Mammon’s eyes narrowed. “Stand.” I obeyed as quickly as my limbs allowed. “Stand proud.” He growled as though impatient.
Proud? I gave my wings a flick, lifted my shoulders, and brought my head up. Next to him, I was a tiny thing. Fragile and feeble. Did he seek to humiliate me? He could try. Humiliation only burned if the victim cared. I did not. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d truly cared about anything.
He drew in a deep breath, expanding his broad chest and flaring his veins with heat. Sparks danced beneath his flesh, blooming across the expanse of his wings. He was a thing of devastating beauty.
He came forward a step but paused as I flinched. Another growl bubbled up his throat, definitely a warning this time. “Do not submit, half-blood.”
I froze, uncertain. When he moved forward again, every instinct in my half-blood body screamed at me to bow, to flinch, to drop to my knees and prostate myself before him. He came closer, his gaze burning into mine. Fire flushed my skin, rushing over me in a shiver of heat.
Look away,
my instincts screamed. But his glare forbade it.
Look away!
He stopped before me, a wall of slick black muscles. Veins of fire traced through his chest like crimson lightning scoring a night sky. I had a terrifying urge to touch him, to reach my hands out and soak up his heat.
“Now and a’morrow, you stand tall.”
I locked my gaze on his rippled abdomen, fascinated by the play of fire through his veins.
“You will always answer me.”
“Yes,” I rasped.
“You obey my commands.”
“Yes.”
“Change. Reveal your other half.”
If he didn’t kill me upon seeing my disgusting counterpart, the elements cloying the air would. My other self was too weak to survive. The air would burn her lungs and scorch her skin.
He growled so deep it scattered shivers through me, and with a gasp, I lifted my head and closed my eyes.
So be it.
Feverish heat flushed through my veins. Convulsions wracked my body, twisting and contorting muscles. My wings dissolved, and the heat radiating from my core died. My element abandoned me, fleeing to the far corners of my mind. The snarls bubbling from my lips turned to whimpers.
Hardened black skin changed to pink and pliable flesh. Born anew, trapped in wrappings of moist flesh and suffocated beneath emotion, I sobbed and staggered under the weight of it all.
It hurts!
Slippery emotions swirled about my head: fear, relief, admiration, regret—so many maddening compulsions. The thick air choked me. Elements dashed my vulnerable flesh, intent on tearing me apart. All I knew was a pain so intense it felt as though it was peeling the skin from my body.
Suddenly, the pain was gone, and smooth, soft arms closed around my flaccid body. Pathetic quivering legs collapsed beneath me. The elements previously filling the room had vanished, likely chased away by Mammon. The air tasted sweet, fresh, and light upon my lips. I sucked it in, let it sooth the burn in my chest. My body betrayed everything. I could smell the sweet sickly odor of my own fear. My skin glistened with the evidence. So wet, pink, and revolting. My stomach lurched.
Mammon, in his bronze-skinned form, scooped my gangly body off the floor and laid me down on the bed of furs. His eyes, the color of dying leaves, regarded me with a mixture of wonder and amusement. His soft lips turned up at the corners, revealing blunt white teeth. I was too weak to care what the expression meant. If he was going to kill me, he surely would have done so already. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have almost believed he looked upon my hideous self as though somehow proud of me.
“Rest. I will return.” His embrace vanished. I looked for him and watched as, from one step to the next, he shook off his honey-skinned form in favor of the magnificent Mammon. The door closed behind him. Wrapped in furs, exhausted, I closed my eyes and fell into a dreamless sleep.
“
Y
our other half is human.”
It was morning, and I was ravenous. I brought the cooked thigh joint to my lips and bit down. The orderly rows of blunt, human teeth crowding my mouth made surprisingly easy work of the meat. And it tasted wonderful, moist and juicy. I picked up a ripened garu fruit and crunched deep, groaning with pleasure as the food filled my empty belly. This was too good.
Mammon in his ‘human’ form sat casually sprawled in a chair at the end of the table. I perched on the edge of a chair, wrapped in supple leathers, as though the garments could protect my flesh from the elements. He had done something to the air—shooed away the power— so that I might walk his fortress with him. We were in the kitchens. Elementals busied themselves around us, cutting food, slicing, sorting, preparing. I watched them out of the corner of my eye, wary when any picked up a blade. The glint of light on metal always sliced through me.
