The Mad King (The Dark Kings #1)(19)

Just yesterday I would have said no. But today, witnessing the way her shoulders had drooped, the way she’d practically withered before me when I’d told her what I really thought of her... I realized that maybe I’d lost complete touch with reality.

Surrounded by my dead, but interacting with none. I was alone.

And I couldn’t remember a time when I hadn’t been, even when Persephone used to make her presence felt.

Mulling over those thoughts, my mind inevitably took a turn toward Calypso. I blinked, shaking my head as I tried to imagine that in any reality Calypso had ever been mine.

It wasn’t possible.

She was nothing but water. She mingled with none, was said to have the most violent of tempers and was a virgin elemental.

Aphrodite must have lied.

And yet... And yet she said the Fates had told her truth.

It couldn’t possibly be possible. Not even remotely likely. Death and water. I snorted.

Death and life. Perhaps. Maybe I could understand it a little. It was why Persephone and I were tied together in myths. Though we loathed the very sight of each other now, I could reason why the mortals had deceived themselves into believing the story’s veracity.

But what was Calypso to me?

Absolutely nothing.

A terrible grating sound echoed through my chambers, and it was only when I glanced down that I noted I’d shoved my fist through an ebony skull, cracking my throne down the right side.

I didn’t want to believe any of this. I was meant to be alone. Always. Forever. It was my lot in life.

And yet... And yet...

Sighing, I did something reckless. I acted without thinking.

Standing for the first time in over a year, I called the darkness to me. The endless funnel of death that twisted and whirled with the souls of millions headed toward their own version of the afterlife, and I reached a heavy hand inside.

The dead crowded me, pleading with me to take them to Elysium, to not let them fade off into the darkness pulling at them. But I cared not a whit for any of them. There was only one I’d come for today.

I called forth the one soul Aphrodite had promised me would change my own lot in this damned existence I called life. “Come to me, Alice Hu. I know you’re here,” I crooned, wiggling my fingers like bait toward her.

And then I sensed her.

Swirling madness and beauty. Fragmented memories of a woman split in two. I frowned. One woman was of this time. Normal. Mundane. Nothing all that interesting. But there was a wisp of a memory that coiled tight to her soul. And I caught a glimpse of that memory, of a woman dressed in gothic gowns with exotic face paint and a ready smile. And all around her bloomed strange and wonderful creations that brimmed over with magic.

But the image didn’t last long. It was as fleeting as a flake of snow upon sun-warmed lands. Not sure whether I’d seen what I’d thought I’d seen, I dismissed the image as a mere quirk of mucking around too long in the darkness of lost souls.

“Take my hand,” I commanded the fragile spirit.

She did not say a word, but I felt the coolness of her touch press against my own. Were any mortal to touch me, they’d perish in an instant, but the dead were immune to my sting. I yanked her through the portal of darkness, and the blur of blue light took form before me.

Confused me all over again. Because this woman looked just like the one I’d glimpsed in the all-too-brief image of before. How could two separate memories of the same woman exist?

It wasn’t possible.

Mortals lived only one life. But her spirit reflected a duality that I’d never witnessed in another before. She’d been here, but she’d once been there also.

But where was there?

I studied her, lost to my own deep contemplations. And having the patience of the dead, she stood there quietly and let me. This Alice confused me mightily.

She was not dressed in the gothic attire, and there was no smile upon her face. But her beauty was the same. Almond-shaped eyes with liquid brown irises that seemed like warmed chocolate. A small, heart-shaped face framed by a silky fall of ebony hair. And at the center of her forehead was a prominent widow’s peak. She was dressed in death as she’d last been in life—in a hospital gown—and I would have known, even had I not been who I was, that Alice had died a tragic death.

No more tragic than many others, but still, disease had ravaged her body. Though death returned you to your purest and most perfect form, I recognized the stench of cancer upon her.

When I allowed a dead into my Elysian fields, whatever form of death had taken them would be mine to bear. It was why my body was covered in scars. But when a soul came to me like hers did, there was nothing left for me to take. Because the sickness had taken it all from them.

Why was Aphrodite so sure this frail-looking spirit could do anything for me? What was so special about this human?

No sooner had I thought it than I recalled the brief glimpse of magic I’d seen from the different reality. Was it possible Aphrodite had spoken truth then?

Had Calypso and I truly been something in an alternate life? And if so, why did I not know it anymore?

I’d never before seen a spirit like Alice’s. There were two very distinct and separate life threads coiled up within her. What the bloody hell was this?

A crystalline tear rolled down her honey-colored flesh, and it jerked me from my musings. I did not greet her. Did not even speak with her. I simply whispered a command for her to go to the fields of Elysium.