Page 82 of A City of Emeralds and Envy
I’ve tried various schemes to free myself, to reach out andhurtthe ones who put me here. My devices and schemes have all failed. And the more they fail, the greater my disquiet grows. I’m weakening—I can tell. Each wish I’m forced to grant drains me a little more. It gives me some joy to distort the wishes, to cause pain and terror whenever I can, but even that joy wears thinner every day.
Except for a few children in the Village of Crows, there are none left on the Isle who can wish for anything. Newcomers arrive every so often, hunting me down, demanding their due. I like hurting them for their insolence, but I hate the sense of power leaking from my form each time.
My so-called transgressions did not warrant this wretchedness. I did notdeservethis punishment. As a god-star, I need not cling to any moral code, nor follow any canon of justice. There is no such thing as guilt or law for one such as I. A pity the other god-stars did not agree. They disliked my favorite amusements—torturing entire races in various realms. I even created two fully populated realms of my own, just so I could torment and dismantle them. But when I decided to destroy one of the twelve primary realms—well, that spurred my fellow god-stars to action.
I thought them too indolent and self-absorbed to care about what I did for amusement. I was wrong.
Someday I will devise a way out of this prison. And then they’ll wish they had never dared to punish me. I will rain such devastation upon every realm they love, upon every race we’ve ever created, that they will burst apart from the pain of it. And I alone will be left, ascendant, triumphant. Utterly liberated.
But before I can aspire to such goals, I need to rid this Isle of the final risk to my existence—the West Witch and his scrying stone. I don’t believe he knows the threat it poses to me—how could he, puny Fae fool that he is? He is a quivering idiot, incapable of facing me on his own, cowering in his protected region, behind the barrier I was forced to erect for him.
If he knew what that stone could do to me, he’d have used it by now. Besides, the spell he needs to trap me in the stone is securely in the hands of the assassins I sent to kill him. That cold Fae girl with the brown and blue eyes won’t let the Tama Olc out of her possession, so I need not fear it falling into the Witch’s hands.
It irks me that my people failed to steal the Tama Olc from her, and that I was forced to let her walk out of my castle with it. But she’s a weakling half-Fae. There is no possibility of her learning to use such powerful magic. Not now, not when the deadline is almost up.
I pace faster, aching for an end to all this. I want to see the West Witch’s corpse, cold and gray and granite, lying before me. And then I will take his scrying stone and grind it into powdered glass.
If the human, the half-Fae, and the two curse victims fail to kill him, I will have the lesser pleasure of learning about their deaths, and hearing the survivors plead for my mercy. There is love among the little band of fools, and there is nothing I like better than twisting love into despair, rotting it with cruelty, shattering hope into horror.
Either scenario will be a savory treat.
I stalk my throne room in my Fae form—the shape I took so I could seduce and fuck Evanelda. She was amusing for a while. And then I grew bored, so I broke her. It was the best fun I’ve had since I fell—digging into her black heart that pulsed with love for me, driving my thumbs into the vessels, popping them so the dark blood gushed out, ripping the muscle with my nails. I ate her heart myself, and gave her the craving for the hearts of others.
She was the nearest thing I found to a kindred being in this place. But in the end, she was like all the others—boring, insipid, feeble. Her weakness practically begged to be abused and tortured.
A thread of awareness enters my mind. The steward at the throne room door is mentally announcing the presence of several supplicants. It’s the group I’ve been waiting for, and a vicious glee soars through my consciousness.
Swiftly I change my form to that of a great beast—the heads of three lions, the body of a bear, the claws and wings of an eagle, the antlers of a stag, and a hundred bulbous eyes. I relish the shock on their faces as they approach me down the length of the great hall. The rabbit-Fae and the one with cat ears are carrying a body slung between them—the stony, gray corpse of the West Witch.
He’s dead. The fools actually managed it.
I’m ten times larger than any of them, and when I bend my central head closer to inspect the body, they all cringe. I love it. Their fear is better than any psychedelic potion the Fae have invented. It carries me to screaming heights of delight.
The West Witch is dressed in black, his skin a solid, cold gray from head to feet. Tiny cracks are already beginning to branch through his body. Soon he will disintegrate, and his dust will blow away until he is entirely faded. I’ll have his body left here in my throne room so I can watch it happen.
“Well done,” I boom, and my roar makes the supplicants tremble. But the human girl who wished for the two Fae to be freed steps forward, her pale hair billowing with each huff of breath from my great nostrils. I’d like to cleave her in two with a giant cock, then eat the pieces of her torn flesh. But I am bound to honor her wish. I’ve twisted it as far as I can, and now it must be granted.
“And the stone?” I demand.
The girl motions to the other one with the braids—the one with the mismatched eyes. She steps forward and sweeps a cloth off the object she’s carrying.
It’s the scrying stone. The only way anyone on this Isle could possibly end me.
I shift into my Fae form and hold out both hands. “Give it to me.”
But the blonde girl shakes her head. “Not until you proclaim that these two Fae are forever free of their wishes and their cursed forms, as we agreed.”
“It is done,” I confirm, my expression twitching slightly as a bit of power leaks from me. “They will forever retain their natural forms.”
“One more thing,” says the girl with the braids. “Our friend Jasper has not yet made a wish. Before we leave, he has a request.”
I’m about to insist they give me the stone first, but the golden-haired Fae, Jasper, advances, already speaking. His voice is smooth, golden, calming. Almost worshipful. “I wish that I may perceive your glorious true form for five minutes, without losing my sight or memories, and with no harm to my friends.”
I almost laugh. It’s a stupid wish, a simple one, easily performed, and I’ll lose no power by granting it. The boy must be an idiot to waste his wish on such a thing. I should expect no more—humans and Fae are generally foolish, incapable of higher thought. The number of idiotic, foolishly-worded wishes I’ve granted is enough to boggle even such a great mind as my own.
The terms of my punishment are acting upon me already, compelling me to grant the wish, forcing me to shift into my true form—a searing ball of energy, white-hot and glorious, far beyond the comprehension of mere mortals or Fae.
But as I change, a suspicion jolts through me.
