(Damn it. Just now realizing that I should made it a pun. Like a love story you'll be dying to read or something... ah well.)
Nothing More Certain Familiar Spirits Book Three
Emery Elward returned to his hometown with no desire to renew past friendships, but someone is determined to draw him out of the cemetery he hides in. Trinity Creek is a magic town and no one in it is more magical than Ezra Bell. If anyone can convince Emery he is wanted and that magic is real, it’s Ezra. Emery may be stubborn, but he is about to discover that nothing is more certain than Ezra.
m/m romance
The Familiar Spirits Series
Hidden in small towns, witches live and work alongside the unaware. Theirs is a world of covens, ritual, and familiars, where some are strong enough to control the weather and others are content to read predictions in a cup of tea, but all of them are still human, and still struggle to find happiness in love. No matter how ancient or powerful their magic, all must overcome their fears to reach for who they want.
Now at most retailers for $1.49 Nothing More Certain
Honestly the more I think about it the more I think none of us have fully appreciated how fucking hilarious the concept of goth specific crafty YouTube influencer Ezra is. He’s a YouTube who’s also an avatar for death. Like… what does his fan base look like?? Is he out there doing colabs with other goth crafty types? I just… it’s so funny.
God, this series might be my favorite thing ever. It's a world I just want to dive into and live in forever. Ezra and Emery are such wonderful characters and I honestly was surprised when I found out just who one of them was. LOVE IT.
Hidden in small towns, witches live and work alongside the unaware. Theirs is a world of covens, ritual, and familiars, where some are strong enough to control the weather and others are content to read predictions in a cup of tea, but all of them are still human, and still struggle to find happiness in love. No matter how ancient or powerful their magic, all must overcome their fears to reach for who they want.
All three stories are 99 cents each all through July at Smashwords
Familiar Spirits on Smashwords
Basically, you want queer, pining witches? We got queer, pining witches.
Hidden in small towns, witches live and work alongside the unaware. Theirs is a world of covens, ritual, and familiars, where some are strong enough to control the weather and others are content to read predictions in a cup of tea, but all of them are still human, and still struggle to find happiness in love. No matter how ancient or powerful their magic, all must overcome their fears to reach for who they want.
Nothing More Certain
(Familiar Spirits Book Three)
Emery Elward returned to his hometown with no desire to renew past friendships, but someone is determined to draw him out of the cemetery he hides in. Trinity Creek is a magic town and no one in it is more magical than Ezra Bell. If anyone can convince Emery he is wanted and that magic is real, it’s Ezra. Emery may be stubborn, but he is about to discover that nothing is more certain than Ezra.
Last year, for my birthday stories, I was sort of loosely doing ‘arranged marriage’ tropes for the Familiar Spirits books. (Which is funny, since they are all basically arranged marriages stories anyway.) But I ran out of time to do a fun AU for Ezra and Emery. (Chester, typically, made things a bigger deal than they needed to be, so let’s blame him.) idk why my brain then went here, I mean, the world does not need another Hades/Persephone AU and also they are not an arranged marriage anyway unless you call the kidnapping plan an arrangement but whatever, we are skipping all that anyway.
Before anyone starts: I know Hades is not the God of Death but the God of the Dead and that is different and not what Ezra is but sshhh. Also there is a lot of stuff about the story (and others about these deities) that I am just sweeping under a rug and/or fudging so shhhh. Also this is unedited, so don’t @ me about it.
Content warnings: hmm technically, Emery cannot leave a place but he is also not exactly a prisoner. I mean, P/H stories are Beauty and the Beast stories which are about girls making do in arranged or whatever marriages, but honestly this is not that grim. Truly. Emery is just being Emery here. Um. Ezra needs to eat more. They both want to bone. Idk.
Emery (and Ezra and all characters from Familiar Spirits) belong to R. Cooper etc etc
Nothing More Certain, but the God of the Dead version.
Emery stared out over the vast necropolis that stood just inside the gates. The marble gateposts rose to the sky, or what would have been, could have been, the sky. This world was beneath the earth yet outside of it, designed to be endless, although most of those who entered probably did not think of the walls around and above them. At least, not when so fresh from their crossing.
The gates were open, always open, to allow the souls of the dead to pass through, for all the good it did Emery now. He couldn’t step outside them. That was the way of this world, the way of the King of the Dead, even if the one standing before the king was alive and immortal. What entered this realm stayed in this realm, unless granted permission from the greatest of them.
