Lilith let out a blood-curdling scream as she gripped onto the bars beside her, her knuckles braced and white.

“Push! Just a bit more!”

Lilith was a young woman now, her skin plump and youthful and tinted a bright pink on her cheeks and nose. Her lashes were as white as her hair, and she seemed to be perpetually kissed by winter’s beauty. Seventeen going on eighteen, she was now giving birth to her seventh child.

“The baby isn’t breathing,” a doctor shouted, mortified as he scrambled to revive the small body.

The gruff king, old and wrinkled and withering, stood up. “What do you mean? No child of mine could be born defective!” He roared and glared at Lilith, blaming her with his eyes. “Your blood is cursed because of your horrible mother. How dare you kill my child after I blessed you with my seed?” Lilith was lifted into the air and slammed back down onto the bed by his hand.

Lilith was a goddess—she was almighty and powerful and worshiped and divine, and she scooped up her dead child into her arms and pressed the small body against the curve of her chest before walking out of the room. King Leith did nothing to console her, nothing but scream and shout and flip the bed over and smash it against the wall.

Fire, water, earth, air, shadow, and void. They’d all been passed down to her children already, but she had one more left within her. One that she’d kept hidden.

As soon as she left the room, she held the child and began to run, her feet hammering into the ground. She placed a gentle hand on the child, and it awoke, crying. King Leith didn’t bother chasing after her; no matter what, she always came back. This was the only life that could accept her, and it was the only life she’d known.

“Lilith?” A man opened the door to his small room. He looked at the child in her arms and gasped, quickly letting her in. Blood trickled down her legs, but she wasn’t in any pain. She hadn’t let herself feel pain in years, but he was the only one she let see her.

She held the child and pulled the man into a hug, crying into his shoulder. “This is our son,” she said, and she looked up at him as the child cried and reached up.

Lilith had been having an “affair” if one could call it that. King Leith had raised her since she was a child for Lilith to bear his own children. Six by the time she was sixteen, but the seventh wasn’t his.

His face softened, and he gently took the child into his arms and helped Lilith get cleaned up.

“Does he know?”

Lilith shook her head and brushed her hair back. “I killed the child when it was born, but I brought him back once I left.”

He gave her a look of genuine concern as he rocked the child, staring at its wide and vulnerable face. “He’s the only one with your features. Look at his beautiful white hair and blue eyes…” he trailed off as he brushed the baby's face. “Then, King Leith doesn’t know about your last power, does he?”

“No, he doesn’t. Only you and this child do,” she said as she smiled down at its adorable face. “I love this one the most.”

“Don’t say that, Lilith. You love all your children.”

“But I love this one more, because he’s your child, too.”

“So our son… has the power of life and death at his fingertips?”

Lilith nodded, and the man’s eyes trailed down to her dirtied fingertips. Mud and grim were stuck under them, most likely from the hours she spent on the battlefield to advance the army of Leith.

“That’s brilliant. You’re brilliant.”

Lilith gave a joyous laugh that rang throughout the tiny, rustic cabin. “I’ll head back now, but I’ll keep visiting you. You’ll be alright raising him?”

“Of course. It’s just as we discussed.”

A little kiss was pressed against the man’s forward before Lilith walked out and returned to the central district.

King Leith gripped her arm as soon as she entered the castle, throwing her onto the ground. “Where’d you take my son?”

“I buried him. He was dead.”

His face twisted into sheer disgust as he looked down at her, glaring. “How could one be as powerful as you but mortal?” He brought a hand down and struck her cheek repeatedly, and she let out fake cries despite not feeling a single sting after turning off her pain receptors. How else could she survive?

“Go to the frontlines. Now. Push back the Hajin army, and when you’re done, you’ll come right back here.” He grabbed her by the throat, lifting her up, and then forcefully pressed his lips against hers. It was violent and overwhelming and painful.

Lilith gave a court nod, her lips tightly pressed together as she turned her back and got ready. Her silver armor glimmered in the light as she ran her hands over it, staring at the two open slits in the back. She adorned the gear and headed out, a set of large, glimmering, and white wings unfurling from her back; she blew up from the ground as a blur of white feathers before she paused far above in the sky, staring down at the barren and poor country before her.

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Admittedly, Lilith feared what would happen to her children. Love was complicated when one hated their children, but she deeply loved them, too. She loved them because they were her kids, but for no other reason. They had been separated from her at birth and raised with King Leith out of fear she might try and kill them. Would their fate be the same?

The only love she knew was the love of King Leith. It was spontaneous and violent, but that was how he proved his love to her. He hit her because he loved her. She took it because, well, wasn’t that what love was? She couldn’t recall a time anyone else had loved her. Perhaps she once had a mother, but whoever that woman was, she abandoned Lilith.

As long as her youngest son lived securely, Lilith would manage. That’s right, the man waiting at the cabin was different. His love didn’t hurt, and he didn’t use his words the same way King Leith did.

