Page 35 of The Deathless One (The Gravesinger #1)

“She knows something,” Elric muttered, standing in the shadows as Sybil worshipped with an ancient spell. “I don’t like that she’s keeping it to herself.”

“You seem very invested in this girl for reasons that are far more to do with the personal than the necessary.” Sybil kept her eyes closed, her hands moving over the altar where a dead chicken bled out.

Her bloodied fingers traced runes on the stone.

“I don’t understand why you’re so interested in what she’s hiding, and why you aren’t focusing on training her to resurrect you. ”

“She’s not interested in summoning me to this realm for good. I have to earn her trust.”

“Is that so?”

“She’s said as much.” He huffed out an angry breath. “Why are you arguing with me about this? You should want me to have my full powers back. That’s the only way you will get all your powers back as well.”

Sybil cracked one eye open to look into his gaze, and then shrugged. “I’ve lived this long without the full extent of my powers. And as I said, I was the weakest of the coven. I do not know what true power feels like.”

A lie.

He could sense it in the air, hovering between them.

She even held her breath for a few moments, waiting for him to call her out on that very lie.

After all, he had seen what she did with that infected man.

She had more power in her than she wanted him to know, but he wasn’t sure how, when he had given her so little.

Let her keep her little secrets if she wanted. He had more important problems than figuring out what had happened to his coven.

“She’s hiding what she saw in Benji’s memories. If I do not restore this woman to the throne, then she will not summon me. She’s made it very clear those are her terms, and I am not going to lose this opportunity because I didn’t win her a measly little throne.”

“A throne for an entire kingdom.”

“I have changed the tides of war before, and I have placed kings on thrones who were less worthy than Jessamine. It will be easy enough to do.” He prowled around the altar, pacing behind her as his witch pretended he didn’t exist. “But I need to know what she saw.”

“Deathless One.” Sybil sighed. “Perhaps you should just ask her.”

He startled at the sound of his title. How strange it was now that he’d remembered his name. He didn’t actually enjoy the title. He wanted to hear other people say his name, just like Jessamine had done.

Because his name had sounded so pretty coming from her lips.

He’d forgotten that he even had a name. He’d forgotten that he was a person before all of this. Before the first knife, the first sacrifice, the first time someone saw him as a tool rather than a being. She’d given that back to him.

So perhaps he had reason to help her. If only because she had returned to him that little piece of humanity.

Sybil sighed and dropped her hands onto the altar, effectively ending the spell, which likely had taken hours to set up. “Just talk to her.”

“I have no interest in pleading for information that she should freely give.”

“Then I will ask her for you.” Sybil stood, her hands on her hips as she glared at him. “You’re how old and you cannot ask a woman to give you the information you want?”

“I’m not going to beg!” he repeated, although even he could hear the petulance in his voice. “I am her patron. I should know everything that she knows. If she’s unwilling to give me the information, that is her own fault. Not mine.”

Sybil looked up at the ceiling and expelled a long sigh. “I am exhausted by the both of you. Things were so much simpler when it was only me in this house.”

“You had very little power,” he pointed out as she started out of the room.

“I had enough!”

The sound of her voice trailed through the halls, and then he could hear the quiet murmuring from another room. Fading through the shadows, he followed her to a room where the two witches stood.

Jessamine had been working on restoring this room. In its time, it had been a gallery. Artwork from many of the talented witches in his coven had graced the walls, depicting gods and goddesses as they performed their most heroic deeds.

He’d forgotten that he used to be so well known. Standing in this room, however, surrounded by empty canvases that had long since rotted, he remembered that he had once helped people readily and often. There were so many paintings of him before his sacrifices.

How he had fed an entire town as he hunted for days on end in the middle of winter.

The cold hadn’t affected him, and he’d been bloodthirsty during that reincarnation.

Another painting showed him swimming through the sea for hours, seeking a witch’s child who had been lost at sea. He’d found the boy miraculously alive.

