Crown of Crimson (Underworld Gods 2)

When we hit the surface, all that remained was pain. The loss of Alku, the loss of my father yet again.

And the loss of what could have been.

Dreams are funny in that they often slip past your subconscious and into your soul, until it feels real. What’s the difference of whether something really happened or not if it feels like it did? Lying here, the pain seems to root in all realities.

Alku did die. I didn’t know the creature, but if it wasn’t for me, it would be alive still. All it was trying to do was help us, help me, and I got it killed. Sometimes when I close my eyes, I see the pain and horror on its face as the Oblivion stole its body, I feel the pure helplessness as I stood there unable to save it. I’m not sure when the images will stop replaying.

My father is alive according to the aurora stone earrings on my ears that glow with his life energy, but only so long as Eero and Noora are on their best behaviour. But it feels like he’s dead all the same. Unless he comes into Tuonela once more, I’ll probably never see him again. Never hug him, never talk to him, never feel that unconditional love that has kept me going, one foot in front of the other, for as long as I can remember. I have so many questions to ask him.

I want to know why he never told me about Rasmus. I want to know how that even happened, how could he have slept with Louhi, knowing full-well the monster that she is. I want to know the truth of why I was taken to America.

Did my mother discover who he really was? Did she learn he was a shaman, or did she learn about Rasmus? Did she take me away from him because she was afraid of what would become of me? Was she protecting me?

Did she ever love me or…did she fear me? Because I grew up believing the latter, even if I didn’t realize it at the time. My mother, who never had the time of day for me unless she was able to mold me into something of her choosing. And of course, try as I might, I was never able to do that, never able to become what she wanted.

And yet, throughout the years I thought my mother wanted me to be like her. To be a version of her, following in her footsteps, which is why I bent over backwards trying to please her, trying to shuck off my own identity, as unknown and evolving as it was. Every day I would get home from school and rehearse what I was going to say to her over dinner, what I could talk about that would make her like me. Whether it was a good grade on a test, or a compliment a popular girl gave me, or how well I did in gym class, I held onto everything in hopes it would make her be proud of me. Give me something.

But it was never about that. She didn’t care if I was like her or not, she just didn’t want me to be like my father. She didn’t want me as myself. And when I finally broke under the pressure, when I couldn’t dance anymore, couldn’t be skinny anymore, and stopped trying to become what I wasn’t, she fully pulled away. The minute I was eighteen, she was gone and I was homeless. She discarded me like old jewelry she didn’t want to wear anymore.

Slowly, my family disappeared.

I was fine with that, or so I told myself.

Then…family reappeared.

In the form of Rasmus, a brother I never knew I had, one that I want to trust despite what happened to us. And if I do trust him, then I mourn for him, because he’s caught in Louhi’s snare and all the good that was in him, the adoration and devotion to my father—our father—and his concern for me, that will never surface again, not when his mother will corrupt him. She’ll drain him so that there’s nothing good left in him. The demoness will win.

And then there is Death.

The one person that I believed maybe, maybe, could become my family one day…well, fuck. Scratch that. He is my family now. We’re married. As insane as that wedding ceremony was, it happened. I’m now married to Death. I’m his wife, his Goddess, his queen.

A queen at the bottom of the hole, soon to be forgotten by him.

A spark of anger flames inside me, but I don’t have the energy to keep it going. Death wants to punish me for what I did. He thinks me leaving him was a crime of the highest order, and the God wants me to pay. Sometimes I don’t even think he believes in the stupid prophecy, I just think he wants to torture me for eternity because he’s bored.