The necropolis was, he suspected, meant to offer comfort in some way. The Remembered who entered the gates might like to think of the offerings made to them, the monuments left with their remains. But none had bodies to be placed here, and if any of the shades lingered over the stones and statues and urns that stretched to some distant point, Emery could not see them.
Emery also thought that not even the paint on the pottery and the bright colors of the statues could equal the pleasures of the world the shades had just left behind. The dirt around the stone was bare. Looking at it made his chest feel hollow and his hands itch with the need to touch it.
Or maybe that the warmth in his palm from the touch of the king. Emery would not have expected him to feel so, but should have. Never, in the many times Emery had glimpsed the king, had the king ever seemed cold. Distant and distracted, slight and thin as though he did not know plenty or ease, but with a gaze that caught and held.
No, he had never seemed cold. Emery had never found him so.
But he was cruel to have done this.
“The rules should be different if someone was tricked into being here.” Emery glared at the rich soil of the underworld that did not have even the wriggle of an earthworm through it.
“You were invited,” the king returned, surprising warmth in his voice as well.
That brought Emery’s head up, some of the garlic flowers, dandelion greens, and cherry blossoms in his hair falling to the ground at the sharp motion.
He glanced down to the elegant, fragile shape of the king’s hand, fingers still half-curled as they had been when Emery had taken hold of them, as they had been when Emery had…
A hand extended through the earth did not count as an invitation.
But if it did, “You didn’t say to where.” Emery met the king’s eyes at last, dark brown and hungry.
The king gestured toward the realm beyond them without taking his gaze from Emery. “The garden needs tending.”
“What garden?” Emery put as much scorn in his voice as he was capable of, which, since he was his mother’s son, was a lot.
The king frowned in worry, but curled his hand as though he wished it still held Emery’s. “Yours,” he explained softly, the softness surprising too, “if you’d claim it.”
Emery did not allow the tremor carry all the way down his spine, although he could do nothing for the flutter of his heart; hearts were not his realm.
He wanted to pretend he was surprised by the offer, or to demand to know if it meant what his hot blood said it did. But that he was not going to do. He was not free, here. No offers would be heard.
His spine was an oak. “I have gardens of my own to return to.”
The king’s hand opened. “I cannot let go. I’m sorry.”
“Are you?” Emery dragged his gaze away, focusing on the bare soil around them, and then, when that called to him nearly as strongly as the king himself, looked to the lifeless stone instead.
He did not hear whatever answer might have been given. He turned his back on the king and his gates, and walked until even a god would tire.
~~
He stalked the lengths of the realm at first, knowing he would walk forever if he chose, but turning away from the depths of Tartarus and the stark fields that heroes apparently thought of as beautiful. The walls, when they chose to be there and when he chose to see them, were the shadowed, packed rock of the inside of mountains, glimmering with silver and gold and gems that did not matter to the dead. The sky that was there to be seen if he truly looked was not truly the sky. Or, it was, but Emery and the others here could not experience it as a living body might. It was like viewing the sun through a fine mesh net. Emery could feel the warmth of it, but only just, and doubted the dead could.
He had an idea the sun was there, as the stars and moon would be there, for those shades who suddenly remembered their old lives and wanted a taste of it, or maybe to help new arrivals adjust to endless time by giving them a familiar sight.
But sight was all it was. They could not feel, so it did not rain. There were never clouds, night or day. Only the moon changed, as the moon must.
They were looked after, the common souls who had neither greatly offended nor greatly pleased the gods. But there was no beauty for them as they waited.
A garden would be a good gift to them; humans always did love green things.
But that might have been asked of Emery when he had stood on real soil in the sun’s full light, so he walked on. He found a house, a beautiful, if small for such a king, house, and passed through it, ignoring the full table, the rooms with a soft bed and the large pool of clear bathing water prepared for him. He passed the entrance to a throne room, and felt, for a moment, as if thousands of souls pressed around him, waiting for their turn to beat their breasts or plead their cases or inquire after those left behind.
He did not go in.
He walked, and when he was finally weary enough that Sleep pulled him down, he curled up in the soil of the necropolis, his back to one of the stones.
He woke to ryegrass and wheat sprouting beneath him for a mattress and sprigs of soft parsley for a pillow. He considered this for a long time, then finally answered some of the hunger in his heart and plucked a twig heavy with cherries from his crown. He dug it a bed with his fingers and packed the dirt back around it to keep it warm and help it grow.
