Page 64 of The Endless One

He wasn’t certain he should even be here. But this child seemed adamant this was the right place.

“She was here,” little Jessamine said. “She was right here the last time I saw her. She told me to run into the city and hide the best I could. I’m a very good hider.”

“Yes, you are,” he murmured, ducking underneath the swaying limbs of a willow tree. But these leaves were metal. They clinked against his shoulder, tapping in sharp little spikes that might have broken skin if he wasn’t wearing his jacket.

This place was dangerous. He could see why some version of Jessamine had chosen to hide here.

“There,” the little girl said. “Do you see her? She’s like some fairy in a story.”

He looked where she was pointing, and at first, saw nothing. There were only more trees there. More shadows that melded with gold, and more water that gleamed and glimmered. But then he realized one of those shadows wasn’t from the tree. It peeled away from the others, a dark swirling mass of a person.

He could see her from this distance. Sheer black fabric that clung to every shape of her form, even though her body was nearly made out of shadows as well. Horns sat atop her head, two small horns that he’d never seen before.

But then she turned to look at him, and he was struck silent with awe.

There was no face on her at all. Just a shadow. Like the gravesingers he had trapped in his own realm. She looked so much like them that for a moment, he thought he was back where he did not wish to be. Until suddenly, eyes opened up in that dark. White eyes that blinked a few times at him, and then a grin that spread through the shadows.

Was this the gravesinger part of her? Uncontrollable, raw magic that finally came to greet him?

Setting the little girl down on the ground, he pointed at another tree with significant shadows beneath it. “Hide there. If you come across any trouble, scream for me. I will come to you.”

She nodded and scampered away.

Elric straightened and turned his attention to the beast before him, who had not moved. She merely stared at him with those glowing white eyes and that gleeful grin.

“I came here for you,” he said, trying to appeal to what he hoped was a reasonable version of Jessamine.

“I know you did.”

“Then you know I need you to come with me. We have to save her.”

That mouth split even wider, revealing sharp, jagged teeth as this monstrous version of Jessamine laughed. “Don’t you think that’s what I’ve been doing for years? It’s my job, Deathless One. I save her.”

“Are you her magic?” Because her answer didn’t entirely make sense. Jessamine hadn’t had magic until he had appeared in her life.

“No.” With a twitch of her shapely hips, she turned back to the willow tree and started to walk away from him.

Like the puppet he was, Elric followed. He was enchanted by the round curve of her hips, by the sound of her voice, by the womanly figure that he had worshipped time and time again. If there was ever a siren for him to be lured by, it was her. This mystical witch had always captivated his heart, mind, and soul.

“Then who are you?” he asked as he rounded the willow tree.

She stood by the edge of the water now, her feet just barely touching the deep pool of the swamp spread out before them. A dark figure in front of all that gold, she was hard to look away from. “Every person is made up of parts. Some good, some bad. All of them were created out of necessity. We function together as a whole, but most people don’t even recognize that we exist. You have already found Jessamine as a child.”

He watched as she stepped deeper into the water. The thin fabric of her clothing spread out around her, floating on the surface as she turned to look over her shoulder. And he saw her then.

His Jessamine.

The feral darkness that had always drawn him to her was this version of her. The madness, the force of will that had always said no one would stop her from getting what she wanted or she would make them beg at her feet.

Those curving horns made her look even more sinister as her shoulders reached the water. Her hair spread out around her then, longer than it should have been, so long that he thought it likely went all the way to her waist. A simmering, bubbling emotion flickered around her, barely leashed, it was so powerful.

Now he understood.

“You are the protector,” he murmured. “Her rage.”

“Her anger at the world for not taking care of that child who should have had all the help and love that could be given. I am her justice.” The dark woman before him snarled the words as though they were poison on her tongue. “And I will have justice for her.”

He crouched at the edge of the water, watching her intently. “Then take care of the child. That is your role, is it not? You protect the innocence that is still in my Jessamine and you keep it whole.”