Page 124 of The Deer and the Dragon
I shook my head. My teeth began to chatter as the water leached through my skin and froze my muscles, my tendons, my blood.
“Where?!” she practically screamed, voice echoing between the glass and tile of the shower as steam filled the room.
“The heat, please,” I begged.
“Spit out a single coherent thought and I will turn on the hot water and wrap you in a blanket and make you tea and rub your feet,” she said, voice hitched with desperation.
“Caliban killed Astarte,” I said. “He killed her. There was so much blood. She let him in and he knew she would, but I don’t know how or why. He didn’t tell me why, butheknew. She drugged me and—” I flinched away from the memory.
“Azrames!” She gave my wet hair another yank.
“Parasites!” I struggled to free myself from her hold as I flailed like a fish in the shower. My legs hit the ground with a wet splash as the hot water continued to burn us. I shookmy head free from her fist and grabbed her shoulders. “Anath was calling them. There were so many in the lobby. It was just Caliban and Azrames against so many. He made me call Silas to get me out of there. I didn’t want to leave him.”
I released her as I crumbled into myself. I no longer had my knees as support, face collapsing into the puddle of frigid water, lips barely above the tiny pool before it raced toward the drain. The water’s temperature changed ever so slightly, inching from arctic to lukewarm to hot once more. Each drop ran from my back, my hair, from Fauna, over my collapsed form and into the tiny drilled holes in the corner of the shower.
She helped me up from the floor. The shrillness left her voice as she wrapped her arms around me, cradling me while heat rained down over us both. There was a gentleness to her questions as she asked, “Parasites and Anath? That’s all who was left?”
I started to cry, but she squeezed me until my sobs abated.
“You’re sure Astarte was dead? What of other Phoenician presences? Gods? Goddesses? Was Baal there?”
I shook my hair, sputtering as the water attempted to drown me. Her scent filled the shower as if I were scrubbing with forest-scented bath soaps and oils. I spoke through sludge and fog and steam, but my words came with slightly more ease as I said, “No. Caliban took Astarte down in the room with me in the middle of some…mating ritual. I don’t know. I still have no idea why she let him in or what the fuck they were talking about. None of it made sense. But we were there, and then Azrames killed Jessabelle in the lobby—I didn’t see it happen, but almost. She was dead. Baal wasn’t there. Dagon didn’t come for them. It was just Anath and the parasites.”
She relaxed almost imperceptibly as I my sobs grew too loud to control. The sounds coming from me were louder than the pounding of the shower. My grief burned hotter than the water. My pain was more poignant than the absenceof our partners. She pulled my utterly naked body into her arms, still dressed in a soaked tee and drenched pants. She held me as she began to shush me.
“They’ll be fine,” she said.
“There were so many—”
Whatever remained of her fury and angst was gone. Her tone shifted, becoming the comforting, strange entity I’d known.
“It’s okay,” she promised.
“It’s not,” I said, struggling to breathe as my shoulders shook with tears.
She tucked me against herself as she said, “I know it doesn’t seem like it right now, but it’s going to be okay.”
“You weren’t there!” I sobbed, voice hitching into a hiccup. I choked into the water between the shower’s steam and the puddle of her hair.
“Hell’s Prince, its greatest assassin, and an angel of justice all stacked against a single goddess and her nothing army?”
“A goddess of war!” I cried. “Caliban begged Silas to get me out because it was so dangerous! Because it—”
“Hush,” she said, stroking my hair. I knew she was still worried, but her tone, her body, her aura calmed as she said, “Because the stakes were so much higher for you, Marlow. You’re mortal. Your safety is so delicate. And I get it. This cycle means infinitely more than the others. Your eyes are open, and the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been for all of us. That doesn’t mean they aren’t okay. The three of them can take any shitty, forgotten war goddess and the parasites she convinced to follow her. So few still worship the Phoenicians. Without the energy from an army of faithful, they’re weak. They don’t have temples. They aren’t given mass sacrifices or godspouses or energy—”
“Fauna…”
Her hand continued to move against my hair, my back. I tried to focus on her through the pain that coursed through me like a lightning rod. I’d spent my life rejecting love, andthe moment I accepted its reality, it was to be snatched from me.
“Hush, Marlow,” she repeated through the blackness as night gripped us wholly. I saw nothing. I felt only the outline of her body against the hot water. “I’ve got you,” she said while I shook. Her voice cut through the choking shadows as she whispered, “I know it’s dark. I know. But we’re going to be sunflowers.”
“What?” I almost gagged on the absurdity of the statement as I trembled in darkness, free-falling through the emptiness of oblivion. There was no hope, no warmth, no light as I shattered.
She tightened herself around me, arms on my body, a hand in my hair, like a mother, like a friend, like a sister as she said, “Have you heard that sunflowers turn to face each other when there’s no sun in the sky?” She didn’t wait for my response, allowing me to crumble into myself as if I were a black hole. “It’s not true,” she said quietly. “It’s something cute, something made up, something people tell themselves about flowers to feel nice…but Marlow, right now there’s no sun. And everything about your life has felt like make-believe up until the moment it’s come true. So what if it’s a myth that sunflowers look to each other when there’s no sun in the sky? When has something being a myth ever stopped it from being real? Things feel hopeless right now, but they aren’t. I promise you. You and me.” She lifted my face, wiping the tears from my cheeks, her doe eyes burning into mine as she said, “Let’s be sunflowers.”
