“Let me remind you who I am.” He stared at me, fury in his eyes. I felt his magic booming around me, reverberating in the inside of my mind. He was doing it again, godsdamn him. I tried to drown out the sound of his magic with a tune in my mind.
“I need to know. I’m after something I’ve wanted for millennia, and I need to know. Are we still going to the Merrow?”
“Yes,” I said through gritted teeth.
“And the Merrow knows where the soul cage is?”
“Yes.”
Slowly, he released the magical hold on my mind. He looked agitated, like the whole experience disturbed him as much as it disturbed me.
I sipped my coffee, unwilling to let him see that he’d rattled me. “Don’t worry, Salem—I don’t think you’re nice at all. I think you’re evil to your bones, and the world would be better off if you were dead. But I also think maybe you like company. And if you’ve been looking after a cat, maybe you don’t want your cat to die in an inferno of your making.”
The boat rocked gently over the waves.
“You’re trying to humanize me. Stop it.” Golden sunlight sparked off the blue in his eyes. “Can you hear the Merrow now?”
I trailed my fingertips in the water, reassured by the Merrow’s song floating through the waves. “Yes. His song has grown a little stronger. Any idea how far we are from Mag Mell?”
“Only a few hours.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Not that I’d expect you to care, but I’d like you to know that I have better things to do than burn the world down with you.”
“Ah. Yes. I’m sure you could be having scintillating conversations with Lyr at this very moment while he wanders in and out of a death realm.” He pulled out his flask of brandy. “Can he actually speak, or does he just grunt and break things?”
He almost sounded jealous, but he was getting me off my main point. “Exactly why do you want to burn the world down, Salem? What do you get out of it? Can’t you just enjoy your brandy and your fancy suits and your mansion? You could seduce any woman you wanted to.”
“Any?” He managed to imbue the single word with an ocean of innuendo.
At least I’d pulled his attention off the sky again, and he was focused on me.
I straightened. “Not me, obviously. But why can’t you just enjoy all that? What more do you want?”
That little smile disappeared from his lips. “I can’t enjoy any of it. I don’t feel anything, Aenor. Or at least I haven’t—” He seemed to catch himself, and he stopped. Then he leaned back in the boat, elbows over the edge like he was completely at ease. The wind ruffled his hair.
“You really think you can convince me to change my ways?” Amusement gleamed in his eyes. “You think you can find the nice devil underneath it all? That I should just be happy with what I have? Do you have any idea how long I’ve been seeking my destiny?”
I shrugged. “Maybe I sense you want more than just destruction. You’re longing for something else.”
“I am. But it’s not love, if that’s what you think. I can’t love. I never could. I feel animal impulses, nothing more. There’s nothing to redeem in me, Aenor.” A wicked curl of his lips. “Now I have an idea. Perhaps it’s time you got to know the real me, and I’ll disabuse you of this time-wasting venture.”
“I don’t have a choice about this, do I? Given that we’re stuck in a small boat together.”
“I was the second king to rule Mag Mell.”
“I saw that during my research.”
“When we get there, we will find it full of all sorts of depravity. Intoxicating wine and food, dancing and fucking. It’s where fae go for sexual gratification, to have their most debased fantasies fulfilled.”
That was his kingdom. Of course it was. “Can’t wait.”
“But once, it was a perfect paradise for the fae. Dancing, singing, poetry, cathedrals of oak trees that strained to the skies. But that wasn’t enough for me. Nothing was ever enough for me, because I always felt like I was falling. I changed paradise. I started turning it into the den of iniquity and depravity that you’ll find today. And for that, I was cast out by the good people of Mag Mell. But it was too late, because once the flames of my sin had begun to spread, they caught on like wildfire. Mag Mell was never the same. I went back sometimes over the years to enjoy myself, but I didn’t really need it. I had my own pleasures halfway across the world.”
First cast from the heavens, then from his own kingdom. “And why wasn’t it enough for you?”
“I could never fill the dark void in my chest, the feeling that I was plummeting.” The illusion of flames licked at the air around him, casting sinister shadows beneath his face. “In the heavens, I’d been a god, a leader among the celestial beings. I’d led the losing side in the war. And when I fell, Aenor, it was like my soul was ripped out of my body.” Fury danced in his eyes. “I wanted to fill the chasm with fighting and fucking and getting everything I wanted, controlling everyone.”
I took a deep breath. “Okay, so you’re awful. I still don’t get it. Why burn the world now? Connect the dots for me like I’m an idiot.”
He hesitated for a moment, then said, “I thrive in fire, Aenor. When I was banished from Mag Mell, I wandered across the world, growing more and more bestial. I was insatiable for the torment of others. I roamed across the earth until I found that little cave near Jerusalem, where I’d stare at the evening sky every night, my former home. Emptiness ate at me. During the day I reveled in two things: seduction and death. I created hell on earth in a place called Gehenna, near the field of blood. Women offered their bodies to me. Other supplicants burned their loved ones, offerings to their god. Sacrifices—to me. They killed their own children to please me. To get my blessing. And I liked it. I grew strong off it.”
Nausea spread in the pit of my stomach. He truly was more twisted than I’d understood.
I didn’t really want to hear more, but I had to. “And you want that from the whole world? It will make you happy?”
“It was my dark paradise. Humans call it Gehenna; some call it hell. You’ve seen the paintings humans have made, the stained-glass windows showing the flames of hell? They put them in the western windows of churches to catch the wild twilight rays. That’s my light, flames dancing on the glass to terrify people. I inspired that. That is my legacy. Thousands of years of human tribes killing each other, cursing each other in my name. Lucifer. Light-bringer. Tormenter. That’s my legacy.”
I hugged myself, chilled to the bone. “Why did people sacrifice to you?”
A slow shrug. “They thought me a god. Why wouldn’t they? I had wings, and magical powers. I didn’t disabuse them of this notion. And after all, I had been a god. I’m practically one now. So they burned their own in offerings to me, hoping to win my favor. In that cave where we encountered your mother, the victims’ screams echoed off the cave walls. They used drums to drown the cries out. You can hear them, can’t you? In my magic? But they needn’t have drowned out the screams on my account. I thrived on agony. That’s who I am, Aenor. I torment.”