No one in this place would taste its fruit, yet Emery regarded it with satisfaction. The tree would look well behind the statue of the young girl where he had placed it. Its petals would line the paths no one would walk, but those at the gates would see them and know peace.
This could be a place of beauty, he thought, hands curling. I could make it so.
But he kept the words locked in his mouth, just as he turned away from the tempting, sweet cherries of his own creation.
~~
“What are you doing?”
The question seemed to come from just behind Emery’s shoulder, but when Emery turned, the King of the Dead watched him from some distance away. His crown, whitewood and jet, like bone and shadow, circled his brow. He wore gold meanders at his ears. His cloak fell open to one side, revealing a long tunic of black cloth that stole the light, and slender feet untouched by the dirt around them.
Emery felt himself staring and turned away. “Entertaining myself. Isn’t this why you brought me here?”
“You brought yourself here,” the king reminded him. His voice had not lost its softness and yet now, Emery imagined it as it would carry through a throne room filled with thousands at a time. Even the King of the Gods did not command such an audience.
Emery snorted. “Keep telling yourself that.” But he paused, frowning, because his mocking question had not been turned aside. But if Emery had only been wanted for a garden, or for a garden and bit of sport in a garden, there would have been simpler ways to go about it.
He looked back, only for a moment. The king watched him with eyes that Emery could not meet for long.
Emery had thrown off his cloak for ease of motion and had lost it some time ago. His light tunic was short, his feet bare. Blue and white pea blossoms fell from behind the shell of his ears to the back of his neck, tickling his skin before they fell to the ground. He felt as if the king had watched each petal fall and envied it for knowing Emery’s skin, and then as if the thought of the king’s hands on him had set him afire.
He stayed on his knees and turned to the soil between his fingers. He was rough. “You wanted a garden.”
“The humans are not being punished. Well,” there was a hint of humor in how the king paused, “some aren’t. Most are not. Shouldn’t they know some comforts? They cannot fill all their senses anymore but I would give them this, if I could. There is nothing unnatural about this place,” the king lowered his voice, and Emery imagined a graceful hand outstretched, pleading, inviting, “but I can’t grow things.”
“And you can’t let go.” Emery tossed his head, spilling nettle seeds into the furrows before him. He tenderly swept soil over them then held himself still. “These are mine. Not yours.”
It was not his realm. Emery spoke the words anyway, then sat up before turning his head.
This time, he did not let the fierce hunger in the king’s gaze distract him. “They are mine and you will not touch them.”
The king’s eyebrows flew up. A smile nearly took his mouth. His gaze remained the same, even when he bowed his head. “I will not touch them.”
A binding promise, given freely. Not enough, yet Emery’s heart fluttered again. Somewhere, not in this realm, a rose bloomed with a perfume that nothing else on earth would ever match.
Emery could not move.
The king could, a step closer. “Is there anything else I can offer you, Mistress?”
He did not speak as though a place between Emery’s thighs was assured, but his desire was plain.
Emery dug his fingertips into the soil and let it pull the heat from him. “That is not an epithet for me,” he said at last, “and this is all I need.”
He did not know when the king left.
A lie. He knew exactly when the heavy gaze was gone because the resulting warmth in his limbs disappeared.
Emery did not stop his work, but when he sat back to rest, blossoms stuck to the sweat on his chest, then trickled down to his lap.
He picked one up and nearly put it to his lips before he recalled himself.
It went into the ground, so rows of peas could curl lovingly around a row of urns.
~~
Emery spent weeks in just that spot, the smallest corner of an endless kingdom. He grew grass and then alyssum. Tall, yellow strap flowers. Wild ginger and violets. Cowslip and spotted lilies. He plunged his fingers into the earth as he had to first come to this realm and instead of a warm hand, found cool water. He dug a channel that filled as he wished it. He knew not where the water came from and did not ask. It was to quench the thirst of the plants, not his own.
He kept the paths around the stones and statuary clear, but sang to encourage his plants to grow everywhere else they pleased, up to the shaded sun or creeping outward to caress the lonely marble figures. He called to the bees and discovered shades of them as well, as he needed. That was not within his power but he didn’t offer any thanks to the king who had granted the favor.
