CHAPTER FIVE

The Price of Control

“What are you doing here?” Christian asked like I was the last person he expected to see.

“You invited me,” I retorted, shocked by the hardness in his face.

“I have never invited anyone in this room,” he replied, picking up the cloth draped around him and tying it like a sarong around his waist.

“Well, you invited me, Christian,” I said, hoping the use of his name would snap him into some sort of awareness.

“That doesn’t sound like my name. It sounds like a lame alias I use to hide who I really am,” he said crossly as he got down from the altar and approached me like a predator approaching prey.

“Your name is Damon Christianus. I just call you Christian for short.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t sound like you really know me either. That sounds like you’re from the village and someone taught you to say that so that I’d tell you everything I know about everything. I admit you’re a lovely specimen, probably the best they could have found, exactly my type, but no. I don’t let just anyone in here.” He was forcing me toward the door that led into the first room.

“I’m your wife,” I said, saying it like it was the last thing I wanted to say.

He laughed before executing a perfect wall slam next to the door by pinning me between the wall and him. He put both hands on either side of my head and forced me to look him in the eye. “That’s perfect. If you’re my wife, you should know all kinds of personal things about me that should prove what you say is true. Go on,” he dared, pointing at me with his chin. “Tell me something about me that no one else knows.”

I glared at him, challenging him. “You gave me your heart.”

“Did I?” he smiled, running his tongue along his teeth menacingly. “A lot of women think I’ve given them my heart.”

“Your heart is in my body!” I snarled, wondering if I could make myself any clearer.

That got his attention. He backed off. His hands tightened the knot on his sarong. “Are you saying that if we go out those doors, we’ll be in the forest that changes colors except it will be your forest and not mine?”

“Yes,” I answered firmly.

In the next second, he was in the first chamber and then out the front door.

I ran after him, catching up with him outside. He stood, gaping at the Red Forest he could see from our side of the moat.

His mouth hung open for an instant before he covered it with his tanned hand. “This is not my body.”

“Of course, it’s not your body,” I said, slapping him on the back. “I told you, it’s mine.”

“It’s very red,” he said as if he’d never seen the color before. “You must have been very near to death when I gave you my heart.”

“Why can’t you remember giving me your heart? You’ve been here the whole time.”

His shoulders sank. “I don’t know. I know that I was listening to another part of me. Not the version of me that was in the first room. Not the king… it was a different version… a different part of me. Like listening to the angel on your shoulder and then realizing he’s the demon in disguise.”

“Was he the demon or the angel?” I asked, knowing exactly how Christian talked when he acted like that.

“Both,” he whispered. “I was supposed to go to sleep. I don’t know how long ago that was or what prize he got for putting me to sleep.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not that part of myself. The brain thinks all sorts of things it doesn’t consult the guts about. It was like that. I was sent here to starve because a higher part of myself decided that I should stop functioning.”

I smiled broadly. “Are you the heart?”

The look of horror left his face. “Of course I’m not the heart. I was using that as an analogy.”

“I was hoping you were Christian’s feelings and not a blood pump,” I retorted.

“This building is the blood pump,” he said, turning to look at the shrine behind him. “It’s very red here. That’s concerning. Not only must you be close to dying with your forest so incredibly red, but I must be close to dying too with a heart this color. What have I done to myself?”

“What color is it supposed to be?”

“White.” He stared at it and breathed like his world was unraveling before his very eyes.

“Can you do anything to heal it?”

He shook his head negatively. “I can’t. I’m the part that controls matter, so I can’t manipulate the Red Forest.” Then he turned his gray-green eyes on me. “Tell me who you are and how I met you.”

We sat on the edge of the pool and dipped our legs in the blood-filled moat in front of us. I hiked up my skirt and he hiked up his sarong. The blood was warm, like a bathtub.

“My parents died, and you were my guardian. I was dying and in love with you, and you decided to give me your heart. I didn’t know you’d done it. I just woke up one morning and knew I’d had surgery, but nothing else. I was all better. No explanation that made sense was given to me and it was years before I knew what you’d done.”

