Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 99201 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 496(@200wpm)___ 397(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99201 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 496(@200wpm)___ 397(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
“Callistina!”
And he’s not going to do it. He’s not.
He won’t do it.
We’re best friends! We’re more than friends, but even if we weren’t, friends is enough.
I love him. He loves me.
And then the ridiculousness of it all hits me in the back like a bolt from his bow and I am flung forward, straight onto a boulder I was just about to leap over.
And it’s not ridiculous at all.
It was planned this way.
His love is fake.
His friendship is fake.
And I knew that. I have always known that he is fake.
His footsteps come slow now. I’m gasping for breath, face down on the flat, sandstone boulder like a sacrifice. Because that’s what I am.
Antlers are growing out of my head.
Fur is pushing out from my skin.
Claws burst from the tips of my fingers and the last thing I remember, I’m digging those claws into the rock as a sharp blade stabs my antlers and bloodhorn pours out of me in rivers.
I am nothing to him but a source of power.
He planned this. From the very beginning. I knew something was wrong when we were on the hillside together. When those man-boys walked through the door and Eros stopped me from following.
“Here’s the thing, Callistina. I… might like you.”
That’s what he told me.
“We are… kind of a team. And I think we should go to this new world together.”
That’s what he said.
“I want to go with you, Callistina. OK? I want us to go together.”
Then he pointed at himself and at me.
I was confused. Then suspicious.
And then he kissed me.
He spelled me.
He used me.
He killed me.
Is killing me right now, in this very moment.
A spelling comes to me. In a voice that’s soothing, and sweet, and belongs to a very small girl. She is standing next to the boulder like a ghost in a long, sage-green dress that flows down to her feet.
“A horn, a hoof, an eye, a bone.
A god, a girl, away from home.
He takes her magic with his knife.
He takes it all, and ends her life.
She will not wake, she will not wallow
A bitter pill that she must swallow.
The god of love is the god of hate.
He has no soul, he has no mate.
Goodbye, lost god, be gone for good.
You’ll never be the man you should.”
I watch the little girl with blurry vision as my head jerks back and forth from the effort it takes to cut the antlers clean off.
And then it’s over. The antlers are gone. My blood is all over this forest, and this boulder, and this life. The little girl—who can only be Pressia—reaches out to touch my hand. “It’s not your fault,” she says in a small, sad voice. “It’s not your pain. I did my best to explain. He needs to see, he needs to know. I could not tell, I had to show. And so he must live with this, and feel the dark, sad loneliness. What happens next, life goes on. Adventure over, love is gone. He has two choices before him now. Fix it all or take a bow.”
She disappears, but her words linger in my head like an echo in a cave.
And then I simply cease to exist.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE - EROS
I watch from the trees. I watch the god as he kills Callistina.
Steals her magic.
Treats her body like he’s dressing a deer after a hunt.
I watch as he prepares his spelling.
I watch as the golden wings burst out of his back and spread through the forest like a morning sunrise.
I watch him leave. Just… walk away. Like she was nothing to him.
No one shows up to save Callistina.
Not even me.
She is dead.
I wake up in the woods just outside the hallway door. The sun is just starting to rise and birds are singing. When I sit up and look downhill, I can just barely make out the sign over the little candle shop.
What. The fuck. Just happened?
Was it a dream?
But the weight of the wings behind me tells me everything I need to know.
I can’t even look at them, but I know they are magnificent, and golden, and so full of magic, they glow like the sunrise.
I’m afraid to look around. I’m afraid of what I’ll see. I don’t even want to stand up. I don’t even want to live.
I can’t live on if she’s gone. I can’t.
You killed her, Eros.
It’s my own voice inside my head. All me. Not anyone else.
You killed her to steal her magic and get your feathers back.
I did that. I did. There’s no way to deny it. No point, either.
“Once you were great, once you were tall.” The words come out of my mouth unbidden. “But now you’re bait, and now you’re small. You steal the love, not set it free. You take the joy, from them, from me. I see you now, I see you then, I see you everywhere you’ve been. And you will know my name forever, you will know my spell is clever. Not just some words and pretty rhymes, my spells are deep and keep the time. I curse you now, evermore. The magic ends with the last great war. You cannot win, you will not prevail. You will be lost in time and tale. For it is not gods who rule this place—they have no honor, truth, or grace. It is the magic of the spells that keep us safe, and warm, and well. We craft them careful, make the words, and wrap them up in beaks of birds. So go, and live, and rejoice. But know, my enemy, this is not your choice. Goodbye, lost god, be gone for good. Be the man you know you should.”