Page 34 of Mischief Maker
The moment my palm wraps around hers, a terrible pain shoots through me, straight down the middle as if it’s trying to split me in half. I shriek and fall to the ground in agony.
“Dying is an ugly business,” Lucia says, watching me with pity. “I suppose I should have warned you.”
The stars overhead swim, blending with the moon in a swirl of bright light. My body crumples, and everything goes dark.
Kireth
When the doors open for me, I’m greeted by laughing voices and bright light. This yawning ceiling, these great marble walls, are all familiar to me. Walking in is like putting on an old coat.
They are all here. My old friends, my fellow long-gone immortals. They drink wine, and play merry card games, and fornicate in the corners—or in some cases, in large groups on one of the big beds above the mezzanine.
I am back home, in the hall of the gods.
But why?
“Kireth!” Anoinda rushes down the steps, naked. It’s clearly just reached her ears that I’ve arrived. She throws her arms around me. “Ah, you mischievous little imp. I have been wondering when you might show up.” She teases her hands down my chest to the tie of my loincloth.
My mind feels hazy, like everything is coated in a layer of cobwebs. But why am I here, now, in the home of the immortals? I haven’t been here for many centuries, and...
The cobwebs get thicker, more impassable. I can’t remember what came before this, where I was. I’ve clearly just gotten here, but where did I arrive from?
Anoinda’s hands deftly remove my one article of clothing, and then they traverse down my waist. “Ooh, it is good to see you again!” she says to my cock. It doesn’t even seem to notice her. My mind is somewhere else.
With someone else.
But who? I groan and rub the side of my head, snatching the loincloth back.
“I’m not in the mood,” I hiss, and walk to a corner far from the fountain in the center of the mezzanine. Anoinda huffs with annoyance and trots back to whatever rat king of fucking she was a part of before.
I have this aching feeling like whatever it is I can’t remember is very important, and it’s just out of my reach.
Someone. I know it was a someone. A master of mine, perhaps. What was I doing before I found myself in the hall of the gods? I haven’t come here in a long time. As the other gods have been forgotten and disappeared, so has the hall gone quiet. But now it is bursting with noise and activity again.
But there is one god absent. My mother.
I stand up suddenly and look around the room. She’s not among those collected here, but my father is. He’s watching me with interest, his black hair spread out long and thick behind him.
Lucia is the only reason I can think of for why I’m here. She is the one who always called us together, and she is the only one not present, which must mean my foggy head is her doing.
After a time, my father gets to his feet and approaches me, carrying a decanter full of wine. The red liquid sloshes as he sits next to me.
My mother might have carved me from stone and given me life, but the god of the sea, Terano, is the one who created the stone that would eventually become me. A cup appears in my hands, and Terano pours wine into it. Where Lucia is impulsive and often petty, he is steadfast and quiet. But his rages, oh, they can be immense.
“This place is not what you think it is,” he says. Then he urges me to take a drink of the wine. For some reason, I’m repulsed by it. This is the nectar of the gods, but what I find myself wanting is peasant’s wine, rough and tart.
“I’m not supposed to be here,” I say, and no words have ever felt truer. This is wrong. Being among these flawless, beautiful immortals, I feel like a stranger. I’m longing for something that isn’t here.
Terano places a firm hand on my shoulder. “It’s a difficult thing to accept,” he says. “That they have forgotten you.”
I turn to him. Surely that’s not what’s happened.
“No,” I say firmly. “I know that’s not true. If mortals are anything, it is greedy and incapable, and someone will always need a servant in me.”
My father shakes his head. “This is not the real hall of the gods,” he says, gesturing around us. “But we’re meant to think that it is. Most of us just pretend that’s where we are, because it makes it easier for the mind than knowing we have been sent to oblivion.”
Forgotten. I can’t be. Not when someone is out there, someone just on the edge of my memory who makes my heart race and my cock twitch. I don’t know who it is, but they’re not here—which means I shouldn’t be, either.
“I have to go back.” I toss down the wine and it spills across the shining white floor, the golden goblet bouncing off the floor with a loud clang. A few other gods look up to gawk at my outburst. “I need to get back to wherever I just came from!”
