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He crept down the steps as formidably as my father had, mirroring the king’s stately posture, stopping three steps from the bottom to ensure he could still look down on me. “Our guards are training more aggressively than ever before. There’s fighting amongst Requiem along the Hallowed River. If you were to use more… persuasive measures to seek answers, perhaps you would have more.”
“I am not a spy.”
“You are hardly anything,” Regulas answered.
I’d barely registered my own movement until his high-pitched scream ripped through the room. One moment, the snide man was standing, the next, his feet flew from beneath him as Chaos collided with his shoulder.
I climbed the steps as slowly as he had descended, pressing my boot into his arm as I ripped the blade from his body and wiped the fresh blood on his pants. Crouching, I glared. “I have trained my entire life to be able to kill you with less than a thought. Should you wish to reach your one-hundredth year, you will never speak to me again.”
“M-my king?” he stammered, not daring to rise.
I stood, turning to finally look my father in the face. The kernel of pride might have shocked me, had I never known his love for violence. His intentional distance had only sharpened the edges of everything I was. To raise a child without a single touch, a single soft word, grows a beast in slumber. A person with no knowledge of love or light. A woman with no compassion. Still, as if it’d been planted in my soul before I was born, I cared. I wanted to experience love and kindness more desperately than he could ever fathom. Maybe the yearning was what kept me human.
Years ago, I’d disguised myself and went to the inner city to seduce a man. After several visits and several easily swayed partners, I’d learned that touch was not enough. Forced passion didn’t placate the desire for someone to see beyond the mask.
The king moved to my side. “If one continues to play with fire, they will get burned. Especially if that fire is my daughter. Go clean yourself up, Regulas. You’re an embarrassment.”
A flicker of satisfaction settled in my gut. Upon the click of the great door in the back of the throne room, my father continued his careful assessment, shaking his head as he surveyed my unpolished boots. I stiffened, falling right back in line.
“What have you heard of Silbath?”
“Nothing new.”
Again, he tsked. “I demand you be of use to me. And as I cannot marry you off because your poor husband would likely wet the marital bed every night in fear of you, you must have another use, Deyanira. You refuse to kill on my behalf. So, what good are you?”
His rhetorical question echoed through my memories, pinging off each and every time he’d uttered those vicious words until that kernel disintegrated to ash.
“The old gods damned and abandoned us.” He spun on a heel and paced behind me, each step in a synchronized rhythm. “War would be so much easier.”
I bit my tongue, letting the coppery taste of blood fill my mouth. There would be no use arguing with my father. He didn’t understand the finality of murder the same way I did, and thus, war.
Many generations ago, the two kingdoms of this world had nearly killed each other off. Rampaged by war and famine, had Death not stepped in and taken away our ability to die for one hundred years, there would be no one left. A reprieve for everyone but kings seeking land and people to imprison.
He climbed the steps back to his throne and sat heavily, twisting his silver mustache until it curled at the ends. I waited for my dismissal, knowing he would stretch it out, just as I had done to Regulas. Perhaps I was more like my father than I’d realized. Eventually, he cleared his throat and waved me away without another word.
By the time I made it to my room, the exhaustion of my task, of the magic that had compelled me until my free will was gone, forced every muscle and every bone to grow heavy. Death’s magic was so potent, it could not have been meant for mere humans. The second my mind had wandered to the hidden vulnerability of Maidens, I pushed those thoughts away, just as Death had warned me to do the first time I’d ever seen him. When he promised me an eternity and warned me of an early end.
Because, though magic was rare, and so powerful it should not have existed in humans, I would always be the exception. Along with the Life Maiden, should she ever be found. The brush of sheer curtains caught by a cool breeze trailed over my skin as I stood on the balcony, staring down at a world hunted, one soul at a time.
The moon was hardly a crescent, and difficult to discern, but still, it provided just enough light to guide me back through the massive bedroom and to a full-length mirror leaning against the wall. I ran tired fingers over the gilded filigree along the top, noting where it’d begun to wear down over the years.
“Ro?” I whispered, shifting toward my reflection.
The glass rippled like an awakened pond in response to my voice.
Holding my breath, I stepped through, into a world that I once believed was only for me, though the years had taught me differently. This world was hers. A sanctuary from the evils of mine.
“Back so soon?” The familiar voice wrapped me in comfort as I strode into Ro’s home.
“Unfortunately.” I navigated her peculiar hall of mirrors and descended the squeaky steps into the cottage, pushing through the vines of various plants growing from the ceiling until I found her, watering can in hand.
“You are a conundrum, Dey.”
“Why?”
“Because you wear your burdens so visibly. There are days it hurts to look at you.”
“It hurts more to be me. But those must be the days you deny me entry.”
