Page 24 of The Endless One

Elric seemed to know that. He’d already placed a ladle in the bucket and handed it to her immediately upon coming up the ladder. She grabbed onto it, careful to not slosh too much of it over the edge, but also her hands were shaking so badly she inevitably did.

Drinking as much as she could, she handed it back to him for yet another drink. They continued this process over and over again until finally she could form words without feeling like she was going to die at any moment.

Her stomach was distended with all the liquid, and she was slightly nauseous, but it was in the best way possible. Finally, finally she had enough water.

Elric crouched beside her, looking her over with a strange expression on his face.

“What?” she asked.

“He used to do the same thing to me, when I was a young god. He said it would build my confidence, knowing that I wouldn’t die.” Elric swallowed hard, and then took his own shaking sip of water. “We didn’t know back then that I couldn’t die. Or at least, that I wouldn’t. No matter what happened to me, I could always be brought back. After he discovered that, there were a lot more of his experiments to deal with.”

“He used to do this to you?” she asked.

“He did it to everyone. The God King was the strongest of us all. He had elemental magic, as you’ve seen. And he also had, unfortunately, far more than that.” He released a frustrated growl. “I’m sure he also made it clear to you that he can control flesh?”

She nodded. Unbidden, goose bumps rose on her arms at the memory of all that pain he could inflict with a single thought.

He noticed. Elric’s eyes went to the raised bumps on her arms, and she saw his jaw tick. “I’m going to kill him for that.”

“Elric, he’s insanely powerful. If he can inflict gods with pain just as much as he can inflict humans, I don’t see how we can beat him.” And that was the worst part of all of it. She didn’t see an end to this. She could only see there might not be a way to come back from it.

They’d failed. Jessamine had never felt like this before. She’d had times when they had done something wrong or thought they couldn’t come back from it, but there had always been another plan, another way to fix what they had broken.

This time, she didn’t see another end.

The God King was back. He wanted to bring back even more gods and goddesses, or at the very least, a queen to rule by his side. No matter what they did, he was too much for them to beat.

She watched Elric as he struggled with the same thoughts, until they were both staring at each other, perhaps a little lost.

“Come here,” he said gruffly, heading over to her instead and curling his body around hers.

Elric held her back to his chest, his arms around her waist and his legs safely bracketing hers. He just held her. Quietly. Without any need or desire for this to turn into anything else. He held her, and he took all the pain that was in her body, making tears build in her eyes.

She didn’t want to cry on him, though. He had suffered through the same fate she had, and he wasn’t crying. So surely that meant she needed to be strong right now. She shouldn’t show him how much her body ached, or how scared she had been, or how awful every bit of this had made her feel. She was better than that. Jessamine was not only a princess but a gravesinger, and a woman who had survived worse.

“I know how scary that must have been for you,” he whispered in her ear, gently rocking both of them to the sound of his words. “It’s okay, Jessamine. Let me carry it for a little while. I promise I’ll give it back. But for now, just let me carry it.”

The floodgates burst open at his words. Because he knew that she was about to shatter, and the fact that he didn’t mind if she did—that he was so kind about it—that made everything in her break.

The tears turned into body-rocking sobs. Every ounce of her ached with it, because she was so bruised that every inhalation hurt. She hiccupped between every sob, begging her body to calm down, but there was nothing she could do. She had to purge all of these feelings, and it did feel like he was carrying them for her.

Some part of her recognized he was weaving a spell around them. He had taken her emotions. The more she let out, the more she realized he was siphoning them out of her body and drawing them into himself. She could feel them disappearing for a little while. He’d give them back, though, and she took comfort from that.

She would deal with what had happened to her. Soon enough, she would learn how to live with gods’ powers that were so much stronger than her, and the torture she had felt at his hands.

“I was only there a week,” she whispered once she had quieted down enough with her tears. “How long did he do that to you?”

“Years,” Elric murmured. “Many, many years.”

Her heart bled for him. Family weren’t supposed to do that to each other. They were supposed to support and help. That was why families were so strong when they were together.

“I’m sorry,” Jessamine said, stroking his arm where it was wrapped around her waist. “You didn’t deserve to have someone do that to you.”

“None of us did. The gods were not kind to one another. Ajax ruled us all by fear, but there were a few who knew how to manipulate him as well.” He scoffed. “My sister was particularly good at it. She was so rarely touched by his magic because of it. The Huntress had a way of getting underneath Ajax’s skin.”

“You make it sound like they were very close.”

“They stopped calling each other brother and sister many centuries ago. After all, none of us are actually related. We just wanted to create a group of gods who worked together rather than against each other. How better than to claim we were all family?” He sighed, the long breath fanning across the back of her neck. “The rules didn’t apply to everyone, though.”