Chapter Seven (Part 1)

I was in the room again.

Fuck, I was in the room again.

Idris had tried to give me a stern talking to about my little escape attempt, but I just glowered at him the whole time until he seemed to figure out that he wasn’t getting through to me. Funnily enough, we were sort of in the same situation, both of us trying to make the other understand, and neither of us really getting it.

Funny. Haha. Yes. Absolutely hilarious.

Except only one of us was being held against our will.

This asshole could suck his own dick for the rest of eternity.

I was out of options. The only thing I had left to do was the one thing I’d been trying to avoid, because damn it all, I didn’t want to hurt my husband.

Idris still slept in the room with me, in the same bed, apparently unconcerned about the threat of me strangling him in his sleep. The barrier repressed my magic, but not his, so physically and magically, he had the upper hand right now. But if I could pull a sneak attack and weaken him enough, the barrier would naturally disintegrate as he lost power.

It’s just that getting him to that point would be…painful.

As much as Idris was the one making this a fucking nightmare, he still hadn’t hurt me, hadn’t tried to start anything sexually even though I was practically fully healed at this point. Some part of him was still rational enough to recognize that pushing me into anything right now would be beyond fucked up, and so aside from goodnight kisses, he’d kept all his parts at a respectable distance from me.

Or possibly he was worried about me ripping his penis off if he put it anywhere near me right now. Because as much as I cursed him for being an idiot in my head, he wasn’t one.

Unfortunately for me.

Another three days passed, and I couldn’t take it anymore. No one was coming to rescue me, and Idris wasn’t changing his mind. I’d asked him several times how the investigation was going, because he’d promised that once he figured out who sent the deer, he would let me out, but each time he just said it was ‘in progress.’

Which meant he’d found exactly jack and shit about who sent the deer.

But what was he expecting? If this person was really after me, then they were keeping a low profile right now until I reappeared. They couldn’t get to me, so why would they show themselves?

The only way to draw them out was for me to go out and make a target of myself.

When I helpfully pointed this out to Idris, he just gave me a stern look that translated to ‘no way in hell.’

So I had no choice but to conclude that I was probably going to be stuck in this room forever. Idris was only going to let me out when he found the perpetrator (or so he said, I was starting to not believe him about anything), and he couldn’t find the perpetrator while I was still locked up.

But Idris either refused to understand that, or he understood it too well and was using it as an excuse to keep me in his little dollhouse.

Either way, I couldn’t wait around for Idris to keep his promises. I had to figure out how to drain his power enough to weaken the barrier without hurting him too severely.

Easier said than done.

I was still thinking about this one night as Idris sat up reading in bed next to me. I watched him secretly in the dim lamplight, a hollow ache in my chest, eyes tracing over his strong jawline, the softness of his mouth, the way his feathery eyebrows pursed in a little as he concentrated.

The worst monsters in this world weren’t creatures from the venomous forest. No, the worst monsters were the demons we hid within ourselves. When we stripped away the light, all the things that made us good, only the ugly parts were left.

Don’t get me wrong, we needed the ugly parts too. We can only know what goodness is when we see the darkness.

And Idris wasn’t pure goodness, I knew that, logically. No one was. So, it wasn’t fair of me to think that he could never be corrupted. Placing him on a pedestal like that wasn’t good for either of us.

But when Idris’s light was stripped away, what was left behind? Control issues, paranoia. The inability to care about anyone except me, apparently, and even then, his care for me was more for his benefit than mine. So he was selfish, too.

And as bad as all that was, I had a feeling that Idris hadn’t hit rock bottom yet. There were vestiges of light within him still, but they were slowly withering away with each passing day.

He was going to get worse.

And I was trapped here, forced to watch him deteriorate more each day.

So, I had to get out. If not for my benefit, then for his, because it was almost certain that I was causing this.

You’re nothing but a calamity, Rook, I remembered Ana once spitting at me before we’d made up, You bring ruin to everything around you. That forest is exactly where you belong. A vile prison for a vile soul.

 I had been so…stupid. So utterly stupid to think for a second that she’d been wrong.

Because look at what had happened since I’d been brought to paradise.

The venomous forest had been abolished, leading to scores of new deaths across paradise. People were getting poisoned left and right, evil was running rampant. People were so desperate for positive emotion that they were actually obsessively worshipping me, a god of death and darkness, for love. And when they weren’t finding it, they were destroying themselves, whether mentally or physically.

I’m a calamity.

I wasn’t just destroying my own husband. I was destroying the realm piece by fucking piece. Idris had the right idea shoving me in my little hell dimension at the beginning of time, because if he hadn’t, who knows what the god realm would look like now, or if it would even still be in existence.

I had to get out. I had to get out before I caused any more damage. Before Idris was too far gone to save.

But how?

At that moment, a faint sound resounded through the apartment. Idris and I both looked up, and then shared glances.

The sound came again, unmistakable this time as a knock.

Someone was knocking. Someone was here. Fucking finally.

My heart kicked up in my chest. This was my chance!

But I had to play it cool, so I remained reclined against the pillows, looking up at Idris with feigned confusion. Idris set aside his book, leaned down to kiss my forehead, and then quietly left the room.

The second the door closed behind him, I was out of bed and pressed as close to the door as I could get without touching the barrier, ears straining.

The murmur of voices was faint, too faint for me to make out words, but I could tell who had come.

Ana.

Thank all the fucking gods. She’d gotten my note.

Better late than never, I supposed.

I listened to them talking for several minutes, anxiously shifting from foot to foot, waiting for her to come bursting back here. My own white knight.

I half expected there to be shouting. Ana wasn’t one to restrain her temper, so I expected her to chew Idris out for his behavior, at the very least. But their voices were soft, and I was getting antsy.

Hurry up and blast his ass or something, I thought desperately. Just get me out!

A few more minutes passed. Still no shouting. No blasting. No sounds of someone rushing down the hall to get me.

Suddenly the discussion stopped, and there was a soft noise as the front door closed, then the steady thump of footsteps. Idris’s footsteps.

Some fucking white knight you are, I cursed Ana silently. What the fuck even was that?

I imagined what that conversation must have been like as I raced to get back into the bed before Idris came back.

‘Hey Idris, sorry to bother you so late.’

‘Anything for you, Ana. What’s wrong?’

‘Oh, nothing. You don’t happen to have your husband locked up in there going slowly insane, right?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘Oh, okay then. Have a good night. Also, I suck and Rook rules.’

‘Understood, and I agree. Sleep well.’

Ugh!

I restrained my temper as best I could as Idris came back into the room, hiding half my face in the blankets so he wouldn’t see my scowl.

He looked just as calm when he came back as he did when he left, giving no indication if his conversation with Ana had been negative or positive. I raised an eyebrow at him as he climbed back into bed, silently asking what that was about as if I hadn’t just been desperately eavesdropping.

“Just Ana,” Idris said, noticing my stare. “Go to sleep.”

“…”

What a font of information. I rolled my eyes.

“And what did she want?” I asked, trying hard to keep my tone level.

Idris frowned, shrugging, “Something about some of the spirits in Chrysos breaking free of their daze and trying to break out? She said it was handled, but it was strange because the spirits aren’t supposed to be able to do that.”

The spirits in Chrysos remained in a shocked daze until it was their turn to be reincarnated. Death, no matter the cause, left the spirit confused and hazy, which meant they were quite content to wander about the inner part of Chrysos without surfacing from whatever reality they were reliving. I’d never once heard of a spirit breaking that daze. And then trying to leave as well? That was just stupid. Leaving would just dissipate their soul, and they wouldn’t be able to reincarnate at all.

…What the fuck was going on?