“I married you without telling you?” he asked awkwardly, pinching the crinkles between his eyebrows. “That’s a risky move. I must have thought it was worth it… like loving you was the last thing I’d do. Tell me the good parts. Tell me about the moment I told you how I felt about you. Tell me how sweet it was. How much I wanted you and how we made love under starry skies.”

I hesitated. “Uh… neither of those things has happened exactly.”

The Other Christian looked ultimately perplexed. “I haven’t done any of that? I didn’t take you in my arms and make you mine? That sounds unbelievable. Am I no good in bed without this part of me?” he asked himself, looking down at his impressive torso. “One wouldn’t think losing me would cause such a problem in that area.” He got up and paced, mumbling things under his breath while he left bloody footprints behind him.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

“Look, there are very good reasons why,” I said, feeling the need to explain.

“Were we separated a lot?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Was I in chains much?”

“You had your hand cut off,” I supplied.

“Did I get it back?”

“Most of it. The last time I saw you, you were still missing a finger, but I think Brandon has it. Though I have to say, I am willing to cut one off him if we can’t get yours back,” I said, letting some of my steam about Brandon’s treatment of me escape.

“Angry at him?”

“He’s kidnapped me too many times for me to think about him pleasantly,” I said with my nose in the air.

The Other Christian smiled, looking at me like he couldn’t stop looking at me.

I loved it. It was exactly how I wished he would look at me all those years when he was my guardian. He had always looked at me like he enjoyed being with me, listening to me, watching me, but finally, there was a time and a place for him to look at me like he was in love with me.

I had been dipping my fingers in the blood, but when I saw his face, I flicked it off my fingers and stopped his pacing by sidling up beside him. “Who are you and the other versions of you that are still inside? What does all this mean?”

He smiled conspiratorially. “Let’s go see them.”

Together, we went into the room with the king on his throne.

“Hmm…” he murmured as he lifted the king’s hand and let it fall against the armrest with a THUD!

I winced. It seemed like a profane thing to do, except that if anyone was allowed to do something like that, it was the Other Christian. He pursed his lips and went to the remaining rooms. I followed him and watched as he pushed the version of Christian with the words written on his skin in the third room and made him twirl over the pool of water. The Other Christian dismissed that version and entered the last room. There, he crouched in front of the version who was tied to the mast. He looked at that one longer.

“What do you think happened?” I asked timidly.

“I almost killed myself,” he said steadily.

“How?” I gasped. “I thought you were immortal.”

His expression was calm, almost playful when considering his own demise and staring at another version of himself. “There’s no such thing as perfect immortality. I did this to myself on purpose. I cut myself into fragments in order to save something more important than myself. The reward must have been great.” He paused. “It was this one. This is the version of me who put me to sleep. It looks like he did the same thing to himself. We’re not able to do it yet, but at some point, we’re going to need to wake him up.”

I didn’t think there was any way to wake the Christian in the fourth room. I had already tried everything I could think of. Granted, that hadn’t been much. There wasn’t much in the room to interact with. I let it go.

The only thing I could concentrate on was the fact that he said he was close to death. “All this trouble doesn’t have anything to do with us switching hearts, does it?”

“No. At my greatest, I could have simply ordered my heart out of my body and it would have gone. My forest was so white in those days that I didn’t even have blood. This mess has to do with intentionally cutting off thousands of years of experience, losing abilities that were once as natural as breathing, and deliberately leaning toward humanity. To have such large chunks of myself dormant inside my heart, I must have come very close to becoming human… and if I’m human… then I can die.”

I knew instantly that was why I had suddenly gotten results out of Brandon and Pricina. What the Other Christian said meant that just because someone was immortal one day, that didn’t mean they would be the next day. I could kill myself. Accidentally threatening to do so had got Brandon and Pricina to back off.

It also meant that wherever Christian was, he wasn’t immune to death either.

“You told me once that you cut off your memories and burned the bridges inside you. You said that was the only way you could go on,” I recounted, even though now that reasoning didn’t make sense.

He breathed heavily, thinking.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” I asked.