Dead nettle grew where the king stood to watch him work. Emery buried the imprint of each sandal with ferns and hellebore, then cabbage and parsnips, taking spiteful pleasure in the sight of food being grown where the King of the Dead had stood.
He moved until the exhaustion finally sank into his bones and even he longed to rest again.
~~
“You are not actually one of the dead.”
Emery did not doubt the king’s concern, which was infuriating, because he should. Yet the quiet remark, offered gently, spoke of worry.
Emery’s mother used much the same tone when Emery had focused too long on a task, a comparison that would please neither monarch, he was sure.
Emery, sour berries at his brow, scowled. “I am more than aware of that.”
The king, as a great king, did not apologize, but did seem to tread lighter as he went on. “You’ve worked very hard. You ought to rest. Clean up. Eat.”
Emery stiffened. “I’m fine.”
Water trickled in countless streams around him, some visible, some deep in the ground. It was the only sound until the king released a shuddery breath.
“All right,” he agreed, drawing Emery’s gaze to him. “But if you wish to clean yourself, to rest in a bed, you know you may, and where.”
Without his crown, the king was still a king, dark hair gleaming without light, bracelets of deep red wood along his arms.
“Such honors for a gardener.” The words tripped from Emery, meant to be mocking, but his breathlessness betrayed him. “And yet not a word for what I have done so far.”
“It’s beautiful,” the king praised him immediately. “You know it is. You please them.”
“I do?” Emery glanced around despite himself. He knew he did. His work always brought joy to humans. Yet, “I can’t see them.”
He was chided, fond and warm. “You wouldn’t, Life.”
“Don’t.” Emery closed his mouth with a snap, leaving the order there before it could soften. “That is not an epithet for me either.”
“As you say.” It did not have the sound of real agreement.
Emery did not need to be placated. He raised his head and reached up as he did, taking a bunch of berries and nearly offering them to the king. But they were bitter, not good for much more than color and food for birds. And, of course, here there were no birds.
Still, the berries might have been the only thing to cross the king’s lips in some time. He was thin. Emery was used to plenty, it was true, hardy muscles and a soft belly from work and wine and bread without end, but the king was still slight. His table had held more than enough food, but he obviously did not eat it.
“And when do you rest, Wealthy One? When you should be resting, you are here.” Emery did not bite his tongue after making the foolish statement, but it was a near thing.
The king’s eyes lit even brighter. “I didn’t know you noticed my visits. You are usually very intent upon your work, as you were when I first saw you.”
“Ah,” Emery nodded tightly, wanting to crush the berries in his hand. “And that decided you? That? Often, I saw you though we never spoke. And you saw me intent upon my work and thought you would force me to—”
“Emery,” said the king, soft, but to be heard over endless fields, “Rough One, Angry One. I did not make you dig so far into the earth. You reached down. You reached for me, Flower-bringer.”
Emery threw the berries at him. They hit the bottom edge of the king’s cloak and fell harmlessly to the ground.
“And my flowers up there?” Emery shouted, voice hoarse at the idea of them withered and rotting without him. “The rest of my gardens?”
The king dared to look surprised. “I did not think of them.”
“What did you think of?”
Emery meant it to be full of scorn, and it was, for a moment, before his breathing quickened and the king’s gaze met his again. The king was so hungry, vastly, endlessly, and Emery was meant to give. He wanted to, would have in moments if the king had reached for him anywhere else. Emery was strong hands and a full mouth, a furrow made for ploughing.
He did not blame the king for desires that Emery shared. Maybe it was those desires that wouldn’t let his anger fade. “You considered that, but not this part of me?”
For the span of a breath, the king was proud in his crown again, his neck wrapped in beaten gold, his hair gleaming with it. Then not even the simple bracelets remained. He showed Emery his open hands. “I cannot change what I am. I wanted…”
“You wanted, and now I am here,” Emery interrupted, breathing hard.
The king’s lips parted. “Yes,” he finally said, instead of the argument Emery half-expected him to attempt. “I will try to make it up to you.”
Emery stared in confusion at the face of a king without rival, though this king might pretend otherwise. “What possibly could?” he finally asked, with what felt like a dove trapped behind his ribs. “I could grow gardens here for eternity and I still would need the sun. I would still miss my mother, and birdsong as the birds sip from my flowers, and the sight of vines uncurling beneath the true silver light of the moon.”
“Oh,” said the king who could command anyone, and then vanished, the bunch of sour berries and the marks in the grass the only signs he had ever been there.
