“I already told you, I have the gift of sight.” She sighed impatiently. “If you do not at least act like the Greek God of the Dead, eventually those who want you gone will find out.”
Lucius let out an exasperated sigh. “Alright, I will play this game. But first, I must locate the twins I left behind. Can you find them for me?”
Minthe brightened. The action pulled life into her face which, he noticed for the first time, was actually quite lovely. Familiar, almost. “That I can do. But you must construct a plan for deceased souls while I am gone. It should be easy for you—you once ruled over the entire Netherworld.”
Nephthys’s whisper drifted into his consciousness, pulling at the space where the twins had taken residence. He wasn’t sure he could handle both of them tearing at him at once.
Minthe squinted up at him, her unusually hued eyes searching his. “What tortures you so?” she murmured.
Lucius drew away from her with a growl, irritated to be caught in a weak moment. “Are you going to find out or stare at me?”
She shoved the papers into his arms. “I will be back tonight. You have an office down the hall. Have the plans drawn up by then.” She turned on her heel and promptly disappeared.
Lucius looked around the obsidian palace, its emptiness suffocating. He left the stack of papers on a nearby table and flew out the door. The air that met him was cool and damp, droplets from the hanging rock formations hitting the gray earth beneath him in a steady tempo. A smoky charcoal fog skimmed the surface of the lake, snaking its way around the distant mountains. He broke into a stride, following the stony bank until he came upon a field, waves of grain oddly placed in the inhospitable realm, dancing as if a breeze trickled through it.
There was a soul sitting not far from where he stood, a nearly transparent woman who looked at him with wide, weeping eyes. “This is the place for those who love and are not loved in return,” she said wistfully, her hair fluttering in the absent wind.
“Then I belong here,” he muttered.
“Do not speak of this to Minthe, but you can see those you once loved in my tears.” She gestured around her, where a pool had collected.
Lucius stepped back, no part of him wanting to see Nephthys. “I will keep that in mind,” he said. “What is your name?”
“Cyane,” the woman said miserably. “I was Persephone’s lover until… until…” She burst once more into sobs, pouring down her cheeks into fat droplets that splashed down around her.
Lucius backed away until he was headed back to the palace shore. He looked down to see a jar of her tears had miraculously found its way into his hands. He set it down near a rock, making a mental note to create his own pool with them, when he was ready. He headed back into his palace and, for the first time, noticed the throne she’d put at the end of a columned hall. He sighed. No part of him wanted to play king. Not anymore.
He turned instead into the office, surprised to see Minthe already there. Although he was growing annoyed by her unannounced appearances, he was glad to see her. “Well?” he demanded.
Her face was solemn. “They are in Heaven, safe and at peace with their mother.”
Lucius sunk down into a nearby chair, defeated. “I failed them,” he murmured as the news settled in.
Minthe knelt down to be at his level, resting her hand reassuringly on his knee. She seemed pleased he did not push her away. “I am sorry that this brings you such pain. I was hoping to bring you some better news.”
Lucius sighed. “I have long accepted that my life is one of suffering, though a part of me hoped it was going to change.”
Minthe rose and glided to a table at the other side of the room. She retrieved a decanter and a goblet, filling it with wine before setting the cup on his desk. “What if I told you there was a way to forget—a way for you to be rid of the afflictions that haunt you?”
Lucius reached for the goblet and gulped down the wine, pleased by its complexity. “I would tell you I am not interested.”
She wrinkled her nose with displeasure. “Whatever do you mean?”
He paused before taking another sip. “There is a part of me that would love nothing more than to forget my wife and what she did,” he explained. “To forget her betrayal, to forget I ever loved such a wicked creature. To be freed of the wretch who bore children with my own brother—children she hid from me when she abandoned me. I would also love to forget the pain of finally having children in my life, only to know that, despite my best efforts, I let them die.” He met her eyes. “But they all make me what I am. I am honored to have loved so hard that it broke me so deeply. The pain is worth it to me. I do not wish to ever forget it.”
