But then there’s Annalae.
Annalae, sweet Annalae. Like a daughter to him. Her mother brings him cheese for the kitchens twice a week in exchange for use of his fruit press. She brings her daughter, and the girl sits in the back while he cooks. Chats his ear off. He hated it, at first. But then he got to liking the company, so now that she’s a little more grown and has found other things to do, it breaks his heart.
Sometimes Annalae still brings the cheese, and when she does he wraps her up in a story, and she pokes fun at his thinning hair and big ears. Then the cheese doesn’t come for two weeks, and when her mother finally comes by with a delivery, he hears the hard truth.
Ganter Kubbs had taken a liking to Annalae, and he never takes no for an answer. It will only be a matter of time before he starts asking Annalae questions to which she can only consent.
Stu won’t have it. Can’t have it.
So he closes the inn the next day. Damn place hasn’t so much as rested for a holiday in twenty years. But he goes off and sends a request to His Lordship, and the following week armored men come in and take the mobsters away. All of them.
Or so Stu thinks.
A moon passes before two come back. He doesn’t even know their names. He never asked questions. But when it’s so late even the sturdiest drunkards turn in, they come, and they drag him into the forest and rake a rusted blade across his throat, once, twice, three times . . .
The blood falls onto the grass. Seeps into it. Trickles down to another realm. Changes. Takes shape.
And Maekallus opens his eyes.
Maekallus winces at the memories, startling himself when he bites the inside of his lip. Blood dribbles from the corner of his mouth, and he wipes it away. His hand is free of corruption. The air around him is calm. Free of the pricks and nibbles that always engulf him on this plane.
The mortal realm sees him as one of its own.
Enna stands before him, staring straight ahead. She doesn’t blink. Doesn’t move. Barely breathes. Dull. Empty. Soulless.
The tusk dagger lies by her feet.
He picks it up and traces it across the earth, stumbling a bit. Off balance. He touches his forehead. The horn is still there, but it’s shorter, perhaps one and a half hands in length. Never mind that.
He takes her left hand in his and unclasps the Will Stone bracelet—she can no longer use it. Without a soul, she doesn’t have a will. He tries to fasten it around his own wrist, but the chain is too short, so he winds the silver around his middle finger and palms the most powerful thing he’s ever touched.
Do not devour her, he commands himself.
He draws the mortal’s descent circle, then takes Enna in his arms and stands at its center.
Blue light flashes, and the mortal realm falls away in one fluttering piece.
CHAPTER 28
The mortal realm will devour a mysting’s body. The monster realm will destroy a human’s mind.
The ground separates.
I fall.
He’s there.
It’s red.
Too warm.
I . . .
I?
CHAPTER 29
Narval horns make for excellent sorcery, or so a rooter named Attaby has claimed. The extent of his meaning is yet to be determined.
Once, not long after Maekallus was made, before Enna was ever born, he fancied a mortal woman.
He hid from her for a long time, watching, intrigued. Narah worked at a brothel—those aren’t too different across realms, save for the customers. She was tall and lithe with hair like midnight that fell in soft curls down her back. Her breath smelled like dying roses. Her lips were stained red. She was coy and curious and bold, and Maekallus learned how to charm just about anyone from watching her. He’d found her during one of his scouting missions for Scroud; she’d been a diversion from the orjan’s dominating presence in the Deep.
Maekallus had already coaxed out a soul or two by then. Lost himself in the brief ecstasy of the vigor. So long as the mortal was willing, the soul came. Willingness could come from lust, fear, or trickery. An easy obstacle to overcome.
When he’d finally shown himself to Narah, she’d hardly reacted at all. Perhaps it was the smoke in her lungs or the drink in her belly. It didn’t matter. She was kind and curious. Invited him into her home, and her bed.
It was a dark night, the sky congested with those strange white clouds of the mortal realm. She told him about things he’d never experienced—dancing and comedy and heartache—and he hung off her every word like they were drops of water in the middle of the Azhgrada.
It wasn’t entirely his fault. She’d leaned toward him, smiling, reaching for his mouth. He’d kissed her, and he’d taken her soul—the entirety of it. He hadn’t meant to. But intentions don’t matter when one is a narval.
It burned brightly inside him, blissful and sweltering and agonizing. It made him regret. And like the other souls he’d consumed, it began to fade. He panicked.
Then he heard about Attaby. Sought him out. The rooter was interested, quiet, contemplative. Even now, Maekallus remembers their conversation. The immortal waters might do it. Then again, once a soul leaves its body, the pathway is carved, isn’t it? Who is to say it wouldn’t leave again, and of its own volition? You’d need some sort of talisman to keep it in place. But it doesn’t matter.
Why? Maekallus asked.
The rooter shook his head. Her soul is dead, dear lad. It died long before you found me.
Just like that, he’d lost her. And the moment he digested her soul in the Deep, he’d stopped caring altogether.
The Deep has no sky, just endless red light that isn’t really light at all, but somehow it enables the eye to see. It has trees, but they’re ruddy and short with jagged limbs bearing fruit that will kill any mortal taster. Its soil is darker, where there is soil to be had. Much of the Deep, at least where Maekallus dwells, has uneven ground that’s spongy with one step, steellike with the next. But there’s water—brooks and streams and rivers of it, though not nearly as bounteous as in the mortal realm. Even mystings have to drink.
Sometimes, in the mortal realm, on a snowy night, one can experience pure silence. But it’s never silent in the Deep. There is always something breathing, crying, laughing, feeding. Always something writhing, usually unseen.
It had bothered Maekallus at first, at the beginning of this existence. Then he’d stopped noticing it, stopped caring. But with Enna in his arms, he notices every click and whine, every shift of the endless red landscape.
Enna doesn’t. She stares straight ahead, a puppet without a master. The light is gone from her eyes, captured inside his own body, burning inside a lantern that won’t let it shine.