~~
Emery did not rest, out of spite, though his movements slowed. He was conscious now of an audience, or at least of the slight murmur of movement or voices that came from the gate and carried down the paths through the necropolis that led to the rest of the realm.
Thinking of them and their comfort, he added trees. Hackberry and laurel. Maples in bold reds. Something new, with flowers that dripped from its dark branches like the palest cream. Yellow shrubs of witch-hazel. Grass sprouted wherever he stepped except for the paths around the stones.
His hands made another trickling stream, ice-cold as it washed dirt from his skin but not from beneath his fingernails. The sight of the water left his throat parched and burning. Emery turned his back on it. Now clean, or as clean as he could be, he laid down to sleep where he would not hear the babbling of the brook.
He woke to asphodel around him and a blanket over him, a blanket of cloth so fine he could not feel the weave between his fingers. It could be the work of only one, and it had been draped over Emery despite the dirt that covered him.
He did not mean to walk toward the house once he had risen, but the blanket must be returned. Returning it punished no one but himself, but Emery was nothing if not stubborn.
He made his way over hills and fields full of those he could not see, leaving more asphodel behind him, and cypresses along any ridges where he felt they were needed, until he reached the house of black granite. He ought to call it a palace, though it was nowhere near as grand as some palaces found atop mountains or beneath the seas. It was a palace built for one.
One who did not have visitors, although Emery found his rooms as he had left them, the bed with all its pillows and blankets waiting for him, the marble pool clear and fresh, the air heated by fragrant steam.
He plucked at his stained tunic and felt the itch of soil even in his hair, and when servants he could not see parted a curtain as if to direct him to the bathing pool, he was not surprised. He plunged into the water, then warmed himself amid the steam while he rubbed oils scented with narcissus into his skin, and finally dressed in the clothes laid out for him. When he finished, it was evening, or as close to evening as it ever could be here.
He walked throughout empty rooms, brilliantly lit against darkness yet empty all the same, until he reached the hall meant for a feast, with the table prepared for a banquet. A spring banquet that carried into summer, bright with berries and apples, vivid greens and crisp radishes, figs and oranges and pomegranates, naked walnuts and honeyed almonds, pitchers of water and wine, and breads so thick with grain that Emery nearly thought his mother was near.
He swallowed to wet his throat and put a hand to his chest, over his trembling heart and his burning hunger. Then he returned across all the fields to the start of his garden.
But when he tired of the roughness of dirt on his skin again, after days and nights of a distant moon and a shaded sun, he crossed the fields of the Remembered to clean himself and soften his skin with his favorite perfume. And perhaps he was also simply tired, for he fell asleep on the bed before he could dress.
~~
The rooms, his rooms, the only such rooms in the palace, were richly furnished, the bed comfortable, the house calm and peaceful. Emery stayed to his bed until clematis crept along the walls.
When he left and returned the next night, no one had pulled down the vines and the flowers had started to bloom.
“You rest but you do not eat.” The king spoke with no warning, although Emery had felt his presence in the grove of birch and holly since his arrival hours ago. Hours spent watching Emery work and Emery allowing it without objection.
“And you do neither,” Emery heard himself answer, as if this was the only argument he had held inside as they breathed so near to each other. “There is no sign of you in your house of black granite. No place for you to…” Emery stilled. “Did you give me your bed?”
“It is the least I could do.”
Emery could not respond to that or think of how he had been sleeping on the king’s mattress, among his blankets, Emery’s warm and scented skin leaving them fragrant, his flowers brightening the room, his vines curling around the bed itself.
The least indeed, Emery thought without bitterness. Such a wealthy and powerful king could have made Emery his own house.
He immediately shuddered away from the idea of another dark, bare palace, empty of any presence but his own.
“And staying away even when I am not here?” Emery demanded in a gruff voice. “That food looks untouched whenever I see it.”
“I have much to do,” responded the king, and Emery did not think he lied. Yet the king was here, from sunset to sunrise, sometimes, saying nothing, as if the sight of Emery was feast enough.
Emery kept that behind his teeth but could not stop the rest. “Better that the food not be there, then, if you’re not going to touch it.” Emery could not cook, had no interest in a hearth. But it was in his nature to provide, to spill over with plenty, and to see his bounty on that table and know it was not received? It itched. It burned. And his hunger was so great already.
