The night sky hovering above the American southwest was a mirage of long dead stars and forgotten worlds.
The Sin of Lust slunk through the dark, unfurnished halls of the modern home built atop one of the desert's many ridges. Her bare feet moved with soundless grace over the tiled floors, and when her toes encountered the jagged points of broken glass, she refused the urge to flinch and continued forward.
Red footprints traced her path through the silent mansion.
She shouldn't be there. She should have been oceans away, scouring the old continents for a Gate to take her into the Pit—but Amoroth was here, listening to the hushed drone of the air conditioning unit and the tick of a clock buried somewhere in the residence's expansive rooms. Hoarfrost marked her passage as she moved from hallway to hallway, her eyes blazing as if lit by an inner light.
This was not her house.
That fact was relevant in the choice of decor: expensive but cheaply made, the gaudy furniture spoke of wealth but not of class. Much of it was broken, too, as if someone had come through the halls and had thrown their fists into the pictures and davenports in a furious fit.
She stepped around crushed beer cans and empty cigarette boxes, and as she walked the mess became thicker, darker. There were empty bottles of harder liquors and the paraphernalia of harsher, more addictive drugs. As the Sin approached the living room, the garbage gave way to a host of empty plastic mana vials, the sides crimped by impatient, preternaturally strong fingers.
Amoroth was familiar with this scene. The world was an overwhelming place for many of the second-borns Sins. In the same instant, it could be too loud and too quiet, the roar of it like never-ending alarm bells in their ears, while the silence ate at their minds. The humans who became Sins weren't prepared to kill to survive, and to remember every detail in perfect clarity was its own form of living Hell. Many of them would do anything for a moment of quiet—or a moment of sound. Anything to forget, if only for a moment.
She had been spared addiction by Cuxiel's patient handling. He'd taught her how to cope, how to understand the change, how to survive the crushing loss of morality that left her raw and shaking.
Amoroth understood the urge but held no sympathy for its victim.
The Sin of Greed sat slumped upon the living room floor, back to the couch's side, his breathing labored and uneven. His short hair was flecked with blood and his arms were a gallery of burns and cuts, each healing at the same sedentary pace. The coffee table was overturned and the television smashed to bits, ripped from the wall.
Danyel only lifted his chin when Amoroth grabbed an empty vodka bottle and hurled it at the wall next to his head.
"Filth," she sneered in Gehen, hating how she sounded like Balthazar when she derided Greed that way. "Stand up."
Danyel did stand, wobbling on unsteady legs, clothed only in tight jeans torn at the knees and along his slender thighs. The Sin of Green held a revolver in his hand, and Amoroth took in the splattered mosaic of crimson streaks thrown across the leather sofa, the walls, the floor, and the ceiling.
It wasn't so easy to kill oneself when you were immortal.
"If it isn't the wicked witch herself," he mocked, mouthing the unfamiliar syllables with unrefined talent. "I thought you would have fled the continent by now, but here you are." The unrestrained starlight coming through the open window glittered on the wet, blood-soaked circles peppering the front of his bare chest. "How did you find me?"
"You're not the only Sin with money, Danyel. Just the only Sin who doesn't know how to use it." More shards of glass cut her bare feet as Amoroth stepped forward from the hall's shadows. She tossed a ruined bundle of twigs and witch magic at the younger Sin and he caught it, wincing as he touched his own essence. "I paid more than you're worth, if it's any consolation."
He crushed the tracking charm until it was dust.
The Sin of Lust kicked an empty mana pot and gestured violently at the rest of Danyel's trash. "Are you so burdened by your guilt that you'd try anything to mitigate it?"
Greed scoffed and held up the gun, his hand trembling against its weight. "What guilt?"
"Guilt over what you've done. Guilt over what you destroyed."
Danyel flinched, his grip upon the weapon tightening when Amoroth stepped forward again, the frost of her ire writhing through the room like a bird with its wings ripped off. The woman herself was as composed as ever, and spoke with the barest blush of an English accent in her tone.
"I only did what any of you would have done," Greed retorted. "I did what I was taught to do: survive. Maybe you don't like the results, but you're alive too, aren't you? Aren't you, Amoroth? Or is it Amor, as that asshole Peroth used to say? What did you sacrifice to that—that slaughter to survive, huh?"
The tips of her manicured nails bit into the soft underside of her palms as Amoroth clenched her fists. "You don't want to be taunting me, Danyel."
