Damaged Gods

He is gone.

I take many deep breaths as I force myself to come to terms with what has just occurred.

This woman is magical. That’s a given. The ability to enter Saint Mark’s Sanctuary without invitation is a skill that runs in the blood. It skips two generations and is only passed on if both parents have a recessive gene for sight.

Or so Grant said.

But how would I know? I have not been schooled in the knowledge of alchemy. Almost anyone can work spells, but I’m not an alchemist. And I only have a few innate powers. None of which are particularly helpful or have anything to do with the curse of Saint Mark’s.

My head is thumping to the beat of my heart, that’s how angry I am right now.

Calm down, Pell. You must think clearly.

It was a nice ride with Grant. It has been easy for more than fifty years. Predictable. But he never did anything for you. This girl is a fresh start.

Here’s my problem. I don’t like the fresh start. I prefer the predictable. I enjoy the easy. And maybe I am whining a little bit—only internally, of course—but the easy is gone now. Grant has left and in his place is this woman.

Woman? Hardly. I have not spent a lot of time outside the gates of Saint Mark’s because Grant had to escort me, like a fucking babysitter, whenever I wanted to go somewhere. But I have kept up with the times. I think. So I have a cursory understanding that in this day and age, the woman in the apothecary is considered to be young. Early twenties. A girl. Barely more than a child.

In my day, a woman her age might already have a daughter who was having daughters. She would be wise to the ways of the world. She would’ve been practicing her craft for well over a decade. She would have discovered things. New things. Important things. She would have ideas about potions, and herbs, and she would not only have opinions about how things inside the sanctuary apothecary worked, she would be plotting ways to make the potions and herbs stronger and more effective.

She would be an asset. But this girl? I scoff into the night, my breath creating a stream of white steam across the blackness.

She will know nothing. She will be useless. She will be a millstone around my neck for decades, possibly even centuries. And maybe I didn’t have a lot of hope that one day I might break this curse, but at least Grant knew what the fuck he was doing.

And now this new thing with Tomas. Surely he is also considering his change in fortune. He is also plotting a way to lift his curse. If that’s what it is.

And he is planning on using my woman to do that.

I place the tips of my fingers up against my forehead and make little circles.

This is more than I can take.

Well, do something about it, Pell. You left him alone with your new woman. He could be telling her things. Things about you. Things Tomas has no right to divulge.

I whirl around and gaze back up the hill at the cathedral. And then I’m running. I will stop him. She is mine. He will not use my slave to fulfill his needs or gain his freedom.

I burst through the doors, leap up the stairs, and then I’m huffing with anger under the arch of the apothecary door.

“Take your hands off her!”

Tomas sneers at me. But I’m not focused on him. I’m focused on her. She turns her head and I already know what’s coming before the scream leaves her mouth.

I turn back around because I’m tired of it. I didn’t bring her here. I didn’t put this curse on her. She did this to herself. She and her family—her bloodline—they are the entire reason I’m stuck here. So she doesn’t get to look at me like I’m the monster when she is the reason I’m cursed.

“Get away from me! Stay back!” She screams this as she scoots to the furthest end of the lounger.

And Tomas is spewing his threats. “I have this,” he says, holding up a flask filled with bright green liquid. “I have this, Pell. And I swear to fucking God, I will use it if you come any closer!”

I’m not afraid of Tomas’s little potion bottle. That’s stupid. But the look on this girl’s face right now?

It’s more than terror as she gapes at me. At my monster body.

It’s… disgust. It’s hostility. It might even be hate.

And fuck that. She has no right. So I turn and leave, slamming the heavy wooden door with all my might, so hard the doorframe cracks a little.

Good. Let it crumble. It was carved by an asshole called Antonius who spent ninety years with me almost a millennium ago. He didn’t even get the story straight. But did he care that he was carving lies all over my home?