“We…” Mammon flurried a hand in the air, twisting his fingers. I had no idea what that meant but assumed he was referring to the others in the kitchen with us. “…are demon, born of the elements.”
“Human is weak.” I grumbled around a mouthful of food. I didn’t care for what the humans called us. Demon. It meant nothing. They were nothing. Before me lay a spread of meat and fruit fit for a king—or a prince. That was real. I cared for sustenance.
Mammon’s human face ticked, and one of the furred arches above his eye curved upward. “Of the body, perhaps. But not of the mind. In that, we are sorely lacking. They possess infinite talents. Imagination. Spirit. Passion. They live in a world where savagery is shunned. It exists, but they strive to better themselves. They are innovators. They seek the stars and will not be deterred. I admire their ambition.”
I dropped the bone I’d been gnawing on. He’d said a lot of confusing words, most of which I didn’t understand, but I gleaned their meaning from his tone. He admired humans? “But you are a prince.” My voice was pitched too high, like a dying creature. I was a long way from manipulating words properly with fleshy lips and a wriggling, moist tongue. Mammon had mastered human speech. He spoke with a beautiful accent, his words rolled from one to the next, luscious and melodic. Mesmerizing
“I tire. I am the Prince of Greed, forever hungry. What is there to have here? I have acquired all I can possibly possess. Besides you, little half-blood.”
Hunger? Yes, I’d seen hunger fuel the fire in his eyes. “Where are these humans?”
“Beyond the veil.” He must have seen the doubt flicker across my face. I had no hope of hiding my expressions in this puny human form. My own flesh refused to obey me, and Mammon appeared quite expert at reading human faces. “It is possible to pass through the veil. Princes generally avoid the realm of men. However, many higher elementals can—and do—cross.”
“Why?”
He leaned forward, and the thin fabric covering—he called it a shirt, though I thought it a waste to cover him up—pulled tight across his shoulders. His shoulder-length hair spilled forward, softening the effect of a sudden intensity blazing in his eyes. “Their world is young and has much potential. They build vast towers, reaching into the sky. In the dark, those towers sparkle like monoliths to their many deities. They travel in machines. Some of their contraptions fly, but most follow tracks or roads.” Firelight flickered in his eyes. “They seek company and breed mercilessly. Humans are passionate in all they do, even should they wish to do nothing. They battle, they rage, they kill, they love, they are capable of mercy in the most impossible of circumstances, and they are monstrous.”
“Madness.”
“Yes. But a wonderful madness…” Dark lashes shuttered over his eyes, and a shudder rolled through him. What did he feel? What is it the humans had that he could possibly desire? His words were at odds with how my kin saw humans: as hideous beasts.
“Are they slaves?”
Amber eyes snapped open, and I got a glimpse of the prince inside before the amber melted away, returning his gaze to a more neutral tone. “Only to themselves.”
I knew intimately what it felt like to be a slave to myself. My human head was filled with rambling insanity, as though dozens of voices all talked at once. Clearly, being human meant wanting a great deal and fretting over every tiny obstacle, even if those obstacles were hypothetical. It was all nonsense, and it added yet another weakness. “You go there, to this land of humans?”
His lashes fluttered as he dropped his gaze. When his teeth bit gently into his bottom lip, my thoughts funneled to that one tiny gesture. Tearing my gaze away, I tried to reason what it was about him that had my mind chasing itself in circles. My throat dried. I reached for a cup of water to wet my lips, only to find him observing me closely. We both noticed my hand giving a little tremble. I snarled.
He licked his lips—snagging my gaze again—and teased his fingers in swirling symbols on the tabletop. “I experience much beyond the veil. Pleasures, pains, challenges. I wear this mortal vessel and command the name Ahkeel.”
“Ahkeel.” I tasted the name and rolled the sound of it around my slippery human tongue. “
Ahh-kee-aahl
. What does it mean?” He blinked back at me. After a few moments, it became clear he had no intention of answering, so I asked, “Is that the name I should call you while you wear that body?”
“If you wish.”
I nodded. It didn’t feel right calling him by his true name while he wore his human skin. “They know you are elemental?”
