The Mad King (The Dark Kings #1)(23)

I grimaced. Poor schmucks. Glad I wasn’t them.

Which left only two choices.

I watched the souls gathering around both rivers. Some stood, gazing on in longing but not moving forward. Others knelt and chugged the water, then looked up and simply stared dead ahead.

There was nothing obvious about either channel that would make me confident enough to move forward. I wrung my hands together. If I choose wrong, it would not end well for me.

And as I stood there for what seemed an eternity, studying the souls, I felt movement to my left. Frowning, I turned quickly and spotted a petite, pretty woman with ivory skin and long, flowing hair of auburn.

Her glass-green eyes were sad and haunted, and I couldn’t help but shiver at her obvious pain.

“You’re looking for Lethe, aren’t you?” she asked, and her voice had a sweet, gentle melody to it.

I’d not tried to get to know anyone the entire time I’d been here, not wanting to waste my time on any of them, but something about this soul made me instantly and weirdly trust her.

Which made me rock back on my heels and not trust her.

“I guess,” I said slowly. “I mean, I was thinking about it.”

Blinking several times, her long red lashes oddly reminding me of fluttering butterfly wings, she turned to me head-on.

Her skin was so pale it was practically translucent, and I could see the thin blue veins running behind it. But with her wild mane of curly hair, and waiflike features, she was nothing short of gorgeous. More than that, every so often when she’d move, a beam of light would strike her body, making her practically gleam like light refracted on crystal. She was also dressed in a style that didn’t seem in the slightest bit modern.

Made me think of someone on the back lot of a Hollywood film. I wouldn’t call her teal gown a toga, but it moved like a diaphanous cloud around her and was held at her shoulders with ornamental pins. Clearly she was human, and yet she looked almost like a goddess. Humans didn’t glow.

She sniffed. “What’s your name, girl?”

There was a hint of authority in her voice that I responded to.

“Alice Hu,” I said, cocking my head and wondering what it was about her that made me so readily want to talk.

Her long, thin fingers lightly brushed at her chest. “My name is Amara.” Her lips curved into a fleeting smile. “I died a long time ago.” Eyes taking on a faraway gleam, she stared past my shoulder, looking into her past even as she continued speaking almost in monotone. “So long that there are none left who’d remember me. I had a good family. A happy one.”

She sniffed again, the sound both wistful and longing. I wasn’t sure why she was telling me her life story, but I was morbidly curious, so I stayed put, even knowing I was bound to hear something I wouldn’t like.

“We didn’t have much, but we had each other, and it was enough.” She wet her lips, halting and taking a deep breath before plunging on. “I was very beautiful, and my family very poor. Then he came.”

My nostrils flared and my fingers clenched as I sensed whatever she was about to say next would be a terrible train wreck I should look away from.

“Aegaeon.” A muscle in her jaw twitched, and a lone tear spilled out the corner of her left eye, rolling slowly, hypnotically, down her pale cheek. “Tall. Beautiful. Feminine features that were also surprisingly male. He was like nothing I’d ever seen before, and he stole my heart instantly. Incredibly wealthy, he offered to pay off my family’s debts for me. I was only thirteen.” She sniffed again, and this time there was humor mixed with shame.

I gasped. “But that’s child abuse! I can’t believe he thought he could—”

Frowning and snapping out of her trance, she shook her head. “Not in my world. Liaisons between youths and men were quite common and even accepted. I’m of the old world, you see. But though Aegaeon was rich beyond imagining, my family did not like him at all. And so they did something practically unheard of in that time. My father told him no, but I snuck out of my room, found him, and demanded that he take me away anyway. All he had to do was secure my family’s happiness. He vowed to do all that. And so I kept my word and followed him gladly. At first he was wonderful. And I did not think I could know any greater joy than to always be his.”

She closed her eyes, swallowing hard.

Her story sickened me. The fact that a grown man could see a thirteen-year-old girl and believe—at any point in history—that it was perfectly acceptable was nauseating. But Amara’s obvious pain beat at me. I still wasn’t sure I should trust her, and yet I found that I did. Though I sensed she wasn’t exactly what she seemed, I didn’t think her dangerous to me. Reluctantly, I stayed where I was.

“Then I began to age.” She brushed her fingers against her forehead, her eyes. “Wrinkles. Lines. He did not like it. Aegaeon wanted a nubile youth, not a woman grown. At first it was simply insults. But then it became physical. I didn’t know what to think at first, so I allowed him to do to me as he would. He was rich. I was not.”

She shrugged as if it were the obvious and only choice she’d had, but my fingers clenched tight, and dead or not, I found myself wanting to find that sick bastard and beat him to a bloody pulp until he died all over again.

“We were not wedded—without his support I’d be out on the streets to fend for myself. I had no place to turn. The first time he punched me, he shattered my eye socket. Left me blind in that eye for the rest of my life. He was sorry, of course.” She waved her fingers airily. “Vowed he’d never do it again. And I believed him. Things were good again. For a time.” Her words ended on a soft sigh.