he is.

“I hate you,” she comments, and he shrugs.

“I kind of hate me too. As I should,” he concedes. “Right?”

Her gaze flicks down to the doll in her hands.

“Right,” she says.

They’re silent for a moment.

“You know,” he offers, “I’m not that bad.”

She lies on her back, closing her eyes.

“I know,” she confesses miserably, and she can feel him smile, and then she feels him shift, his chest lightly resting against hers.

When he kisses her she tastes Gatorade on his lips; the blue kind that he prefers, that she’s noticed is the kind he likes to drink after practice. It tastes fruity, like fruit punch, and she remembers suddenly and without warning that he has just told his mother on the phone that he misses her, and that he looks forward to their visit but can she bring the apple crisp he likes? It’s silly, he knows, but he likes when she makes it, and he misses her very much, only don’t tell Dad he’s said that—

She shivers, contemplating what she holds in her hands and she reaches down, lightly drawing a finger down the abdomen of the doll that still rests in her palms.

He shudders, his breath escaping into her mouth.

“I like you,” he whispers.

She sighs.

“Don’t make me say it,” she groans, and when he kisses her again she holds a finger over the doll’s chest, as if she can feel its heart pulsing beneath her finger.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

He’s careful when he does it.

He nudges aside the piece of her extra P.E. uniform that he’s used to make the doll’s chest. A portion of Masters, Valentina is scrawled messily across it and he reaches inside, carefully.

He’s so careful, and she has never known this.

She will, though. He’ll make sure of it.

He nudges aside the shirt that smells like her and takes out the heart he’s placed there.

He looks at it for a minute; contemplates it.

Then he raises it to his lips.

He holds his breath.

He swallows it.

He smiles.

And then she’s his.

the ANIMATION GAMES

Part I: Once Upon a Time

Once upon a time there was a small, unassuming village called Camlann’s Strife. It wasn’t a particularly well-manicured village, or even a particularly interesting one—two villages over there was at least a chicken who could predict rainfall to a near-reliable degree, thus leaving something for people to discuss as they passed by—but one thing of significance did happen there.

Specifically, it happened at the well.

Wells, of course, have a long history of magical phenomena. Whether this has to do with a general belief in the healing powers of water or the possible conception that such potable sources had been placed there by deities, blessed by saints, or granted by some other explanation altogether, there’s no way of knowing. All there is to know is that in this particular case, there was a well, and in the next case, there was a resulting series of highly strange occurrences.

The story opens, as many stories do, with a boy and a girl; a boy, like many you have heard told before, who was handsome and bold and dauntless, and a girl, similarly, who was headstrong, clever, and lovely. With a boy like Bran Barza and a girl like Rhosyn Viteri, sparks were not doubt going to fly—but this is no tale of ordinary love, nor of magic that constitutes a blessing. In fact, the trouble strikes on the very eve preceding Bran and Rhosyn’s would-be wedding, whereupon they were visited by a rather unfortunate mishap: a ghastly, untimely death that tore the young would-be lovers apart.

Specifically, Rhosyn’s death.

A tragic occurrence, of course, as with any great loss, and Rhosyn herself being such a rare beauty, too—but don’t worry; this isn’t a tragedy. In fact, this story is hardly even sad. Rather, there is a pearl of wisdom to be gained, for when one has lived a life such as Bran Barza and Rhosyn Viteri have lived, one is given to learn a very important lesson indeed.

That sometimes, the end is just the beginning.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

Part II: Endings

The first time that Bran Barza met Rhosyn Viteri, they were children scarcely over the age of ten. Bran, the eldest of four boys and the inheritor of his father’s forge, had been healthy and strong, even then quite tall for his age, and his disposition clearly showed a knowledge of it. He carried himself with pride and was known for his good nature, his sense of humor, his charming laugh and the makings he possessed of both a successful heir and, teasingly, an irredeemable scoundrel. Rhosyn, on the other hand, had been a tiny, pinched little slip of a thing, her dark curls wild and unruly and a perpetual scowl plastered on her face as her father shoved her forward, not-so-gently coaxing her to meet her fate.

“It will be a good thing for both of us,” Lord Viteri had promised in pleading undertones to Bran’s father. “I don’t have much for her dowry, but her stature can only aid in your business, and in your son’s future. Please,” he added, in a supplication that made Bran’s chest fill up with pride, seeing such a fine nobleman so humbly requesting the aid of his family. “I have need of your services, and my daughter is all I can offer.”

Bran’s father accepted, the betrothal was made, and Rhosyn, who slid her hands uncomfortably down the front of her worn gown—clearly tailored more than once, and many times refitted and restyled and re-sewn—had stared relentlessly at her feet, scarcely batting an eye as her father sold her off to the local blacksmith’s son.

“You’re lucky, you know,” Bran had said proudly; a boy still, as he was. “I will be a good husband to you, and you will live a good life here.”

Yet again, she scowled; he’d meant to comfort her, but he could plainly see he’d mocked her instead.

“I’m a Lord’s daughter, and you a blacksmith’s son,” she pronounced simply, “and it is you, I should think, who are lucky.”

Bran arched a brow, his gaze traveling slowly over the worn material of her dress and back up to the sour expression on her face; he fixed his attention on her too-pert nose, the little stub of it sitting beneath unfashionably dark eyes that were too close together to be truly beautiful, and sighed. She was no sunny farmer’s daughter, had no laughing gaze of cornflower blue, and with a rush of displeasure, Bran found he very much doubted that he would enjoy the fruits of their union.

“We’ll see,” he said tartly, and she left with a glare over her shoulder, dutifully following her father as he went.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

The second time Bran Barza met Rhosyn Viteri, it was to finalize the details of their marriage, when both had reached the age of seventeen. It was shortly after Bran’s birthday and he’d had something of a challenging evening prior, having spent his time with a lovely girl called Bessie and ( perhaps ) overindulging in vice. He doubted he had much to worry about, however, anticipating Rhosyn’s tepid scowl and considering her still the luckier of the two; he staggered carelessly from his bed, sparing little but a scrape of his hand through his fair hair and a moment to slap the corpse-like look of sleeplessness from his cheeks, scarcely bothering to rid himself of the lingering tavern smell.

The moment he saw her, though, he regretted not having done more.

“You remember, of course, my youngest daughter, Lady Rhosyn,” Lord Viteri had said, gesturing to where her fingertips rested gingerly on his arm, and Bran’s father had been forced to smack Bran hard in the gut, prompting him to shut his gaping mouth and bow.

“My Lady,” Bran forced out in a blustered exhalation, watching a twitch of satisfaction stretch briefly across the face of a girl he might have dreamt into being, but certainly did not remember.

Rhosyn Viteri’s face now suited her name, the little rose of her father’s failing kingdom. Where everything about her expression had once been too close and too cramped and too small, she had now grown elegantly into her features, her dark hair tamed into a long braid that fell down her slender back. Her eyes remained dark and discerning but her nose, her cheeks, her lips, were as if they’d been painted to life by angels, blooming across a smile that was no less stunning than it was completely false.

“Mister Barza,” she acknowledged warmly, giving Bran’s father a small curtsy, and turned to Bran. “And you, Master Barza, are quite well, I hope?”

He choked on something that might have been an answer as she swept her gaze up through coquettishly batted lashes.

“I hope you have not been too lonely while we have been apart,” she commented, and he knew with a burning in his cheeks that she could see quite clearly what he had been up to the night preceding. “What a shame it would be, indeed, and myself not so far away.”

“I regret not having known more of you these past seven years,” he blurted awkwardly, and his father glared at him, though Rhosyn herself gave a brilliant, elusive smile as he leapt forward, bowing before her as she offered him his hand.

“You don’t yet regret anything,” she whispered, her voice only audible to him as he brushed his lips against her knuckles, “but you will soon, won’t you, beloved?”

He stiffened, pulling away with a feigned smile that became a poorly concealed grimace, and forced himself to shove aside the yearning in his chest at the sight of her, finding it confusingly misplaced. She’d somehow become a painfully beautiful woman, he knew, but he compelled himself to recall that such things were only skin deep; that yes, he might have flung himself at her feet, breathless, if only she had not remained so spoiled and sulky, her disagreeable nature only cleverly masked.

“Oh, how I long for our marriage,” he muttered, watching her long braid bob along the line of her spine as she laughed, reveling in his discomfort.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

The third time that Bran Barza met Rhosyn Viteri, nearly two years had passed. He was no less handsome and restless and she was no less beautiful and oppositional—but this time, the years that had passed in isolation had molded them to something far more somber. Rhosyn had lost her mother, the Lady Viteri, and her father had been quick to take another young wife. As a result, the proposed marriage between Bran and Rhosyn was nearly dissolved; the promise of more Viteri heirs and injection of the dowry belonging to Lord Viteri’s new wife restored the family’s prior wealth, and so the always unflattering (at the very least, highly unequal) betrothal had nearly been cast aside.

Surprisingly, it had been Bran who hadn’t wanted to let it go; perhaps he fancied himself deserving of a lady now, or perhaps he hadn’t quite recovered from his curiosity about Rhosyn herself—but regardless of the reason, he urged his father not to let Lord Viteri upend the deal they had made nearly a decade ago.

“I hear that you fought for me,” Rhosyn remarked without preamble, surprising Bran by appearing outside his father’s forge one day.

“Lady Rhosyn,” he said, alarmed. “You shouldn’t be here alone.”

“Why?” she joked, taking a step towards him and carefully adjusting the hood that obscured her face and hair. “Are there any terrible rogues I might encounter?”

“I’m serious,” he told her sternly, though he felt his mouth twitch into a laugh, and felt something else twitch, too, her hips swaying towards him as she approached. “You’re a lady, aren’t you? You should have an escort.”

“Oh, don’t bore me, Barza,” she retorted, and he saw a flash of the sulky girl she’d been. “I simply wanted to know what your reasoning was. My father may yet keep to his promise, you know, if I say I want the betrothal,” she clarified neutrally. “But if I do not—”

She trailed off pointedly, and Bran arched a brow.

“I take it you want me to convince you,” he guessed, and she tilted her head.

“Say that I do,” she agreed. “Are you so opposed to courting me?”

“I—” he hesitated. Everything with her was always a game, and he’d never quite understood how to play it. “I want a wife who keeps her promises,” he said instead, seeing a window of something clever, “and if you are willing to be that sort of wife, then I would be happy to see to it you are courted as you wish.”

“Smooth,” she commented, sparing him a smirk. “Perhaps I will marry you after all.”

He took a daring step closer, waiting to see if she would retreat; she didn’t, though she arched a brow.

“I’m not some kitchen maid you get to lie to sweetly,” she told him, her gaze slipping sideways to the townspeople that passed. “Don’t try to lure me, Barza,” she added boldly, “because I promise you, it won’t work.”

He smiled.

He liked a challenge, and Rhosyn Viteri was the most challenging woman he’d ever met.

“Meet me, then,” he decided. “Tomorrow night. Let’s be alone,” he suggested, and she tilted her head warningly, but he held up a hand for pause. “Not for that,” he assured her with a wink, a brief tilt of his chin. “But convince your father to uphold his agreement, and I swear, I will give you the romance you want.” He stepped closer, as close as he was sure any man had ever been to her, and watched her swallow.

“I will sweep you off your feet,” he assured her, and after taking a moment for her dignity, she spared him a slow nod.

“Tomorrow night, then,” she said carefully. “At the well?”

He smiled.

“Tomorrow night at the well,” he promised her.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

The final time that Bran Barza met Rhosyn Viteri, it was just after sundown on a clear, cloudless night, when he’d slipped away from his father’s forge and made his brother swear not to tell where he was going. It was foolish, of course, to find himself so inclined to secrecy when he was only going to meet the woman who would soon be his wife; but still, anticipation thrilled through his bones, and he crept by the light of the over-bright moon to the well on the edge of Camlann’s Strife, just outside her father’s lands.

He caught the outline of her in her cloak, swallowing hard as she turned.

“Hello, Mister Barza,” Rhosyn called to him, and in an instant, Bran felt his fear dissipate from his shoulders.

“Lady Rhosyn,” he offered, sweeping her a low bow, and she laughed, shaking her head as she approached him.

“You bow too low,” she informed him, tapping her fingers lightly against his back to adjust his posture. “I’m not a queen, after all, and then what will you do when you meet one?”

“But you’re my queen,” he protested, like a foolish boy who couldn’t hold his tongue, and she smiled radiantly, her beauty manifesting in the moonlight that broke through the crown of trees. “Would my queen like a dance?” he asked, playfully grabbing at her fingertips, and she shook her head with a regally feigned look of indifference.

“A pavane?” she guessed. “Gavotte?”

“Put your fancy words away and let me show you,” he declared ruthlessly, sweeping an arm around her waist and spinning her wildly, delivering them both to feverish laughter until they collapsed, breathless, in the grass.

They turned to stare at each other, their breaths gradually quieting, and for several moments she simply stared at him and he at her, feeling something change between them.

“I wanted to marry for love,” she confessed, looking down at her hands. “Which is a foolish conception for a girl like me.”

“Why?” Bran protested. “Hardly seems worth being born a nobleman’s daughter if you can’t do anything you choose.”

She looked up hopefully, something imploring in her dark gaze.

“Will you be fair to me?” she asked him. “Will you let me be your partner in life?”

He frowned at her, bemused.

“You are above me,” he reminded her. “You are a proper lady and I am at best a craftsman, and you’ve reminded me of it many times yourself.”

“Yes, but once I am your wife, I will only be that,” she said sadly. “Only your wife, and nothing of my own—”

“That’s not true,” he cut in hastily, and lurched forward to take her hands in his, ignoring her startled gasp at his boldness. “That’s not true. My life is not very grand, true,” he conceded, “but I have money, and I have a household to run, and I want a wife who can think for herself.” He paused, and carefully—so carefully he could hear both their hearts pounding—he brushed her hair from her eyes, tucking a loose, midnight-colored curl behind her ear.  “I promise you,” he said quietly, taking the curve of her cheek in one hand, “that marrying me will not lessen you, Rhosyn. I will share this life with you. As equals,” he added solemnly, and he felt wildly goonish making such a claim but he could see that it had been the right thing to say when she smiled up at him, gratitude spreading across her lips.

“Let’s get married, then,” she said, and he blinked in surprise. “Tomorrow, even,” she urged, rising hurriedly to her feet. “The sooner the better, before my father tries to marry me off to some doddering, ancient nobleman who wants nothing more than to keep me in a cage—”

“Tomorrow?” Bran repeated vacantly, uncertain. “But—but a wedding requires—”

“What do we need?” Rhosyn protested, cutting him off, and he glanced down, his breath trapping in his lungs as her fingers rested lightly against his chest. “A priest, a witness, that’s it. And then we’ll be wed and my father can say nothing against it. Will you do it?” she asked breathlessly, gazing up at him. “Please,” she added. “You said you wanted to marry me, didn’t you?”

Bran swallowed hard, staring down at her in disbelief.

It seemed too sweet to be true; but still.

He could never have refused her.

“See, I was right, then,” he commented eventually.

Her dark brow furrowed. “About what?”

“That I would be a good husband to you,” he said seriously, fighting a laugh, “and that you would be lucky to have me.”

It took a moment, but once she saw that he was teasing her, she threw her head back, letting out something that was half laughter, half mesmerizing groan.

“Let go of me, you horrible brute—”

“Never,” he swore fervently, and pulled her closer to press his lips to hers, capturing the sound of her gasp and the pliant willingness of her oath on a breath shared between them, feeling her melt to wonder in his arms.

The moment he kissed her, he wanted more; wanted her in his bed, or better yet right there, beneath the too-bright moonlight on the mossy ground beside the well, where no one would know what they had promised each other. But she was a maid still, and as yet uncertain, and so he released her with a sigh, stroking his thumb along the lower line of her mouth.

She stared up at him, likely the first man she’d ever kissed, and turned furiously, resolutely pink, the flush in her cheeks visible even beneath the cover of night.

“Are you thirsty?” she asked, turning to the well with her hand self-consciously over her mouth, and he cleared his throat, permitting a nod.

“Yes,” he said, “it’s quite a warm evening.”

“Unseasonably,” she agreed. “And the moon quite so unusually bright.”

“I wonder if there’s magic in it,” he joked, stepping towards her as she lifted the wooden pail from the well and rested it atop the stone ledge. “Do you think we’ll be blessed?”

“Silly stories,” Rhosyn replied disapprovingly, shaking her head as she cupped her hands together, taking a sip and closing her eyes. “It is refreshing, though. Would you like to—”

She trailed off, her hands still held out, and Bran leaned forward, his lips brushing the inside of her thumb as he took a sip from her hands. He let the water coat his lips, seeping coolly onto his tongue, before it slithered down his throat, settling conclusively in his stomach.

He glanced up, his fingers curling loosely around her wrists, and again fought to suppress the urgency he felt to hold her, instead opting to clear his throat and offer her another silly bow.

“Another dance, Lady Rhosyn?” he suggested. “Might as well, as we may not conjure up much of anything tomorrow if we’re going to only have a priest and a witness.”

She set the pail on the ground before granting him a coquettish curtsy of her own, looking up at him through her lashes.

“Better make it a good one, Mister Barza, or how will I possibly be bonny and blithe at bedtime?” she prompted serenely, and he yanked her into his arms with a growl of longing, spinning her about until she had thrown her head back with laughter, holding tightly to him as they danced.

It all happened so quickly from there.

It might have been his fault; he’d spun her so wildly he hadn’t seen where he was going, and neither could she, having taken his lead.

It might have been her fault; she’d set the pail down in such an inconvenient place, and they’d both forgotten it had been there, having been caught up in closeness.

It might have been no one’s fault; perhaps spirits conspired against them, having grown envious of the young couple’s blossoming love.

It might have been anyone’s fault, but however it happened, it happened too quickly to prevent; Rhosyn spun free from his arms, falling backwards as she collided with the pail, and then there had been a moment; a breath , even—disastrously brief and yet so tormentingly long—wherein her eyes widened enormously, and Bran had known she could not prevent herself from falling, and that he could not have moved quickly enough to stop her.

She stopped breathing the moment her head hit the stone wall surrounding the well, her head knocking forward and then, disastrously, off to the side as she collapsed on the ground; he knelt beside her, crying out in dismay, but even as he fell to his knees, he knew it was already much too late.

In an instant, Rhosyn Viteri had died, and his future, his promises, fled with her.

At first he felt nothing but sorrow; a gripping, terrible loss.

Gradually, though, the chill of mourning he suffered gave way to fear, and then, as Bran held his sweetheart in his arms, he felt his veins run cold with recognition.

