Page 6 of A War of Embers

“What if he’s not?”

Franklin doesn’t relent as he immediately challenges back, “What if he is?”

As much as I hate this conversation going around in circles, he has a decent point. There’s no proof the guy from Obsidian ever made it across the Blood Sea. He’s also never been seen again from what I’ve been able to tell in my sleuthing.

“Look, if this is your last resort option and you no longer care, then you have my blessing. You’ll trade one corrupt jailer for another. You’ll also be leaving your soul behind in the clutches of Lady Gwenyth and there’s no telling what she’ll do if you leave.”

“Do you think she’d destroy it?” Part of me wonders if she already has, but I keep that tidbit of knowledge to myself. As far as I'm aware, trading souls doesn’t swap the soul in Lady Gwenyth’s clutches, it just provides immortals with loopholes to get out. And after all this time, a soul is a soul as far as I’m concerned. But I still don’t want to be the reason someone is forced to live out my debt.

Franklin presses his lips together. “I think,” he answers slowly, “that if you continue going down this path there will be a price to pay. Are you willing to pay it?”

I don’t know. To bet on an unsure thing is reckless thinking, just as Franklin pointed out. But how much longer can I continue to live with myself, the barely feeling side taking more control, day after day? How many more people will die by my hand? How many more bodies will it be to even my score?

How much longer can I live with the monster I’m becoming?

“Maybe she’ll grant me a quick death,” I half-heartedly say.

“Maybe she’ll feed you to a creature.” He gives a weary sigh. “Why did you really come in here tonight, Keres? You’ve made up your mind, it’s written all over your face. You’d rather live in an unknown hell than continue living in this one. That’s the gist of this conversation, isn’t it?”

Up until now it felt more as though I was debating this entire ordeal. But he’s right, as infuriating as it is to come to realize. Some deeper part of me is ready to take my chances. To move on. To find some semblance of peace that I won’t find here.

Maybe out there in the sea, I’ll drift endlessly, never making it to shore, but never losing another part of myself.

“I want to remember what it feels like to care about something beyond my survival,” I quietly announce.

“You mean your death.”

“And that.” I take a deep pull from the frosty glass and place it gently back on the bar. “I don’t know why I came. To hear your thoughts or reason with myself. To speak to someone who took the easier way out of this life, one I wish I could take.”

Franklin folds his arms across his barrel chest. He tilts his chin to nod at me. “You realize you care more than you think you do. About yourself. About others.”

“Only when I have my mind.” And only sometimes. Perhaps the Lord of Shadows and I aren’t so different. Lady Gwenyth took my soul, my personal version of the heart shard, but left my brain.

“The Blood Witch isn’t your answer. She’s not your friend.”

“Then tell me what is.” I drum my fingers impatiently on the bar top. “I’m tired, Franklin, of being trapped in this body.” I’m tired of all of it. Just waiting for the next moment I black out, murder an unknown number of people, and come back to myself. I’m tired of waiting for the moment I don’t come back at all.

“You could always ignore your wants to spite your needs.”

He means to con someone else into this debt so I may die of my own accord. “The risk is I don’t understand why I would do that when I know Lady Gwenyth would never allow it. Even if someone else came along and took these souls, she would never honor the deal and release my soul back to me. She would find another way to trap me.” Lady Gwenyth is vindictiveness personified.

“What makes you so sure she won’t honor it?” Franklin seems truly flummoxed by my words. Then again, Lady Gwenyth didn’t take a personal interest in him like she did me.

I can recall the first time I asked about the rumors I heard of trading my souls for that of a mortal. It made the soul she had invalid to hold over me, yet when I brought it up she laughed in my face. It was then I found out how different of an immortal I am compared to others.

What I hadn’t known before was that most immortals only have one soul placed inside of them. Sometimes two if there was a need for an assassin to deliver punishments in specific forms unknown to the host. Yet I have four, an outrageous number by all accounts.

Something about what I did to be thrust into her court as an indentured servant was unspeakable. Something heinous no one knew of but the severity was easy to tell. She placed four souls. A penance I could never hope to repay, no matter how much she claimed it was possible.

A life for a life.

Those were the terms for immortality.

Whatever I had done was wiped from the mind of anyone who was there that day who could dare say something against my punishment. Still, that doesn’t keep people from seeking to repay my debt in turn for a chance of immortality.

“Over the years people have tried to bargain for my debt,” I explain. Justin isn’t the first, nor will he be the last to try to swindle into the good graces of a goddess. “She always says no. On one occasion she outright killed a woman for daring to ask.” I shake my head as I remember the horrific smell of flesh burning as Lady Gwenyth fried the woman on the spot with her magic. “I am the same as you were yet I am different too.”

Franklin pauses to digest my words. “You mean something to her.”

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