Page 93 of Can you take it?

‘This is why’, she said. ‘It’s Bartleby, my love. He’s the healer I’ve been working with. Ten is due for her three-month check.’

‘Three-month check?’

‘I don’t recognize him,’ Mendax snarled.

‘That’s because you killed the last healer,’ Cal grumbled.

‘He made her cry! No one makes my daughter cry and lives.’

‘You see?’ Caly laughed. ‘Do you see what I have to deal with now? He will hardly let me hold her unless she needs to be nursed, and even then he watches over the door like a guard.’

‘Three-month check?’ I asked.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t reach out sooner; life has been hectic. We have made some serious advances with the study of magic though, that I’d love to tell you—Cal began but I cut her off.

‘How has it been three months? I just heard you cry out in birth yesterday,’ I said, suddenly feeling alarmed.

‘Are you still in the tiers? Time doesn’t really exist in Tartarus, not in the way it does for the living,’ Mendax said. ‘I can’t talk now. Ten is eyeing the window absolutely begging to go on a walk. Are you going back to the lab, Caly? We’ll see you for dinner. Tarani is bringing over her husband.’

Her husband. Tarani had gotten married. I’d missed everything.

‘Yeah, sorry I can’t stay either; we are working with some combustible magic and I really need my full thoughts on it.’ Cal trailed off, and then they both left.

“They sound really busy and happy,” Anna said after I had filled her in.

“Yeah. It’s like they’re too busy for me now,” I muttered.

A knock at the door sounded. Anna and I looked at each other. We were still lying on the floor naked. She jumped up and grabbed her clothes but was much faster than I was, and when the door opened with a loud creak, I jumped and scrambled to cover myself. In the place of the open door was nothing but blackness. The kind of darkness that was only seen in empty portals.

“The portal,” Anna said. “We—we must’ve all passed lust, though I don’t know how.” She made a point of looking down at me with a hedonistic grin.

“Love isn’t lust,” I whispered. She nodded softly.

“I suppose it’s on to the tenth tier,” she said rather sadly.

I wasn’t feeling much happier. Silence overtook us as we took our time getting dressed. We went up to the doorway and entered the portal to the tenth and final tier with one final look at one another.

Chapter 18

CALY

Yes, now see that beautiful cluster of glowing glitter? That’s the collection of certain Hasanabi powers in solid form; now watch.” I struggled to conceal my excitement as I leaned over the glass plate with Ten on my lap. “Now touch it and see what happens.”

Ten, now three years old going on twenty, reached her tiny hand out and held it above the plate of sparkling stars and looked at me, unsure.

“It’s safe, I promise,” I reassured her, giving the small embodiment of my universe a squeeze.

Her bright blue eyes twinkled as she poked the tiny mass of gold with her finger. Instantly the sparkling magic climbed up her finger and proceeded to cover her tiny body in shimmering gold as she kicked her legs joyously and let out a peal of laughter as she sat on my lap.

“Momma! Look!” she cackled with laughter as the glitter flowed up and into her black hair.

It was completely harmless, a laboratory party trick we had discovered months ago, but it made her smile and that was all that mattered.

“Beautiful!” I laughed.

“Daddy!” Ten shrieked with excitement when Mendax entered the large doors of the lab. A few of the techs in the room coincidentally made themselves scarce at the sight of the darkly clothed king.

Mendax ignored Ten completely. “Caly, have you seen Ten at all?”