I’m trying not to promise anything, but her eyes already glint with hope. “Yes. If he could come back here…I would have everything I want.”
I study her ethereal face, knowing she has the blood of a Goddess flowing through her. “Would you though? Aside from him, what do you need? What are you after? What are you hoping to gain during your time here in your position?”
I expect her to hesitate, and it takes me by surprise when she says:
“Power. I want power.”
My heart beats with pride. “I can respect that.”
“I want to be someone to be reckoned with,” she says, gnawing on her bottom lip for a second. “I want to live up to my potential, and I want to find out what my potential is. Test the limits. I want security and safety and I want it to come, not because I’m married to you, but because no one can cross me, no one can mess with me. I want to know what that feels like.”
I sit up, careful not to hit my head on the low ceiling. There’s a fire in her that I’ve seen before, but never like this. I want to fan the flames.
“You’re on the verge of that, don’t you feel it?” I tell her.
“I don’t know.” She shakes her head. “I’m on the verge but…it’s just out of reach. I’m not sure if I’ll be worthy of it.”
“Feeling worthy of something and being powerful are two very different things. Perhaps true power is knowing your worth.”
She cracks a grin. “Okay there, Dr. Phil.”
“I can’t be expected to know all your tedious pop culture references.”
She rolls her eyes and then sits up beside me. For a moment I’m afraid she might boop me again. “So, what do you want? The same? Power?”
“I have power, little bird,” I tell her. “I always have. For better or for worse. The problem with having power, as I’m sure you’ll find out, is that you have to learn to hold onto it. You can’t be at the top forever, even as a God or a leader, your power will wane and ebb and flow throughout the years. I am in the valley at the moment, doing all I can to make sure it rises again.”
“So what you want is to keep power.”
“That sounds so simple when you say it like that. Besides, I am not one-dimensional. I want more than one thing.”
“And what’s the other thing?”
I swallow thickly. “You.”
“But you have me.”
“Do I?” I raise my brow.
“We’re married. You just fucked my brains out. We’re lying naked in bed together. How can you think otherwise?”
“There are different ways of having someone, Hanna, some are easier than others. What I want is what I don’t have, and that is your heart and your soul.” She may have said things I wanted to hear when we were in the Crystal Caves, but hearing and feeling are two different things.
She stares at me for a moment, her brows drawing together in a delicate frown.
“You told me you’d never love me,” she says quietly.
I nod. “I know I did.”
“That you’d pity me if I loved you.”
“Then perhaps I want to pity you.” Perhaps I want to know what it fucking feels like for once in my damned life.
To be loved.
But I’ve said too much already.
We fall silent, the air feeling heavy, the tension thick. This boat could use a hatch back here, anything to let in the sea air. As if the air could sweep away everything I just told her.
I’ve let myself become too vulnerable for my comfort.
Only one way to fix this.
I take my finger, lean over, and press it on her nose.
“Boop.”
She explodes into laughter, the sound filling the cabin, and all the awkwardness of the moments before disappears in a second.
“Oh jeez,” she says through giggles. “I just got booped by Death.”
Chapter 23
Death
“The Pre-Game”
The snowbird chirps at me from the corner of the solar room, mocking me. It’s perched on the tarnished metal tip of one of my globes located on the highest shelf. So high that I can’t actually reach up there on my own.
I made the mistake of opening the cage. I thought that since the snowbird had been here long enough, that I was talking to it, feeding it, that it wouldn’t leave me.
I was foolish.
I let it out and it immediately flew to the highest part of the room, just out of reach. Now it’s perched there, staring down at me with red lizard eyes, preening feathers of distrust, and there’s a fucking lesson in here for me, I know it.
I’ve been too lax with Hanna. Too open. Too much like a husband, less like a king or a God. I feel like a big softie. I need to throw her down the oubliette again. Maybe send a few Deadhands to Oblivion. Anything to make myself harden a little more. Now is not the time to be stewing in my feelings for her; now is not the time to be having feelings at all. The only feelings I need to have are ruthlessness, determination, persistence. There is a war coming and I need to be as prepared as possible. There shouldn’t be a single moment of my day where I’m not entirely focused on that.