Page 91 of The Heartless One
“That wasn’t very nice,” Jessamine scolded.
Fortuna was breathing hard, her shoulders rising and falling in rage. “Get out of my head.”
“Or what?”
“Or I will scratch your eyes out. I will do whatever it takes to keep him safe.”
“Why?”
Fortuna seemed to freeze for a moment. Her expression fell into surprise before she stammered, “Why what?”
“Why are you trying to protect a man like him? He left bruises on me, Fortuna, and I wasn’t even sleeping with him. I can only imagine the marks he left on you. He promised you a kingdom and a castle, and you’re still here in the Pleasure District. Still a toy for them to wind up and watch dance until they are bored with you, and then what?” Jessamine rolled her eyes and turned her back to the fading image of Fortuna. “You are just a shadow of the woman I thought you would become.”
“How dare you.” Fortuna raced forward, her fingers trying to catch Jessamine by the hair. But she fell right through Jessamine, falling onto her hands and knees like a supplicant at her feet.
Jessamine crouched so they were at eye level. “I’m not really here, Fortuna. I’m out there. Living, breathing, calm as a sea on a breezeless night. But you? Youarehere. And anything I do to you in your own head? I do in the real world, too.”
It took such little effort to grab her cousin by the hair. She was stronger in this realm of memories, stronger than she had any right to be as shetossed Fortuna’s spirit into the corner. Her cousin slid across the floor and hit the wall. Her form slumped, her head lolling with the impact.
“Stay there,” Jessamine said, before moving the memory forward yet again.
Now Leon crawled up Fortuna’s body, pressing kisses to her neck as he made her way to her lips. “I promised you a kingdom, but I want more than that.”
“Is that so? What more is there than being a king of two kingdoms? Three?” Fortuna let out a bubbling laugh. “Do you want all the kingdoms at your beck and call?”
“In a way.”
The crumpled version of Fortuna against the wall stirred, then shrieked, “Stop it! Shut up, shut up, shut up!”
Jessamine threw her hand back without looking as shadows swarmed to seal her cousin’s mouth.
Leon’s voice seemed to echo in the room as he said, “I found a way to bring the gods back.”
It struck her right in the belly. So he really was going to do it. He wanted them to be indebted to him, or some other mad explanation for why he had killed her and everyone else who had any meaning to these kingdoms.
Fortuna’s memory giggled. “Bring the gods back? That’s so silly! Why would we want the gods back whenwecould be the most powerful people in the kingdoms?”
There was an edge of fear in her words. Like in the moment, even Fortuna had heard how insane Leon sounded.
He reared up, sitting on top of her, looking every inch the king he thought he was. “Of course not. I’m going to become the vessel for a god. And you, my dear, will be the vessel for another. I don’t want them to rule this kingdom again. I want to make their power my own. I know how to bind them, how to make them bend. And then I will become a god, just as they once were.”
“Oh,” Jessamine breathed, feeling all the blood drain from her face and her body grow faint. “No.”
She dropped the spell at the same time shock made her stumble back from Fortuna. Back in the human realm, she felt Sybil’s hands slip underneath her shoulders as she staggered away from her cousin.
Fortuna slumped on the bed, spitting blood from her mouth where her jaw hung unnaturally loose. But she still reached up and held it to her face so she could hiss, “You’re already too late.”
“We’re not.”
“You are,” Fortuna snarled.
The shadows had done a number on her face. Her jaw was barely attached, and there were scratches across her eyes, down her cheeks, where she had clawed at her own features to rip the darkness away. Her beauty had been shattered, bit by bit. There was no healing what had happened, not when the shadows themselves had started to stitch her together, leaving horrific scars and dark lines of magic as grim reminders of their power.
Those deep furrows slowly became ragged wounds that quickly filled with wriggling maggots. Her hollow eyes were blackened holes. And that jaw… that waggling, loose jaw kept her mouth constantly open.
No matter how many sacrifices she made to her goddess, Fortuna’s beauty was no more.
“I’m so tired of your lies,” Jessamine said. “I’m so tired of all the things that mind of yours has done. I took Callum’s mind, you know. Everyone believes him to be a doddering old fool now. They know what he once was, but all they see is a child locked in the body of a man.”