Lady Rhosyn Viteri, an unchaperoned noblewoman who’d come to him in secret, had died, and he would almost certainly be held responsible.

Bran choked on a breath of panic, his grip tightening on her.

He could not return to his village, nor could he return her to her father.

He would be punished for certain, possibly killed, and then—

He swallowed, glancing down at her, and pressed his forehead to hers.

“I’m so sorry, beloved,” he whispered in her ear, just before he tossed her lifeless body in the well.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

He’d gambled that Rhosyn wouldn’t have told a soul where she’d been going, and he found he’d been correct. News soon spread from her father’s house to Camlann’s Strife that the Lady Rhosyn Viteri had fled without warning, and for the entire day following, no one could speak of anything but the intrigue regarding her disappearance. Some guessed she’d taken a lover, had run off with him in the night; others supposed that Lord Viteri’s new wife, Lady Rhosyn’s stepmother who was only two years her senior, might have even done away with her herself. All looked to Bran expecting devastation and they certainly found it in spades; he walked as mournfully as a ghost, dumbstruck by the loss of his betrothed.

“Didn’t you see her?” his brother asked, and Bran forced out a lie. After all, what was yet another, when there were so many worse things he’d have to live with?

“She didn’t come,” he replied, as steadily as he could manage, and out of his brother’s sight, his hands shook from the gripping weight of his falsehood.

He waited for someone to find her, to notice something amiss in the well; after five days, though, he developed a heightening sense of discomfort. Determining that he could no longer wait to find out, he snuck out as soon as he was able to evade questioning by his father, and immediately, he was struck by a most disconcerting observation:

Rhosyn Viteri’s body was no longer in the well.

He supposed he should have been relieved. Perhaps someone else had found her, and had not wanted to take the blame for her death. That would be a reasonable enough explanation, and he clung to it, hoping to put his conscience to bed. It had not been his fault that she had died, and it was better for both of them that he did not suffer punishment in the wake of her loss, wasn’t it? It pained him to lose the promise of her, of the life they might have had together, but at least there were not two lives wasted in the process.

At first he honored her memory by keeping his distance from his usual vices, from excessive drink and rowdiness with his brothers and friends, from pursuing women who still passed him teasing, sidelong glances. After all, he could not put Rhosyn’s kiss from his mind; could not rid himself of the way she’d curled into the circle of his arms, the warmth of her pressed inescapably against the length of him as he’d drawn her within his hold. She had always been the woman he’d wanted most, and now would want, perhaps for as long as he lived. For a time, he considered that perhaps no other woman would do, and perhaps he’d take no lover outside his memories, and the ghost of Rhosyn Viteri.

For a time, he really believed it.

Eventually, though, he became restless. Why live, after all; why survive Rhosyn’s death, if he did not truly make use of his survival? He would need to take a wife, to bear sons, to live a life as he might have done otherwise. Once weeks had passed, he realized he’d known Rhosyn hardly at all, and so perhaps such a period of mourning was in fact an insult to her memory. Was he not to have anything in life?

He returned to his old ways before long, and his memories of Rhosyn eventually faded, drifting from his thoughts as though he’d only dreamt her once or twice. Every time she flitted through his mind, he became less and less convinced that the night he’d spent with her at the well had even happened; hadn’t the moon been overly bright, the air unseasonably warm, her face inhumanly lovely? How was he to know that any of it had ever been real?

Perhaps none of it had ever even happened.

“You must be terribly alone,” Flora lamented, a silly girl who was in his arms with hardly any effort, coaxing him into her father’s barn and letting him lift her skirts and settle her on his lap. “You poor, poor man, abandoned by such a selfish woman, and to call herself a lady, too—”

“Hush, don’t speak of it,” Bran replied, his fingers tearing at the front of her bodice. “Please, I am so distraught by her loss—”

“Oh, Bran,” Flora wailed, tugging at his trousers, and Bran hid a smile in her shoulders, burying his lips against her neck until he paused, a flash of something catching his eye.

He looked up, his breath catching in his throat, and blinked.

For a moment, he wasn’t sure what he was seeing. At first he processed only the sound of water; of a slow, torturous drip upon the floor, growing oppressively louder and more percussive the longer he stared. After a few moments, even with Flora dutifully wriggling away on his lap, the vision before him gradually became clearer, until Bran realized that what he saw was in fact the silhouette of someone painfully familiar.

“Rhosyn?” he croaked, trying to clear his vision, and the image of her—or whatever it was—took a step closer, crooking a finger towards him from afar.

“No, sweetheart, you poor darling,” Flora said, gripping the back of his neck. “Oh Bran, you poor, poor dear—”

But he wasn’t listening, nor was he fully aware of her touch. He was lost instead to a vision he could have sworn was a ghost, blinking in wonderment, his breath trapped somewhere in the midst of his ribs.

As the figment of Rhosyn approached, Bran realized that she was the source of the dripping sound; that in fact she was soaked to the bone, suffering a constant chill from her limbs, and that water fell from the gown that clung to her every curve, leaving her hauntingly exposed and terribly, terribly beautiful.

He swallowed hard, disbelieving.

“Rhosyn,” he begged, fumbling to free himself from Flora’s hold. “Rhosyn, please—”

“What is it?” Flora pressed, taking his arm as he stumbled forward, an emptiness now occupying the space where Rhosyn had been.

“Did you see anything?” he demanded, eyeing the now-dry floor. “Was there someone here?”

“Of course not,” Flora protested, staring at him. “Are you unwell, Bran?”

He knelt down, running his fingers over the beams of the floor.

Nothing.

No sign of moisture, even.

“I don’t know,” he said honestly, aghast.

But it was only in his mind, of course.

Of course. The stress of her loss, of his secrets.

That was all.

Unless—

Hadn’t he been the one to guess that the well was magic?

Silly stories , Rhosyn had said, but suddenly, Bran wasn’t so sure.

“There’s no one here,” Flora said uncertainly, and Bran closed his eyes, unable to fight a chill up his spine.

“Go,” he told her hoarsely.

“But—”

“Just go ,” Bran repeated, shaking his head, and he waited until Flora’s footsteps had abated until he sank down to his knees, giving into a shudder of fear.

He heard a droplet of water fall behind him and turned; nothing.

Then, on his left, another.

Another.

Another.

Another, more, faster, falling and falling until they matched the sound of his pulse, the errant beat of his heart.

The echo of falling droplets rained around him, scattered and frantic and violently arrhythmic, and Bran dropped to his elbows in panic, crying out in horror.

“Rhosyn!”

Like magic, the sound abruptly ceased, and he sat up slowly, glancing around.

The floor was wet.

The room was empty.

“Mister Barza,” he heard in his ear, a little taunt. “Tell me, beloved, are you sorry?”

He choked on a gasp, forcing his eyes shut.

“Yes, I’m so sorry,” he rasped. “I’m so, so sorry—”

“No, you’re not,” Rhosyn’s voice beckoned. “But don’t worry, Barza.”

He held his breath, waiting.

“Oh, don’t worry, Bran, my beloved,” she whispered in his ear, and he swore he felt the moisture of her lips as they settled, frozen, against the back of his neck.

“You’re not sorry yet, but you will be.”

⟻ ❈ ⟼

Part III: Vengeance

The last thing that I remember is spinning and falling, and the last thing I feel is a joy so incomprehensibly sharp I almost don’t notice when it rapidly convulses into fear. There is part of me that knows I am ending even as I am so filled with beginnings, and I don’t suffer any pain; I only feel numbness, and then an abject chill.

When I wake, the chill has not subsided, and I’m freezing; I’m incomprehensibly cold. I’m not where I was, either. I rise to my feet awash on the shore of a river, the clothes I’m wearing clinging to my arms and legs as droplets of water slide down from my limbs. I stand in the sun but feel no warmth, nor do I manage to dry.

There is only one thing on my mind when I open my eyes, and it is Bran Barza’s face, even as I look up to familiar moonlight. I imagine him telling me again that the well is filled with magic, and this time, I don’t laugh, and I don’t brush it off. Perhaps now I am one of those silly stories. I even think, childishly, that perhaps this is a love so strong that death itself bears no authority on our lives. That thought is the only thing that warms me as I make my way back through a half-familiar wood.

I keep myself hidden at first, because even I can see I am not as I was while I lived. I am eternally, unrelentingly cold, and water seems to follow me wherever I go; in fact, it now seems part of me, and I find that I can control it almost as equally as it controls me.

Part of me knows I have died. Part of me knows that I remain dead, though I breathe and see and hear and feel just as I did before. I learn, however, that my whereabouts are as yet a mystery to the village; Bran has not told them what happened. They do not believe I am dead. In fact, most of the townspeople believe I have shamed my family, run off with someone in defiance of my promises, in an affront to my position and my name.

In death, my reputation is tarnished.

Bran Barza has let them tarnish me.

In this version of my body, anger feels cool, feels like raindrops on rooftops, like waves that crash upon sand; but whether my fury is ice or fire, I still feel it passionately in my bones. I know I must find him; I know, somehow, that there is a debt I must yet collect, though I don’t know yet how it will be paid.

Then I find Bran with his arms around another woman, and the moment that I lay eyes on him, I know precisely what he owes me, and I know exactly what I will take.

“You’re not sorry yet, but you will be,” I whisper to him, and he may not realize yet that I am here, that it is really me, but what he knows or doesn’t know doesn’t matter. I have done enough reckoning for the both of us.

I know exactly what I will take, Bran Barza.

I will take your life, as you have taken mine.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

The moment that Rhosyn Viteri realized she had Bran Barza at her mercy, her lips pressed lightly against the back of his neck, she knew that whatever she gained from a quick death could not possibly be enough.

No, Bran would have to give her much more than that.

He would have to suffer as equally as she had suffered.

Rhosyn Viteri had not lived much of a life, after all; how could she? She was a nobleman’s daughter, true, but Lord Viteri had been a poor nobleman with little to his name, and whatever dearth he possessed as a lord, he’d accounted for even less as a father. He had been quick to discard Rhosyn as payment when he’d needed weapons and plows, then equally quick to cast off his word when he no longer had need of the arrangement. Rhosyn herself had gained little from her tepid position save for a persistently damaged pride. She had been treated as nothing but an object, cast aside even in death, and having never had a hobby she’d pursued purely for her own pleasure, she saw at last—at last —an opportunity to take something selfishly.

She started by letting Bran go, even as she held him in her grasp.

“Rhosyn,” he begged. “Rhosyn, please, if it’s you, I have to see you—just tell me if this is real—”

But she withdrew into the shadows, finding satisfaction in his confusion as his eyes went wild with fear.

For the next few days she followed him, keeping to the shadows in his home, lurking quietly around his forge. She could slide in and out of sight as easily as water itself now, and not only that, she seemed to control whatever water was in her sight; she was magic, just as Bran had said.

She’d have given him more credit for being right if he hadn’t managed to drag her reputation through the mud once he’d tossed her dead body into the well.

In terms of her patient study of him, the whole thing was incredibly rewarding. For days, every time a drop of water hit the floor, Bran jumped half a foot in the air, staring around the room and pressing a hand to his chest to settle his frantic heart. Every time she knocked over a glass of his water or caused a pitcher of it to burst, the contents splashing relentlessly over his face, he let out a whimper of “Rhosyn,” and she was forced to fight a laugh.

Much to her pleasure, he called for her, and often.

“Rhosyn,” he said one night, lurching upright in his bed with a shudder, and she sighed.

“Yes, Barza?” she asked, waiting for him to turn towards her, his eyes wide.

“Are you haunting me?” he asked her.

“Yes, Barza,” she replied, “obviously.”

He lay back down, still looking as though he didn’t quite believe it.

“Are you going to kill me?” he whispered.

She sighed again.

“Yes, unfortunately for you, beloved, I plan to,” she told him. “But I wouldn’t worry about it yet.”

She watched him breathe, the motion of his chest quiet and anguished.

“I made you angry, didn’t I?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied. “I find I’m rather displeased with you.”

“I would have loved you,” he told her, and she shook her head, rising to her feet and watching him cower beneath his sheets.

“No, beloved, you wouldn’t have,” she lamented. “Maybe for a while, perhaps, but you’d have tired of me and moved on, and I would have had nothing to ensure your faithfulness, Barza, and no option but to watch. So I think this is better,” she determined, watching him squeeze his eyes shut as a droplet fell from the tips of her fingers to crash against the floor.

“That’s not true,” Bran insisted, and Rhosyn made a face.

“You know, you might as well be honest, since you’ll be dead soon,” she told him.

“What about you?” he asked thoughtfully.

“What about me?”

“What will you do once you’ve killed me?”

She paused, considering it.

“I hadn’t thought about it,” she admitted.

He closed his eyes.

“I don’t recommend it,” he said. “Being alone, I mean.”

“You’re just trying to save your life,” Rhosyn scoffed, unimpressed.

His eyes fluttered open.

“Maybe,” he permitted, and he turned his head, looking at her. “You’re so beautiful,” he sighed regretfully, as if he might have reached out to stroke her cheek. “We might have had a beautiful life together.”

Rhosyn made a face.

“Don’t ruin this for me,” she said flatly.

He smiled.

“Are you going to kill me tonight?” he asked.

“No,” she told him. “Not tonight.”

“Good,” he said. “Then sweet dreams, Rhosyn.”

“I don’t dream,” she told him.

“Right,” he agreed, “because you’re a ghost.”

“I’m not a ghost,” she corrected. “I’m just haunting you.”

“Right,” he repeated. “Sweet dreams, beloved.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Go to sleep, Barza,” she replied.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

“So how are you going to do it?” he asked, aiming the question over his shoulder as he worked. “Have you thought about it?”

She’d meant to stay hidden, but silence seemed somehow less fun.

“Blunt force trauma,” she replied.

“That’s nice,” he said. “Romantic, really, to pattern it off our first night together.”

“Is that how I died? I can’t quite remember.”

“Yes,” he confirmed. “You hit your head.”

“Stupid,” she lamented. “What a terrible way to die, frankly.”

“I agree,” he said. “And it left me in quite a predicament, too.”

“What about me?” she protested, glaring at him. “ I’m dead.”

“Well, to hear you tell it, I will be soon,” he reminded her. “And frankly, being haunted isn’t much of a life.”

“Well, good,” she said stiffly. “I hardly think you should be permitted to go about things as normal, do you?”

“I sort of assumed you were the regular kind of dead,” he said, and paused before adding, “I also didn’t realize you’d be so upset.”

“Of course I’m upset,” Rhosyn snapped, as elsewhere, a pot of boiling water exploded. “You shamed me. You dishonored me. You forgot me—”

Bran paused, looking up with a curious expression of recognition.

“Are you jealous?” he asked knowingly, and Rhosyn scowled.

“No,” she retorted. “I’m angry.”

“Sure you are,” he chuckled, and she was furious.

She’d had enough, she decided.

He’d grown too comfortable, and haunting him wasn’t fun anymore.

Now he’d have to die.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

She decided to do it in his forge.

That had a nice bit of irony to it, she thought, considering he seemed to feel so safe there, and it would be easy enough to pull off. Plenty of heavy things around. Plenty of ways to be rid of him afterwards, even. Flames, she figured, would be a nice, poetic alternative to being thrown in a well, if she decided she felt up for the task by the time she got around to it. Mainly, she was in it for the death bit. What happened after that was purely whatever struck her fancy.

She practiced quite a bit with his hammers and things, making certain she could lift them. Even the hot ones, the tools that had been recently put to work against various metals were still slick and chilled in her hands, so she decided it would be simple enough. She pictured the impact; imagined it to be satisfying.

After all, she’d waited long enough.

She bided her time until he was nearly done for the day, wiping sweat from his brow as he went about setting things in order.

The fire lit warmth into his cheeks, and he looked terribly, indescribably handsome.

She couldn’t wait to see the light go out.

“Rhosyn,” he called, as he usually did, a habit he’d developed over the past few weeks. “Beloved, am I going to die today?”

“Yes,” she replied. “Shortly, in fact.”

She watched his mouth quirk up in a smile.

“You’re going to hit me, are you?” he asked. “I doubt you can lift these things, Rhosyn. Even I had to train with them for years. Maybe you should choose another method.”

She fought the urge to gag at her displeasure.

He was so intolerably smug.

“I don’t need help murdering you, Barza,” she snapped, carefully picking up one of his hammers. “In fact,” she added, taking a careful step closer, “I think that I’ll manage it just fine.”

She paused, reconsidering, and he tilted his head.

“Didn’t want those to be your last words to me?” he guessed.

“Shut up,” she said.

“Go ahead,” he urged. “Try again.”

She sighed crossly.

“What did you say to me?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he reminded her. “Your death was an accident.”

“Fine,” she grumbled, “but what did you say before you threw me in the well?”

He swallowed, his chin dropping slightly.

“I said ‘I’m so sorry, beloved,’” he answered, and she smiled, grimly satisfied.

“Say it to my face, then, Barza,” she told him, and he pivoted to face her, ducking as she swung the hammer at his head.

“Oh, hell,” he swore, dropping to his hands and knees. “Seriously?”

“You’re not allowed to duck!” she exclaimed, swinging again and nailing him between his shoulder blades, prompting him to let out a yell of displeasure.

“I’m not just going to let you ,” he growled, scrambling forward and promptly slipping in the puddle of water that pooled at her feet, swearing his opposition. “This is hardly fair—”

“Fair?” she demanded. “You want fair ?”

She swung again, hitting him hard in the torso this time just before he ducked behind a rack of cooling swords.

“How’s this for fair?” she snapped, tossing the hammer aside and picking up a still-hot dagger. She threw it at his retreating back, prompting him to a rigid halt, and watched him yowl in pain, pulling it out of the back of his ribs. He staggered towards her, pressing a hand to his wound, and collapsed with a groan at her feet.

“Rhosyn,” he gasped, tugging the wet material of her skirts. “Was this really necessary?”

She waited until he slid flat against the floor, his eyelids fluttering in pain.

“Yes, this was fine, I’d wager,” she informed him, hefting one of his newly finished broadswords in her right hand and eyeing the blade experimentally. “But this, I believe,” she murmured, “will be a bit gratuitous.”

“Don’t do it,” he gurgled, eyes wide, and she sighed.

“So sorry, beloved,” she told him, “but I’m afraid that I must.”