He clenched his fists. “What will the world do, if the King of the Dead joins his subjects because he will not rest or eat?”
He wouldn’t. Emery knew that. The king might waste away to nothing but a voice as Emery might if he continued on as he was, but he would not die.
“It is the world that concerns me,” the king replied, soft and mournful. “But I know not how to fix it. I cannot… I might have to leave, for a while. I am sorry.”
Emery turned at last to look at him, the great, small figure curled up at the base of a young birch, his shoulders hidden by a heavy, dark mantle. “Is something wrong?”
The king looked at him, saddened and hungry, then turned his head to break their shared gaze. He inhaled deeply. “I have work to do. I should go.”
Emery tore a handful of carrots from the ground that had not been there moments before. He held them out, dizzy when the king rose to his feet and slowly approached him to take them.
His voice had a rasp. “Eat.”
Their hands did not touch as the king accepted the bundle. “They are like jewels, even covered in soil. I thank you.”
Emery wished he could look away or smooth his voice. “You cannot let go, and I cannot not grow things, nor leave you to starve.”
“No.” The king spoke like one grieving. “No, I suppose you can’t.”
“So,” Emery found it difficult to swallow, his throat drier than ever, “eat them. And rest. I will sleep out here tonight. Or… or you could order me from your bed.”
At last, the tired, mournful air left the king. His gaze returned to Emery, blazing hot as Tartarus itself. “You know I won’t do that.”
Emery did know that. And that what the King of the Dead wanted could have been had under real sunlight. Or at least asked after.
He would have acquiesced to any such request from the slight, sorrowful king and the hunger in his eyes. Emery was meant to satisfy, and he had flowers in his fingertips for any that might fade beneath each graceful, dark hand.
“You could build me a home here, then, separate from yours,” Emery suggested, then did not move, not even to draw in air.
The reply, when it came, was soft. “If you ask me to, I will.”
Emery sent his gaze away, staring at the first hints of red among his holly trees.
He considered many answers. “I would have liked a choice.”
“You took my hand.” The king would say that, reminding Emery of the warmth in his palm he could no longer feel. “Why didn’t you pull me up?”
Emery shuddered. The King of the Dead could not live in a bower of roses and blue sky any more than Emery could live forever with black rock above him. But the simple truth was as the king had said; Emery had not drawn him up. He had not thought he could. Emery was no king. “You are more powerful than I.”
“Am I, Mistress?” Oh, that voice could be coaxing and sweet. “Every god but you would think this soil barren.”
Emery’s name could be spoken. He had no need to pretend otherwise, and none feared him, that he knew of. “Will you not call me by my real name?”
“Will you not call me by mine?” responded the king, or, just his voice, the rest of him vanished from sight. “More than any other immortal, you have no reason to fear me.”
When Emery did not speak, he heard, “I thank you again,” on a faraway breeze. Then he was alone.
~~
Emery spent the night under stars that were farther away than ever. He allowed the trees to grow, their lush canopies forming something like a ceiling to block out each twinkling light.
The king did not join him the next day. Emery wondered if he had ventured from his kingdom as he had hinted he might. Then he wondered when he would return. He chided himself for it, but that did not stop his thoughts from dwelling on what could possibly trouble the one that even the King of the Gods might someday answer to.
After what might have been midday, he noticed a breeze among the branches of his trees that he had not before. He followed it back to the start of his garden, to overflowing flowers and cold stones and pink blossoms scattered over the earth. He went to the gates themselves, wide open but guarded, where the breeze was a shivering cold gust and leaves from Emery’s trees stirred against the ground like the sound of soft tears.
Emery frowned at that, then traveled back across the fields to the house, again empty, the great table untouched. He took oranges and pears and a wedge of a split pomegranate, and left asphodels behind him on his furious journey to the throne room of the king.
The steps to the hall were wide and carved of gleaming stone. There, even Emery’s flowers would not grow and his steps had no sound. He walked alone, but felt, for the first time in his realm, life around him, or the shadows of it, some wailing with misery and some not, some nearly trembling with anxiety he could feel, though for what, he didn’t know. Only great crimes were punished here and only great deeds mattered. Most were left to wait for the arrival of their loved ones in peace, or what peace might be had in the fields and halls of the dead.
The shades of the once-living parted around him, and far away, then very close, the king caught his breath on the sound of one of Emery’s names.