“No. They have muddied us in fantastic-tales, turned us into nightmares and myth. They are blinded by stunted science. Most are not even aware the veil exists, and those who do witness it call it a
magnetic field
, or the aurora borealis. They are far too self-centered to concern themselves with our world. They believe themselves the pinnacle of evolution.”
I snorted a laugh and almost choked on my garu fruit. “This?” Lifting my spindly arm–now wrapped in leather braces–and gave it a wiggle. “They believe these limbs— and this body—to be superior?”
“Our elements are weak in their world, captured and restrained in the forces at work around them. Earth, ice, fire… all but chaos itself are static. Humans do not require armored skin to survive.”
This was fantasy. I smiled. At least I thought I did. My lips turned up at the corners, but I may have displayed too many teeth. A smile, a sneer, I didn’t understand the difference. “You tease.” Why did humans show their fangs when they were pleased? Like the rest of their expressions, it was flawed and confusing.
His lips appeared to twist a little, as though he pinched back his own smile. “No. It is truth.” Was he trying not to laugh at me?
“How am I half
human
?” I’d meant to growl the last word, but my obscure vocal range made my growl resonate like a purr. “How does that happen? One of us would have to…” Words failed me, but my imagination didn’t. I scrunched up my face and shivered. An elemental and a human together? It would be like rucking with a lesser… Wrong.
Ahkeel’s eyes sparkled with humor. “Enough questions. Eat. There is more I wish to show you.”
A
hkeel showed me halls the size of canyons and gardens buried deep inside the cliff-face where lesser elementals roamed and lava spewed light and heat. Monstrous flowers bloomed tall, exuding intoxicating scents that did peculiar things to my human body. As Ahkeel told me of the human world, a seed of doubt settled in my gut. His words were sweet and his tales marvelous, but they changed nothing. I knew this routine: seduce me with niceties, and then rip my hopes apart. Da’mean was a master of such games. I could only expect a prince would be all the more terrifying when he finally turned on me. And he would, of that I was certain.
Ahkeel returned me to my chamber where I stripped the leathers from my skin. Why cover the flesh? It made no sense to me. I wanted to feel air kiss my skin and the warm stone beneath my feet. I already felt numb while buried inside my human skin, and didn’t need clothing to seal me further from the elements.
“Summon your true self,” Ahkeel casually ordered.
I obliged with relief and welcomed the blast of heat, the hardened armor, and the cool clarity of my focused mind.
Yes, this is me. I am elemental.
A shiver tracked through me, rippling my muscles and raining embers at my feet.
Ahkeel leaned against the wall beside the fireplace. With a quick gesture, his clothes dissolved, leaving him naked and all the more glorious for it.
Glorious?
My inferior human thoughts had leeched through. I snarled. It would not happen again.
The torches bracketed to the wall flared to life at his command. He settled his gaze on me. “How much control of your element do you possess?”
I tipped my head and narrowed my eyes. “Control?” Control was pointless. Chaos abhorred control, and chaos fire was my lifeblood.
“Can you summon your fire on impulse?”
“When I am distressed…it comes.”
He nodded, “Your element controls you. I will teach you how to call the fire, tether it, and control it.”
Control my fire?
“Samien has prepared the hearth. You will ignite a fire to warm this room.”
I slid my gaze to the cold, gaping mouth of the fireplace. Ignite a fire? Seasoned logs and kindling were piled high in the grate. It wouldn’t take much of a flame to set the fuel ablaze. A few sparks would probably be enough. If I could touch it, my skin alone would probably do it.
“No touching.”
Did he read my thoughts? Did he have that power too? No, my face probably betrayed my thoughts. I’d forgotten my mask of indifference. The time I’d spent as a human had already eroded my armor. Brow furrowed, I asked, “How?”
“Speak of Da’mean. Tell me, half-blood, what he does to you.”
“You know,” I grunted, clawed-fingers flexing at my sides.
“I do. Half-bloods are curiosities, playthings, to be used as their owners deem. Is that what you are?”
“Yes.”
The delight died in his eyes and hardened to contempt. “Is that what you truly believe?”
“Yes.” Was he trying to trick me? “I am half. Not worthy.”