Page 43 of The Devil In Blue
“I must attend to other things,” Petris said vaguely, clearing his throat. “This library is yours. No one comes here.”
“I can come here whenever I want?”
“Yes. Provided you remember the way.”
“I do,” I said excitedly. Petris inclined his head a bit and then spun on his heels, heading toward the door. “Thank you,” I said after him.
He halted and glanced back toward me, silent for a long moment as if he was hesitating to say something. And then he nodded his head again and left the library.
I watched the door where he disappeared, listening to his steps fade down the hall. Part of me would have rather kept his company, but when I looked at the endless collection of books at my disposal, I could think of nothing else. I turned around and grabbed the first one with the most beautiful lettering.Elven Legends.I’d never read anything about elves. To Lucien, they were a myth, like so many other things. Perhaps they were, but that only made the idea of reading about them even more enticing.
Near the balcony doors, I saw a round, cushioned seating area with embroidered pillows and a glass table that was cut into a raw shape that resembled ice.
If there was seating and a table, I would need more books.
I began skimming the ones I could reach and pulled out three more.Songs of the Sea, The Ruthless History of the Eastern Pirate Cove,and one in a language I couldn’t even read. I hauled them all to the sitting area and prepared to dive in.
The Labyrinth was a dreary place. No other plane in the universe held so much emotion and I’d learned over the years to build strong walls around myself so the grief did not slither into my conscience.
It took too long for me to erect those barriers, though. Being without them had taken its toll. I’d paid a hefty price for allowing rage, hate, and revenge to infect me. A price I would never forget.
The past
. . .
Many humans adopted a bogus idea that their actions in life dictated where they went when they passed on. They worked hard to make themselves believe that if they lived good lives—charitable lives—they’d enter the afterlife through pearl gates.
Phariel had done that. He was a viciously manipulative cunt and he liked seeing what people would do under the threat of punishment. Would they fold or would they rebel? But Phariel didn’t have to see their souls afterward. He only had to see the foolish humans prancing around, ignorant and so moldable. After a century or two, he’d get bored and find some other way to bend humans to his will just so he could laugh about it.
But no matter his promises, I knew it was all false. No god or gods dictated where mortals would end up after their last breath left them. They dictated that themselves, inmyLabyrinth. In the Glyn. I ruled the final gate through which they had to walk. There were no sweet fantasies in my Glyn. I knew the truth. The soul of a murderer could walk into the most perfect eternal dream from my Labyrinth the same as a child who only knew life for a few days simply because neither of them possessed a guilty conscience. For guilt was the ultimate hell and those carrying too much of it rarely escaped into the heavens they wished for.
It was unjust. It sickened me to see rapists, killers, and sadistic monsters create a rapturous afterlife for themselves because they had no remorse. It irked me more to see some of the worst souls somehow find their way into the mortal realm again and grow into the same monstrous fucks they were before.
I wanted to destroy them. It wasn’t right that they were allowed to live free of remorse and inflict harm on others. It wasn’t right that they could roam my Labyrinth without answering for their misdeeds. And I knew Malvec would never take them unless they disrupted the balance enough. His prison realm was meant for the most wicked. Those who defied the balance and turned things too upside down to ever fix. He would never turn his attention to the evildoers in my Labyrinth unless I made him.
So, I found loopholes in the rules. I started to interfere. I was not to touch a soul wandering in my Labyrinth, but I could do as I pleased with those who wandered out. Left too long to their own devices with no memories of their mortality, souls outside of the Labyrinth became terrible, primal creatures with no sense to them. Ihadto destroy them. It was my job.
Cutting a hole in the Labyrinth’s hedges helped me do that. And when the bad souls started to filter out, I let them get lost in my woods. Iletthe monster grow and eat its way out of them to show what they truly were. Because if they became monsters, then I would have an excuse. An excuse to hunt them, slaughter them, and wipe the world clean of their existence, ensuring they’d never be granted another chance or another life.
Too many times, I’d seen mothers, children, and innocents wandering in my Labyrinth, lost and confused and condemned to endless turmoil. I could see all of their memories. The Labyrinth stores every single one for every single soul and keeps them long after they've passed on.
It's hard not to judge when you see all that people are and all that they’ve done.
I was sick of the imbalance. I was powerful. All three of us were. We could destroy or remake the realms if we wanted to. We could burn the laws and shape the world however we liked. Phariel certainly liked toying with the humans in his charge.
So why was I sitting around letting awful souls experience heaven and watching innocents wade through confusion for eternity?
. . .
So many…
I had destroyed so many over the years since I created the breach in those hedges. Every soul that wandered out into the forest of the Glyn became something awful and I slaughtered each and every one of them.
But my forests became places of danger and fear and the terrible escapees had chased away so much of the beauty in my Glyn.
I was king and it was a necessary sacrifice to see filth get cleansed.
Blood, guts, and dirt were caked onto my tunic, but my coat was fairly clean. I always took it off before a kill, discarding the extra fabric that could wind around my legs in a fight. A long day in the woods hunting and slicing and destroying ugly beasts had left me filthy. Every day, it left me grimy and I knew the filth was going deeper every time I swung my sword, but I had to endure. I had been neglecting the Labyrinth. What was the point of lighting candles so awful souls could find their way to a rapturous afterlife? I’d rather they found their way into my woods. There were so few worth helping those days. Mortal souls kept getting more twisted and I just. Kept. Destroying them.
