The Sinner

“So it’s the girl.”

There’s no point in refuting it. “Yes.”

“Who is she? Who is this human you’ve been following through her every lifetime for the last four millennia?”

Anger at his brazen question flares and then flames out. Denial dies on my lips. I haven’t the strength for either anymore.

“She is my wife.”

Speaking the word aloud is like releasing a burden and invoking a curse at the same time. It’s sweet on my tongue and burns like Ashtaroth’s blade.

Dam-gá. Ttsuma. Zhena.

The most beautiful word in any language because it describes her. She was mine for a handful of moments in the brief candle-flicker lives of humans. My eyes shut at a memory that roars up at me. Her pleading stare, her mouth gagged, and then the blade at her throat…

My hands flinch, the glass upends, and wine spills along the bar. Like blood.

Eistibus hurries over to clean the mess and refill my glass.

Ambri has gone silent. When the djinn is gone, he leans in. “And this Guy is your gift to her?”

“I’m paying a debt, that is all.” I hunch over the bar, twisting the glass stem in my fingers. “I watch her, Ambri. Lifetime after lifetime, always alone. She’s never loved another. Not once since Larsa.”

“Because she loves you.”

My chest tightens, my wings tense and fold close. “There is nothing left to love. I’m a moth, battering itself against a lamp, trying to get to her light. But it’s too late for me. The best I can hope for is to leave her with a chance to love someone else.”

Ambri’s perfect eyebrows rise. “Leave? As in…leave?”

I nod.

“How? Who…?” His eyes widen. He knows who. The only demon in our sphere powerful enough. He lowers his voice to a hissing whisper. “You’re going to get Ashtaroth to send you to Oblivion.”

I nod again.

Ambri clears his throat and says with a false smile, “Are you certain, my lord, this is the wisest course of action?”

“I’m certain.”

He shakes his head. “I’ve heard of our kind giving up immortality for the eternal sleep. I’ve just never met anyone who was willing to do it.”

“I’m not willing,” I say. “It’s the only tactic that satisfies my intentions.”

“Int

entions that baffle me. What of your duty on the Other Side? Have you lost your taste for it?”

I’d begun to lose my taste for it years ago. The fire of my rage and pain was burning out, leaving nothing but ash and wasted years. Centuries of human misery that paid for my grief. I say none of this to Ambri. There is only so much weakness I can trust to relay in a single night or else he will betray me on general principle.

“I’m weary Ambri,” I say, one facet of the truth, at least. “When you’re as old as me, you might feel the same.”

He snorts. “So long as there exists cocks and cunts, I’ll exist to enjoy them. Because that’s all humans are to me. Toys. Playthings. Vessels.” A brow arches. “I wonder, my lord, if that’s something you’ve forgotten.”

“You forget, Ambri, my outrage at the murder of this particular vessel is why I’ve been laying waste to humankind for centuries.”

“Aye, and what a glorious run it’s been.” Ambri touches his glass to mine. “But I still fail to see the allure of Oblivion. Is there nothing holding you here?”

“No.”