But then, as he turned to the opposite wall, he realized there was one painting still more or less intact.

A depiction of a dark room deep in the heart of the earth, its walls shiny with constantly dripping water.

The soft plinks had echoed in his ears for hours as he bled out from a hundred tiny cuts dotting across his chest, thighs, and arms. He had been in so much pain, and that pain had brought the coven a massive amount of power.

Swallowing, he turned his attention to the witches in the room, who hadn’t yet thought to sacrifice him.

“Jessamine, you have to tell him whatever you saw. Otherwise, neither of us can help you.” Sybil patted her shoulder. “No matter how hard it is to face.”

“I don’t know if I can say it.” Jessamine stood in the corner of the room, her hands clutching his book like a lifeline.

“Then don’t say it. Just show him.” Sybil turned to leave, jolting at the sight of the block of his shadows before she pressed a hand to her chest. “I hate it when you do that. It’s even worse now that you have a face.”

The witch left them together, awkwardly standing at opposite ends of the room, with Jessamine barely even looking at him. She stared at his feet, her hands white against the leather book, her fingers twitching every now and then.

Finally, he couldn’t stand it. “I can just take a look at your memories.”

“I’m not sure why you need to.”

“We have to keep going. You already killed a man, Jessamine. What could possibly make you want to stray from the path now?”

It wasn’t the right thing to say. He had always known he was a cold and callous creature, but he had forgotten how fragile humans could be.

She closed her eyes as if in pain, and then whispered, “I suppose it’s best if you just look.”

He wasn’t sure how to take that. Looking into her mind the last time had been rather…

traumatic for her. She had lost her sight, something he should have at least warned her about.

And even then, it had been difficult for her to watch the death of her mother.

He wasn’t sure why he should make her relive this memory as well.

But why did he care? Elric hadn’t thought about another person’s feelings in such a long time. It shouldn’t matter what she had to see.

Swallowing hard, he tried to slip back into that version of himself who cared less about mortal problems, and stepped closer to her. “I will have to—”

“I know,” she interrupted. “My eyesight.”

“Just for a few moments.”

He raised his hand and slowly shifted a small lock of her hair behind her ear. The slick strands glided through his fingers, as fine as a spiderweb. The small seashell of her ear captivated him as his hand slid behind it.

Gods, she was so fragile. He could snap her in a moment, and that terrified him as much as it intrigued him.

“I’ll make it painless,” he rasped. “And then we’ll figure out what to do from here.”

“I trust you.”

The whispered words made him freeze. He stared down at those big black eyes, looking up at him with the truth in that gaze. She trusted him.

The heaviness of that settled on his shoulders. He had wanted this, he knew, but it was also… daunting to live up to her expectations. Squaring his shoulders, he moved his hand to cover her eyes. “I will try to be gentle.”

Then he dove into her mind.

She was thinking about him, he realized. A faint burn of a blush traveled through both of them as he found himself back beside the statue of the Crone. He watched himself with his hands tangled in her hair, their lips only an inch apart as he breathed in her death-lily scent.

“This is not what we’re here for,” he murmured, his voice a low grumble.

“I know.” Was that a whimper?

His hand spasmed on her face, and suddenly he realized how close they were even now.

He could feel his power drawing out of her mind, away from her memories and closer to this moment.

To the way her body shuddered beside his and how he wanted nothing more than to lay her beneath him.

He wanted to worship this witch underneath the painting of his own death.

But she shuddered again, and he felt her memories shifting. He was standing in front of Benji. The boy’s body arched uncomfortably as black magic poured into his mouth. The power beckoned to him. Both he and Jessamine tumbled through the open maw of the body and into the memories of the young man.

The stolen memories were hazy at best, but clear enough for him to realize they were standing in an opulent room. Warm wooden walls, a massive desk at one end, with dark smoke swirling around their legs. Benji sat in a chair in front of the desk, glee turning his eyes to sparkling gemstones.

