Page 25 of The Endless One

She didn’t have to ask what place he held among them. Elric had made it very clear they all thought he was beneath them, but she had never understood why.

“You are so strong,” she quietly stated. “So much of your magic can be built upon, as well. If you have a strong coven, why didn’t you try to create thousands of witches? Or at least hundreds of women sacrificing to you. You could have been the most impressive of all the gods if you wanted to be.”

“I never would have been that. Sacrifices only get me so far, and I…” He shook his head, ducking his nose to the back of her hair and breathing her in. “Years and years of them telling me I was never good enough, and honestly believing that, certainly held me back. Now we’re too late. Even if we had the time to build a coven of that size, he will still have gotten even stronger.”

“If you acquire more magic through sacrifices, how does he get his?”

“Pain.” The word rocked through her. She did feel weaker when she was around him. Even worse when he was making her hurt. “He gathers energy from torturing people. That energy feeds him, and it is very easy to gather for one such as him.”

Shit. Well, that made everything even more complicated. Because Elric was right. His brother could take that kind of power in mass amounts before they could even find someone who was born to be a witch.

“What are we going to do, Elric?” Jessamine whispered.

“I don’t know, nightmare. All I know is that I have you back, and that is the only thing that matters to me.” He pressed a kiss to her shoulder. “Are you ready for me to wash you?”

“I can wash myself. I’m not that injured.”

“And yet, I will be doing so. I want to make sure you are all right. Don’t rob me of the opportunity, nightmare.”

He rolled to his feet, and that was when she noticed yet again the deep hollows and bruises underneath his eyes. He hadn’t been sleeping, not since she had been taken. This poor man had been so worried about her, and now he just wanted to take care of her. He needed to see for himself that she was as well as she said she was.

She seemed hesitant, but eventually she nodded. “Okay, Elric. We can do that.”

As he dipped a rag he’d brought with him into the bucket of water, she stretched out her legs first and let him start at her ankles. The man lovingly took care of every inch of her body, washing away all the touches from so many others before he gathered her up in his arms once more, and she sank into a deep, restful sleep.

“I will stay here all night,” he murmured as she drifted off. “I will guard your dreams, nightmare.”

His dreams were full of terrible things. Memories of a time long ago when he had been far weaker and less confident in who he was. And when he woke, shivering with a cold sweat, he was certain that all of his fears had come to life.

She wasn’t beside him. Jessamine. He would have felt her warmth draped across his chest where she usually slept. For a heartbeat, it crushed him to think that all of this had been in his head. That he hadn’t saved her and she was still with his brother, enduring the torment he knew all too well.

But then he smelled her scent lingering on his skin. He felt the phantom touch of her hand on his chest. She had been here. He’d saved her. Elric repeated the words over and over again in his head, rolling them like sharp stones softened by the waves of relief. He’d gotten her away from his brother, at least for the time being. He’d kept his promise to the one person who actually mattered. Jessamine. Nightmare. His gravesinger who had brought him back from the dead.

He hated how Ajax still lived in his head. He hadn’t for such a long time. Because once the gods were dead, he buried all these memories so deep that he nearly forgot they existed. But now, Elric could hear his brother’s voice once again, a cruel lesson whispered from the past: Don’t get too attached to mortals. They are far too easy to break.

Where was she?

Elric turned to look through the loft and realized she had opened the hatch that would have been used for throwing hay out onto the grounds beyond. It was a simple mechanism to do so. All she had to do was attach a cord to a pulley on the ceiling, pull, and then tie it off. She was sitting in front of it with her arms wrapped around her legs, a black mark already forming beneath her left eye and that sheer dress hiding nothing of her figure.

She looked like a ghost in the stories mortals told. A man who woke in a barn at night to find an undead woman who haunted his dreams. If this were a story, he’d be drawn to her just like he was now. A magnet that pulled him in her direction.

He should have let her be. Clearly, she was thinking. Her chin was on her knees and she barely blinked as she stared out at the sea beyond. And yet some part of him couldn’t stop itself.

Like a moth to a flame, he would always go to her.

He got up and slowly shuffled over to her side. Rather than sit down beside her, he decided they had been parted for far too long. So instead, he sat behind her, spread his legs around her own, and then wrapped his arms around her. Considering the thinness of her dress, he assumed she was cold.

“I’ll share my warmth if you share your thoughts,” he murmured as she sat up enough for him to rest his chin on her shoulder.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“I figured as much.” Elric eased his hand down her arm, intertwining their fingers and drawing her hand up to his mouth. “Still thinking about what happened?”

“As much as you took, there is a lot to think about. I’m still stuck believing that this is the end for all of us. That there’s nothing I can do to change what has been done, and surely that’s just not right. We can still beat him.”

He recalled all the moments he had thought the same thing when he was a young god. Ajax had always encouraged people to try to overthrow him. Elric thought it was because he enjoyed what came next. There was a part of Ajax who always wanted someone to fight. An enemy had to exist, and if there wasn’t one, then Ajax would create one for himself. He had to hate to make himself feel powerful. Or safe. Or whatever it was going through that twisted head.

He tried to be supportive. “I don’t know if there’s a way to beat him now, but I will try with you for as long as you desire to do so.”