"Why not?" He reverted to English, his eyes darkening as the slurring effect of the narcotics wore to nothing. "Because you think you're stronger than me? You may be older and more bitter, but it's been a while since your last snack, hasn't it Amor? That's the difference between you and me. Your sponsor taught you how to play the long game, how to maximize your stay in this realm, and my sponsor taught me nothing. It was Balthier who showed me how to get the most contracts, how to get the most kills and the most energy out of my stay. You might have three hundred something years on me, but I'm stronger."
"He also told you to keep your head down, and you did everything you could to shine the spotlight on yourself." There was blood on her hands, her own blood, issuing from half-moon cuts embedded in her skin. "I imagine that's why you haven't run. It must be difficult to travel as a mortal does when your face is idolized by hormonal teenage girls across the world."
Danyel's lip curled, his brow cut low over narrow eyes. "It's your fault Peroth is dead. He chose to save you instead of himself."
"So you are trying to taunt me."
"Do I need to?" Greed leaned on the couch, affecting a casual air Amoroth suspected hid the lack of strength in his legs. "You're here. You hunted me down with your witch mercs or whatever. I don't have to taunt you, Grace. You're already pissed off."
The sound that escaped the older Sin was a melding of incredulous rage and fuming grief. He thought she was upset by his duplicity. Danyel thought his scheme had inconvenienced her, like a missed meeting in a busy schedule or a late valet not returning the car on time.
"Do you think this is a joke?" she demanded in a whisper, her throat constricting the volume of her words. Amoroth had known Darius for all her life and for the duration of it she'd derided his anger, his inability to articulate emotion in expressible ways. She'd thought herself more mature than Pride, but she understood so well now. The fury crouching in her belly was indescribable, like a bed of coals burning her up from the inside out—and yet the loss was worse.
She was so empty. Coming here was meant to fill her with reason. Amoroth had hunted Danyel down to end his life and, in doing so, to find reason for her survival, to find a point in continuing on when all that she held dear was gone. Familiar things were no longer familiar. Activities she'd once found enjoyable had become small tortures. Finding Danyel was supposed to fix something and return the world to its proper state.
It hadn't. In the face of his blithe ignorance, Amoroth found herself free-falling into the chasms of her rage.
Annoyed, Danyel muttered, "Isn't it? Isn't life a joke?"
Amoroth jerked forward like a puppet on taut strings and Danyel fired his revolver. The shot tore through her shoulder, forcing the Sin to pause as the arm went limp, tendons severed. The pain only served to antagonize her further, and Amoroth bared teeth in a fierce, wild-eyed smile.
"You didn't even buy charmed bullets. What a fool," she intoned as blood trickled from the shredded sleeve of her dress, dripping from the end of her limp fingers. The hand twitched as nerves knitted together once more. "What was his name?"
Danyel prepped the revolver again, his motions slow and unsure. "What?"
"I want to hear you say his name. You betrayed him—betrayed us all, so say his name, Danyel. I want to hear you say it!"
Greed fired again, aiming lower, but his shot went wide and only grazed Amoroth's hip. As bones and flesh came together with grotesque sounds of shifting flesh, the Sin of Lust surged forward. Twice the gun roared, the first bullet hitting her in the gut, the second missing entirely. The pain searing through her veins was blinding, but Amoroth didn't need to see as she shut her streaming eyes and lunged at Danyel.
He tried to dart away but was hindered by his weakened equilibrium. Amoroth collided with Danyel and they slammed into the wall, shaking the foundation with the force of their impact. She struck his arm, throwing it to the side, and the ungainly weight of the revolver slipped from Danyel's slender hand. The plaster and the window both cracked, Greed yelling when bones in his spine snapped like winter tree branches overburdened with snow. Amoroth punched him and the diamond ring on her left hand slashed his pretty face.
"Say his name!"
The heel of Danyel's hand struck her wounded gut and the Sin of Lust snarled, fueled by an inner agony the savages of an external injury couldn't touch, not matter how grievous. Their breath mingled in a haze of white plumes as the air plummeted into sub-zero temperatures.
"Say it!"
Greed sucked what essence remained within the vicinity into his lungs and shoved with summoned strength. Amoroth was tossed back several yards, skidding to a stop on bleeding feet, breathless from Danyel's blow.
"He told me this would happen," he rambled as he slouched against the buckled wall to keep himself upright. Part of his spine had been severed and his legs were limp struts barely holding his weight. "Balthier told me the chaos he incited would summon an Absolian, but I didn't believe him. I didn't believe there were Absolians left who wanted to even look at this sorry realm."
