Page 16 of Mischief Maker

Chapter Thirteen

Faela

“ F aela!”

I wake up with a start at the sound of Kireth’s screams. I drag myself out of bed, the wine pounding in my head, and run to the window. Whatever is happening out there, he’s terrified. Worry creeps into my foggy mind.

Regardless of anything else, if he’s in trouble, I have to help him.

Outside the window stands a great woman, pale and tall, wearing a white gown that reflects the moonlight so brightly she looks like pure silver.

Lucia. The goddess of the earth.

I rush down the stairs and out the front door as fast as my legs will move. Lucia stands in front of the barn, her hands raised to the sky. There is a hole in the ground in front of her, crawling with green vines.

“Kireth?” I call out. He doesn’t answer. That can’t be a good thing. “Where are you?”

“He’s gone,” the goddess says. She turns to me and lowers her arms, a gentle smile on her face that belies something much meaner. “Isn’t that what you wanted, mortal?”

My head swims. Gone? He can’t be gone. I was angry, yes—so angry, and heartbroken, and vengeful—but I didn’t want him to leave.

“He left me?” I stumble forward. “He couldn’t have.”

“It was not by choice,” Lucia says with a feminine giggle. “But he broke his rules, the promise of his existence, to stay with you longer. And so, he has been punished.”

It is a bolt of lightning directly to my heart.

“No. You didn’t.” It can’t be. I turn accusing eyes on her. “Why did you take him?”

She has a haughty look on her face. “It was past time.”

“But he had tasks left to complete. He wasn’t finished here!”

Lucia lets out a bored sigh. “He was finished. He had been, for a long time.” She peers down at me, and she’s tall, too tall. Unnaturally tall.

My stomach lurches. I knew he had stopped telling me when I used up one of my tasks. Despite that, were they still ticking away?

“And so this was his punishment?” I reach into the vines, searching for him, ripping off leaves and small branches trying to get him back out. The thorns bite into my flesh, but still I yank and pull.

“Stop, mortal.” Lucia’s voice is commanding, final. “He is not there. Not anymore.”

I get up and stagger over to her. I don’t care how tall she is, because I am angry.

“Then where is he?” I ask, my voice growing higher and louder. “Where is Kireth?”

“What do you care?” Lucia scoffs. “You were finished with him anyway.”

Was I? Oh, he had hurt me. He had cut me as deep as one possibly could with his foolishness, his mischievous mistakes.

But I don’t know if I can ever truly be finished with the creature who hopped away like a puppy to do his chores, who took me so sweetly every night, and loved me so thoroughly.

His devious little nature had carried a heavy price, but was it his fault that he had fallen in love with me, and I with him—and that’s what made me the perfect target?

He couldn’t have known, it’s true. He said it, but I didn’t want to believe it, because I needed someone to blame for Mother’s death.

“No. I wasn’t finished. I’ll never be finished.” I grab a fistful of the goddess’s dress in my hands, gripping it tightly, and she blinks down at me in surprise. “Where did you take him?”

“So rude when faced with a god,” she says, shoving me away. “Perhaps the two of you are more alike than I thought.”

I can’t lose Kireth. Not now, after losing Mother. I need him here.

“Take me to him!” I demand.

The goddess tilts her head. “So angry. If you wanted him that much, you should have just said so.” She wags a finger in my face. “But it’s not so easy as just going to him. He is in the realm of forgotten gods now. Oblivion.”

“Then bring him back!” I brush away stinging, angry tears. “I know you can!”

“I cannot. That place is beyond even my reach, unless I want to find myself banished there, too.” But then Lucia pauses and taps her chin. “Perhaps you could retrieve him, though. Mortals are not so afflicted.”

A spark of hope bursts in me. “How?”

I will do it. I need him here, with me, because I love him. Faced with his absence in my life forever, I know the truth. Whatever sins he’s committed in the past, I’ll do anything to bring him back.

“You will have to die.” The goddess smiles sweetly. “Then you could pass through the barrier to the world beyond.”

That spark of hope sizzles into nothing. Dying? That’s the only way to see him again? But I cannot fathom it, not after watching Mother fade away. I can’t go to that dark place and leave the farm behind. And what would be the point if we can never live our lives together?

“It’s not permanent,” Lucia says, watching my face with a smug smile.

Could I possibly trust another god? It might be a trap, and I’d simply die and remain that way.

“How do I know?” I ask, my eyebrows knitting in suspicion. “How do I know I’ll come back to life?”

She shrugs. “I suppose that you don’t. But I promise that if you succeed, if you can surmount the obstacles you’ll face in reaching him, you will return to the world of the living.”

Obstacles? I wonder what trials Lucia has planned for me on the other side.

“Time is ticking,” she says, tapping the air. “Will you take my offer or not?”

Do I have a choice? Kireth saved my farm—he saved me . Now I have to save him.