Minthe looked at him with wide, scarlet eyes. “I had no idea.”
Lucius looked away, embarrassed to have revealed so much. He swiftly finished his drink, setting it back down on the desk.
“Well,” Minthe sighed, as she slipped down into the seat across from him, “I hope that if you remember this part going forward, you will forgive me.”
Lucius was confused by her words until it dawned on him. He grabbed the cup. “What have you done?”
“One sip from the River Lethe and all of your painful memories disappear,” she explained with a shrug.
He threw the cup across the room, jumping to his feet. “How dare you?”
“You might want to hold onto your pain like some kind of martyr, but you have a realm to run—a realm I helped you create and am now a part of. Nothing will be gained by you moping around, whining about human children. Soon, you will be thanking me.”
Something inside him snapped, releasing a rage he had kept tightly leashed since he held his brother’s head underneath the water as he thrashed, waiting until he floated limply to the surface so he could drag him onto the shore and chop his body into pieces with his sword. It washed over him like a scalding flame, blurring his vision, his blood screaming in his veins as his hands promptly caught fire. The unassuming white flames in the nearby hearth burst to life, devouring his desk in an easy sweep as it began to hunt for wood and cloth, grabbing hold of any curtain and furnishing it could find.
He lost sight of the insufferable nymph in the chaos, the soothing sound of a crackling inferno filling his ears as he let all his built-up anguish ignite the world around him. He walked calmly out of the palace as it turned into an untamed pyre and settled down on the shore by the placid lake, watching the bright, violent sparks behind him reflected in the water. It looked like a majestic painting, swirls of red and orange dancing on its surface.
Strangely enough, the fire in the water made him feel better. THE ATLANTIC OCEAN, 1857
Lucius found himself staring at the deceased old man as the vision of flames faded from his mind. He blinked, taking a moment to fully return to the present, letting the sounds of the rickety ship lumbering through the ocean guide him back.
The old man looked serene in death. His labored breathing had ceased, his chest still beneath folded hands wearing skin that looked like glass. Lucius wondered if he’d ever been saddened by the visual of death, or if he’d always been mystified by its peculiar beauty. Death had been a part of him since inception, a natural transition that so many feared and not many appreciated. He had been lost in the blood memories, but he knew at some point, the man’s soul had been released from its prison of flesh and took its place with the deity he held the most dear. Lucius found it quite moving to witness the end to a creature’s suffering, met with the promise of something new.
Lucius rose to his feet, and quietly exited the room. He was immediately accosted by Morrigan’s scent, temporarily disarming him. He managed to push past the room where she slept and into the dank, lower hold, though his mind screamed to check on her. The trunks bobbed and swirled in the inches of seawater still trapped in the lowest level of the ship, but he found a heavy chest that had remained planted through it all. He seated himself upon it, folding each spindly leg into a cross-legged position. The blissful dark and quiet proved ideal for contemplation, especially after the blinding succession of memories that just re-entered his consciousness.
He exhaled, letting his mind put together the pieces of his fractured timeline. He had no doubt that Minthe was Discordia, that she had consistently taken on whatever guise necessary to provoke his compliance. He pulled her forward in his mind’s eye, wearing Isis’s skin. He envisioned her on the fateful night she brought him to life as a deplorable dragon, screeching spells into the air as she siphoned him into the strongest identity he ever had: Lucius, the vampyre. It was she who had created the first immortal creature; it was she who started the chain reaction of unbridled chaos that was his life. But why? Why did she consistently target him—from Minthe to Isis to Hekate to Angelique—perpetually twisting his mind in whatever way she deemed fit? Was it simply an illogical motive, driven by pure thirst for discord, as her name would suggest? And furthermore—he thought with a wave of anger—how was she able to best him over and over again?
And then, the revelation hit him so strongly, it almost knocked him from where he perched.
Morrigan.
She was his weakness, and Discordia was somehow tied to her.
