Beyond the cocoon of horrid green power, I am vaguely aware that Erik is barrelling towards Raphael.
I want to help, I do. To tell them to stop. I want to fight. To move. But I am dying. My skin has become allergic to the open air. Air no longer feeds my lungs. Because of Raphael, I am neither Mer nor human.
I have become nothing at all.
Every part of me burns and stretches in unnatural ways. My lungs feel like they will pop due to the toxic atmosphere.
Every cell begs for relief, for this pain to stop.
When it finally does, I feel my very life ebbing from my fingertips. The last thing I see is Aidoneus’ power overtaking his brother before death comes to claim me.
* * *
In death,there is a song. There is peace.
My body has been laid gently on a bed of powder-soft sand, and I hear the waves crashing nearby. The stars twinkle in the heavens like pearls glinting off spell light in the deep, black layers of the sea. I’d not spent enough time gazing at the stars in my mortal form.
A female being hums, wearing nothing but robes of pure starlight.
Sensations prick at my skin, and I recognize the bitter cold. It is not welcome. At one point in my life, I loved it. But that was before my heart thawed in the warmth of daylight, of love. I push the cold away, gazing back at the stars. Instead of being afraid, I am filled with the promise of life in the darkness. The glinting lights and the majestic female bring me a sense of warmth springing from the chill.
The tune is… it’s exactly what I imagine the sirens of old used to sing. Songs that could only be heard below the water, for the land robbed us of our voice.
I sit up to look at the woman. She is weaving threads of golden light at an impossibly tall, gilded loom. Her deep black skin melts into the night, and I have difficulty making out her features. A plush golden stool supports her ample arse, and her soft, curvy figure stretches high enough to touch the sky. As she works, her silken black hair shifts, revealing the low back of her dress. Her shoulder and arm muscles flex, causing the rolls around her waist to move and ripple.
She is beautiful. She is agoddess.
My body tenses when I take a step, but all of the damage the idiotic Raphael did is gone. Emboldened, I walk to her. She could squash me like a bug with one of her large, black toes.
Kiara?I want to ask.
When I open my mouth, still no sound comes out. A manic laugh bubbles up inside of me. Even in death, the curse persists. I have been ripped from my life, and still, I cannot speak.
The weaving stops, and my heart follows suit. A whirlwind whips at my hair, and the waves crash with more ferocity as the goddess twists around from her gilded perch. When the colossal female looks down at me, I stumble backward. She is not Kiara.
Fortuna’s impossibly beautiful eyes contain galaxies that are both young and old. She smiles, and I can see stars glittering in her veins, plaiting their beauty into a fabric that makes up the robes she dons.
There is something about the air around her. It is ancient. Eons exist in the span of her body.
The goddess tilts her head and watches me.
The weight of judgment pressed down on me like the weight of holding up the world. She gazes at my heart and flicks through my thoughts. Every action and reaction from my life blooms like the purple gas from a small galaxy.
With great difficulty, I swallow. I cannot defend myself, for I cannot speak. The intensity of Fortuna’s gaze is like being pelted by the icy water with no end in sight.
I am standing here before her because of my uncle’s rash actions. He is her son. Surely she would understand. My tongue is like sandpaper in my mouth as she studies me.
Her thick arms bring the fabric she’s created over her soft thighs. It cascades down like a waterfall, and I see the fabric of life glimmering before me. I see it all, beings as numerous as the grains of sand on the beach. All the threads come together, and it is too much for me to understand. The one thought that floats up from the depths of my thoughts is this: We are all inseparably connected, for better or worse.
And then I see Erik’s thread. It appears black, but my eyes adjust and begin to make out the complex depth of color that he is. He is… beautiful. At first, he is woven into a solid block of cloth. And then, beautiful designs start to make up his life as it twines with my own to create a delicate, blue lace. Gauzy, and yet, forever inseparable.
Fortuna opens her mouth after an eternity, or maybe just a few seconds. But she doesn’t speak… she just sings.
The sound leaks from her lips, wrapping me in a warm blanket, and like the comfort of a hot shower, I feel the cold seeping out of my skin. Questions fill my mind, but blackness intercedes my sight before I can ask them.
And then I am looking up at Uncle Aidoneus.
I know that Raphael is gone from the lack of his slimy presence in the room. My under-lids flutter open, sliding across my painfully dry eyes. But that is the only hurt that persists. Everything else is... normal. I mentally run over my body, and I feel... fine. I can wiggle my toes—I have toes! My lungs can breathe. My heart can beat.