Kalona's Fall (House of Night Novellas #4)(32)

“You should not be out here alone, especially so close to the edge of our realm,” Kalona said, striding around the Wishing Tree to stand on the patch of red earth that was the Otherworld’s entrance. When he finally looked at her, his amber eyes were hard.

“Has my warrior completely defeated my lover?” Nyx asked him.

He blinked in surprise. “I do not know what you mean.” He approached her, obviously meaning to guide her back to the palace.

Nyx shook off his hand and walked purposefully to the hard-packed dirt at the edge of her realm. Kalona simply crossed his arms over his chest and watched her.

“Do you understand that I love you?” she asked him.

Again, surprise flickered through his amber gaze. He nodded, not speaking.

“No. Let there be no more silence between us. Answer me, son of the moon. Do you understand that I love you?”

“Yes,” he said. Then he added in an emotionless voice, “You love all of your subjects.”

“And you truly think there is no difference between what I feel for you and what I feel for others?”

“Which others are we speaking of? Your vampyres or your Consort?”

“I see my answers in your questions. You do not understand that I love you, and that my warrior has defeated my lover.” Nyx bowed her head, steeling herself.

“I do not understand you at all anymore,” Kalona said.

Nyx lifted her head and met his eyes. “Kalona, my warrior and lover, I have not changed. You have.”

“No! I am as I always have been!” He almost spat the words at her. “I have never wanted to share you with Erebus.”

“He is not my lover!”

“So you have said, over and over again. Yet you always, always turn to him over me.”

“Kalona, your mind is so filled with jealousy and anger that you can no longer think clearly.”

“Have you ever considered that perhaps I have only begun to think clearly?”

“Oh, Kalona, no. Can you not see yourself? Where has your joy gone?”

“You killed it when you chose him over me!”

“I have never done that,” Nyx said. “Tell me what I can do to help rid you of the anger that is destroying you and to find your joy in our love again.”

“Get rid of Erebus.”

Though she had been expecting Kalona to eventually ask that very thing of her, still Nyx felt the shock to the core of her being. “Your brother was created to be my friend and playmate, as you were created to be my warrior and lover.”

“I cannot bear this any longer. I will not share you!” Kalona went to Nyx and dropped to his knees, his emotion overflowing as tears washed his face. “As your warrior and lover, I beseech you. Choose me. Banish Erebus so that you and I can spend eternity together without this Darkness between us. If you do not, I vow that I will leave this realm and the despair it has caused me.”

Nyx stared down at him with equal measure of sadness and resignation. “Kalona, I will not banish Erebus. Not now. Not ever.”

Kalona’s tears dried and his expression went to stone. “If you think I merely threaten, you are wrong.”

“I believe your vow. I know you have made your choice,” Nyx said. “Know that wherever you are, whatever you do, I eternally will love you, but I have made my choice as well. I will not banish Erebus. By your own vow, Kalona, you must go.”

“Don’t do this! You are mine!”

“I do nothing, Kalona. You have a choice in this. I have given even my warriors free will, though I don’t require them to use it wisely.” Tears coursed down Nyx’s cheeks, soaking the gown she’d picked with such loving care.

“I cannot help myself. I was created to feel this. It is not free will. It is preordination,” he said, his voice spiteful.

“Yet as your Goddess I tell you what you are is not preordained. Your will has fashioned you.” Though her shoulders shook with the force of her heartbreak, Nyx was filled with the unflinching power of a Goddess.

“I cannot help how I feel! I cannot help what I am!”

Nyx’s words were choked, but the command in them was not diminished. “You, my warrior, are mistaken; therefore, you must pay the consequences of your mistake.”

Flooded by regret and tears and despair, Nyx gathered her Divine Energy and hurled the consequences of his own choice at him, knocking him backward with such force that he was lifted from the ground and flung down, down, into the black of the ether that separated the realms.

Kalona fell.

Slowly, sadly, Nyx made her way back to her palace and all the way to her bedchamber before she collapsed onto the floor, sobbing as if her soul were broken.

*   *   *

The cat brought Erebus to her. He lifted Nyx in his arms as if she weighed no more than a child. He carried her to her bed, where he washed her face with a cool cloth and coaxed her into drinking some wine. Only after she had stopped weeping did he ask, “He is gone?”

Nyx nodded, eyes dark with grief. “He left me.”

Erebus took her hands in his. “I will help you get him back.”

“Thank you, my friend,” she said tremulously. “But I will not allow him to return until he has earned forgiveness for the wrongs that he has done and the wrongs that he will do.”