And with a motion so fast that it hummed through the air, Rhosyn Viteri plunged the sword into Bran Barza’s chest, finishing him off in one stroke.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

Rhosyn could move as easily as water, and so after she’d murdered her would-be lover, she seeped down through the floors, resurfacing outside his forge as his brothers and father discovered his body. There was much wailing and shrieking, she noted, counting the many women who appeared a little too distraught for comfort over Bran Barza’s death, and for a second she lamented she hadn’t done more; after all, it wasn’t quite fair, was it? He was painted as an innocent victim, remembered for his looks and his easy charm, while she’d been horrifically slandered.

Men. Even in death, they had it easier.

As soon as he was gone, though, she found that Bran had been right; it was a curse of its own being the one left over. She had nowhere to go, and no one she could speak to. For a time she tried heading back to her father’s house, following him around, but he was far less interesting than Bran. He didn’t seem to miss her in the slightest, and though Lady Viteri was very much traumatized by Rhosyn surfacing in her quarters (and at least had the decency to faint on sight), Rhosyn found the entire thing underwhelming. After hardly any time at all, people had forgotten entirely about her, and there was no one left who cared.

Eventually she wandered over to the graveyard, moistening the still-fresh mound of earth that had been layered over Bran’s body. She bent down, staring morosely at Bran Barza’s name, and before she quite knew what she was doing, she’d begun clawing dazedly at the loose dirt, not stopping until she’d hit the shroud he’d been buried in.

She stopped suddenly, her breath suspended, and flattened her palm against it, closing her eyes.

The shroud was empty.

She was sure of it; where his head should have been there was nothing but more earth, and she swallowed hard, processing this thought slowly.

Bran Barza, whatever he was, was almost certainly not dead.

She let out the breath she’d been holding.

It carried on the wind, chilling her to the bone.

And then, on a whim, Rhosyn smiled.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

The last thing I remember is looking up at her face—my lost betrothed, my terrible darling, my most cruel, my dearest beloved—and she is strange and cold and beautiful and I know that she is the only woman who has ever delivered me to fear, to awe and wonder. I wish, as I have for so long, that she had never died. That I had gotten the chance to hold her, to touch her, to be with her and entrance her; to consume her, devour her as my own. To own all the parts of her I was never able to possess.

And then, just as the thought occurs to me, I realize something.

I realize that part of what I desire so much about Rhosyn Viteri is my strange, sharpened need to destroy her, if only so that she loosens her unyielding control over me.

So the moment I open my eyes, I resolve to find her.

I know right away that I am not quite as dead as I should be, and when I come to life again I have the strength of a thousand men, breaking my way through the earth and climbing up through jagged stone. Part of me wonders if perhaps the only thing keeping her in any state of living was her need to exact vengeance on me, but somehow I think that she will be waiting for me. Somehow, I think she knows that I’m the one deserving of revenge this time. After all, my death was far more gruesome than hers.

I think we both know that some degree of pain is owed.

I find her near the water, which is apt; though I am strong, stronger than I have ever been, my footfall is soft, and she doesn’t hear me coming until it’s nearly too late. Until I am so close I could do away with her in an instant, one hand wrapped tightly around her slender neck.

Her eyes flutter open, and I realize now why she couldn’t kill me right away.

I’d be lost without the sight of her, as she must have been without me.

“Is that you, beloved?” she whispers, and I struggle not to think of how it might feel to take her in my arms.

“Hello, sweetheart,” I say.

She smiles.

“How will you kill me?” she asks, and I pause.

“Slowly,” I promise.

Her beautiful smile broadens.

“Perfect,” she declares.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

Part IV: The Animation Games

ROUND 1: BRAN

“What if I don’t come back?” Rhosyn asked, wiggling her fingers as Bran tied her wrists to the branches of a forest tree. “You’d miss me, Barza.”

“Of course I would,” he agreed, testing the restraints around her wrist. “But I suppose it’s worth it, isn’t it? The attempt?”

“It was very satisfying,” she permitted curtly. “Killing you, I mean.”

“I know,” he confirmed. “You made that very clear.”

“Well, say that I do come back, then,” she prompted. “What then?”

“You’ll have to find me,” he said. “I, unlike you, look quite normal. I think I’ll attempt to carry on living my life.”

Her expression stiffened.

“You wouldn’t,” she accused warningly, her fingers curling into a fist; behind them, the river’s current crashed atop the shore, drawn asunder by her fury.

“I would,” he corrected, stepping back to survey his handiwork. “Why be alive, after all?” he prompted, stroking his thumb along her cheek. “Have to enjoy it, or it’s just a waste, don’t you think?”

He reveled in her look of fury; delighted quietly in her rage.

“I don’t understand why I miss you when you’re gone,” Rhosyn seethed. “You always cast me aside so easily, Barza.”

He fought a scoff, glancing up at her, and shook his head.

“I’ll never be rid of you, beloved,” he reminded her, knowing she’d be a fool to think otherwise. “I simply don’t wish to be dead in your absence.”

She scowled, reminding him again of who she’d been as a child, and he leaned forward with a laugh, resting his hands on the sodden hips of her still-wet gown.

“I knew you couldn’t love me,” she told him bitterly, and he leaned forward, wondering if she’d ever realize the truth.

“I hope I see you again, Rhosyn Viteri,” he whispered in answer, and pressed his lips softly to her frozen ones, letting moisture bleed from her mouth to his. “Don’t take too long to come back to me, sweetheart.”

“Is this it?” she muttered into his mouth. “You’re just going to leave me here? You know I won’t die of starvation or thirst,” she reminded him dully. “I don’t need those things anymore.”

“No, beloved,” he told her gravely. “I’m afraid you’ll die of blood loss.”

And then he dug the dagger between her ribs, leaving it there, and stepped back to watch the crimson of her blood mix with the water that poured forth from every pore of her skin, dripping beatifically from her solemn, sorrowful eyes.

“You’ve never been more beautiful,” he said, touching her cheek, and she dragged her gaze up to his.

“You are going to die a very painful death when I return,” she choked out, and he nodded, heading back to the forest path.

“I don’t doubt it,” he murmured to himself, whistling as he went.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

He came back to check on her a week later.

There was no sign of Rhosyn, and Bran smiled.

“See you soon, beloved,” he said, turning over his shoulder and heading back into town.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

ROUND 2: RHOSYN

It took months, but eventually she found him.

Naturally he couldn’t go back to Camlann’s Strife, being as thoroughly dead as he allegedly was, but she wasn’t certain at first where he would go. Luckily, this time upon her return she wasn’t nearly so out of place in a crowd; this version of her reanimated self was dressed quite normally, and wasn’t subjected to terrible temperatures, though the chattering in her head was perhaps not entirely ideal. It took her several days to get use to the sound of it before she realized what she was hearing; that no, the world had not simply gotten louder, but in fact, she was now exposed to the volume of others ’ thoughts.

It took weeks before she learned to toy with the dials of things, tuning some voices louder and softer. She listened intently for Bran, but it took a while; luckily she knew quite well his weaknesses, and found a tavern a few villages away wherein she’d heard something familiar. A young woman’s voice had pined relentlessly for a certain impressively strong blond that Rhosyn would have recognized in any description, whatever he foolishly called himself, and so she brought it upon herself to make an introduction.

“River, really?” she asked drily, sliding next to him and watching every hair on his arm stand on end, his grimy white shirt pushed up to reveal the muscle of his forearm. “Creative, darling, but not very covert.”

“Hello, sweetheart,” he said without looking at her, bringing a cup of ale to his lips. “I see you managed to find me.”

“Don’t be too impressed,” she told him. “You barely made it difficult.”

“Well, I wasn’t totally sure you’d be back,” he reminded her, winking at the barmaid who’d had him so unerringly on the mind. “And it’s been some months, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“How long did you wait?” she asked blithely. “An hour?”

“Oh, don’t sell yourself short, beloved,” he told her. “For you? I managed a full day of mourning.”

She fought a sullen retort, knowing it would only amuse him.

“It took longer this time,” she noted, drumming her fingers against the table. “I wonder if it’s because the method of death was gorier.”

“An interesting theory,” he judged. “Will you kill me quickly this time?”

She considered it, watching the barmaid smile at him from across the room.

“I haven’t decided,” she pronounced unhappily, and he turned to her, fixing her with his bright, breath-arresting gaze.

“What did you come back with?” he asked. “Abilities, I mean. I find I’m curious.”

She paused, toying with the dials in her mind.

Rhosyn, she heard his voice say in her head. My Rhosyn, my love, you’ve finally returned.

“What, tell you and give away the game?” she asked neutrally, taking a sip of his ale before sliding it back to him. “That hardly sounds fun at all.”

“Oh, so it’s a game, is it?” he prompted with a hearty laugh, bringing the tankard to his lips. “Then I presume the first round went to me.”

“Well, presume all you like,” she told him stiffly. “I doubt the first round matters much in the scheme of things, does it?”

“True,” he agreed, taking a long swallow and setting the tankard down with a smile. “So,” he continued with a wink, “shall we celebrate our respective animations, at least for a night? Surely you’re not so eager to get rid of me as to—”

He stopped, his eyes widening, and drew a hand to his throat.

“Oh dear,” Rhosyn said falsely. “Beloved, are you unwell?”

He coughed loudly, struggling for breath, and she slid her hand along his thigh, the small, now-empty vial pressed firmly into his leg.

“Would you like me to hold you while you die, sweetheart?” she asked him, as his eyes rolled back in his head, his tongue lolling from between his lips. “Oh no ,” she called in feigned distress, gesturing to the whoring barmaid, “I think he’s been poisoned!”

“No, not River!” the girl cried in dismay, and Rhosyn fought not to roll her eyes.

“No,” she agreed sourly, “not River.”

She looked down in time to see Bran Barza gargle up something incoherent, leaving her to sigh.

“Terrible last words, Barza,” she told him. “I presume this round goes to me?”

His convulsing body fell still.

“Alas, beloved,” she whispered to him. “See you soon, my love.”

⟻ ❈ ⟼

ROUND 5: BRAN

The next few deaths were rather unremarkable, being the forays into academic study that they were. There had been some merit to the idea that animation took time; the more brutal the murder, the longer it took to reanimate after death. Bran, returning from his poisoning with powers of telekinesis, used it to strap Rhosyn down and brandish a wide variety of kitchen implements, leaving her in a rather messy state of parts. Her return, however, nearly two years later, was one so thoroughly infused with rage that the slitting of Bran’s throat meant a very brief period of reanimation. He was back within a matter of weeks with the highly unhelpful ability to slow time to a syrupy crawl, which only bought him worthless spare minutes in plotting his next moves against a very difficult opponent.

That round, Rhosyn was near invincible, her skin impenetrable to either impact or laceration; Bran figured it would be easier to simply take the loss.

“Fine. Just do it,” he grunted, watching her sketch lines into his skin and lamenting again how unhelpful his gift had been this round. “What’s with all the extra body art, anyway?”

“Oh, I’m thinking I’m going to distribute the pieces of you this time,” she said, drawing a line across his mid-thigh. “See how long that takes, you know?”

“That’s very clever, sweetheart,” he said. “You’re not going to do it while I’m alive, are you?”

“No,” she said, making a face. “Seems excessively bloody.”

“You do love to do things in excess,” he reminded her.

“True,” she agreed. “But I think I’ll enjoy winning two rounds in a row, and the extra time to savor it sounds rewarding enough on its own.”

“May I ask what you have in mind?” he prompted, and she tilted her head, thinking.

“Sure,” she permitted. “It’s not very complex, really. I’m just going to shoot several arrows into your head,” she explained, gesturing to the bow and quiver she’d procured, “and then I’m going to get the knife and—”

“Never mind,” he cut her off, feeling queasy. “I think I grasp the concept.”

“It’s a win for sure, though, isn’t it?” she prompted, and he hadn’t wanted to admit it, but he had.

“It’s a win,” he admitted with a groan, and she’d smiled.

Rumor had it, though, once he’d returned, that a woman had been put to death shortly after being found dismembering a man.

“Witchcraft,” the innkeeper had told him, shuddering to speak of it. “Some sort of unholy ritual, clearly. They burned her at the stake.”

“Oh really?” Bran asked, amused. “Did she say anything?”

“Oh, who can remember the details,” the innkeeper sighed. “Must have been what, five years ago? They say she said something funny before she died, though,” he recalled. “Something like ‘it still counts, beloved,’ or something—”

“Ah,” Bran said with helpless pride, chuckling to himself. “She never did like to lose.”

“What?” the innkeeper asked, his brow furrowed.

“Nothing,” Bran said quickly.

But mentally, he adjusted the tally.

That round no doubt went to him.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

ROUND 11: RHOSYN

Bran was never very good at hiding himself; he regularly left a trail of people who adored him. Even the strangers he encountered would always regale her with tales of having come across a cheerful blond man of considerable height, and though he was at times more effort to trick, he was always exceedingly easy to find.

That particular round, though, both the finding and the tricking were so easy as to be very nearly unfair.

“Fancy a dance, handsome?” Rhosyn asked Bran, having taken on the appearance of a young farmer’s daughter whom she’d tied up temporarily amid the towering grains. “You look like a man who knows his way around a place like this.”

He glanced at her, a wolfish hunger instantly filling his face, and she fought not to gift him her signature scowl; he was always so foolishly predictable. Only a single dance had done it before she’d lured him out to the barn, stretching out beneath him on the hay as his lips floated to her neck.

She hadn’t expected to like it.

She hadn’t expected, either, to want more; much more. She’d possessed the ability to kill him within minutes after arrival, having hidden a knife beneath one of the bales, but to her severe discontent, she realized she now understood what was so very appealing about Bran Barza to the many women he’d encountered over the years.

“Tell me,” he murmured to her, his lips traveling over her— not hers , she reminded herself , some silly farm girl’s —ample breasts. “What’s your name?”

“I’d prefer we didn’t talk,” Rhosyn managed roughly, and he paused, glancing up at her.

“Really?” he asked, mildly suspicious.

She squirmed in his arms.

“Continue,” she instructed, shifting his hand under her skirt, and he frowned, watching her a bit too closely.

“Why me?” he asked, and she realized the question sounded empty without his usual terms of endearment for her; without sweetheart or beloved the words merely felt cold, and she wondered if this were the reality of him.

“Perhaps I thought I’d be lucky to have you,” she said, and though she froze for a moment, considering that maybe she’d shown her hand, he seemed to have lost interest in conversation, his lips finding hers as his hand traveled slowly up her thigh.

He was gentler than she thought he would be.

The whole thing was sweeter, really, than she’d expected; he seemed to hold her penitently, achingly, and with a coveting touch that part of her hated, wanted to rail against, because she wanted those parts of him to only be for her.

She was furious, and weak.

She was saddened, and ignited.

“Bran,” she whimpered, her fingers tightening in his hair, and he sighed.

“Rhosyn,” he said softly, “I know it’s you.”

She bristled, stiffening in his arms.

“I’d rather have you as you, sweetheart,” he told her, so tenderly she flinched. “Perhaps you might find it in you to kill me later?”

She paused, considering it.

She was curious; decades had passed now, and she still remained a maid untouched.

“But then who would win?” she posed tangentially, and he sighed.

“Must there always be a winner and a loser?” he asked, feigning exhaustion, but she knew better.

“You only say that,” she reminded him, “because you’re winning, six to five.”

He grinned.

“I know,” he agreed, and she closed her eyes.

“Kiss me again,” she told him, and he greedily complied, his lips finding hers as intently as if they’d journeyed there for pilgrimage.

He didn’t notice when she gripped the knife in her left hand.

He did, however, cry out when she dug it into his kidney.

“Rhosyn,” he sputtered, glaring. “Was that really necessary?”

“It was, rather,” she lamented. “And I’d like to see you find me, Barza, when you don’t know what face I’ll wear.”

He groaned, fading fast.

“I’ll always find you,” he promised her. “I always do, beloved.”

She sighed.

“Would you have held me like this?” she asked. “If I’d come to you as myself?”

“Longer,” he said, his eyelids falling steadily. “Closer.”

“Hm,” she murmured. “That sounds nice.”

His lashes fluttered once, and then stilled.

She slid out from under him, eyeing the bloodstains on her gown.

Part of her wished he hadn’t confessed knowledge of her identity until later, until after her curiosities had been assuaged; though , she thought, wouldn’t she rather have had him in her own body, and not this silly long-legged nymphette’s?

“Well, but I’d rather not have him at all,” Rhosyn protested aloud.

But by then, nobody was there to tell her she was lying.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

ROUND 23: BRAN

Proving even more difficult than the time that Rhosyn could change bodies—a time which had taken him nearly three years until he’d finally caught a woman sneaking out to the well at Camlann’s Strife, half-asking to be caught—was the time she could become invisible. He would catch up to her and promptly lose her, watching her vanish entirely and leave him with absolutely no hints as to how to continue. His own gift, control over metals, was almost no use; until, that is, he determined that his manipulation of light sources made her easier to spot, and then he discovered after a few days of trial and error that she had actually been following him .

“I know you’re here, beloved,” he called into the air. “This is just like the first time, isn’t it? You have such a tendency to follow me around.”

“I do not,” her voice returned, and he glanced around, but didn’t see her.

“Are you bored, Rhosyn?” he asked. “You must be. It’s been quite a long time.”

“Bored?” she scoffed. “ Bored , watching you relentlessly chase your tail, Barza? Peering into shadows, staring desperately into space? Hardly a trace of boredom to be had.”

“Well, I’m bored,” he informed her. “This, of course, is a useful talent for smithing,” he said, manipulating the sword in his hand and bending it, just so she could see. “I wish I had been able to make use of it when we might have still had a life together.”

He heard her swallow.

She was always so sensitive to nostalgia.

“You wouldn’t have stayed true to me,” she said again, her usual argument. “Even now, you don’t.”

“Actually, I do,” he corrected her. “Lately I find that other women have a frustrating tendency to be—how shall I put this?” he considered, cocking his head. “So very not you.”

He heard a satisfying waver of doubt in her voice.

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not,” he said, shaking his head. “Why bother with a woman who doesn’t know me as intimately as you do? You are the woman who has caused me the most pain, and the most horrific suffering,” he reminded her. “And therefore you are the only woman who has ever truly known my strengths, and who has given me the greatest of adventures.”

He listened to her hesitate; placed her by the sound of her breath in the room.

“Do you love me yet, Mister Barza?” she whispered sadly.

“I have only ever loved you,” he said sincerely, even as he aimed the carving knife in his palm in her direction.

He heard the impact of it, the sound of her gasp, and watched the blood that dripped onto the floor; he watched her hover in and out of sight and then carefully took her in his arms, catching her as she fell against him.

“This won’t kill me,” she said, gesturing to the wound in her shoulder.

He dug it out, waiting for her to hiss her displeasure, and then replaced it, driving it into the steady beat of her heart.