He smiled reflectively. “It doesn’t work like that. What I know about myself is spotty. I’m not the house of my memories. I am the keeper of a particular secret.”

I leaned in. “Can you tell me your secret?”

“I already told you,” he replied with matching glints in his eyes and teeth. “I am the ability to reorganize matter.”

I stared at him. “Like Pricina?”

“I don’t know her, but I have no way of remembering anyone. I am the knowledge to command air particles, make wind, form storms, concentrate gasses, and pull all the air out of your lungs. I can move liquids, change the course of tides, twist whirlwinds, make waterfalls flow upwards, and make underground oil squirt up like a geyser. It goes even further. I can control minerals and alloys, move mountains and make whole cities disintegrate with a snap of my fingers.”

I wouldn’t have considered believing him if I hadn’t already seen Pricina do such things on a smaller level.

I cleared my throat and asked, “Are you a god?”

He looked at me curiously. “You didn’t know I was a god? That’s bad. In that case, let me make a few things about this clear. I’m not the god. I’m not the original god who set this world rotating. I’m not The Beginning and The End. I’m not the author of all this. There are other gods working here.”

“Is Henry Brandon one of them?” I asked.

“I told you, I don’t know everything Damon Christianus should know. That doesn’t mean that person isn’t a god. It just means I don’t know him. Gods and goddesses crop up from time to time. Sometimes they don’t hold it well. Obviously, I haven’t, but if I’ve taken a wife then I’m probably on track for regaining some of my former glory.”

“I don’t think you know you’re a god,” I said slowly. “The Christian I know is always on the run, hiding, lying, disguising, changing his face, and changing his name.”

The Other Christian’s face softened beautifully as his eyes met mine. After all those times he had been forced to school his features, not let his love for me show, seeing his unfiltered love on his face straight up took my breath away.

I licked my lips. “I don’t understand. Are you saying I’m a goddess because I have your heart?”

He nodded. “When we married, I gave you everything that I am. In a human ceremony, they give all their worldly goods to each other. They only do that in a vain attempt to make their weddings like ours. I didn’t just give you whatever possessions I have. I gave you the gift of becoming all that I am.” He leaned forward and whispered in my ear, “Current circumstances notwithstanding, I’m literally everything.”

My breath caught. “I thought I wasn’t supposed to eat the stones.”

“If you hadn’t, you could never have awoken me and consequently, our union could not have deepened. Can you feel how it’s getting deeper?”

I nodded.

“Good. Thinking back, if I was in a position where I had to cut myself off, I would not have cut off my ability to control matter in one go. I would have done it in sections; a hundred and twenty-five sections to be exact.”

“That was how many stones were resting on you!”

He suddenly looked down at my stomach like he had realized something else. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine. Great, even.”

His eyes traveled between my face and my stomach a few times before he inclined his head. “I’ll check on you later.” Then he returned to the previous subject. “The reason I would have chosen to cut my abilities into a hundred and twenty-five pieces is that there are a hundred and twenty-five different kinds of matter on this planet.”

“Are you talking about the elements on the periodic table? There are a hundred and eighteen.”

“Don’t bore me with whatever scientists think right now. There are a hundred and twenty-five unique forms of matter that went into the creation of this world. With each of the stones you ate, you gained the ability to bend that element to your will the same way you can move individual cells in your body. The easiest way is to learn how to manipulate all of them at once rather than to learn them individually, and I will teach you”

He took me by the hand and led me back to the second room. Once there, he lifted me onto the altar. “Have you ever been sacrificed before?”

“I’ve never been butchered for funsies. If that’s what you mean.”

He looked at me earnestly. “Have you ever sacrificed yourself?”

I straightened my back. “I thought you didn’t want me to die?”

“You’re absolutely not going to die, but the version of you that is human will be gone if I tell you the secrets to manipulating matter. You’ll have the power to change anything around you with a blink. Rain will turn back into clouds because you say so. You’ll have eyes everywhere because the floorboards in a house will tell you everything you want to know. Even diamonds will tell you their secrets,” he said with the most seductive click of his tongue.

I leaned forward and rested my forehead against his. “I’m afraid it might be too late to do anything else.”