His throne rose up from the ground itself and pulled down from the ceiling above, made of stone such a deep, sinking black that was barely visible against the hall behind him. There was no sky in this hall, not even the pretend version of one. The throne room was the dark of deep earth, sparkling with veins of gold and silver and red lights that might have been jewels, as red as the seeds in Emery’s hand.
Next to that throne was another, a throne of earth, bare of color.
Emery turned his face from the empty throne to approach the first.
The king’s gaze lit on the fruit Emery held forth for him, and hope emanated from him like the waves of heat near a fire before he looked to Emery’s face. Then he sighed. “You have come to chastise me.”
Emery scowled. “Something is wrong, and you do not eat or rest.”
“I can’t.” The king gestured, almost kindly, to the rest of the room.
Emery turned to glance over the vast space. “I cannot see them,” he admitted again. “Though I can… I can feel them, or what they once were.” He didn’t ask, but the question was in his voice. “I couldn’t before.”
The king either had no answer, or had an answer Emery did not understand. “There are so many of them. Too many, lately.”
Emery glanced over the hall again. “Another war?” Always, there was war. Humans loved War so. Emery did not. It undid his work.
The king shook his head. “I have not been outside my gates for some time. But they suffered before they came to me.”
Emery scowled. “I will grow more flowers,” he decided out loud. “For them. To help.” He looked down and remembered the fruit he still held out. “And you should eat if you’re to deal with that.”
“As should you,” the king answered, fond enough to make Emery shiver. But he extended a hand and Emery put the orange and the section of pomegranate in it. He left the pear on the ground at the king’s feet when it seemed as if the king would not accept more.
“Do I have to make sure you rest as well?” Emery demanded, and thought a tremor went through the king’s body.
But his answer was calm for all that his gaze wasn’t. “I have my duty.”
And no one to share it.
It stayed unspoken, though Emery darted a look to the other throne. His words were slow, not false, but they might have been with how strange and stilted his voice became. “It wouldn’t suit me. I only help things grow.”
“Lord of Shoots and Sprouts and Green Things.” The king called him. “Essential to the Queen of Harvest and Plenty. But also, I think, essential to the King of the Dead.”
Emery could not look at him for that, but that his bowed head said enough. “You know I can’t stay here. I can’t live away from the light, not for long.”
“I do.” The king mourned again. “Yet I cannot let go.” He turned his palm up on his knee, where Emery could see. His other hand was full of ripe, tempting fruit. “What enters my kingdom is mine. This even the others cannot change.”
Emery raised his head to give the king a puzzled frown. “But I brought life here.”
The king answered his frown a small one of his own. “That you did. Of a sort. In your way.” He smiled, though it was not merry. “And it will fade when you leave, if you do. I cannot maintain that. Not even my power equals yours, to bring blooms to this place. You do know that, don’t you?”
“Then it will take someone stronger than even you to bring me out of this place?” Emery reasoned slowly. “Who would that be?”
“Did I not just say?” The king waved toward the empty seat beside him. “Do you think I put that throne there? It built itself with every pass of your hands into my earth.”
Emery stared with stinging eyes at the throne and then at the slender hand gesturing to it. He could not speak.
The king slowly withdrew his hand, then shifted to turn away, facing the crowd of restless souls. “More have come,” he announced in an echoing, distant voice. “I need to see to them.”
Emery shook himself, sending white and red poppies to his feet. He focused back on the king. “You will eat?” It was all he could think to say, and that too quietly.
He felt almost like one of the Remembered when the king nodded without looking away. He slipped from the throne room through a labyrinth of confused grief, as if the room was choked with souls.
~~
There were more when Emery came out into the fields. He felt their sobs and laughs both, as if the shades were full of sorrow to find some of their loved ones here, but happy as well to be reunited. He left them lobelia and ground flowers, primroses like opals, and wandered among the stones in his first garden until he began to see stars above him.
~~
Emery ordered the bathing room to be warmed and ready and the table filled, and waited on the bare earth outside the house where there ought to have been peonies and yarrow and olive trees. When no one came, he bent down to push his palm against the dirt, and when he rose, the King of the Dead stood before him holding a white poppy that fell to the ground when their eyes met.
“A bath awaits you,” Emery told him with furious dignity. “As does your dinner.”
The king raised his head. “And you?”
“I have bathed.” Emery wanted that to be his complete answer, but more fell from his mouth. “I will sit with you, as you eat.”