She finally approached the border, surveying the trenches as both armies fought one another with spears and bows. Her wings folded against her body as she plummeted toward the ground—wind wrapped around her and she seemed to glow as the Hajin army paused and quickly retreated.

“There she is! It’s Lilith!” They screamed and retreated while she landed with an explosion, the soil and earth quaking beneath her. White wings unfurled behind her, expansive and blinding. She ducked as arrows flew toward her, and she stomped on the ground, opening up a deep ravine beneath her very feet.

Shadows of the Hajin soldiers seemed to grow from the ground, reaching up and grabbing their creators, strangling them while the soldiers desperately clung onto crumbling ground.

Lilith raised her hands before her stoic face, and with a mere twist, swirling black and purple portals opened up all across the battleground; people fell in, screaming, only to drop from the sky and hit the ground with a blood splat—their bodies mutilated, bloodied, and shattered.

She jumped into the air before vanishing into a small portal beneath her feet, yet she soon reemerged in the infested Hajin trenches. Sucking in her wings, she lifted her hands to her sides before fire shot out and filled the trenches. She stopped her hearing, fearing the screams of hundreds of soldiers, but she continued to torch them down. They clamored, desperate, fearful, and forever weak before God.

Rising into the sky, she surveyed the decimated battlefield. Not a hint of fatigue or hesitancy plagued her body, but before she could turn back, an arrow shot straight through her white wing. She cried out, plummeting toward the ground as her limbs flailed around her. Her arm crunched as it hit the ground, and she quickly healed it.

“How dare you!” A voice cried out, and she immediately recognized the tone.

King Leith.

His hand grabbed the base and quickly tore it from her back, blood spurting out as he tossed the limp white wing to the side. Lilith let out a surprised screaming, trying to kick away.

Lilith’s eyes and face were wide with confusion and shock as she looked up at him. He never harmed her wings—not once. They were far too precious.

“You lied to me… all this time.” His head was lowered as he spat into her ear. “You never told me about your little power, did you? Life and death…” he laughed out the last words. “I could hurt you all I want, and you could fix it, couldn’t you?”

Lilith’s jaw slackened at his words. How did he find out? How? This couldn’t be possible… no one knew about her power. No one at all.

Except for one man.

King Leith let out a pleased, deep laugh at her expression. “So it is true. What did you do to our child?”

“He… told you? He told you?”

King Leith gave a mocking sympathetic expression. “What? Did you really think someone other than me could love you?” He gripped her shoulders and slammed her down into the ground. “How many times have I told you, no man loves anything more than power.”

Tears streamed down Lilith’s face as any hope, any ambitions vanished from her hollow blue eyes. She couldn’t get any words out; her body, her mind, everything deflated from her eyes immediately. They were shallow, empty pools that could only stare up.

“Answer me. What did you do to our son?”

“I killed him,” she replied firmly, harshly. “I killed him. That’s why he wasn’t moving.” If King Leith didn’t know what had happened to the child, then the man hadn’t abandoned their son. Only her.

King Leith gripped her hair before smashing her hair down on the ground once more. That’s right, this was what love was. This was always what love was. Her mother had left her because she loved Lilith too much to stay. King Leith hit her because he cared too much. The man in the cabin sold her out because….

Because what?

An enemy spear suddenly pierced straight through Lilith’s neck, and blood quickly pooled in her throat as she sputtered, coughing and spitting blood into King Leith’s face. He whipped his head around, rage painted in his expression, as he immediately charged at the man, slitting the soldier's throat as he fell limp.

King Leith walked back to the suffocating Lilith.

“Heal yourself. I know you can’t die.”

Lilith’s eyes turned toward him slowly as blood continued to pool around her.

“Get up.”

She finally turned her pain receptors back on and for the first time, she cried out in true, raw pain.

“Lilith, get up. Don’t make me repeat myself.”

Was there anything left for her to do? Anything left for her to be? The cold feeling that began to grip onto her limbs felt more comforting than whatever this world could bring her. Her body became more and more numb as she welcomed it, beckoning the frigid breath of death to take her.

She let out a sigh of relief, greeting the feeling. That’s right, she could be free. If she died, she could be free.

King Leith’s face twisted as he seemed to realize the expression of her face, the way the ends of her lips slightly twisted into a smile. He reached out, trying to grab her, but she gave up before he could ever prove his love again.

When her eyes opened, passing from the dark abyss that had taken over her, she found herself surrounded by blank, white and gray rock. Nothing greeted her except for the endless expanse in the black sky.

What?

She scrambled onto her feet and looked down. She seemed translucent, a blinding white. Was this death? Was this really it? She ran, tripped, stumbled, sprinted, crawled, but there was nothing here. Nothing here except for this cold, empty land?

And then it hit her.

A scream shattered the suffocating silence around her as she collapsed onto the ground, heaving and crying and sobbing. She gripped her head, tears spilling down and glinting when they hit the white sand beneath her. Her face was twisted and contorted into unspeakable pain as the memories, the thoughts, the lives of millions of people and decades all flooded into her mind at once.

Was this freedom?