“So all I got to do is open the gate?”

“That’s it.” A large man stood beside the desk, bent over with his silver hair hiding most of his features. “It’s a simple task, Benji. Can you do it or not?”

“I can do it. Easy enough. And then I get whatever I want from the castle?”

“Within reason. All you’re doing is opening a gate, boy.”

“I’ll take whatever I want from the dead. That’s good enough for me.”

The man looked up, and Elric froze the memory. He felt the darkness of his own power swirling around his legs as he paused in front of the stranger.

This was a strong man. His features were square, almost startlingly so. A square face, a slash for a mouth, bright blue eyes cold as the sea in winter. A man who saw much, this one. He wore a uniform of the deepest blue, gold buttons dotting down either side of his chest.

“Who’s this?” he asked.

Jessamine appeared beside him. He’d forced her to physically appear in her memories, he thought, because her eyes were glassy with tears as she hugged both of her arms around her waist. “I can’t.”

“We’re already in the memory, Jessamine. You might as well tell me who he is.”

She swallowed hard. “Callum Quen. He’s the head of the guard at the castle. He was the person responsible for our safety at all times. I’ve known him my entire life.”

Elric felt the moment she lost grip on the memory. And then suddenly they were hurtling through her own memories, crystal clear and bright, as though they were happening right in front of him.

He saw a little girl on a horse, her unbound dark hair wild as she thundered bareback across a field, her laughter bubbling through the air.

The man rode behind her, his expression murderous until he realized the little girl wasn’t going to fall.

Then he rode beside her, both of them allowing the horses to run as quickly as they wished.

Another memory. A scrape on a knee and a dark head ducking down to press a kiss just below the wound.

An older Jessamine standing in front of a door, her face creased with anxiety. And the guard standing there, this Callum Quen, who gave her a wink and opened the door while whispering, “You’re going to do just fine.”

Countless memories, each one supportive and kind. It was likely impossible for her to fathom that this was the man behind all of it. Callum Quen was not someone who would betray the royal family.

It all ended on a memory where he could see little Jessamine peeking around the corner of a hallway.

There was a woman there, tall and powerful, with the faintest hint of purple around her eyes.

The same as Jessamine always had. Her mother?

The closer he looked, the more he saw the similarities.

This had to be a younger version of her mother.

And she was clasped in the arms of Callum Quen. They were locked in an embrace before the queen pulled away. She held on to his biceps, her eyes perhaps a little wild and her lips berry red. “We can’t. You know we can’t, Callum.”

In the wake of those words, everything fell away. The power leaked out of Elric’s body, and soon he found himself kneeling in the gallery with Jessamine before him. His hand slid away from her eyes, and she slowly parted her lips on a long sigh.

“They loved each other,” she said. “I knew every time I saw them in a room together. They could barely keep their eyes off each other, no matter how many times they tried. But she was the queen, and she couldn’t marry anyone other than my father.

Even after his death, the queen remains symbolically with the king.

If it had ever gotten out that she was with the head of the guard, the entire kingdom would have rioted. ”

“So she kept him a secret, and he became bitter?”

She shook her head. “I never saw him angry with her. He looked at her with longing. Of course, how could he not? He was never a violent man. Not with us. He had a tendency for it, but he was always so kind to both me and my mother. He wouldn’t…

I can’t imagine what would bring him to a place where he would do this. ”

Elric could feel the pain radiating through her body. Suddenly, he realized she hadn’t just been suffering because she’d killed Benji. She’d been suffering because her entire childhood had been ripped out from under her. She didn’t know what to do with this truth.

He smoothed her hair back from her face and gently cupped her cheeks in his palms. “We’re going to figure this out, Jessamine. But we cannot find this man while we hide away in this manor.”

“I know.” She looked up at him with those wide, emotional dark eyes. “I have to go.”

“Not alone.” The words burned, falling from his tongue. “I’m going with you.”