“Come back to me however you like,” he told her, “just come back to me, beloved.”

He watched a smile flit across her face, gone as quickly as it came.

“Bran,” she whispered, letting the sound of it escape on her final breath.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

ROUND 30: RHOSYN

“This is crazy,” Bran told her. “Rhosyn, sweetheart, you do realize this is mad , don’t you?”

She tilted her head, considering it.

“Rhosyn,” he pleaded, “if you do this, you only hurt yourself. Is that even part of the game?”

“I don’t know,” she said, frowning. “I hadn’t considered this before.”

They’d already tested it several times, unfortunately.

This time, the gift (curse, more like) was a connection; when he hurt, she hurt tenfold. When he was enveloped in warmth, she burned like the sun. When he felt joy, she melted into it; when he felt sorrow, or anger, she was helpless but to drown. When he keened at her touch, she felt herself delivered to euphoria, and whatever it was that had dragged them apart and forced them back together, she knew this was the worst of it.

This, to feel as he felt, she simply couldn’t abide.

“I have to do this,” she said, blinking. “Otherwise, why are we even here?”

He pressed his forehead to hers, his thumb rising to coax the lines of her cheeks.

“Who would win?” she whispered, because by now, she felt she knew nothing else.

“I would surely lose,” he said plainly, and shuddered. “I could only lose, Rhosyn.”

She wondered at how to respond.

Wondered, sighing, for perhaps too long a time.

“How do you want to die, Barza?” she asked, not unkindly.

“In your arms,” he replied.

“That can be arranged,” she told him, and stabbed the poison-tipped arrow into his back, feeling the matching, blinding pain in her own.

“Do I win?” she murmured, her vision blurring as they stumbled to the floor.

He didn’t answer.

She closed her eyes.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

Part V: Resolutions

They met again outside of Camlann’s Strife, at the well between the village and the land that once belonged to Lord Viteri, who had long since passed away.

“Hello, Mister Barza,” she said, turning as he arrived. “Have you been waiting long?”

“Not long at all, Lady Rhosyn,” he replied. “Though, even an hour without you seems long enough.”

She paused, uncertain.

“I find I’ve lost count,” she said. “Of the game, I mean.”

“It is difficult,” Bran agreed. “This one took quite a long time.”

She nodded.

“Years?” she guessed, and he nodded.

“The village is so different now,” he commented. “I can’t quite believe how much time has passed.”

“No one would recognize us,” she remarked, half-musingly. “And I see you didn’t bother to hide.”

“I didn’t,” he agreed, and then added, tepidly, “I couldn’t.”

She waited, not quite ready to lean towards hope.

“What can you do now?” he asked tangentially, meaning her talents; her gifts that sprung forth from the well.

She’d tried it extensively; done as much as she could.

“Nothing,” she confessed, and at the look in his eye, she knew his answer was the same.

“Do you ever worry that we won’t come back?” he asked.

“Always,” she said, and paused.

“Do you ever think,” she posed carefully, “that we should have just had a life together?”

She waited for him to blame her; to fall back on methods tried and true.

Instead, he surprised her.

“Don’t we have one?” he asked simply.

“Do we?” she prompted, bemused, and felt her brow furrow.

He gave her a solemn nod.

“I think,” he murmured, taking a step towards her, “that we have had so many lives together, Rhosyn, we may very well be soulmates.”

She gave a sigh of exhaustion, feeling the weight of those lives (and deaths) settle firmly in her bones.

“Could this, perhaps, be the gift, then?” she asked tentatively.

“What?” he echoed. “You and me?”

“A life together,” she corrected, “certain, at last, that there is no one else for us.”

Bran Barza’s lips cracked a knowing smile, as they always did.

“I have always been certain,” he told her.

She considered it.

“There has never been another,” she reminded him, confessing it plainly this time.

It seemed an easy ending; once again, beside the well, it seemed a promise that was far too sweet to be true. But by then they had witnessed magic aplenty, and no longer had trouble believing in anything at all.

Instead, they glanced aside, at the well that started had everything, and contemplated how far they’d come.

“Thirsty?” she asked him.

His lips quirked up.

The game was to finish in a draw, it seemed, and they both recognized the offering.

To her surprise, though, he shook his head, and offered her his arm.

“I think my thirst is sated,” he replied, and together they set out, venturing back into life.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

Part VI: Happily Ever After

In a small, unassuming village of no particular interest, something extraordinary happened; many things, in fact, but one in particular. A love story, and one that all started with a well, and that ended with one, too.

Wells have always been places of strange phenomena, and this one is no exception; though, like the others, there is no comprehending the circumstances of events that have passed. There is no explaining the curious events befalling Bran Barza and Rhosyn Viteri, and truths being what they may, perhaps there never will be. Perhaps magic bests our mortal minds yet again, and there are truths we have yet to discover; or, perhaps, the only important truth is the one that Bran and Rhosyn shared in the end, and so this is the only one we must learn.

The story ends, as most stories do; in a familiar tale of a boy and a girl, and a happily ever after. But it concludes with a lesson, too: that the end is never the end.

For the gift, the magic of it all, is in the sharing of a life together.

FATES and CONSEQUENCES

On Monday, June 14th at approximately 7:45 in the evening, Guy Carrington was hit by a bus.

“Ah, fuck,” said Atropos. “Whoops.”

“What do you mean ‘whoops’?” Lachesis demanded, setting down her measuring rod to give her sister an appropriately chilling glare. “What’ve you done?”

“Look,” Atropos returned briskly, “don’t freak out—”

“No promises,” Clotho muttered, toying with a tangled thread.

“—but I accidentally cut the wrong thread.” Atropos picked up the correct thread, for a Mr. Gene Cartman, and promptly gave it a snip with her treasured (albeit equally abhorred) shears of mortality. “See?” she said, letting the two pieces fall. “Done. No harm, no foul.”

“Give me that,” Lachesis snarled, ripping Guy’s threads from her hands. “This is Guy Carrington ,” Lachesis said emphatically, picking up the two halves and holding them aloft for her sisters to see. “I had a whole thing planned for him!”

“Let me see that,” Clotho sniffed, delicately removing Guy’s thread from Lachesis’ grip and eyeing the first half of his life. “Well, he’s going to be rewarded, anyway, isn’t he?” she prompted, frowning in thought. “He’ll be fine.” She shrugged, tossing the apportioned thread back towards her two sisters. “Who’s going to blame you for a few extra years in paradise?”

“Er,” Lachesis ventured hesitantly, glancing at the second half. “Not exactly.”

Atropos leaned forward, snatching it from Lachesis.

“Ah, fuck,” she remarked again, arching a brow this time. “Hades is going to be mad .”

⟻ ❈ ⟼

Guy opened his eyes slowly, squinting around the cavernous room before letting his vacant round of scrutiny settle upwards on the face of a man reclining above him, a pale-skinned and heavily bearded stranger who sat comfortably on a charred-looking throne. The man, a judge of sorts, casually sipped from a pewter goblet, presiding over a court of thin, waif-like creatures who cackled quietly as Guy attempted to right himself, feeling his head throb. It was unreasonably warm—unseasonably so—and Guy’s clothes were clinging to his skin; despite the humidity, however, Guy found himself shivering.

“What happened,” he croaked.

The question was not met with surprise.

“The short story,” the man supplied grimly, “is that you, Guy Carrington, were hit by something called a bus.”

“What?” asked Guy.

“A bus,” the man repeated. “It’s like a car, only bigger.”

“No,” Guy offered apologetically. “I meant more along the lines of, you know— how I got hit by the bus.”

“Ah,” the man permitted. “Then you phrased the question poorly.”

“Right,” Guy agreed, rubbing the back of his head. He looked down, noticing he was wearing the same suit he’d been in at the time; it was rather fuzzy, and fairly far away, but now that he was trying, he could just manage to recall the moment of impact. The bus had slammed into him and he’d felt nothing.

Well—excruciating pain, he amended thoughtfully.

And then nothing.

“So, where am I?” Guy asked, looking around the room. “Is this a hallucination?”

“Unfortunately, no. Bad news, kid,” the man pronounced grimly, shaking his head. “You’re in the Underworld.”

Guy laughed, and laughed and laughed and laughed.

“No,” he eventually managed. “That can’t be right.”

“Well,” the man sighed, shaking his head. “I guess it’s time for the long story, then.” He took a deep breath, clearing his throat, and then settled back in his throne, tapping his goblet.

“First of all, I’m Hades,” explained the man who was apparently Hades. “Welcome to my home.”

“Cozy,” Guy remarked.

“Yes, fine, lies are welcome here,” Hades acknowledged flippantly, waving a hand. “Here’s the situation, Mr. Carrington—may I call you Guy?” he asked, and Guy nodded, uncertain whether refusal was wise. “Look, Guy, here’s the deal. Your string of fate was accidentally severed, and so you have died several years before your time. Now, the thing is,” Hades continued, sounding vaguely professorial, “at the moment you died, you were a fundamentally good person. Sound morals, reliable ethics; generally pleasing temperament.”

“Huh,” said Guy, unable to help himself from preening slightly.

“ But ,” Hades continued, “had you lived, you would have borne witness to an extremely tragic event—specifically, the death of your twin sister, Greta Carrington,” he clarified, gesturing behind him to a picture of her that projected across the room, “which would then have prompted a mental breakdown—”

“Is that a PowerPoint presentation?” Guy asked, and Hades paused, glancing over his shoulder.

“Yeah,” he confirmed, shrugging. “I mean . . . this is hell.”

“Right,” Guy muttered. “Anyway, you were saying—mental breakdown?”

“Right,” Hades agreed. “So, it’s a whole thing, but glossing over the complexities, you sort of form this vendetta and then you start hunting people down and killing them, and there’s also a bit of a cult aspect involved—” He trailed off, frowning. “Candidly, Lachesis didn’t really go into details, but let’s just say that this was one of her more creative tyrannical murder plot lines.”

“Plot lines?” Guy echoed faintly.

Hades shrugged. “Plot lines, lives—whatever you call it, it’s really all the same to us,” he explained, gesturing to the figures around the room. “Anyway, your string of fate obviously ended with you here in the Underworld, so now that you’re dead, your soul is mine.”

“Wait,” Guy interrupted, blinking slowly. “So you’re saying that since I was supposed to turn into a—” He paused, glancing expectantly at Hades for confirmation. “A bad guy?”

“Sure,” Hades agreed, yawning. “Let’s go with that.”

“So even though my fate’s been changed, I’m still going to hell?” Guy said, suddenly feeling a slap of recognition as he noticed the pair of silvery translucent shackles that had wrapped around his wrists. “Are you saying that I’m—?”

“I’m saying you’re in hell,” Hades helpfully supplied, toasting Guy from his seat on high. “Which is unfortunate, I suppose,” Hades conceded, “but rules are rules. I had thought Zeus might petition for your soul, which would have been very messy, but it turns out that he just really enjoys a good fuck. Or fucking over, as it were,” Hades quipped, grinning. At Guy’s tormented silence, his smile twitched slightly. “You do get the joke, right?” Hades asked, and then looked around the room, shrugging. “Eh, you guys get it.”

“But I’m not even Greek,” Guy muttered in disbelief, staring at his hands.

“Yes, well, bummer about that,” Hades agreed, not unkindly. “But, things being what they are—”

“So I’m stuck here,” Guy summarized aptly, shaking his head. “I don’t deserve to be here, but there’s nothing you can do, so …” He faltered, drawing a hand to his mouth. “That’s it? That’s what you’re telling me?”

“It is, yes,” Hades confirmed, nodding. “You’ve got it perfectly—which, I’m happy to say,” he added, straightening, “makes this whole situation far less complicated than I thought.” He waved to someone behind Guy, gesturing them forward. “Take Guy down to Tartarus, would you?” he asked, and one of the waifs nodded. “You’ll have to take the river, though it’s murder this time of day— ach ,” he said incoherently, glancing apologetically at Guy. “Sorry. I suppose murder’s a bit on the nose.”

“I didn’t actually murder anyone,” Guy reminded him, “so to be honest, this all seems a little bit horrifying.”

Hades raised his hands, offering him a sort of mock (or mock- ing ) surrender.

“It’s the Underworld, Guy,” Hades said. “I’m just here to rule it.”

⟻ ❈ ⟼

The first day in hell was startlingly similar to one of Guy’s worst days on Earth.

“Oh, well, it’s not all fire and brimstone, dear,” his mother remarked over a stuffy Easter brunch. “And sit up straight, would you?”

“I am sitting up straight, Mother,” Guy remarked tightly, pulling at his constricting collar. “See? Straight.”

“Speaking of straight,” his mother ventured brusquely, pouring a cup of tea. “You are , aren’t you?” she asked, not for the first time. He grimaced, nodding. “Then why haven’t you found a nice girl to settle down with, Guy?”

“Because I’m twenty-five,” Guy muttered, “and nice girls who want to settle down don’t exactly come banging down my door. Oh,” he added, letting out a rough scoff of laughter, “and I’m dead , too.”

“Drink that,” his mother instructed, pointing to the tea and ignoring him. “Good for your digestion.”

Guy rolled his eyes, but conceded to raise it to his lips. “Fuck,” he swore, the liquid promptly scalding his tongue. “Fucking fuck , that’s hot—”

“Language!” his mother declared, drawing her hand to her chest in mechanically practiced horror before resuming her brisk, businesslike tone. “Now hurry up and finish,” she urged. “We have things to do, you know.”

“Like what?” Guy muttered. “Is fire and brimstone next on the list?”

She pursed her lips.

“You know, for someone who doesn’t want to be burnt to a crisp, you really seem to be pushing for it,” his mother chided, leaning over to wipe something off his face. “Come here, you’ve got a little—”

“Mother, stop, ” Guy growled, swatting at her hand. “How long is this brunch?”

“Thirty-six hours,” she told him, scrubbing mercilessly at his cheek with her napkin. “Now,” she continued, sitting back in the chair. “Explain to me again what you plan to do with your future, and after that—” She leaned down, pulling something from her purse. “I want you to teach me how to use the Twitter.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Guy growled, throwing his hands in the air. “My mother isn’t even dead!” he added, half-shouting. “You’re not actually her, are you?”

“No, I am not,” not-his-mother confirmed, swiping through her phone and squinting at it. “Guy,” she called loudly, “I’m trying to read this Fifty Shades book but the print is too small, so do you think you could read it out lou-”

“If you’re not my mother,” Guy interrupted, staring at her. “Then who are you?”

His mother blinked, tilting her head slightly. “I’m Timothy Spade,” she— he —said.

“Why are you here?” Guy prompted, gesturing. “And more specifically, why are you my mother?”

“Well, I invented a cure for nicotine addiction,” Timothy Spade replied.

“That’s amazing,” Guy remarked, but his mother (Timothy Spade) held up a hand.

“I invented a cure for nicotine addiction, but I didn’t tell anyone,” Timothy Spade clarified. “I kept it a secret and I sold it to a tobacco company for an unholy fortune.”

“Yikes,” Guy said, grimacing. “Okay, then.”

“And I’m here,” Timothy Spade continued, “because I hate brunch. And people,” he added, “and technology, and socializing, and memorizing lines.”

“You have lines?” Guy asked, and Timothy Spade nodded.

“Apparently your mother has quite a speech for how disappointed she is in your lack of potential,” he said. “I was saving it for the halfway point, you know, for a bit of excitement in between looking at pictures of her cats and discussing the pitfalls of menopause—”

“Right,” Guy permitted wearily, and then tilted his head. “Just out of curiosity, what do I look like to you?”

“Sort of a nice guy,” Timothy Spade said. “Actually, you’re not awful.”

“I’m not?” Guy asked, pleased in spite of himself.

“No,” Timothy Spade said. “You’re really not so bad.”

“Huh,” Guy remarked, and then frowned. “But you still have to—”

“Yeah, I have to carry out your punishment or I’ll get electric shock therapy later,” Timothy Spade said. “Which is another thing I hate.”

“Fair enough,” Guy sighed, leaning forward. “So, you said you wanted help with Twitter?”

“Yes,” Timothy Spade said, giving him his mother’s owlish blink. “And I’m also thinking of getting on the Tinder.”

“Oh, Christ,” Guy said, shaking his head. “Okay.”

⟻ ❈ ⟼

When brunch was over, Guy opened his eyes to find himself inside of a very small white room.

“Hello,” a man offered unenthusiastically. “I assume you know why you’re here, Mr. Carrington?”

“No,” Guy replied, frowning. He glanced down, looking at a box full of receipts and a poorly organized checkbook. “What’s this?”

“I’m Edward Naughton,” the man droned, “and today you’re being audited, Mr. Carrington.”

“Are you kidding me?” Guy asked, blinking, and Edward Naughton shook his head.

“Nope,” said Edward Naughton. “So if you could just fill out forms 941, 1066, DE-6—”

“Oh holy hell,” Guy said, holding up a series of hastily scrawled association minutes. “These aren’t even my financials!”

“Does that mean you’ve forgotten your identification, Mr. Carrington?” Edward Naughton asked him. “Because if so, then I’ll need you to fill out a couple more forms. And if you’d like to run home and get it, I should warn you that this is actually one of the nightmare rooms, so you will feel as though you are jogging in place while something chases you—”

“So what’s your deal here?” Guy cut in, arching a brow at Edward Naughton. “What did you do?”

“I claimed my son had cancer and asked my co-workers to donate to save his life,” Edward Naughton explained.

Guy grimaced. “I take it your son didn’t have cancer?”

Edward Naughton shrugged. “I don’t have a son,” he replied.

“Okay then,” Guy said, sighing. “And you’re doing this because…?”

“Because I was an auditor,” supplied Edward Naughton, “and I deeply despise auditing.”

“Fair enough,” Guy agreed, sorting through the receipts. “Well,” he muttered, trying to make sense of them, “there’s nothing that says we can’t try to have a good time while you audit me, is there?”

He looked up, and Edward Naughton pointed to the sign behind him.

ABSOLUTELY NO GOOD TIMES.

DO NOT ENJOY THIS AUDIT.

SIGNED, MANAGEMENT

“Right,” Guy sighed. “Well, I’ll at least try to—”

Edward Naughton wordlessly pointed to the placard below the first sign.

NO EXERTING OF EFFORT TO MAKE THINGS EASIER.

SUFFERING ONLY!

SIGNED, MANAGEMENT

“Got it,” Guy said. “Cool. Excellent. Marvelous.”

“I hate that word,” Edward Naughton grumbled, glancing up.

“Which one?” Guy asked.

“All of them,” Edward Naughton muttered, squinting at him. “But you’re not so bad, I guess,” he conceded.

