Page 78 of A Queen Of Broken Realms
“I was the one who reaped your soul,” Cole says as Eryx and Ediye release his hands and he takes another step closer to the trembling new demon. She tries to push further away from him, but she doesn’t yet have the strength to fight her way free. Cole kneels but comes no closer.
“Naya,” Ashen says, drawing her attention from the Reaper who killed her to a more terrifying option, one complete with glowing eyes and giant wings. “You were reaped for the Crime of Coercion. Do you remember?”
Naya takes a moment to respond, as though it’s taking effort to discern dreams from memory. “Yes, I remember.”
“The former Council of the Shadow Realm determined that you were entering another coven’s dreams to manipulate them into an attack against a third coven, one that was backed and controlled by the Council. Is that true?”
Naya squeezes her eyes shut. “It is.”
“No matter your motivation or the advantage the former Council gleaned from your actions, you already know it is a violation of the rules governing immortals. You were only to use your powers to guide and to heal, not to coerce,” Ashen says, his tone firm but not unkind.
Naya’s head drops with a heavy sigh, and she takes a deep breath before nodding. “I know.”
I rise from the throne and approach her with careful steps, crouching near the woman who’s doing her best to keep pace with a situation that’s long outrun her. But despite her fear and confusion, she’s holding her shit together. The only sign of her distress is the tremor that jitters through her body. “Naya, look down at the words that scroll across your chest,” I say. She reads the letters and meets my eyes.
“Shalasu Ningsisa,” she whispers. “Merciful Justice.”
I squeeze Naya’s arm. “I can’t free you of this place, not for the crime you’ve committed. But I can give you the chance to use your residual gifts to help other souls and rebuild this realm. I am offering you a position on the Council, and the opportunity to use your Dreamwalker capabilities to guide the most broken souls back from their suffering. And Cole will help you do it.”
Naya darts a wary glance to the demon kneeling nearby. His hands are folded in his lap. Tears still glass his eyes, but only a few fall. “I’m sorry, Naya. I’m so sorry I took you from the Living Realm,” he says. “I want to help you find a purpose here. You can help the Realm find the path back to what it was meant to be.”
“If I don’t accept?” Naya asks in a whisper, as though she doesn’t really want to know the answer.
“Then you return to being a wraith,” Ashen says. “We’ve looked through the texts. The rules are very clear. Ten years for every mind you coerced to commit the attack. One hundred and twenty years is your sentence.”
Naya was only reaped a year ago, but each moment must have felt like a lifetime, because the sound she makes is one of pure anguish. My heart sinks thinking what the other souls here must be enduring if one hundred and twenty years is unfathomable to an immortal. Even despite knowing what she stands to face, Naya reins in her fear and nods. “May I think on it?”
“Yes, of course.” I give her a smile and rise to stand next to Ashen. His fingers lace through mine as his thumb draws a lazy caress across my skin. Naya seems to notice the movement and a crease flickers between her brows. When she meets my eyes it’s as though the concept of love in the Shadow Realm had never occurred to her. Something about showing her otherwise through such a simple gesture warms my core. “You have two days.”
Imani offers Naya a hand and helps her from the floor. “Come. I will show you where you’ll stay.”
Naya’s gaze is still on me as her head tilts. Her eyes narrow as she tries to remember if we’ve ever met, though I already know we haven’t, unless she recalls fractured images of me in her time as a lost soul. “Who are you?” she finally asks when she’s sure she can’t wrest my name from history.
But before I have the chance to answer, it’s Cole who speaks.
“She is Leucosia of Anthemoessa,” he says. When he looks at me, I feel my Cole looking back, the one who once said we can give ourselves permission to accept love, even when it’s tarnished and imperfect, even when we feel unworthy. When Cole smiles, I know the bruises he feels now are on the way to fading. “She’s the Queen of this broken realm. And she’s going to fix it, one soul at a time.”
CHAPTER30
I’m standing in the ruined living room of the cliffside manor that will one day be our home. Ashen is upstairs, his hammer a comforting beat that travels down the stone staircase. Aglaope scrubs a section of the floor where we’ve already swept away debris. I’m brushing down one of the walls with soapy water, and I hum a little tune to the beat of my strokes. Sometimes I think of Bian and cleaning in the Swan and I smile, wondering if she’s sitting in the lobby doing her crosswords as the world is ready to fall apart around her. It should be a disturbing image, but somehow it feels fitting for Sanford. Something makes me think the rest of existence could be destroyed and that hotel would still be standing.
“The Annuls of Biluda state that the Nephilim are creatures trapped between realms, malevolent beings that were punished by the gods for the Insurrection of Ekur,” Eryx says, talking just as much to himself as to the rest of us as he scrubs a tapestry that was hanging on the wall. Ever since he went to the Realm of Light and spent two days in the library in the ziggurat, he’s been a non-stop fountain of historical information, though there’s been less about the Nephilim than I’d hoped for. “In the prophecy of the seventh oracle, Nunamnir, it was believed some Nephilim had remained in the Living Realm in hiding, possessing the bodies of mortals as slowly regained power.”
“That’s what I remember from the early stories. Possession this, possession that. Ghost stories. It seemed like it was another human myth,” I reply.
Aglaope’s laugh is like music that warms the stone walls, and Eryx glances over his shoulder with a look of awe. “We do know a thing or two about hiding beneath the stories of humankind.”
I hum in agreement. “Anything else, Mr. Art Historian Angel?” I ask as Eryx rinses the tapestry, the bright colors starting to show through now that the centuries of dirt are being washed away.
“Only that immortals would open a channel to the space between realms and allow the Nephilim in.”
“Great. So, if that’s true, then how many Nephilim are there lurking in the Living Realm?” I ask.
“Not sure,” he says with a shrug. “It seems like the channel can only be open for short period of time, in an ancient city called Rusalimum.”
A gasp leaves my lips as I turn to face Eryx. Pieces of memory shift into place, my pulse humming with the excitement of a picture coming into view. The hammering stops upstairs, Ashen surely sensing the sudden shift in my emotions. His footsteps flow down the staircase and he joins us in the living room.
“What’s going on?” he asks, looking between us.
