Page 35

WRATH

“Bahamut’s attack on the Realm of Caelum has failed.

” Raul, one of the five of the Covenant, sat in the center on his black throne carved out of petrified stone.

Fangs protruded from his mouth, curved horns like a ram sat upon his head, and talons long and sharp as daggers protruded from his fingers and toes.

With skin made of scales, fibers over his chest where his black, beating heart pumped, he was another monster like the one we’d lost. Sometimes his eyes were black as the abyss, and sometimes they were red with flames.

I stood among the others at the bottom of the stairs, beside monsters, crippled servants, and courtesans who were forced to please him. All of us were scarred by Bahamut’s brutality—and I suspected no one cared that he was gone forever.

His fate was worse than death.

Because now he was nothing, part of the abyss to which so few had ever traveled.

“Another must take his place,” Raul continued. “Another must finish his work, pay his debts, continue to fuel the underworld with the souls of the foolish that sustain us all.” He looked across the crowd, as if searching for the replacement that very moment.

His eyes stopped on me.

I almost shook my head in silent protest.

“Wrath.” His deep voice echoed off the stone columns that surrounded the stone dais. His eyes now leaped in fiery flames. “You served your sire faithfully these last centuries. We have agreed to appoint you to this position.”

I did what I was told without a word. Internalized my torture and suffered in silence.

I’d done so in the hope that some mercy would be granted to me, that I would be able to confess the truth to my boys.

But that mercy had never come, and the Covenant misconstrued my silence as obedience.

“I reject your proposal. Choose another.” I had served Bahamut intimately, knew exactly how to continue his position if I wished.

But no part of me wanted something so foul.

It had already been quiet, but now, a palpable tension passed through the crowd. Slowly, all eyes turned on me, shocked that I would reject a position of honor and power. It was a job anyone there would be happy to take.

But not me.

Raul’s eyes danced with flames. He didn’t look at the other members of the Covenant, who all stared at me with the same intensity. “Step forward, Wrath.”

They had already taken everything from me. I had nothing left to lose.

I moved through the crowd and broke the line, reaching the bottom of the steps that rose to the platform. I stood and looked ahead with stoicism.

Raul stared me down, a demon several feet taller than me, giving me his ire until I looked away.

I continued to hold his stare.

“Leave us,” he commanded.

The crowd started to part and head back to the castle. I turned with them, knowing my punishment would come later.

“Not you.”

I stilled, feeling his stare piercing my back like a sharp knife.

Everyone else continued to disperse until I stood alone, stepping into the darkness outside the line of torches. My back remained to them until I found the strength to turn around and face their cruelty.

“Rise.”

The other demons remained in their chairs and stared down at me with the same silent rage.

I resisted at first, hating my situation more than I ever had.

All I had to do was mindlessly do what I was told, but this promotion would make me responsible for making deals, watching people make the greatest mistakes of their lives as I benefited from their foolishness.

Not a single person came here without regret.

It didn’t always happen right away—sometimes it took time, and then it hit hard when they least expected it.

“ Rise .”

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, missing the time when my life was my own. When I made my own decisions and decisions for the good of my family. I rose up the steps and reached the dais where they were gathered, demons whose source of power was the souls they consumed.

Raul looked me over, his chin tilted down to regard me.

My life had been spent being the tallest man in every room I stepped into, six and a half feet tall like one of the trees I cut down with my axe.

But now, I was overshadowed by the demons that were tall like mountains. “It was not a request, Wrath.”

“I deny your request. There are others who are as capable for the position?—”

“Bahamut selected you to succeed him in the unlikely event of his demise. That unlikely event has come to pass, and now this task has been handed to you. You will carry this burden the way you’ve carried all your burdens.”

“The answer is no.”

A silence pierced the air around us. The flames in his eyes rose like a fresh log had been thrown into his hearth. “Become God of the Underworld—or an Eater.”

A rush of bile moved through me.

“Serve the underworld—or serve us.”

Once the disgust flooded my mouth, it was all I could taste.

Demons were like minerals that formed in the earth, over centuries and under the right conditions of moisture and darkness and erosion.

To become a demon required the ingestion of souls over a great length of time, until you became an entity of the underworld itself.

Raul smiled and showed his two rows of razor-sharp teeth. He knew what I would choose.

But I couldn’t bring myself to say the words.

His smile widened. “Wrath, God of the Underworld and King of the Dead.” He raised his palm to me, his talons sharp enough to cut skin with a single touch. Invisible power radiated from his open palm, and then I was transformed.

