Page 79 of A House of Gold
I force my voice to join his: "Ex anima mea, te solvo." From my soul, I release you.
"Non sum avaritia," Croesus says. I am not greed. I repeat each line.
The greed thrashes out its fury at being named.
His voice cracks slightly. "Non sum cupiditas." I am not covetousness.
"Redi ad originem tuam," I whisper. Return to your origin. "Redi ad dominum tuum." Return to your master.
I pour our mixed blood, red and gold, into the flames.
The greed screams, and then it's being ripped out of me like roots torn from earth, like bones pulled from a living body, like my soul is being flayed. Not gentle. Not clean. Brutal and agonizing and endless. It’s tearing through my throat, my chest, my soul, pulling out pieces of me along with the sin because fifteen years of avarice doesn't want to let go, has grown tendrils into every part of me, wrapped around my spine like a parasite that would rather kill its host than leave.
I'm screaming. Or maybe that's still the greed screaming. Or maybe we're the same thing now, inseparable as blood and water mixed. I can't tell anymore.
Croesus's hands are on my shoulders, grounding me. "Breathe. You're not me. Come back."
But I am him. Right now, at this moment, I'm feeling what he feels every second of every day. The hunger. The emptiness. The terrible, aching loneliness of having everything and feeling nothing.
How does he survive this?
How has he survived this for three thousand years?
The greed pours out of me in golden smoke, burning away in the white-gold flames. It takes forever. It takes an instant. Time stretches and snaps like a rubber band pulled to breaking. Time becomes a circle, becomes a knife, becomes nothing at all.
When it's finally gone, when the last tendril of avarice burns away like morning fog, I collapse forward.
Croesus catches me. Pulls me against his chest. And I can feel his heart beating, too fast, too hard, like he's the one who just purged a sin instead of me.
"You're okay," he says, but his voice is shaking. "You're okay. You survived."
I'm not okay. I'm hollow. Every nerve ending feels like it's been dipped in acid.
But I'm alive.
"That's what you feel," I whisper against his chest. "All the time. That's, Croesus, that's what you are?"
He goes very still. A statue. A held breath. A moment before the fall. "Yes."
"How?" Tears are running down my face, salt rivers carving paths through exhaustion. "How do you survive it? How do you exist like that and not..." I can't finish. Can't find words for the horror of it. For three thousand years of being a black hole that devours itself.
"I don't know." His arms tighten around me. "I just do. Because the alternative is fading. Ceasing to exist. And even this," His voice breaks. "Even this endless hunger is better than nothing. Of being a puppet to the creator."
I pull back enough to look at him. His gold eyes are bright, too bright. Wet. Is he crying?
Can angels cry?
"I felt you," I say. "When I absorbed the greed. I didn't just feel Victoria's hunger. I felt yours. Three thousand years of it. All at once."
"I'm sorry." He touches my face, wipes away tears. "I didn't want you to feel that. Didn't want you to know, "
"Know what? That you're in pain? That you've been in pain for millennia?" More tears. I can't stop them. "Croesus, you're suffering. Every second. And you hide it so well that no one knows. No one sees."
"What would be the point of showing it?" His thumb traces my cheekbone. "I can't change what I am. Can't escape the curse. So I endure. I take and take and take, hoping that maybe this time, this acquisition, this soul, this something will finally be enough."
"But it never is."
"No." He leans his forehead against mine. "It never is. Until you."