“Thanks,” Guy told him, and then held up a receipt. “So, does this one count as a business expense?”

Edward Naughton tilted his head, lowering his glasses to glance at it. “Do you own a pornography-related business?”

“No,” Guy said, startled, and pulled it back, staring at it. “I swear, a second ago this was a gas receipt—”

“Then no,” Edward Naughton ruled sullenly, pursing his lips. “Moving on to form 542.”

⟻ ❈ ⟼

“How many more of these?” Guy whispered to Andrea Villanova, whom he discovered had stolen regularly from an arthritic old man she’d nursed until the time of his death, at which point she’d escaped to Tahiti rather than face his disgruntled heirs. “These paper cuts are really starting to sting.”

“You know, the whole making-endless-lemonade-with-paper-cuts is one of the more innocuous tasks,” Andrea Villanova reminded him. “It’s really more irritation than torture.”

Guy hissed quietly in pain as he sliced open a new lemon, the juice of it seeping viciously into a crack in his cuticles. “Right,” he said faintly, grimacing. “Sure. Better than—”

“Better not,” Andrea Villanova cautioned, shaking her head warningly. “Hades’ll hear you.”

“He doesn’t actually hear everything , does he?” Guy asked, flinching, before tossing the lemon aside and forcing himself to pick up a new one.

“No,” Andrea Villanova confirmed, “but there are a lot of shitty souls around here, so best to be careful who you say things to. Not me,” she clarified, smirking at him. “I can keep a secret.”

“You certainly can,” Guy remarked, and she flashed him a somewhat unnerving grin. He looked up, wiping at the sweat seeping from his hairline with the back of his wrist (it was, understandably, quite warm there, being what it was) before suddenly realizing they were not alone.

“Who’s that?” Guy asked, gesturing to a woman who was stepping off one of the Styx riverboats. She appeared to be coaxing Cerberus, Hades’ three-headed dog, which tagged along behind her on a leash.

Andrea Villanova glanced up briefly, looking unsurprised. “It’s Persephone,” she said. “Hades’ wife. She must have just arrived for her six months.”

“Six months?” Guy echoed, watching her. Persephone was a willowy kind of tall, slender and poised, her olive skin freshly tanned and glowing against the backdrop of the dark cavern. Her dark curls were loosely knotted near the top of her head before spilling down in a messy array of decorative braids, all of it draped beneath a thinly-woven crown of gold. Her gown, a dark green silk that was almost black, trailed down to her bare feet and hovered above the Underworld floor, almost as though she were floating.

“Yeah,” Andrea Villanova confirmed, and then paused. “You don’t know about Persephone? The whole kidnapped-by-Hades, ate-six-pomegranate-seeds, bound-to-the-Underworld thing?” At his vacant head shake, she shrugged. “She has six months on Earth to make things grow, and then spends six months as Queen of Hades.”

Queen of Hades , Guy’s mind echoed curiously, watching her toss a raw steak into each of Cerberus’ drooling mouths.

At the feel of his eyes on her Persephone looked up, meeting his gaze across the river; her eyes were amber, like molten gold, and they narrowed almost instantly upon meeting his.

Guy let out a captive breath. “Right,” he murmured to nobody in particular, promptly looking down.

“Don’t even think about it,” Andrea Villanova warned, bringing her thumb to her lips and wincing as the lemon slipped in her hand. “Fuck, ouch—”

“Come on, Cerby,” Guy heard Persephone coo, her voice low and musical as she spoke to the dog’s three heads, tickling underneath one of his chins. “That’s a good boy.”

⟻ ❈ ⟼

“Yes, yes, I’m naked,” Guy muttered, trying awkwardly to cover himself. “I get it. It’s hilarious.”

“It’s a nightmare room, bro,” the young lacrosse player offered, somewhat sympathetically. “We’ve all been there.”

“Well, I don’t know what you’re all getting out of this,” Guy snapped, bristling unexpectedly at an unusually cool breeze.

The athlete shrugged. “We’re taking a midterm,” he explained, holding up the sheet of paper he’d been writing on. It was nearly three feet long.

“Great,” Guy muttered, shivering again as he looked around. “Why the fuck is it so—”

“Well, isn’t this interesting,” he heard behind him; a low voice he faintly recognized. Guy caught sight of Persephone over his shoulder and promptly spun to face her, still trying unsuccessfully to cover himself. She, however, had her head tilted curiously to one side, a small smile playing across her lips as she tore her gaze from the curve of his backside.

“Not bad,” she commented, offering up a quiet laugh as he instantly felt his cheeks flush. “Who are you?”

He licked his lips, trying not to focus on the way her ivory gown clung so invitingly to her hips.

“I’m Guy,” he said.

“I see that,” she mused, making a small motion with her hands that brought his wrists flying above his head, leaving him exposed. She tilted her head again, smirking slightly as she dragged her gaze across his torso and then lower, salaciously resting between his legs. “I love a thing that’s aptly named.”

Despite the heat, Guy felt his skin break out in pebbled gooseflesh.

“Tell me, Guy,” Persephone continued, taking a step towards him. “Are you the one my husband says isn’t supposed to be here?”

Guy forced a swallow, watching her fingers as she brought them first to her lips, brushing one against the swell of them, and then out towards him, drawing a manicured nail down the path of his abdomen.

“Yes,” he forced out, sucking in a breath at her touch.

“Hm,” she hummed thoughtfully, her crown glinting as she took another step. She was nearly his height, he noted, only tilting her chin up ever so slightly to meet his eye. “Interesting.”

“Hey,” the lacrosse player interrupted, “are you two going to—”

“Go work at a soup kitchen,” Persephone commanded sharply, snapping her fingers, and in an instant, the entire class had disappeared, taking with them the academic scenery and leaving behind only the Queen of the Underworld—and, of course, Guy.

Who, as it turned out, felt more naked than ever.

“Put your arms down,” Persephone instructed. “You look ridiculous.”

“But you’re the one who—” Guy sighed, lowering his hands at his side. “Fine.”

“Better,” she said, nodding at him. She made another hand movement and the room around them spun, changing in a breath; she daintily fell back against a bed that materialized behind her, her honey skin a kiss of gold against a sea of emerald bedding. “Are you coming?”

Guy shook his head slightly, forcing a swallow as his bare feet settled against the beams of the cool wooden floor. “But you’re married.”

“Yes,” she agreed, her expression unchanging. “But you have a strong jaw, and a queen needs a sturdy throne.”

He gaped slightly at that, hesitating, but was unable to prevent himself from watching her long legs as she crossed left over right; she leaned back onto her elbows, glancing up at him expectantly.

“But,” he said again, less convincingly this time. “You’re married.”

“Yes,” she acknowledged. “But on the other hand,” she reminded him, sitting up slightly, “you’re dressed for the occasion.”

At his tortured silence, she sighed exhaustedly, rising to her feet and letting her gown slip to the floor before stepping slowly out of it. She was wearing nothing underneath the fabric and he marveled at the way her olive skin was so vibrantly unblemished; she was so gloriously golden , the edges of her curves seeming to glint and flicker, glowing like a candle flame.

“Guy,” she said, taking a step towards him. “May I call you Guy?”

“Yes,” he mumbled, the word sounding oddly slurred.

“Guy,” she repeated approvingly, reaching up to take hold of his face and then drawing it down to hers, her breath skating across his lips. “This is what it’s like to kiss the Queen of the Underworld.”

He opened his mouth to argue but hers was already there, colliding with his, a hungry, urgent wanting that tore the breath from his throat and then reached in and snuck it from his lungs as well, a kiss that was as much a blow to his constitution as it was a strikingly elegant promise; a taste, and nothing more.

Not enough, he thought with panic, realizing his hands had launched forward to hold tightly to her waist, his fingers digging into her skin of their own accursed volition.

“Now,” Persephone whispered, brushing her lips against his. “Would you like to see Elysium?”

⟻ ❈ ⟼

“So,” Hades said, materializing with a quiet pop beside him. “How goes it?”

Guy jumped, leaning forward and letting out a strangled yell as the doctor tightened his grip.

“Ah, prostate exam,” Hades remarked knowingly, letting out an oddly delicate laugh. “Fun.”

“It’s going well,” Guy said through gritted teeth. “Loving it.”

“Not even remotely hellish?” Hades asked, frowning. “Pity. I suppose we could always—”

“No, no, it’s fine, it’s bad,” Guy forced out, trying not to move as the doctor continued his exam. “I’m suffering, I promise.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Hades sighed, taking a seat in one of the patient chairs and propping his feet up, offering Guy an absent-minded smile. “Hope you don’t mind, but I thought I’d check in. I do that on occasion,” he added. “At least with the ones who aren’t totally opposed.”

“Are there a lot of those?” Guy asked, forcing his eyes shut.

“Honestly? No,” Hades admitted. “I’m not very popular.”

“You’re kidding,” Guy said drily. “You sentence them to their eternal damnation and they don’t even have the decency to adore you?”

“I know,” Hades agreed. “I’m baffled, too. Hey,” he added, as though a thought had just occurred to him. “You haven’t seen my wife around, have you? Persephone?” he clarified, gesturing near his head. “About this tall? Brown hair? Wears a small golden crown?”

Guy bit back a breath of panic, forcing a smile. “I’m familiar with the Queen,” he began unsteadily, “but no,” he lied. “I haven’t seen her.”

“She normally doesn’t do a lot of wandering,” Hades murmured, half to himself. “Likes her gardens, mostly. But she seemed awfully interested in you,” he remarked. “I think she’s quite taken with your backstory.”

“My errant fate, you mean?” Guy asked, unable to prevent a stirring of bitterness. “Yes, I suppose it would be interesting.”

“Not really sure why,” Hades confessed, shrugging. “But, in any case, do let me know if you see her.” He rose to his feet, giving Guy and the doctor respectively curt nods. “Until next time,” he said, before disappearing with another quiet pop.

Guy let out a sigh of relief, suddenly feeling a cool breeze from near the door and fighting a smile as he recognized her presence.

“He’s so nosy,” Persephone sniffed, snapping her fingers to make the doctor disappear, and in an instant Guy was in her bedroom again, his elbows braced against her emerald duvet as he remained bent over where the exam table had been. “Now,” she murmured, tracing a line down his spine with the tip of her finger. “You weren’t having any prostate fun without me, were you?”

“Prostate fun ?” Guy echoed, balking.

Persephone laughed, turning him around and coming to rest in the space between his legs, lowering herself to her knees.

“We’ll get there,” she assured him, flashing him a wicked smile.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

“Tell me,” he murmured to her, mapping patterns on her bare shoulder as he drew her loose curls away from her skin. “How does one come to live in the Underworld? I suppose it was an abduction,” he recalled hazily, frowning, “but still, I don’t see you as the ‘abducted’ type.”

“It wasn’t an abduction,” she corrected him irritably. “I chose it.”

Guy paused his meandering fingers, tilting his head to meet her eye. “You chose it?”

She looked up at him, her heavy-lidded gaze narrowing slightly. “Do you know what it’s like being created for the sole purpose of nurturing things?” she asked, her expression darkening. “Vegetation, harvest, fertility—it was a life of being made to give, and with nothing in return.” She closed her eyes, coiling her fingers in the soft silk of her sheets. “The world will drain you, Guy, if you let it.”

He laid himself back against the pillows and drew her towards him, settling her cheek against his chest. “The pomegranate seeds,” he commented slowly. “Is it true you were tricked into eating them?

“I ate them on purpose,” she said, scoffing. “Do you really think anyone doesn’t know what they’re doing when they eat food from the Underworld—much less me ?”

Guy brushed his lips against her forehead. “Are you brave,” he asked slowly, “or just desperate?”

She looked up, measuring him with her amber gaze, and opted not to answer the question.

“You’re quite popular with the other souls,” she commented tangentially.

He shrugged. “I try to be friendly. We’re in the same boat,” he explained. “Or river, as it were.”

She nodded, the fingers that had buried themselves in the gaps of his ribs now tracing a line down his inner thigh.

“Pity there wasn’t a man like you around when I first showed up,” she lamented, drawing herself up. She rested her knees on either side of his hips, dug her nails into his chest, and leaned forward to whisper in his ear, “I’d have swallowed the fucking pomegranate whole.”

⟻ ❈ ⟼

“Hades is such a dick,” Timothy Spade remarked on Monday as Guy played the role of his wife, the two of them shopping for an evening gown that both knew neither could afford. “It’s not like there’s anyone making him enforce these punishments. He just likes them.”

“And considering there’s only one of him and zillions of us,” Edward Naughton said on Tuesday as he and Guy wheezed through a marathon, “it’s a wonder nobody’s tried to revolt.”

“You’d think,” Andrea Villanova mentioned offhandedly on Wednesday as she and Guy attended a stuffily formal baby shower for her snotty older sister, “that having someone else in charge would really make a difference.”

“Like who?” Guy asked innocently, and Persephone’s voice laughed in his ear.

Like you , she murmured to him, as the image of him spending eternity in her bed (her legs wrapped around him, the shackles gone from his wrists, their need for secrecy abandoned) flashed before his eyes and then trickled down, curving his lips into a peaceful, beatific smile.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked breathlessly, collapsing with him against the sheets. “I know I’m good, but you look unusually euphoric.”

He took her hand, brushing a kiss against her knuckles. “What do you think about a mutiny?” he asked her, biting lightly on one of her fingers.

She held her breath, watching him. “I think,” she said slowly, “I’d be interested in seeing that happen.”

He smiled again, rolling over her and settling his hips against hers. “We could be free,” he whispered, and she traced her finger along his lips.

“Nobody’s free, Guy,” she told him. “But damn if I don’t want to see you try.”

He felt the corners of his mouth twitch, satisfaction nudging at his fingers.

“We could rule ourselves,” he said to Timothy Spade the following Monday; it came quickly, as Fridays and weekends did not exist. “There’s only one of him, and all of us.”

“We’d only need to take his soul,” he murmured to Edward Naughton on Tuesday, his voice hushed but tight with promise. “To sever it, and take control.”

“Are you with me?” he asked Andrea Villanova, whispering it on Wednesday, quiet words for sharpened intentions. “Are you in?”

“Yes,” they said, and by Thursday, Guy hid a smile in Persephone’s neck.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

“So,” Hades said, frowning down at Guy in the same courtroom where it had all begun. “Revolt, huh?”

Guy swallowed uncomfortably as Persephone stepped into view, draped in a gold gown and dripping with jewels that sparkled in the dim light as she took a seat beside her husband. Hades leaned over, offering her his cheek, and she brushed her lips against it, a cool breeze filling the chamber as she took her throne.

“How were you planning to do it?” Hades drawled lazily. “Were you going to kill me? Overpower me by force?”

“Something like that,” Guy muttered, glancing again at Persephone. She arched a brow, meeting his gaze with a stunningly ominous smirk.

“You know, when it came to my attention that you were organizing the other souls to unseat me, I have to say, I was a bit annoyed,” Hades commented, twining his fingers with Persephone’s. “Luckily for you, my ego is not overly sensitive, and thus I can only be so offended.”

“You take advantage of the souls in your possession,” Guy informed him, gritting his teeth and sticking to a now-practiced refrain. “I never deserved to be here, and yet—”

Hades cut him off with a laugh, the sound of it filling the room and slicing the air between them. “You really think you don’t deserve to be here? Still? Let’s see,” Hades mused, leaning forward. “You were fated to be a murderer, weren’t you? To give in to your inclinations of tyranny on Earth. And what have you done here?”

Guy said nothing, feeling slightly sickened at the thought.

“You gathered an army of deplorable souls,” Hades answered for him, “ immoral souls, and you prepared them to overthrow me. And you were willing to take my life to do it, weren’t you?”

At Guy’s lack of answer, Hades sat back with satisfaction. “ And you fucked my wife, Guy,” he remarked, shaking his head. “Don’t think I didn’t know about that.”

Guy grimaced, glancing at Persephone. She met his gaze with her amber eyes, saying nothing.

“She turned you in, Guy,” Hades informed him, answering the tacit question. “It seems you misjudged her, just as you misjudged yourself. Because clearly ,” he added gleefully, gesturing around the room, “your fate could not have been avoided. You’ve become in the Underworld what you were always meant to be on Earth,” he concluded, laughing, “and isn’t it funny, then, that the consequences are so fitting? Hilarious.” Hades shook his head, letting his laughter convulse to a stuttered pause. “You got precisely what you deserved, Guy Carrington.”

Guy stiffened, forcing his eyes shut. It was a very ‘ I told you so ’ moment, which was, if anything, the most hellish experience of all.

“I’m sorry,” Guy offered lamely.

Hades waved a hand. “Don’t be,” he returned. “The Underworld is no easy place, Guy, but I think you’ll find it has a different flavor when you know you’ve earned it. It’s just something a bit more—” He trailed off, smiling. “Savory.”

With that, Hades rose, gesturing for Persephone to follow. She took her husband’s arm, not looking back, and Guy understood for the first time that this, indeed, was hell.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

“You haven’t eaten, have you?” the doctor asked. “For a full day?”

“No,” Guy confirmed miserably, lying back on the patient table. “Just clear liquids.”

“Well, good,” the doctor said. “I’d hate to have to pump your stomach.”

“Sure,” Guy agreed, closing his eyes.

“So, it’s a relatively simple procedure,” the doctor explained. “But I will probably make some crucial errors during that time that will cause you undue pain and distress, and afterwards you’ll be meeting your lawyer to try to discuss the necessity of a lawsuit while also trying to submit a claim to your health insurance provider. I’d estimate the whole thing taking ten months, tops.”

“Naturally,” Guy sighed. “Ready?”

“Quite,” the doctor continued. “So I’ll just—”

“That’s enough of that,” Persephone cut in, breezing in. She snapped her fingers, the atmosphere around Guy abruptly changing as she nudged him over, and perched herself lightly beside his ribs. “What were you having done?” she asked, tapping his nose.

Guy opened his eyes to find the doctor gone, and to find himself reclining on her emerald sheets again.

He sat up slowly, loath to meet her eye. “Colonoscopy,” he muttered, and she smiled.

“Poor thing,” she tutted softly, reaching out to touch his bare chest. “Have you missed me?”

He swallowed, realizing how long it had been; the six months of her absence must have finally lapsed. “I,” he began hoarsely, and paused, clearing his throat; he was unable to lie, he knew, but remained unwilling to confess. “I thought that—”

“I missed you,” she informed him, sliding closer to him. She brushed her lips against his collarbone, murmuring into his skin. “Candidly, my mother’s nearly as bad as yours.”