“Fine,” I say, holding out my hand. “Show me how to get there.”

My last thought as I take the goddess’s hand is that I hope Petal and Rye will be all right if I don’t come back.

The moment my palm wraps around hers, a terrible pain shoots through me, straight down the middle as if it’s trying to split me in half. I shriek and fall to the ground in agony.

“Dying is an ugly business,” Lucia says, watching me with pity. “I suppose I should have warned you.”

The stars overhead swim, blending with the moon in a swirl of bright light. My body crumples, and everything goes dark.

Kireth

When the doors open for me, I’m greeted by laughing voices and bright light. This yawning ceiling, these great marble walls, are all familiar to me. Walking in is like putting on an old coat.

They are all here. My old friends, my fellow long-gone immortals. They drink wine, and play merry card games, and fornicate in the corners—or in some cases, in large groups on one of the big beds above the mezzanine.

I am back home, in the hall of the gods.

But why?

“Kireth!” Anoinda rushes down the steps, naked. It’s clearly just reached her ears that I’ve arrived. She throws her arms around me. “Ah, you mischievous little imp. I have been wondering when you might show up.” She teases her hands down my chest to the tie of my loincloth.

My mind feels hazy, like everything is coated in a layer of cobwebs. But why am I here, now, in the home of the immortals? I haven’t been here for many centuries, and...

The cobwebs get thicker, more impassable. I can’t remember what came before this, where I was. I’ve clearly just gotten here, but where did I arrive from?

Anoinda’s hands deftly remove my one article of clothing, and then they traverse down my waist. “Ooh, it is good to see you again!” she says to my cock. It doesn’t even seem to notice her. My mind is somewhere else.

With someone else.

But who? I groan and rub the side of my head, snatching the loincloth back.

“I’m not in the mood,” I hiss, and walk to a corner far from the fountain in the center of the mezzanine. Anoinda huffs with annoyance and trots back to whatever rat king of fucking she was a part of before.

I have this aching feeling like whatever it is I can’t remember is very important, and it’s just out of my reach.

Someone. I know it was a someone. A master of mine, perhaps. What was I doing before I found myself in the hall of the gods? I haven’t come here in a long time. As the other gods have been forgotten and disappeared, so has the hall gone quiet. But now it is bursting with noise and activity again.

But there is one god absent. My mother.

I stand up suddenly and look around the room. She’s not among those collected here, but my father is. He’s watching me with interest, his black hair spread out long and thick behind him.

Lucia is the only reason I can think of for why I’m here. She is the one who always called us together, and she is the only one not present, which must mean my foggy head is her doing.

After a time, my father gets to his feet and approaches me, carrying a decanter full of wine. The red liquid sloshes as he sits next to me.

My mother might have carved me from stone and given me life, but the god of the sea, Terano, is the one who created the stone that would eventually become me.

A cup appears in my hands, and Terano pours wine into it.

Where Lucia is impulsive and often petty, he is steadfast and quiet. But his rages, oh, they can be immense.

“This place is not what you think it is,” he says. Then he urges me to take a drink of the wine. For some reason, I’m repulsed by it. This is the nectar of the gods, but what I find myself wanting is peasant’s wine, rough and tart.

“I’m not supposed to be here,” I say, and no words have ever felt truer. This is wrong. Being among these flawless, beautiful immortals, I feel like a stranger. I’m longing for something that isn’t here.

Terano places a firm hand on my shoulder. “It’s a difficult thing to accept,” he says. “That they have forgotten you.”

I turn to him. Surely that’s not what’s happened.

“No,” I say firmly. “I know that’s not true. If mortals are anything, it is greedy and incapable, and someone will always need a servant in me.”

My father shakes his head. “This is not the real hall of the gods,” he says, gesturing around us. “But we’re meant to think that it is. Most of us just pretend that’s where we are, because it makes it easier for the mind than knowing we have been sent to oblivion.”

Forgotten. I can’t be. Not when someone is out there, someone just on the edge of my memory who makes my heart race and my cock twitch. I don’t know who it is, but they’re not here—which means I shouldn’t be, either.

“I have to go back.” I toss down the wine and it spills across the shining white floor, the golden goblet bouncing off the floor with a loud clang . A few other gods look up to gawk at my outburst. “I need to get back to wherever I just came from!”

Terano sighs, and it’s ripe with pity.

“That’s not possible, Kireth. You don’t leave this place. None of us do.”

But I have to. He doesn’t understand.

“Of course I can leave,” I say tartly. I kick the cup aside and head for the doors. I pull on the handles... and they don’t open.

A hush has fallen on the room as everyone watches me try the doors again. I yank and pull, harder and harder, until I’m grunting and gasping with effort.

My father’s hand lands on mine.

“It’s impossible,” he says, his voice sad. “This is the end, Kireth. I’m sorry.”