The unremarkable attire I wore morphed into a uniform of dark blue with the skull crest in the center.

The blade across my back suddenly weighed down my spine.

Spiked gloves made of petrified stone covered my hands.

The shackles of responsibility were chained to my wrists and hands.

The cape hung behind me, lifeless in a world without wind or sky.

Raul slowly lowered his palm, but the smile remained. “All hail King Wrath.”

I watched Lacey stand in the cemetery and look at the sea of tombstones. She placed a single flower on several graves, a white rose. There was one in particular that she stood in front of the longest, and then she placed all the flowers on that one grave.

Then she cried.

Cried so loud it sounded like a scream.

Being the merciful god that I was, I gave her the moment to grieve.

It took minutes for her to calm, to let her tears run dry like the rocks under the desert.

“It’s time.” I came to her side, casting a shadow over the grave.

She didn’t flinch, either because she knew I was there or didn’t care.

With her shoulders slumped and her head bowed, it was like she hadn’t heard what I said.

“Are you ready?”

Her eyes remained on the writing on the stone, her husband’s name and the years that he had lived. They had been married for fifty years before he’d passed away in his late seventies. He’d grown old, but she’d remained forever preserved in a youth that she paid dearly for.

She’d come to the dead forest and sought my audience.

She’d been born with a horrible scar on her face and hadn’t been blessed by beauty’s charm like the other girls her age.

She had her eyes on one man, but because of her uncomely appearance, she was ignored.

Barely an adult, she asked me to make her beautiful, to be preserved that way like a block of ice on the mountain tops.

Her lifetime had passed in the blink of an eye, and now it was time to pay for what she’d bought.

“I warned you not to take this deal, Lacey.” Now, she would spend an eternity in the underworld—and never join her husband in the Realm of Caelum. Their love had never been real anyway, not if she had to change her entire appearance to earn his affection.

“I have no regrets.”

That was about to change.

I moved in front of her and placed my hand upon her chest. I felt the energy leave my palm and heat her flesh. Felt her soul rip from her body. And then we were in the underworld at the funnel.

I watched her body slowly float down in the mist until she hovered above the rock.

The monsters moved forth and dragged her to the ground.

Her eyes opened at their touch, and that was the moment she understood.

“Ah!” She looked around frantically at the monsters that grabbed her and shackled her wrists and ankles. They forced her forward toward the castle to be locked below. Her soul was to be harvested and fed to the Covenant.

I didn’t watch her go.

Whether my customers were good or evil, I took no pleasure in making the deals I discouraged them from agreeing to.

Cecilia came to my side, dressed in all black, thick, dark hair brushed back from her face. “What wish did you grant her?” She turned and watched Lacey be taken away, arms crossed over her chest, her dark eyes reflecting the torches that burned forevermore.

“Eternal beauty.”

She turned back to me, shifting her body until she was directly before me. “A soul is an immense cost for something so trivial.”

I spent more time telling victims not to take my deals than offering them.

It made no difference. They were focused on power, revenge, or beauty…

whatever it might be. They wanted their request granted there on the spot and didn’t think about the consequences that would come later. “I echoed that sentiment.”

She looked me over, her eyes practically hands that gripped me. She drew close, her fingers reaching for my forearm. “Unburden yourself with me.” She traced up my arm to feel the different muscles as she came closer to my shoulder. “Or in me…”

My eyes flicked away from hers. “I have obligations that require my attention.”

“Really?” she asked playfully. “Sounds like an excuse to me.”

It was an excuse. Cecilia was beautiful, but she served the Covenant—not as a requirement because of her servitude, but because she wanted to.

There was a cult of mortals who had worshipped Bahamut for centuries, and she was among them.

She’d asked to join the underworld and serve Bahamut and, once he was gone, me.

She was dead, but unlike most of the residents in this dark place, she had a soul.

It didn’t seem like she’d ever come to regret her decision, perfectly adapting to the suffocating darkness, enthralled by monsters and demons rather than afraid.

She was worse than the demons she revered.

I’d slept with her several times, but it was just a means to an end, a tonic for loneliness.

It scratched the itch, but then it festered like a raw wound, and I felt dirty as if beset by an infection.

My wife had been gone for so long and had bedded my brother like I didn’t exist, so I felt no commitment to her.

But it felt wrong, nonetheless.

I stepped away from her touch. “Leave me be, Cecilia.”