Sins of the Soul

A blind end.

Every instinct Alastor had told him this was not a good place to be. But Naphré resisted when he started to walk away, their arms extending the full distance between them as she refused to move, and he refused to let go his hold on her hand.

“This is it,” she breathed, laying her other palm flat against the boulder that towered over them. “It? What?”

“The story of Izanami and her husband, Izanagi. She died. He followed her to Yomi, wanting her back. When he got there, things didn’t work out as planned.”

“In what way?”

“She had already partaken of the food of the dead, and her body was decomposing. He swore to her he wouldn’t look at her while she begged the deities for release from death and the chance to return to life.” She shrugged. “He lied.”

“Doesn’t everyone? What does that have to do with this boulder?”

“He ran from her once he saw her rotting corpse. He escaped and pushed a boulder to block the entrance to Yomotsuhirasaka.”

“Which is?”

“The cavern at the entrance to Yomi.”

Alastor glanced up at the rock face. “You think this is that boulder.” And now that she’d so succinctly recapped the story, so did he. But that didn’t negate the fact that he felt like jumping out of his skin, every sense and instinct screaming that this situation was wrong.

He did a quick evaluation of the boulder, running his fingers along the edges, squatting to feel along the base. He clambered up the stone face of the rock wall that bordered it, just to see if the way in was at the top.

Nothing.

“Izanami!” he called. The wind picked up and blew down the gully, but that was the only reply he got.

From his place some twelve feet up the rock face, he looked down at Naphré. She was hunkered down, running her fingers along the base of the boulder.

He had to smile at that. Trust her to not trust him.

As though sensing his regard, she tipped her head back and her lips curled in that mysterious, close-lipped smile.

“Double-checking, in case I missed the secret lever?” he asked.

She shrugged. “The Shikome said I’m the key, right?”

And he was an utter and complete moron.

Izanami wanted nothing from him, had no reason to let him into her realm. She wanted Naphré. And he had only the Shikome’s intimation that he’d be allowed to come along for the ride.

Bloody sodding hell.

He leaped down, landing so close that his thigh skimmed her shoulder. She was already rising, and he closed his fingers on her upper arm and hauled her the rest of the way up.

“It’s a sodding trap,” he snarled. Rage curdled in his gut. He was a thrice-damned fool. The Shikome had played him, using the darksoul he so clearly wanted as the bait, Naphré the prize she sought to bag.

Why? Why the fuck did they want her?

Time to figure out those answers once he had her somewhere safe.

He laced his fingers with Naphré’s, as tight as he dared without risking breaking her bones. She didn’t argue or struggle or ask a single question. He focused his attention on summoning a portal, grabbing the energy that surged between Topworld and the Underworld and momentarily combining them to create a fracture between the realms, an icy doorway that would allow them to escape.

Too late.

From behind came a booming, echoing roar, and he spun to see a massive wall of water chasing along the riverbed toward them.





OBLIVION. IT CALLED TO HIM.

The cold sliced him open like a scalpel, flaps of skin pulled wide to lay bare the flesh and bone beneath. He was normally immune to cold. Yet this numbing chill nullified the part of him that was Sutekh’s son and left only the human part to face the tiny crystals that formed on his lashes, his skin, flaying him raw. Death by freezing. By drowning. By loneliness and self-loathing.

Where were these thoughts coming from?

He’d left them behind long ago.

He opened his eyes and looked into hers. Naphré. Eyes like an endless lake. Dark. Fathomless. She was there in front of him. No, inside him. She could hear what he heard, know what he knew.

He didn’t want her to know what a coward he had been. To know the many ways he had tried to take his own life. The first time he’d taken a soul. The darkness inside him. The part of him that reveled in harvesting souls and hearts. The taste of that, the rush of absolute pleasure.

It wasn’t the knowledge of what he was that made him hate himself so. It was the knowledge that he liked it.

He’d wanted to die. To kill himself.

He’d tried. He’d failed.

Lokan had saved him. And Mal and Dagan. Though they always insisted that in the end, he’d saved himself.