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Buried Alive

Reven

I yank myself out of the memory.

Seven hells. I can’t believe I found that.

I’ve been looking for any memory of where the book might be, Eidolon’s book where each iteration of him has written down the details of their reign and instructions to the next.

I haven’t found it, but what I just saw…that was information we didn’t have before.

Specifically, the event that shattered Eidolon into all his Shadows and set him on an unwavering, ruthless path of destruction in an attempt to reverse what Esha had done. One thousand unsuccessful years of festering vengeance and a thwarted need to free his mother, started by a single terrible act.

An act I just witnessed as though I was in it, living it. As though it was my memory.

I guess in some twisted way it is mine. Was mine.

I have to tell Meren.

Getting myself out from the depths of Eidolon’s mind where I wriggled is like clawing my way out of a grave. It took me ages to get down here, the pressure of being so deep building with every creeping ooze inward, but now I force myself to back out just as slowly.

He can’t know what I’ve seen, what I’ve discovered.

I may be trapped inside of him, but damned if I’ve been sitting on my existential ass.

No, I’ve been searching. First, for a way to kill the bastard from the inside. But in trying that, I stumbled onto a memory locked deep inside the king. One from his first life. It had been simple—his first taste of chocolate—but it made me wonder if there were more. Since then, I’ve been digging for memories…and it just paid off in pure gold.

Now I know what we’re up against.

“Meren.” I send the thought out to her as soon as I think I safely can and brace in case Eidolon heard.

I can still feel her sometimes. Eidolon didn’t count on that . She’s faint. It comes and goes, this sense of her. When it comes, every so often we can talk through our connection, and those moments feed me the strength I need to keep going. And every time she disappears again, the terror that she’ll never return threatens to consume me.

“Meren.”

Nothing.

“Princess, talk to me.” She both hates and loves when I call her that. I’m counting on it. Stronger emotions seem to make the connection clearer.

Still nothing.

What feels like eons later, I try again. “Meren?”

I need to hear her voice. Know she’s all right.

Instead, all I get in return is silence.

The nothingness is so total here, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it. Not after centuries of existing with the other Shadows, first trapped with me inside Eidolon like terrible siblings, then after I was shed to become a younger version of the king, the years I spent caging those same Shadows inside myself.

They never shut up.

But they aren’t with me or the king anymore. Meren is their vessel now. I gave them to her, forced them on her, cursed my own bondmate to be tortured with the Shadows’ voices, their filth inside her like poison.

Goddesses forgive me.

Terror rises like a blizzard of ice and fire inside me every time she goes quiet. I fear that my giving her the Shadows will eventually kill her.

But she’s strong. She can take it.

“Meren.” Please let her hear me.

Out of nowhere, her soul barrels into mine down the bond we forged between us through magic and ritual and love.

“Reven. Thank the mother goddess.” Her voice comes through in patches, fading in and out, but I catch the words. I catch the sound—a gorgeous raspy slide over my senses. Relief at hearing her again is like clear water after wandering the desert parched.

There’s an echo of her own relief underneath her near-frantic tone. “Where have you been?” she asks. Demands more like, which is so her. “Why couldn’t I—”

“I found something important.”

Silence. Did she hear? She knows what I’m trying to do. She’s fighting him out there. I’m fighting him in here. I wish I could see her face. Touch her.

“What…find?”

Only a few words are getting through now. “I saw why he’s doing all this.”

His bondmate’s betrayal, his shattering, his mother…

The last thing I need is to understand Eidolon, to sympathize with him. But if Meren had done that to me, had betrayed me in that way, I don’t know what I would have done.

“Reven—” I catch the single, thready word. My name on her lips.

Did she not hear me? “Meren—”

“I love you.”

My entire being expands with those three clear, ringing words. Words she sends me often, pouring her love for me down our bond, feeding me her strength.

“Meren?”

She doesn’t answer. I can still feel her, though. She is all things warmth and light, and also abrasive like the sand she wields—just like the woman herself. She’s still here with me.

“Princess…did you hear me?”

“You just had to go digging into our past.” Eidolon’s voice, a harsher version of my own, echoes around me in the void.

Fury, as raw and hot as a branding iron, blisters my heart. “It’s a good thing I did. You actually believe everything you’ve done through the centuries was justified.”

“To return the goddesses to the world? Worth every sacrifice.”

Holy hells, he’s so far gone, rage and a singular goal blinding him to all else in a way that is chilling. This is why I took his remaining Shadows the first time I escaped him. To stop him.

“And now you’ve gone and bonded with Esha’s reincarnation,” he accuses now.

If nothingness could go cold, it does. He knows Meren is Esha’s reincarnation? Did he follow me? Watch that memory with me? Impossible to ignore how the twins of old looked exactly like Meren and her sister Tabra.

The fates really messed up with us.

Or rather, Eidolon and Esha did.

Everyone knows how bonding is supposed to work. Once the ritual is complete, bondmates will find each other in every life they are born into—be it the Allusian heavens, one of the seven hells, or another life in Nova.

But Eidolon never died entirely. Only pieces of him did, his Shadows scattered across time like petals slowly plucked off a flower.

Esha died while he remained partially immortal.

The cold starts to burn as Eidolon’s anger grows. “You are determined to fight me when you should be standing with me. Especially after seeing what she did to us in her previous life.”

“Meren is no more Esha than I am you. Not anymore.” I may have begun my existence as a piece of my maker’s soul, but now I am myself. After being shed, I became my own man, with my own life, soul, mind, experiences, and goals. And I became Eidolon’s enemy.

“If you believe that, you’re even more of a danger to me than I realized,” he muses. Then his voice goes razor sharp. “Which means you leave me no choice.”

The bottom drops out from under me.

Followed by pain.