He swallowed a laugh, refusing to be lured by her charm.

“Persephone,” he grunted, as sternly as he could manage, “you turned me in to Hades, remember?”

“Yes,” she agreed, not looking remotely sorry. “I wanted to see what would happen.”

He frowned. “Then why—”

“I told you,” she reminded him. “Nobody’s free, and especially not from suffering. Besides,” she added, “I’m married. There’s sort of an obligation to disclose when one’s lover is intending a violent overthrow of one’s husband.”

Guy permitted a smirk, though it was more a show of disappointment than humor.

“You love him more than me,” he acknowledged, but she shook her head.

“No,” she corrected. “But this was a long game before you, and it will be for an eternity after—and I,” she added airily, rising to her feet, “don’t intend to lose.”

Guy turned to face her, sliding himself to the edge of her bed. “You’re sure about this?” he asked, watching her gaze rake across his chest; the amber glow of her eyes soaked in the view of him, and she gave him her wicked smile.

“This is the Underworld, darling,” she whispered, slipping her dress from her shoulders and letting it fall to the floor. “If I wanted morals, I’d go somewhere else.”

SENSUAL TALES for CARNAL PLEASURES

Prelude

My mother brushes an ivory comb through my hair, as she used to when I was a child. I am grown now, but tonight she sits behind me on the bed and patiently coaxes the tangles out, her fingers deftly running over the tendrils of my hair as she gives me a long-familiar warning.

Someday you will meet a man who is tall and dark and handsome, she says with a steady rhythm; almost as though she is casting a spell, or weaving a delicate fabric. I, who have seen her do both, know that either could be true. Beware the lure of a handsome stranger, my darling, she warns, for nothing beautiful is ever as it seems.

She tells me I am proof of this. She says that I, in my beauty, will tempt and be tempted, and that such things can so easily be my undoing. I believe her, as I always have, and I heed her warnings, but still I am restless tonight, as I am all nights.

As I have been since the night I was born.

“Do you think it will be tonight?” I ask her softly, uncertainly, and her fingers pause their wanderings.

“Yes,” she says, and nods. “I’m quite certain it will be tonight.”

I manage a careful swallow, my throat suddenly dry and tense, and feel my mother’s lips press against my hair.

“Remember what I’ve taught you,” she murmurs in my ear.

I always remember.

I can never forget.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

The Night Castle

I open my eyes a sliver to note a glow at my window, golden and warm. I can’t quite see what’s beyond the pane, but I carefully undertake a slow procession of movement—sliding my feet out from beneath my heavy duvet, uncurling my toes against the fabric of the rug, feeling the shape of the cobbled stone beneath—and make my way towards it, rubbing my fingers over the thin veil of my eyelids. When I reach the glass, the glow pulses brightly and I undo the latch with meticulous deliberation, only to let a winter breeze take hold of the window’s edge and draw it free from my fingers.

Outside my window there is a castle, floating, with five illuminated towers, each forming the apex of a five-pointed star. Each of the towers shimmers with gold, irradiant in waves, and there is a pulsing, gentle warmth from within the castle’s battlements that beckons to me, coaxing me forth like the crook of a finger. The castle hovers as if manifested from nothing; a thick, entrancing fog spreads out from its base in eerie, alluring tendrils.

The draw of it is tempting; I reach a hand out, my fingers drifting helplessly towards it.

“Hello,” a voice says behind me, and I turn with a startled gasp.

Inside my bedroom is a man who is all dark shadows, his hair a gleaming black with eyes as dusky as the thick fog outside. His clothes, from what I can see beneath a heavy cloak, are pitched a black so fully midnight the fabric couldn’t possibly have come from any human dye.

When I first see him, my attention snags on the ornate golden mask that obscures the top half of his face, but my gaze is drawn closer by light that glimmers in flashes behind and below it; by the white of his teeth that cut against his lips as he smiles, and the glint in his eyes as his gaze settles knowingly on me. He inclines his head, a slow, syrupy smile pulling at his lips, and sweeps his cloak aside to accommodate a subtle bow; beneath it, I can see the underlying pattern of shimmering stars, and I feel as though he contains the entire galaxy in the bend of his arm, drawing my breath along with it.

“How did you get in here?” I manage, stifling my nerves, and his smile broadens. It’s a bit crooked when he smiles, as though a portion of him wishes not to show amusement at all, but it cannot be prevented.

“Never mind that,” he tells me, and he is handsome, and he is tall, and strangely, all of my bedroom and the entirety of the night is awash in darkness except for him—the light catching and dancing around him as though he commands it, toying with it in the palm of his hand. “I don’t suppose you’d like some company, would you?”

I feel my brow furrow.

“Who are you?” I ask, though I think I know the answer.

“I am the prince of the night castle,” he replies. “Tonight, the castle is for you.”

I pause, holding back the greedy lurch of my recalcitrant tongue.

“And what exactly do you have in your castle, Your Highness?” I ask, not exactly impolitely, and he laughs.

“So formal,” he tells me. “Call me Noctus.”

“And what do you have in your castle, Noctus?” I persist.

He beckons me forth with a smile I know will be my undoing.

“Anything you wish,” he promises, as my mother had said that he would.

Beware the lure of a handsome stranger, my darling, she warned me, but this, the night prince before me, is more than a handsome man.

He is a dangerous, beautiful thing, and I know it already.

“Show me,” I whisper, embracing the devastation ahead.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

The Dining Hall

The castle’s portcullis is solid gold and opens at its prince’s touch, like an indulgent pet greeting its master. I’m not unused to finery, but even I have to admit to being awed by the way the inside of the castle gleams. The entry hall is grand— too grand, actually, considering that only the two of us seem to occupy it—and a low, tempered hum of phantom music plays from nowhere as he leads me past a grandiose set of stairs.

“Where does it go?” I ask, my fingers resting daintily on the angled plane of his arm as I tilt my head towards the staircase.

“You’ll see,” he assures me, sweeping through his castle so gracefully that it seems he, too, floats on air.

He takes me into the dining hall, claiming I must be hungry. I suppose I am; it’s the middle of the night, after all, and dinner feels a long way off, but I don’t know how I’ll manage to eat. He seems to know this, and he eyes me closely as I lift a proffered goblet to my lips, tentatively taking a sip of a liquid.

I think at first that the glass’s contents will be wine but I know, immediately upon raising it to my lips, that it isn’t. It has a similar texture, even a similar smell, but the sensation of drinking it is somehow foreign and misplaced. At first it tastes like something simple, something berry-flavored and sun-ripened and sweet, but as it makes its way down my throat, I feel a tingling of something that warms me from the inside out.

“Do you like it?” Noctus asks me, and I glance at him, uncertain.

I want to say yes, but I can’t, not quite; something is discomforting. Something about the feeling floods me and ignites me, but it tastes a bit wild, a bit sour at the end.

“It’s unsettling,” I eventually manage, and he laughs, as if I’ve told a clever joke.

“The castle’s wine is meant to make you feel as if you’re tasting love itself,” he explains, and now I see why he found it so funny.

“I wouldn’t recognize the feeling,” I tell him, not meeting his eye.

“Pity,” he says, and slides another goblet towards me. “And this one?”

I taste this one just as hesitantly, though it is another flavor altogether. It bursts and cascades on my tongue, and if the love elixir was meant to be sweet than this is exquisitely savory, a thrill that rattles up my bones.

“This,” I say, “tastes like madness feels.”

His dark eyes glint with appreciation.

“It’s meant to thrill you,” he says, “as fully as desire.”

I shudder.

“Don’t tell me you don’t recognize that either,” he tuts disapprovingly, and I fight the urge to roll my eyes.

“So what will the food do, then?” I ask drily. “Submit me to lust? Dissolve me to devotion?”

“Neither,” he says, shrugging. “Unless you feel given to such things already.”

At the look in his eye, I think it would be catastrophically unwise to sample any more of the castle’s offerings. I let my gaze skate over the feast that lines the table and mimic disinterest, going so far as to spare the artful, crystalline tarts a sniff of false disdain.

“I’m not hungry,” I persist.

He gives me a knowing smile.

“Would you like to see something, then?” he asks patiently, almost patronizingly, though I suppose my pride might be doing funny thing to my ears, and the wine-that-isn’t-wine still coats the inside of my stomach with warmth.

“I would,” I say, cursing the way my voice sounds so breathless.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

The Room of Truth

He guides me back to the staircase in the entry hall, leading me up the marble steps. I watch my feet as I walk, careful not to stumble, and eye the gold that swirls amid the ivory stone.

“This is a lot of excess,” I comment, and under his breath, he chuckles.

“It is,” he agrees, “but my position affords me quite a lot of resources.”

“Your position?” I echo, and he glances sideways at me, as if considering if I am worthy of an answer.

“We’ll start with the room of truth,” he says.

“Ironic,” I murmur.

I catch him hiding a smile, though he says nothing as he leads me down a corridor, the plush crimson of the rug beneath my feet giving way like grass that rustles on a breeze.

The door of the room he leads me towards is unadorned with much of anything, and I find it somewhat of a disappointment, though I can see why he took me here first. It has an energy to it that pulls me as much as it repels me. He pauses, his hand on the wood of the door, and a purple-tinted eye manifests from the grains of it, sleepily fluttering open to stare directly at me.

“What do I do?” I ask uncertainly, feeling uncomfortable beneath the eye’s scrutiny.

Prince Noctus places his hand gently on my shoulder, steadying me.

“It’s the room of truth,” he says, as if this is enough to answer the question.

“I have to offer it something?” I guess, glancing over my shoulder at him, and he gives me a somber nod.

“The closer to you, the better,” he says, and I sigh.

I consider it for a moment.

“I sometimes feel I would like to be freer,” I say carefully, and the eye blinks.

I feel Noctus come closer to me, his hand tightening on my shoulder.

“More,” he coaxes at a whisper, and I sigh again.

“My mother has such high hopes for me,” I explain, “and my father has such immovable expectations that I feel sometimes as if I will be crushed by the weight of them both. I feel I’m in a cage. I feel lonely, exhausted, lost. I feel,” I exhale, “that I crave my own freedom so much I will shatter everything around me just to conjure enough space to breathe. I feel capable of destruction, and if I were freer, perhaps I would find it easier to exist.”

When I finish speaking, I feel as if I’ve had the wind knocked out of me; I suppose I should have measured the truth before I gave it, but I haven’t quite gotten my footing here, and the expulsion of it is almost too much. I double over, avoiding the door’s discomfiting eye, and when I straighten again, heaving a couple of panting breaths, I find that there is no longer a barrier to entry. I step forward without waiting for Noctus to follow, though I hear his steady footfall behind me; inside, the room is bare and generally unremarkable, save for a single spindle in the corner.

“Is this all?” I ask dully, wondering if I’ve spilled my secret for nothing.

“Yes and no,” Noctus replies, removing his cloak of stars and draping it on a hook that obediently grows out from the wall before settling himself at the spinning wheel. “This spins threads of fate,” he explains, gesturing to it. “With it, I can spin your truth into a veil of sight.”

“Sight?” I echo curiously, moving towards him as he begins to spin.

“Sight,” he confirms, nodding once. “A glimpse of something you truly desire—but only just a glimpse.”

I wait while he conjures a thread that seems to manifest from nothing, my gaze drifting over the motions of his hands, and then I watch while he lets it float in the air between us, spinning and twisting and drawing from his magic to form a thin, translucent fabric that he plucks delicately from the air, balancing it on his fingertips.

“Try this,” he offers softly, and I close my eyes as he drapes it over my forehead. His fingers brush my temples and I nearly sigh in longing, feeling a shiver of anticipation that courses through me like the wine I drank downstairs as he leans over to speak in my ear.

“Now look,” he beckons, and I feel my eyelids flutter open.

Where the room once stood, I see the bars of a golden cage, and for a moment I panic that he’s trapped me—that in defying my mother’s warning, I’ve sealed my own fate. I notice a door, though, and a latch, and the moment I press my hand to the woven, braided gold, it gives way beneath my fingertips.

“What do you see?” I hear Noctus ask me from somewhere far away, and it startles me, because I see him now, too, clear as day. He stands before me, hand outstretched, and I step towards him, entranced.

“I shouldn’t have come to this castle,” I tell the figment-Noctus who takes my hand, like a child struck with stubborn indignation even as I stumble forward for his touch. “I should have stayed in my bed.”

He laughs, a storm of something I don’t understand yet brewing behind his clever eyes.

“I have a bed,” he tells me softly, his grip tightening around my fingers, and I know I will be the fool who lets him lead me past my mother’s warnings. But I remember that this is only a vision, and so I reach up, tearing the veil from my eyes, to find that the real Noctus faces me with a worried frown.

“Do you not like what you’ve seen?” he asks me, looking surprisingly anxious.

I find within me a softness that wants to comfort him, but hold firm to my better judgment, my sharper edge.

“It isn’t future,” I reply bluntly, “nor truth.”

“And if it is?” he prompts, but I let the veil cascade from my hand to the floor.

“It isn’t,” I say flatly.

His gaze falls slowly to the veil.

“Let’s try something else, then,” he says, clearing disappointment from his throat.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

The Hall of Mirrors

“What is this?” I ask, as he leads me down a corridor lined with reflective glass of different shapes and sizes, each frame more elaborate than the last.

“The hall of mirrors,” he replies, aptly. “Each one will give you a glimpse of your future.”

“Always with the glimpses,” I comment, making a face. He laughs.

“I suppose if you stood here long enough, you could find a mirror that would let you watch it all,” he amends. “But there’s so much else to see, and the night is only so long—”

“Fine,” I sigh, pretending as though I have no curiosities at all. “What’s this one?” I ask, stepping towards a thin, vertical mirror that stands at my height. I can see the length of my body in the glass and I catch his gaze on the curves of my hips, though his expression remains hidden by the mask he still wears.

“The mirror won’t show you anything for free,” he cautions, his eyes dragging up to my face’s reflection. “It will force you to make a choice.”

“What choice?” I ask, and the moment I do, two of the mirrors illuminate. One of them sits within an ebony frame carved from bone; the other in gilded bronze, lined with a polished filigree. I consider the bronze frame, chewing my lip as my gaze travels over the pretty, artful engravings, but I opt for the bone instead, sensing a pull towards it.

“Ambition over romance,” he says. “An interesting choice.”

“Do you see what I see?” I ask him, reaching out for the scene that plays within the mirror’s frame.

“No,” he says. “I wasn’t the one who made the choice.”

“Hm,” I say. “And if I want to see more?”

The light in the bone frame goes out; beside it, two more mirrors pulse with light.

“Choose carefully,” he warns, but I’m immensely tired of warnings. Rather than turn to the mirrors, I turn to him.

“What did you choose?” I ask Noctus, and he blinks, startled by the question, though he conceals it quickly.

“What makes you think I chose anything?” he asks, his voice carefully neutral.

“This is your castle, isn’t it?” I prompt. “Surely you must have tried all the mirrors yourself. Or does it not present you with choices at all,” I amend, “since you are its rightful owner?”

He hesitates.

“Yes, I’ve tried the mirrors,” he says, “and yes, this is my castle.”

My ear catches on the things unsaid.

“But?” I prompt, and his lips unravel to a smirk.

“ But ,” he permits, “I made it with someone else’s help, and not everything is my doing.”

“Then who did you—”

“Don’t you want to see your future?” he interrupts me, gesturing to the mirrors that await my choice, but I can’t be deterred so easily. My mother has always said so, and she is never wrong.

“What did you choose?” I press, and he considers me carefully before answering.

“Does it matter?” he says.

“Yes,” I reply, and then I give him a clever smile of my own.

He sighs.

“I also chose ambition over romance,” he says, “and I chose it over loyalty, too. I chose magic over love, and power over everything.”

I let the words linger; imagine them settling weightily at my feet.

“Was it worth it?” I ask him.

He clears his throat, turning away.

“Maybe we should get some air,” he suggests, his gaze already drifting down the hall.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

The Wishing Fountains

Outside the castle, the grounds are equally ornate. Flowers with velvety-soft petals bloom close to the ground, all in shades of purples and reds so rich they would almost be black if not for a hint of softness, like the inside of a currant. He leads me past a line of flowers that reach out for my ankles, brushing them like a caress, and towards a series of fountains.

“Fountains are for wishing,” he tells me. “Make a wish, and watch it come true.”

“There’s a catch, though,” I presume, and his mouth quirks slightly.

“Yes,” he says, “there is always a catch. Always a price. But for a wish, isn’t any cost worth paying?”

“Depends on the value of the wish,” I suggest.

Beneath his mask, I watch his cheeks shift, accommodating the stretching of his lips.

“Somehow,” he exhales, “I don’t think you’ll err too small.”

I walk towards the closest fountain, finding the others too gaudy, and run my fingers along the lip of the cold stone basin.

“Will it ask me for something?” I ask, and immediately leap back, finding the reflection of the water has changed the moment I’ve spoken. A ripple surfaces from nothing, spreading out in waves, and the glassy reflection of the fountain’s well rises up, a tiny hurricane on tip-toe, to form the shape of a faceless woman who beckons to me with a finger.

“Every wish has a price,” she warns, her voice as harsh and loud as rushing water.

I sigh.

“So I’ve heard,” I reply, and she stares at me.

“Your price is this,” she hisses without warning, darting towards me like a snake, and I leap back in alarm, my back colliding with Noctus’ chest. He grips my arms, holding me steady, and I hold my breath as she faces me with an eyeless, disquieting glare.

“For your wish to come to fruition,” the fountain-nymph says, “another will suffer a curse upon their head. For your happiness, another shall grieve; for your fulfillment, another shall wade in discontent. Do you agree to the terms?”

I pause, considering it.

“Do I know them?” I ask. “The sufferer.”

“Perhaps,” she says. “Perhaps not. That result is not ours to choose. Only an action and reaction. A current, or a tide, must always recede once it reaches the shore.”

I glance up at Noctus. “Did you make a wish?” I ask him, and he bristles.

“What does it matter what I chose?” he asks gruffly, but I can see the question settles irritatingly under his skin, and that he will eventually answer me if I don’t press him too intently.

I shrug, turning away. “It doesn’t,” I say. “I’m just curious.”

He swallows, the pressure of it swelling against the back of my head.

“I accepted the terms,” he admits, as I knew he would, and I hide a smile.

“Then I accept as well,” I tell the fountain-nymph. “Let your justice fall as it may.”

She nods, neither approving nor disapproving.

“And your wish?” she prompts.

I turn to face the prince of night, watching him gleam against the backdrop of the golden castle he set amongst the stars.

“I wish to see your face,” I say, and I can see his eyes widen behind his mask.