"I don't care."
"Don't you? That creature's trying to take the Pit from the Baal—."
"I don't care. I told you to say his name." Amoroth threw herself at Danyel again and he defended himself, aiming a punch for her wounded center. They struggled like two wild animals, wounded and crippled by their inability to sift through the Realm, fighting without strategy or finesse. Just fast, unmitigated blows and the brutal chorus of their furious shouts.
Neither was a warrior. One was born the handmaid of a spoiled English lady, the other the son of a struggling immigrant tailor aspiring to wealth beyond his means, and neither was schooled in the art of combat. They kicked and threw each other into the walls and the floor, not bothering to block, breaking bones and flesh, tearing, twisting, screaming wordlessly into the night. Danyel was stronger, but Amoroth's fury was a inferno that burned through the pain Greed couldn't withstand. Nothing mattered to her but his utterance of Sloth's name, the acknowledgment of the life Danyel had betrayed and stolen from her.
"Say it" she snarled as she straddled the cur and struck him in the neck, the torso, the face—anywhere she could reach. Amoroth was no longer certain of which language she spoke, only that the words flew from her lips with every blow. Her hands blazed with agony. Her muscles ached. She continued to beat Danyel until the name she wanted to hear came roaring from him.
"Cuxiel!" Greed screamed. "Cuxiel, Cuxiel!"
The word sparked emotion in Amoroth's numb chest, and she remembered the first time she'd heard that name. She'd lain with her back to unfurled sheets, the skirts of her gown risen past her knees, and he'd leaned above her like the demons in the portraits he'd so enjoyed painting, his eyes like river gold panned from crystalline waters. She'd whispered the name "David," and he responded with a soft laugh, murmuring, "No. Tonight, you give the beast his true name. Tonight, you call me Cuxiel."
She kept hitting Danyel because the torment in her heart wouldn't abate.
"Amoroth, please—!" Greed begged. He begged because he was a coward, an avaricious craven who'd been overlooked as a pathetic waste of space and had repaid that negligence with lies and deceit. With a knife in the back. "Amoroth!"
"That is not my name!" The floor shook each time her fist connected with his face and chest. There was blood, so much blood. "My name is Kyra!"
Grace Amoroth, the Sin of Lust, was an indomitable woman of composure, wit, and ruthless pragmatism.
Kyra Sparrow was an impetuous girl who'd fallen in love with a monster, and he'd become her world.
She didn't feel like Amoroth anymore. She felt like that silly girl who'd been taken with Cuxiel from the moment she saw him.
Lust kept hitting Danyel long after he'd died, until she struck the floor underneath him through what had once been the man's heart. Her broken hands were sleeved in gloves of pure red from fingers to elbows. Sweat trickled down her spine as she trembled and heaved herself off the dead Sin, going to the broken window from which she could see the spangled sky illuminated with so many spots of distant light.
She wasn't indomitable. She held no composure, no wit, no pragmatism. She'd pretended to be strong these past months, had gone on with life with a smirk fixed in place, had ignored the crushing weight slowly swelling in size until it was too much to bear. She wasn't strong. She was weak, and she was afraid because Cuxiel had taught her many things, but he'd never taught her how to survive in a world without him in it.
She remembered a garden of winter thorns lit in the moonlight. She recalled the hands of a drunk, rapacious marquess upon her person—and the snap of his neck breaking when his head had been twisted by the Duke of the Mirelands. Cuxiel had been crouched above her, a stranger then, a man of dubious intent with the face of a devilish Adonis.
He'd told her, "Fly away now, little bird, before this wolf decides he really does want a bite of you," and she'd been terrified—but Lust would give anything to be there again, to be the frightened sparrow caged by the predator, the wolf with gold eyes, the man of the manor who'd given her first life joy and her second life purpose.
Though Danyel was dead at her feet, the misery of his betrayal's consequences didn't abate. There was no balm for this affliction, for this loss. Murdering Greed had done nothing but compound her solitude, because Lust was the only Sin alive now. More would come in the days that followed—but she would always, always, be alone.
With no one to witness her vulnerability but the stars above, the woman who'd once been Grace Amoroth wept into her cupped hands and prayed to a God she'd abandoned centuries ago. She begged to see her dead lover just one last time, and the heavens remained just as silent as they ever were.