Page 75 of The Heartless One
“Nightmare, I have stolen your soul from you, and I know that means much. I know you suffer now with the knowledge that you lack a soul, and for that, I will never be able to apologize enough. Your suffering was at my hands. It is an act even I cannot forgive.”
“Elric, what is this—?”
“Take my heart,” he interrupted when she would have gone on a rant of her own. “Take my heart, nightmare, because you already own it.”
Her eyes widened. He could see the shock in those depths, but also knew without a doubt that she didn’t believe him. “This is far too dramatic, Elric. Get up off your knees.”
“Did you hear me?” he asked, his voice low and meaningful. “I have your soul, Jessamine Harmsworth. Now I wish for you to have my heart. A trade, if you will. Because I have no intent of returning your soul to you in such a dangerous time.”
There was a small pause. A moment where her lips parted and showed the lovely pink tip of her tongue before she shook her head. “This is insane.”
“I will keep my heart here, along with your soul. Safe. It will be yours, though. Should you die under my watch or choose to go to the afterlife, I will send it with you.” He wrapped his hand around hers and drew the tip of the knife to his breast. “Take it, Jessamine. It’s been yours far longer than either of us has realized.”
She pressed the tip forward, sinking it into the pale skin of his chest,and he tilted his head back in ecstasy. If there was such a thing as exquisite pain, this was it. The parting of flesh. The sensation of white-hot heat and the warmth dripping down the planes of his chest as she continued pushing the blade forward. It sank through his skin, moving forward, searching, slicing,aching.
Then he reached to help her, grabbing either end of the narrow wound, sliding his fingers into his own flesh and pulling. His ribs cracked, more blood poured out, but in this place it wasn’t death that leaked out of him, but magic. The raw, visceral parts of who he was. Magic that spilled out and pooled at her feet, coiling up her legs in a caress, because even that part of his godhood loved her.
Because she was stunning, standing above him with a knife as so many witches had done before. But this one he had begged. This one he had pleaded to do what she had done, and when he had made enough of a gap between his ribs, she reached inside and pulled out his black still-beating heart.
She held it up between the two of them, and he felt the feral grin on his face. “You, my darling, deserve every bleeding bit of it. I am your god, but I worship at your feet. I promised the shards of your soul that I would keep it safe in return for a throne of bloody bones, and I will uphold that promise. But along the way, somehow, this heart became yours.”
“This is too much,” she whispered, but her fingers curled around his heart a little harder.
“It is not enough. But your name was the prayer that dripped from my lips on the evenings when I felt like my own world had shattered around me. You are the most divine creature I have ever met, Jessamine Harmsworth. A life without you lacks all reason for living.”
And with that, he saw her resolve bend, and then slowly break.
“Elric,” she sighed. A stream of blood welled between her fingers and then dropped into the darkness between them. “You make it so hard to stay angry with you.”
Jessamine left Elric’s heart with her soul in that realm where only the Deathless One could go. And even though she was still angry at him, there was a certain amount of pleasure that came with knowing her man would get down onto his knees and let her carve out his heart when he made a mistake.
Holding that still-beating organ showed her just how much power she had over him.
Elric hadn’t been joking when he said she had his heart. She’d held it in the palm of her hand and watched as he looked up at her with rapture in those eyes and she… believed him.
She believed he wanted her soul to keep him company. That he was an empty, aching man who had been so lonely he’d thought peering into memories would make him less so.
They came back to the realm of the living, and she opened her eyes to stare at their reflection in the mirror. She knew she would forgive him for all this. He knew how wrong it was and that of all people, she had never anticipated that he would betray her.
It hadn’t been the right thing to do, but he had done it for the right reasons, and he was a god. He had done it because he’d been so lonely that he wasn’t thinking straight. And perhaps a bit because he did not understand that it would hurt her.
She knew what it was to feel lonely, even while surrounded by crowds of people.
Breathing out, she looked at their reflection and wondered what had brought them here. This time, he left his hands on her shoulders, his gaze meeting hers as they both surveyed themselves in the mirror. A pale young woman seated with a brush in her hand, and the dark shape of a god looming behind her. He was too tall, his fingers too broad, the scars on them catching the delicate silk of her dress. But somehow, she’d never seen a more handsome sight.
He swallowed hard as he noticed his scars had caught on her dress, his hands still lingering where she had previously not let him touch. “Jessamine?” he asked, his voice a little uncertain, as though he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to speak.
“Yes?”
“We should get you out of this dress.”
The underlying question was there. Did she want him to touch her? Did she want to allow him that gift? Because now that he had bared his soul to her, she knew that it was a gift. Every time she let him linger in her body, find solace in the moonlight of her form, as he had claimed, it was a balm to the aching wounds that ran centuries deep.
She stood, still watching him in the mirror as they both backed up. Like they were dancing, their bodies were so harmonious with each other that she knew how and when he was going to move without ever looking at the step he was about to take.
“We need to talk about one more thing,” she murmured, even as his hands slid away from her shoulders and down the wings of her shoulder blades.
“What do you want to know, gravesinger?”