“That,” he tells me, “is hardly the proper price for a wish.”

“I know the price,” I tell him. “And I know the value of a thing I wouldn’t otherwise have.”

His eyes narrow slightly. I suspect that beneath the mask, his brow is furrowing.

“Are you certain?” he asks me, but he knows, as I do, that it’s too late. The arms of the fountain’s spirit rise up behind me as if they will crash atop my shoulders and I flinch, holding my breath, but they alight instead on the sides of Noctus’ face, stroking the bones of his cheeks as though to comfort him the loss of his gilded facade.

“Grant it,” I say, as if everything is mine to command, and she—the fountain—obeys, withdrawing the mask from his face. Noctus, shuddering in its absence, brings his hands to his cheeks, touching his fingertips to the crevices of his eyes and obscuring them from view.

“Elsewhere, a young woman sleeps alone,” the fountain tells me. “For your wish, her sweetheart will not make it through the night.”

I wince, but hold my ground.

“I knew the price when I paid it,” I say tartly, and then I reach forward as she retreats, gently taking the prince’s hand from his eyes.

The rest of his face is as handsome as his eyes, as finely crafted as the shape of his mouth, but there is a jagged scar that slices across his nose and down the side of his face, splintering at his cheek. I run my fingers over the fractured white lines, filling the crevices with the warmth of my touch.

“Who did this?” I ask quietly.

“I did,” he replies, and hesitates. “Well, not exactly. The dream lords took it upon themselves to punish me, but the crime that earned it was my doing.”

“Dream lords?” I echo, and he sighs.

“There is a king,” he explains. “A dream king, who commands the lords and their powers. I was a lord once, a long time ago, but I used too much. I used more than the magic I was given, and I was punished for my ego.”

He waits for me to speak, as if he’s waiting for judgment.

I let a few breaths pass.

“So you are a fallen prince, then,” I say eventually, my hand cupping his cheek, and he leans towards me with something like gratitude, his eyes briefly falling shut.

“I’m a prince,” he says, “as I wished to be, and the ruler of an entire domain. Of more than dreams; of waking consciences. It’s not enough, for me, to command a sleeping mind. I wanted to lure something more. To possess something else. To find someone else—”

“A companion,” I guess softly, and he looks surprised, but nods carefully.

“Yes,” he says, after a moment of pause. “A companion.”

“A princess?” I ask whimsically, and the corners of his mouth tilt upwards.

“I suppose,” he permits, “though I have found no one worthy of the title.”

“What happens?” I ask him. “When you find someone unworthy, I mean.”

His dark gaze fixes on my face, on the curve of my lips.

“Better you never find out,” he tells me, and leads me further into the garden.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

The Labyrinth

He leads me towards the labyrinth, the maze that is much as I might have dreamt it, though I know for certain now that this is not a dream. The scar on the night prince’s face proves it; it is an injury caused by magic, and even I can tell. It’s less a mark of injury than a brand of retribution. He has been claimed by the dream lords as an enemy, and I think perhaps that’s why he’s built this castle with its many battlements, fortifying his kingdom even as it floats above the ground.

“And what will I find here?” I ask, reaching out to touch the hedge that forms the first wall of the maze.

“The labyrinth,” he tells me, “will destroy your fears.”

I study him for a moment, wondering what I will have to choose for this; surely the loss of fear is worth more than the granting of a wish, though I’m immensely distracted now. He is more handsome than ever in the dim light of the garden, and the scar does not diminish his beauty; it heightens it. The dream lords who sought to punish added their carvings of pain and now he shines at every angle of the moonlight, refracted like the planes of a many-faceted jewel.

“Why me?” I ask him.

He doesn’t answer right away.

“Perhaps I’m drawn to you,” he says carefully, “though I don’t know why.”

“You must have seen your future many times,” I suggest, thinking of the mirrors, the veil of sight, the fountain of wishes, the magic of dreams that answer so eagerly to him. “Have you seen me before?”

He doesn’t want to tell me the truth, but without the mask, I can see it plainly enough. The more I see of him, though, the less I have mastery of my own defiance, and I find it difficult to look away.

“Will you enter the maze?” he ventures without answering, staring down at my waiting face, and I shrug.

“What will it cost me?” I ask.

“A piece of your soul,” he replies, as if this is nothing.

I tilt my head, hesitating.

“Which piece?” I press, and he laughs.

“Your soul is not a cake or a pie to be sliced apart at will,” he tells me, chuckling. “You can no more choose which part of it leaves than I can piece mine back together.”

This catches my ear; I hear it as a lament, and I follow the trail of remorse to the truth.

“How many times have you been in the maze?” I ask him.

“Only once,” he says, and hesitates before adding, “At one time, only the labyrinth existed.”

I feel my brow furrow. “Not the castle?”

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “The castle was only built as a result of losing my fears. I would be nothing without the maze. Nothing, that is,” he amends with a laugh, “but a soul lacking caution.”

“You betrayed someone, though,” I protest. “Weren’t you fearless enough already?”

“To turn on a king is not bravery,” he corrects me. “To simply suffer insult to one’s pride is no courage at all.”

“Insult to one’s pride?” I echo curiously, but I’m too curious, and he stiffens.

“Yes,” is all he says.

I step closer, hoping for more, but I can see I’ve already made a mistake. He doesn’t meet my eye, and I feel I’ve gone too far.

“And now?” I prompt, holding my breath.

He glances down at me, contemplating something. His gaze travels over my face with a softened look of longing before it’s disrupted, abruptly, by the crispness of his voice.

“And now it’s too late,” he pronounces, “and the night is slipping out from under us.” He gestures me forward, and the moment is long gone. “Will you try?”

I give him a searching glance before nodding.

“I will,” I agree, because it seems like my turn to be agreeable, and immediately the labyrinth shifts beneath my feet, giving way for my entrance.

I walk slowly into the greenery, spotting a set of silver scales. It seems clear enough what to do, so I take my place on one side; on the other side, a mirror-image of myself appears. She, like me, is dressed in her silk nightgown, her eyes wide and hair mussed from sleep, and she turns slowly to stare at me.

The moment her eyes meet mine, I feel a sharp prick in my chest, like a stab from a narrow syringe, and then the scale gives way beneath me; I see the other version of me glance sadly in my direction, hovering above me with sorrow and pity as I land with a grunt of dismay on the softened ground.

“Hello?” I call, the maze suddenly gone from around me as I struggle to sit up. “Prince Noctus?”

He flickers into being beside me.

“You summoned?” he asks wryly, and I think perhaps he’s not real. He seems different, as though I’m looking at a reflection of him rather than at the man himself.

I stand carefully, dusting myself off, and turn to face him.

“Why are you here?” I ask bluntly, and he shrugs.

“It seems you fear me,” he replies, and I remember that this is the purpose of the maze.

“I don’t,” I lie.

“Maybe it’s something else, then,” he suggests. “Something I represent? Risk, perhaps, or even—” He hesitates. “Love?”

“That’s thinking quite a lot of yourself,” I mutter under my breath. He gives a hearty, affectionate laugh before sobering, the humor in his voice settling shakily to something molten; something darker, more sincere.

“I’ve seen you in my future,” he confesses, his eyes changing in the light. “I’ve already given you my heart.”

“Have you?” I ask, skeptical, and he takes my hand, brushing his lips against it.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he tells me. “And now, at last, perhaps you’ll be able to let me in.”

For a moment, I consider the tempting promise of his offer.

I consider the words my mother taught me, too; that nothing beautiful is ever as it seems. Not even a beautiful promise, or a set of beautiful words.

“What have I lost?” I ask him. “In my soul, I mean.”

He glances down at me.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I can’t possibly know that,” he reminds me, but I can’t help but wonder what’s been severed from me.

“What if what I lost,” I begin to say, “makes me something less than what I was?”

“What if what you’ve gained,” he counters, “makes you something more?”

I sway towards him on the wind, as much in his grasp as the magic that floats through the night’s winter air, and I shiver, suddenly noticing the chill that surrounds us.

“Take me inside,” I suggest, “to somewhere I can know you.”

For a moment, he hesitates.

“I’m already inside,” he says, proving that I was right, and this was only ever his reflection. “This was my last chance, and I am waiting—none too patiently, I’m afraid—for your return.”

He hoped I would be braver, less careful.

I hoped he would be wrong, but I can’t stay away much longer. I can feel curiosity tugging at my wayward tongue, yearning melting in my knees.

“I want to be with you,” I confess, and then he disappears, and the maze along with him, and beyond the walls of the labyrinth is the pulsing glow of the castle as it calls me along a rose-lined path, the petals withering to ash as I walk.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

The Prince’s Chambers

I take my time making my way to him; perhaps my fear is gone, but my curiosity stays with me. I walk past the ballroom filled with earthly delights and through the corridor lined with jewels, with vices and virtues, plucking them from the walls and replacing them to see how they feel in my hands. Guilt feels fine and light, joy feels heavy and frantic, patience pulses comfortingly as though taking cues from my own heart. I have no trouble lifting honor, and duty, too, slips onto my finger like a braided ring, but pleasure burns my hand when I try to cuff it around my wrist. I reach back with a hiss, pressing my thumb to the red welt that’s already shouting its displeasure, but as I return it to its rightful place, a set of double doors opens up ahead.

I know the moment I see the doors—I can tell without looking at the scripted letter N that’s carved in the hearts of them, though they’re difficult to miss—that these are the prince’s private chambers, and I know it’s where he’s most comfortable. Where he’s most vulnerable. Where he’s most lonely, and therefore most alone. I remember that my evening started in my own bedroom and I wonder what it will be like to end in his, though the question flees my mind as I enter.

From the moment I stand in the doorway, there is only him.

He’s without his cloak and mask now, and so he’s just a man, though I can feel the magic pulsing from him that matches the walls, the floors, the heartbeat of this castle that I can tell instinctively belongs to him. This is his creation, his project, his pet. This is what he built with his betrayal, and what I’m sure he will die to protect.

He turns towards me as I walk; he’s alerted to my presence by the weight of my footfall on his castle floors, feeling it as surely as if I’ve wandered through his veins. He knows where I’ve been within the walls of his castle, and he knows what I’ve done. He doesn’t know what I’ve seen, though, and for all that he thinks he knows me, he doesn’t know who I am.

He doesn’t know what he’s let inside his doors.

“How do you feel?” he asks me, almost fearfully, as if he worries his efforts haven’t been enough.

“Fearless,” I say, stepping towards him.

He lets out a breath he’s held captive.

“Do you understand,” he asks slowly, “why I brought you here? You have to choose me,” he says, almost desperately. “You have to choose me, or you can’t possibly stay.”

I hesitate. I’m fearless, yes, but I’m not stupid, and my mother’s warning echoes in my head.

“Tell me more, first,” I beckon, daring to come closer. “Tell me about the king of dreams.”

His smile darkens, but he takes me in his arms.

“The king of dreams has a court of lords who do his bidding,” he says, his hands hovering blissfully above my waist. “He has a queen, too.”

“A queen of dreams?” I ask, and he shakes his head.

“A queen of destiny,” he says. “If you ask me, she has the worse end of the deal. She gives dreams meaning,” he explains, his fingers floating up my spine. “ He only gives fate a flimsy shape.”

“You don’t like him,” I note. “The king.”

“I didn’t enjoy being one of his lords,” he agrees. “I was the youngest, the least trusted. The least powerful, or so he assumed. I proved otherwise.”

“You used his magic to make this castle,” I note. “And what do you do with it now that you have it?”

He gives a bitter laugh, as if the words spilling from his lips are poison.

“I tempt the waking,” he says, grimacing. “I lure the sleepless.”

I tilt my chin up, my lips curving into a smile.

“You’re a siren,” I say, and he leans down to stroke my cheek, letting out a sigh.

“The castle is a function of choices. Of free will,” he clarifies. “I needed someone to choose to make the mirrors. To see you.” I lean into him, letting him brush his lips over my brow. “I needed the fountains, too, to find you.”

“All of this,” I murmur. “All of this was for me?”

“Can’t you feel it?” he whispers, his lips close to mine now. “Can’t you tell?”

I press my palms to his chest, feeling his intake of breath beneath them.

“What happens to them,” I ask again, “if those you lure are unworthy?”

He turns away, his eyes falling shut.

“They never leave,” he says, and I think of the eye at the door of truth, the fountain-nymph, the haunting music that played from nothing.

He is a beautiful, dangerous thing.

“The dream lords,” I say carefully, drawing my fingers along the hollow of his throat. “Don’t they carry some sort of emblem?”

He takes my fingers, slowly guiding them to the buttons of his shirt. I hold my breath, peeling them away, one by torturous one, until my hand alights on a tiny hourglass that hangs around his neck, with iridescent, shimmering swells of sand contained within it.

“All our magic,” he explains, “comes from this, born of the dream king’s power. So long as this exists, so will I. So will everything I create.”

My fingers close around it, and in a flash I see again my vision from the mirror of ambition; I see the sand engulfed in flames, and I see my bare feet as I float back to my bedroom, leaving rubble and destruction in my wake.

The chain breaks easily in my hand the moment his lips meet mine, and in the pressure of his kiss he doesn’t notice how deftly I pull the hourglass from around his neck, nor does he sense the hazy catch in my lungs as I take the source of his magic in my hands. Maybe he’s distracted by the feel of it; after all, even I am not immune to the way fate circles around and meets us where we stand, latching on as my breath nearly escapes me, nearly flees the grasp of my decision.

But I do not forget my mother’s warning; beware the lure of a handsome stranger, my darling, she has said so many times, for nothing beautiful is ever as it seems.

He knows I have the hourglass the moment I push him away, breaking the kiss with a gasp of finality. I see his eyes widen as he processes that I hold it, and I see the flames flicker behind me from the hearth in the fear that floods his gaze.

“I know now,” I tell him hoarsely. “I know which part of my soul your castle took from me.”

He swallows, unable to look away from what I now hold in my hand.

“When I first saw you, I thought this would be much harder,” I admit. “I was burdened by the control of my mother and father, I was weakened by my conscience, I was tempted by the sight of you—but all of that’s been stripped from me. My soul is unencumbered now, and now I am fearless, and so you’ve miscalculated your wish.”

He stares at me.

“Who are you?” he asks, aghast, but still—even in his horror—he reaches out for me.

Still he longs for me, and I for him, though my purpose is much greater.

“I am the daughter of the king of dreams and the queen of destiny,” I tell him, though I know, at last, that I am so much more than this. “I am a storm,” I say, “and I am a flood. I am a force, a crash, a reckoning. I am the sum of all who came before me; I am the master of my fate.

“I am Nightmare,” I tell him; revealing, at last, that I am a princess in my own right, “and I was born to burn your kingdom down.”

⟻ ❈ ⟼

The Past

There is always a cost , my mother told me, brushing her fingers through my silken hair. He will come for you; you will always find each other. But remember, my darling, that there is always a cost, and all you can do is pay it.

What will I do? I asked her, and she told me how to find my father’s magic, how to take back what is rightfully ours.

What if I give in? I asked her, and she warned me not to falter, not to lose sight of what has so long been foreseen.

Why must I do this? I asked her, and she reminded me it was my birthright; that she had seen it on the night that I was born, and had known it as my fate since I was a child in her arms.

I am the daughter of the king of dreams and the queen of destiny.

I was born as much for love as I was made for destruction, and now, at last, I understand.

There is always a cost , my mother told me sadly, for nothing beautiful is ever as it seems.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

The Future

It’s difficult not to remember my prince’s face as I destroyed his life’s work, letting the sands of magic that belong rightfully to my father—and thus, to me—coat the flames that swallowed a lifetime’s worth of plans. There was a cost, my love for him, and I paid it; in return, my father stands uncontested, unopposed, and rules his realms again.

But not for long.

Outside my window there is a castle, floating, with five illuminated towers, each forming the apex of a five-pointed star. Each of the towers shimmers with gold, irradiant in waves, and there is a pulsing, gentle warmth from within the castle’s battlements that beckons to me, coaxing me forth like the crook of a finger. The castle hovers as if manifested from nothing; a thick, entrancing fog spreads out from its base in eerie, alluring tendrils.

The draw of it is tempting; I reach a hand out, my fingers drifting helplessly towards it.

I remember my mother’s warning; you will always find each other.

I see now that it was a blessing as much as it was a curse.

I couldn’t let him go; not fully. I wear the precious few remaining sands around my neck—the ones I couldn’t burn—to remind me of what I’ve paid, and what I must always pay for the keeping of my heart. I am the daughter of the king of dreams and the queen of destiny, but my mother and I have always known it was my fate to live with a conscience torn.

So long as any dream remains, a magic prince can always be reborn.

“What have you brought for me, my love?” I ask the wind, knowing that the castle he has built for me will stand in ash before the night is through, but at least we’ll have this night together. On these nights, elsewhere, children sleep soundly, and tired minds will find rest.

On nights like tonight, Nightmare is with her prince.

At the sound of my voice, Noctus materializes beside me with a smile, the scars of his betrayal refracting the light from the castle’s golden walls as he reaches out, touching the hourglass I wear around my neck.

“Oh, a number of things,” he says. “The hall of mirrors will show you your future. The courtyard of fountains will grant your wishes. The labyrinth will destroy your fears. The dining hall is just a dining hall,” he admits, waving a hand, “but it serves the best food you’ve ever tasted. Flavors that haven’t been invented. Feelings that can never be reproduced. In fact, a sip of the castle’s wine,” he murmurs, taking a step towards me, “will make you feel as warm inside as love itself, or thrill you as fully as desire.”

“And what if I simply want a good night’s sleep?” I ask him, making my usual mistake of staring defiantly up at him.

He smiles.

He is more than handsome.

He is a dangerous, beautiful thing.

“I have a bed,” he whispers to me, and at least we have this, I think with satisfaction.

Sensual tales, for carnal pleasures.

EXCLUSIVE PREVIEW: MASTERS of DEATH

⟻ ❈ ⟼

I: TALES OF OLD

Hello, children. It’s time for Death.

Oh, you didn’t think I spoke? I do. I’m fantastically verbose, and transcendently literate, and quite frankly, I’m disappointed you would think otherwise. I’ve seen all the greats, you know, and learned from them—taken bits and pieces here and there—and everything that humanity has known, I have known, too. In fact, I’m responsible for most of history’s adoration; nothing defines a career quite like an untimely visit from me. You’d think I’d be more widely beloved for my part in humanity’s reverence, but again, you’d be mistaken.

I’m rather an unpopular party guest.

