Bereft: Demise

E | Of Pride

D A R I U S

From the oblivion of unconsciousness, I ascended like a surfacing diver. The return didn't occur readily; it happened in increments, from one breath to the next, as the dim light of awareness flickered and glowed through twilit shallows.

When I drifted through those shallows and awoke, I inhaled a gasp of air that tore through my lungs with searing, invigorating strength.

I was seated upright upon a sofa, though I didn't know if I'd begun that way or if I'd sat up when awareness had returned. I was in Amoroth's penthouse. Late afternoon sunlight filtered through the broad windows and spilled across her living room in shades of orange and gold. The room was as I remembered. Sterile, modern. Done to impress the humans who may stop by and try to buy her business.

The painting above the hearth had been taken down.

Leaning over me was an unfamiliar man of average height with a silver ribbon looped about his throat.

"Who are you?" I demanded in a voice rough with disuse. I touched my raw throat and sought to breathe in the essence of the room—but none came. I hadn't fully woken yet.

How long had it been? Why was I here?

The man smiled, his eyes red in the sunset.

"Astounding. To think it actually worked." The man's hand extended toward my face and I reared back, startled.

"Get away from me," I snapped. "Amoroth!"

A door slammed somewhere in the penthouse. The Sin of Lust appeared at the mouth of the hall with an odd expression on her face.

"You're awake," she breathed as she clutched a phone in her grip. She realized she was crushing the slim device and slid it into her skirt pocket. "I didn't think it possible."

"What is going on?" I demanded, attempting to rise—only to find the man too close. "Get away."

The man, smiling still, finally moved. The front panel of his dark coat shifted, and I caught the scent of burnt metal and something akin to the acrid, sour smell of expended gunpowder.

"I'll be off, then," he said to Amoroth in a raspy, familiar baritone. Coins clacked in his pockets, and when he spoke to the Sin of Lust, her face took on a distinctly pale hue. "You know how to...reach me."

The man left the apartment via the main entrance. I traced his passage, suspicious of his odd gait and the weight of his presence. The essence eluded me still. In its absence I felt a barren, yawning void where the knowledge it brought should have nested. That void ached with a vacuous hunger.

Confusion. All I felt was confusion and a curious weakness in my limbs.

"What happened? Who is—?" I gestured at the door, wincing at the ache in my arm. Ache? I...ache?

"Not important," she answered as she slid into her typical, unaffected bearing. The woman was a straight-razor, a killing instrument formed to cut, slice, and nothing else. I had never known her to be so...unsettled.

"Well?" She propped a closed fist on her hip and adopted a bored posture, but I noted how red her eyes were and how hollow her cheeks had become. "What does it feel like to be back from the dead?"

"Back from the—?"

Silver glowed as the ampoule tumbled from Envy's shattered grasp. Satisfaction filled me.

My heart gave a final, whimpering beat as his talons drove through it.

The warmth of death beckoned.

I stared at my hands, at their clean, unsoiled palms and clipped nails. Dead. I'd been dead. I had died on those desolate moors with Balthazar's hand shoved into my chest and my heart shredded by his talons.

"How?" was all I could say. "How?"

"The Baal." She came to stand by the coffee table, gaze upon the day's dying light. The red of her eyes became more evident, as did the wetness on her cheeks. Below, Verweald was sprawled in all its splendor. It'd been an evening like this when I'd told Sara I would give her vengeance. "He took your shade from Gaspard. He was able to resuscitate it, to give it form and substance, and thus return life to your body."

My fingertips skated over my chest and along my sternum, right over where Balthazar had gouged through my body. I felt the puckered line of scar tissue beneath the cotton shirt.

"Sara," I blurted out before searching the living room anew. "Where is Sara?"

Amoroth flinched, and my heart thundered inside my scarred chest. She kept her head turned, the long curls of her chestnut hair glossy in the sunlight as her eyes closed and her stance stiffened.

Where was my shadeborn?

"She died," Lust finally admitted. "She died when she killed Balthazar."

The silence stretched, untouched and unbroken.

She died. She killed Balthazar.

I could hardly believe it. I should have been elated. The monster who had imprisoned my brother, who had tortured and killed so many of my allies and friends, was dead. After eons of tyranny, the Sin of Envy was finally dead.

I didn't care. I didn't care at all.

Cursed to never belong, I never expected to find home in her arms. Too late, I knew what I'd lost. I'd lost my home, my sense of being. I had bemoaned an existence of loneliness and hadn't recognized the gift I'd stolen from Balthazar's clutches. I hadn't owned her. Sara had belonged to no one but herself. She hadn't been mine; I'd been hers. Utterly and completely, I'd belonged to Sara Gaspard, had been enthralled by her every breath, her every move, every snarky word that passed her impertinent lips.

I finally understood what it meant to be bereft.

"What's wrong with me?" I asked, voice cracking into pieces as I held my trembling hands before myself. My heart was breaking. There was pain in my chest I'd never experienced before. "What's wrong with me?!"

My heart couldn't be beating. I knew that. I'd seen Balthazar tear it from my chest and crush it in his mirthless fist.

Dead. I was dead.

"Darius, you're not...not the same," Amoroth said in hesitant words. "The magic the Baal wielded to restore your life worked upon a fragment of your soul. A fragment cannot be brought back as it was when whole. It must become something else—something lesser, but perfect in its lesser state."

"I don't understand what you're saying," I seethed into my palms as my fingers dugs into my skin. Again I sought to pull the essence through my being, and again I found nothing but the stale air of her apartment. "What do you mean?!"

Amoroth watched me with calm, unfathomable eyes. "You're mortal, Darius."

I surged to my feet. I grabbed her by the collar with speed that was utterly inhuman and twisted my fingers into the silk fabric of her blouse.

"No!" My face was wet with tears I denied. "This isn't how it ends! This isn't how it was supposed to end!"

"Darius—."

"No!" I raged, refusing her words, refusing reality. "This isn't the end! I refuse! I will bring her back! I'll find a way! Do you hear me, Amoroth?!"

She could only nod with her hands resting upon mine.

There was fire in my veins, in my mouth, in my heart. The sun glowed upon Verweald's horizon and set the city ablaze.

"I swear, I will bring her back."

THE END

TO BE CONTINUED IN BEREFT: FORETOLD