Reputation aside, though, I have to confess that humanity’s fixation with me is astonishing. Flattering, to be sure, but alarming, and relentless, and generally diabolical, and were it not to manifest so often in spectacular failure I would make more of an effort to combat it; but as it is, people spend the duration of their time on earth trying to skirt me, and end up chasing me instead.

The funny thing is how simple it all actually is. Do you know what it really takes to make someone immortal? Rid them of fear. If they no longer fear pain, they no longer fear death. Before long, they fear nothing, and in their minds they live eternal—but I’m told my philosophizing does little to ease the mind.

Not many who meet me are given the privilege to tell about it. There are some , of course, yourself included, though this is an anomaly. In general, as you may have heard it, there are two things a person can be: human (and thus, susceptible to the pitfalls of my profession), or deity (and thus entirely a thorn in my side).

This is, however, not entirely accurate, as there are actually three things a person can be, as far as I’m concerned.

There are those I can take (the mortals);

Those I can’t take (the immortals);

And those who cheat (everyone else).

Now. Let me explain.

The job is fairly straightforward. In essence, I’m like a bike messenger without a bicycle. There’s a time and a place for pick-up and delivery, but the route I take to get there is up to me. I suppose I could employ a bicycle if I wanted (and I certainly have in the past), but let’s not dip our toes into the swampy details of my variants of execution quite yet, shall we?

First of all, it is important to grasp that there is such a thing as to be dead, but not alive; an in-between. Requisite terminology takes countless incarnations, all of which vary as widely from culture to culture as do colors of eyes and hair and skin, but the term ‘ un- dead’ seems to serve as an acceptable catch-all. These are the cheaters, the ones with shoddy timing, who cling to life so ferociously that I (in the midst of some sliver of an initial flaw that has now widened to a gaping, untenable chasm of supernatural mutation) can do little but commune with them. I exist beside them, but I can neither aid nor destroy them.

In truth, I find they often destroy themselves; but that story, like many other stories, is only partially the story at hand.

Before you say anything, I should be certain we’re both clear that this is not a vanity project. Are we in agreement? This is not my story. This is a story, and a worthy one, but it doesn’t belong to me.

For one thing, you should know that this all starts with another story entirely, and one that people tell about me. It’s stupid (and frankly quite libelous), but it’s important; so here it is, with as little irony as I can manage.

Once upon a time, there was a couple in poor health, cursed by poverty, who were fool enough to have a child. Now, knowing that neither husband nor wife had much time on earth left to spare, the husband took the baby from his ailing wife’s arms and began to travel the nearby path through the woods, searching for someone who might care for his child.

A boy, by the way; and a total snot of one, too, but we’ll get to that later.

After walking several miles, the man encountered an angel. He thought at first to ask her to care for his child, but upon remembering that she, as a messenger of God, condoned the poverty from which the poor man and his wife had been stricken, he ultimately declined.

Then he encountered a reaper, a foot soldier of Lucifer, and considered it again, but found himself discouraged by the knowledge that the devil might lead his son astray.

(Which he totally would , by the way, and he’d have laughed doing it. Frankly, I could go on at length about God, too, but I won’t, as it’s quite rude to gossip.)

(Where was I?)

(Ah, yes.)

( Me .)

So then the man found me, or so they say. That’s actually not even remotely what happened, and it also makes it sound like I have the sort of freedom with which to wander about being found, which I don’t appreciate. In reality, the situation was this: the man was dying, and then of course there I was, unexpectedly burdened with a baby. They say the man asked me to be the child’s godfather; more accurately, though, he gargled some incoherent nonsense (dehydration, it’s murder on the vocal cords) and then before I knew it I was holding a baby, and when I went to take it home the mother had died, too.

(Okay, again, I was there to take her, but let’s not get caught up in semantics.)

This is the story that mortals tell about a man who was the godson of Death; whom they say eventually learned my secrets and came to control me. They say he still walks the earth today, eternally youthful, and keeps his Godfather Death close at his side. They even say he possesses a golden lasso, the length of it tied around my neck with which to prevent Death (again, me), cunningly and valiantly, from taking ownership of his soul.

Which is so very rude, and I’m still deeply unhappy with Fox for not putting a stop to it, but as fond as I am of him, he’s rather a stubborn little prick, so I suppose I’ll just have all of eternity to deal with it.

And anyway, this is my point , isn’t it? This isn’t my story—not at all, really.

It’s Fox’s story. I just happen to be the one who raised him.

Why did I name him Fox? Well, I’m slightly out of touch with popular culture, but I’ve always liked a good fairytale, and I wanted him to be clever. Foxes are clever, after all, and he had the tiniest nose; and so he was Fox, and he was just as clever as I’d hoped, though not nearly as industrious as I’d have liked. He’s spent the last two hundred years or so doing . . . well, again, that’s not my story, so I’ll not go into detail, but suffice it to say Fox is a tricky little imp, and one whom I would not recommend as a friend, or a counselor, or a lover, or basically anything of consequence unless you wish to rob a bank, or commit a heist.

I love him, but he’s a right little shit, and unfortunately, this is the story of how he bested me.

The real story.

Unfortunately.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

II: COMMUNION

The sign outside the little rented space on Damen Avenue reads, simply, “Medium.” The building is old, but the street is trustworthy and near the Blue Line stop, meaning that though this is admittedly the ‘odd’ part of town it’s safe enough to travel freely, and finicky mothers mostly worry about imaginary dangers, like tattoos and the ghosts of old Ukrainians. The street is populated with taco stands and trendy doughnuts (yes, doughnuts ) and thrift shops, all which contain old eighties fringe and leather boots; and then, scarcely noticeable amidst the others, there is a building above one such shop. If you took the time to look up at its peeling black-framed windows, you would see the sign.

“Medium.”

The label on the building’s buzzer system is peeling slightly from use but the intercom works well enough, and were you to buzz the unit marked D’Mora you would likely hear his voice, oddly soothing, as it stretches through the air between you.

“Hello?” he’d say. “This is Fox.”

“Hello,” you’d reply, or perhaps “good afternoon,” were you in a mood to be both friendly and cognizant of Time’s relentless clutches; and then you’d pause, as many do.

“I’m looking to commune with the dead,” you would eventually confess.

And you wouldn’t see it, but upstairs, Fox D’Mora would smile a rather cutting smile, and he would adjust the tarnished silver signet ring on his right pinky, coughing delicately.

“Excellent,” he’d say over the intercom, and then he’d promptly buzz you up.

Fox D’Mora isn’t the only medium in Bucktown, and certainly not in all of Chicago, but he is the best one, largely because he is a master of disguise. You, nervous as you are, might enter the unit from which he provides his services and expect to see dusty curtains, flickering tapered candles, perhaps a glowing crystal ball; but Fox has none of those things, and you would feel something you would eventually come to realize is relief .

What Fox does have, surprisingly enough, is a state-of-the-art kitchen, and cold brew on tap, and he would offer you a glass before leading you to a seat in his living room, whereupon he would gracefully place himself across from you, peering at you through unreadable hazel eyes.

“Okay,” Fox would begin. “Who is it?”

If you had doubts before coming here, they would likely have dissipated by now. For one thing, Fox is generally well-dressed, though not so well-dressed as to arouse suspicion. His hands, in particular—expressive, and in constant motion—are welcoming, the nails trimmed and clean, and his watch is old and slightly battered but it has a rather nice leather band, and looks like it might have been worth something, once. You might consider it an heirloom.

Continuing your perusal of the man before you—this man, with such an odd name, and such an incongruous image, who would so easily bridge worlds—you would notice that Fox himself, tall and lean but not too tall, nor too lean, sports a recently-trimmed head of dark hair shorn fashionably close to his head, and that in general, he is given to smiling.

He’s a man who smiles, and this would relax you.

When he asks whom you’ve come to see, you might say your grandmother or your father, or perhaps you are even less fortunate and have lost someone close to you too young, like your husband or your child. Fox, hearing this, would sympathize. He would sympathize with a softened look in his hazel eyes, a slight curving of his mouth, and you would feel that he understands you.

And he does, really. Fox has lost many people in his life, and has felt the sting of them sharply enough; and anyway, perhaps it wouldn’t matter to you in the moment that Fox D’Mora has not grown close to another human being in the last two hundred years, because whoever he is, and whomever his loyalty belongs to, he sympathizes with your loss.

More importantly, he is present, and he is here to help.

“Let me call him,” Fox says—or her , or whoever you have requested; and then his eyes close, and his hand slips to the ring on his right pinky finger.

“Now,” he whispers. “What would you like to say?”

The words, once buried in your soul, dance temptingly on your tongue.

You lean forward.

This is communion.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

“Well,” Death coughed obnoxiously, materializing with an inaudible pop to stand beside Fox’s chair. “I see it’s more of the same.”

“Hush,” Fox sighed under his breath, cracking one eye. “Do you see him?”

“Yes, yes,” Death muttered, tutting softly, and then turned, eyeing the supplicant. “This is her husband?”

“Fiancé,” Fox corrected. “He passed before they could be wed.”

“How fucking convenient,” Death remarked, and Fox arched a brow.

“Papa,” he warned, arching a brow at his Godfather, and Death lifted a hand, dutifully snapping the rubber band against it.

“I still don’t see why this is necessary,” he growled under his breath. “What does it matter whether I lose my temper from time to time?”

“Bad for your health,” Fox reminded him, winking, and Death rolled his eyes.

“You’re incorrigible,” Death admonished fondly, and then turned, looking again at the woman who sat curled in around herself, waiting for Fox to have called upon her Bradley. “What does she want to know?”

Fox cleared his throat, leaning forward.

“Eva,” he murmured, and she looked up as he offered her his hands, delicately placing hers in his. “What would you like to tell Brad?”

“Bradley,” Death corrected, yawning. “He’s one of those .”

“Bradley,” Fox dutifully amended, kicking himself as he met Eva’s gaze. “Apologies. I know he dislikes the diminutive.”

Eva’s green eyes widened. “He does,” she whispered, and blinked, moisture drawing to the corners of her eyes. “You can see him?”

“I can,” Fox confirmed with a nod. “What would you like to say?”

She bit her lip, considering it.

“Tell him,” she murmured, and swallowed. “Tell him that I love him, and I miss him, and that I hope everything is going well—”

“It isn’t,” Death cut in sharply, looking sour. “Bradley committed several different kinds of tax fraud and he’s currently floating around in Styx. Oh,” he added flippantly, “and he cheated on her twice; though, in fairness, he was torn up about it, though not torn enough to pull out—”

“He misses you too,” Fox assured Eva, running his thumb comfortingly across her knuckles as she bowed her head, fighting tears. “He wishes you all of the sweetness life has to offer—”

“Nope, wrong,” Death said. “He’s one of those , remember?”

“—not in those words, of course,” Fox amended hastily, nodding as she looked up, a crease of confusion between her manicured brows. “But Bradley never did find the words to tell you how much he loved you, and he’s asked me to give you the poetry he always thought you deserved.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Death muttered, as Eva’s full lips parted in earnest.

“What else does he say?” Eva asked, sniffling slightly.

“Nothing,” Death supplied flatly. “He says ‘Eva who’?”

“He says,” Fox began, leaning towards her, “that you were the only woman who ever understood him. Who could read him with a look, and who could fill him with joy in the same breath, and who made him someone of consequence; of worth,” he murmured, squeezing lightly against her hands. “He says that he would look into your eyes and know the value of his own soul, and that he is grateful to you for that; and he tells me that because you were in his life in his final moments, he can rest eternally in peace, knowing that you will go on to be happy.”

Eva’s gaze softened, her pupils dilating slightly.

“Happy?” she echoed, her breath suspended.

“Happy,” Fox repeated firmly. “And he says that he knows you will go on to make someone else as happy as he was with you, and that although it’s now time for him to move on and find rest, he wishes you all the blessings of heaven and earth.”

“Oh,” Eva whispered, letting out a breath, and beside Fox, Death announced, “Oh, FUCK. ”

“Hush,” Fox muttered out of the side of his mouth, his gaze flicking admonishingly to where his godfather stood. “That’s a rubber band for sure, Papa.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Death said, snapping it indignantly. “You’re going to sleep with her, aren’t you?”

Fox smirked, ignoring him, and turned Eva’s hands over, delicately drawing his fingers over the creases in her palm. “You know, you have such a beautiful heart line,” he told her, lightly tracing it as it ran across the top of her palm and danced off, disappearing between her fingers. “There’s so much love you have yet to give, Eva.”

“You think?” she asked him, and he smiled.

“I know,” he said softly, and she gazed at him with wonder.

“Do you think I was meant to find you?” she whispered. “That you were meant to be the one who helped me say goodbye to Bradley?”

“I genuinely hope,” Death sniffed, “that she gives you a terrible Yelp review.”

“I believe Bradley guided you to me,” Fox agreed, and Death let out a groan.

“I’m leaving,” he said flatly, crossing his arms over his chest. “Wear a condom, you twat.”

“Band,” Fox muttered to him, and Death scowled, viciously, before giving Fox the finger, promptly disappearing into time and space. “Bradley’s gone now,” Fox said comfortingly to Eva, with a rehearsed look of regret. “He’s passed into the next stage of existence, but he’s happy, and y-”

He broke off as Eva leaned forward, catching his lips with hers.

“Eva,” he gasped, feigning breathless astonishment. “I mean—Miss—”

“Fox,” she whimpered into his mouth, half-clambering over the coffee table between them and settling herself on his lap. “This,” she murmured, speaking between kisses as she slid his top buttons undone, slipping her hands under his shirt, “this, us—this has to mean something, and—”

“I’m”—he paused, glancing down as she ripped the remainder of his shirt from his torso—“sure it does, sweetheart,” he continued, “but still, you’re vulnerable, and you’ve suffered a great loss, and perhaps we shouldn’t—”

“We should ,” she moaned, grinding her hips against his and tossing her head back, breathless, as he brought a carefully concealed smile to the space between her breasts, kissing the bit of skin that lay beneath the parted neckline of her blouse. “Bradley, he—he would have wanted me to—”

There was a soft pop.

“I forgot to mention,” Death announced, and then promptly covered his eyes, making a face. “Oh, Fox. Fox .”

“What?” Fox muttered impatiently, glaring at him as Eva shoved his hands under her skirt. “I’m busy, you know,” he said, gesturing to the grieving woman in his lap, and Death rolled his eyes.

“You know what? Never mind,” Death told him smugly. “I’m sure you’ll find out soon enough.”

“Find out what?” Fox asked, and then grunted incoherently as Eva’s fingers made their way to the clasp of his trousers. “Fuck, just—” he groaned. “Tell me later, would you?”

“Band,” Death instructed with a smirk, and then disappeared, leaving Eva to slide between Fox’s legs, positioning herself between Fox’s parted knees.

“May I?” she asked, slipping her hand under the lip of his boxers.

Fox leaned back, inhaling sharply.

“One second,” he whispered, shifting his arms to snap the rubber band against his left wrist before reaching down, burying his fingers in her hair. “Okay,” he permitted, fighting a smile, “ now you may.”

Then Eva What’s-Her-Name’s luxuriant heart line—and the rest of her palm—closed beatifically around him, and Fox closed his eyes, reminding himself to give her a ten percent discount for his services.

⟻ ❈ ⟼

MASTERS of DEATH
will be available January 2018.

A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My immense thanks and unending love to Aurora, Cara, Chmura, Cynthia, David, Garrett, Melina, and Sally, all of whom permit (nay, encourage—fools!) my madness, and thus, can be safely blamed for this project.

Special thanks to Aurora for the cover design and photography (you are the only person I would have trusted with my creepy tree vision), and to Little Chmura for the stunning story illustrations, all of which are perfection. I owe you both my heart and limitless gratitude and potentially one million dollars each, but unfortunately all I have to offer are these murder stories. Hope it was worth it!

I will close with a few notes about the collection, which I sincerely hope you’ve enjoyed reading at least half as much as I enjoyed dreaming it up. As always, it has been an honor to put these words down for you, and I sincerely hope you enjoyed the stories.

xx Olivie

⟻ ❈ ⟼

PINS and NEEDLES

Chronologically, this is the second story that I wrote (before I had any plans for a collection) but I had to put it first. It remains one of my very favorite stories, and I don’t think I could replicate the sort of trance-state I wrote it in if I were to try for a hundred years. I actually attempted for ages to explain to people before I wrote it what I wanted it to be about (“you know, VENGEANCE, and a voodoo doll, but a love story!”) and nobody had any idea what I was talking about. They still might not. It’s all up for debate.

the ANIMATION GAMES

I may never be able to explain this story. Please, as a personal favor to me, nobody present it at my inevitable criminal trial. The basis of it was essentially “wouldn’t it suck if you had to haunt the same house as someone you hated?” and rapidly spiraled from there into “LOVE IS A MURDER COMPETITION!”

FATES and CONSEQUENCES

This is the earliest written story in the collection, completed in approximately March of this year. It’s the result of me contemplating (in therapy, where I do quite a lot of contemplating) how unfortunate it would be if something went wrong with your fate. But then, of course, I subsequently had to wonder if it’s even possible to be mistaken about something as ideologically infallible as one’s fate . . . and here we have the resulting philosophical study, give or take a few cunnilingus references.

SENSUAL TALES for CARNAL PLEASURES

When I described the plot of this story (the only one I wrote specifically for this collection) to my mother, she said, and I quote: “Wow, that actually sounds like a good story!” Her skepticism aside, I agreed with her. The title of it is completely a joke, and was also determined before I actually wrote the story; I thought it would be funny to name something that, and then I couldn’t let go of it. (This is my life. I devote myself to puns, and alternately, to absurd story titles. It’s fine. I’m fine.)

In any case, I am now in love with Nightmare, and hope one day to meet her.

(Though I hope she doesn’t burn my house down.)

MASTERS of DEATH

This is my oft-mentioned, previously never-revealed novel which will be released quite ( QUITE!! she says, with palpable distress) soon, and which features: Death and his recalcitrant godson, a suave Norse demigod, a pair of ill-mannered archangels, a delusional vampire, an irritable ghost, a pizza-enthused demon, and a supernatural serial killer, to name a few. The story takes place entirely in modern Chicago (except for the parts that take place at an immortal poker game, or beneath the tree of life, or otherwise in nineteenth century Frankfurt) and is one of my very favorite stories to date. Should a snotty cast of celestial loons be even remotely your thing, then I hope that you will enjoy this story, too.

Table of Contents

- Fairytales of the Macabre
- and have no plans to murder.
- Table of Contents
- Pins and Needles
- Sensual Tales for Carnal Pleasures
- Exclusive Preview: Masters of Death
- Author’s Notes and Acknowledgements