The king did not look away. He let silence carry through the house, then inclined his head. “As you say, dear Mistress.”
He left Emery to tremble with longing as he passed him to enter the house he had ceded to Emery and his vines.
Emery waited in the garden that was not, and then, when he thought there had been time enough, he went into the feasting hall to sit with the king.
Wine was poured, even for Emery who would not drink. The table was laden with offerings, although not as much as before, unless Emery was mistaken. But he saw dried figs with honey, and soups of herbs and lentils, a few handfuls of almonds. Parsnips and carrots. Goat cheese in cabbage leaves, dried seaweed, and some apples next to all the fruits from before.
It was not enough for a god’s table but the king barely touched food and Emery reached for none of it.
“You must have more,” he finally said, wishing he were angrier or more distant. Anything but worried and fond and ravenous.
The king could eat everything on the table and it would not sate the need in him that Emery saw when their eyes met. Emery could have done the same. But still, like a fool, he reached for an orange and used his fingernail to carve into the skin to peel it and tear away a slice, which he held out with the juice sticky on his wrist.
He didn’t know what his skin felt like to draw the low sound from the king that it did, but he shivered openly at the press of the king’s hand around his, and stared hungrily when the piece of orange was taken between the king’s teeth, and when the king licked his lips afterward.
Emery reached for more of the orange without taking his eyes away, but found the split pomegranate. He dug his fingertips into the flesh to find tart, plump arils, which burst and stained his fingers. He put his red-purple hand full of seeds to the king’s mouth and offered them until they were gone and his fingertips were tasted in their place.
Emery stumbled forward, the long table and its feast pushed aside, vanished entirely while the King of the Dead licked juice from his wrist and the inside of his arm. His lips should have been cold, but like so much else about him, they were warm. They opened beneath Emery’s kisses, and then strong arms drew him down to sit in the king’s lap as though Emery were the one who was slight and small and soft.
“I can’t stay,” Emery whispered hoarsely between embraces, his tunic gone, his mouth brushing the king’s as Emery sought another kiss, “but I am here now.”
The king gave him the kiss he asked for, tart and sweet, and let Emery pull him to the floor among the spilled food as though their bedroom were not mere steps away.
~~
Honeysuckle supplanted the clematis. Emery woke to its heady scent, his arms around a slender, sleeping figure. Happy, Emery put his head back down onto the pillow.
He woke the second time at the sound of voices.
When he traveled down the hallway green with the start of climbing hydrangea and out of the house into the stand of thick olive trees by the door, the king stood alone, although Emery caught a glimpse of winged feet and heard the distant rush of wind.
Until that moment, he had forgotten that one other among them had the ability to come and go from this place, though that was only for reasons of great importance.
“What is it?”
At the question, the king looked to him, his cloak like shadow itself, his crown swallowing light as he turned away again.
“I have learned the reason why my halls are unusually full, and that a decision has been made.” He paused, his gaze on the stand of trees. “Your mother misses you. She will not permit—no, I don’t think that is it at all. I think she cannot do her work without you, because your absence has left her heart bare and empty, like the earth here before you touched it. That, I understand. They are dying while I keep you here. They will all die, every single human, because she can’t go on without you. And that cannot be. This is my realm, but the others will all stand against me if I do not agree to what they have decided.”
The king raised his head, then faced Emery. “I cannot let go, but they can take. And they are right to do so, because you cannot stay here. I am to fight my nature, and for that, I will. If you go to the gates, husband, you will find her waiting for you, along with another to escort you out.”
Emery could almost feel the heat of the sun again as he thought of his mother. He would hold her tight and dig his toes into rich, damp soil and plant roses that needed full light. He would taste roasted apples and dine on figs and guzzle wine underneath the moon.
And the silver light would make him think of the great hall and the throne meant for him, and the roses would remind him that none would ever grow here no matter how much he wished it. The gardens here, only just begun, would fade and fail and wither. The shades would mourn without beauty.
And the king would avoid the bed chamber that held no flowers, and his table would remain empty, and Emery would be little more than a shade to him.
Not even that. The king could see and hear his subjects.
Emery did not know how long he had stood there, breathing hard, but when he didn’t speak, the king finally looked away.
“You could visit me above?” Emery offered quietly, but knew it was wrong. That was the way of a lover, not a husband. And the King of the Dead’s work was never done. When was he to find the time?
But the king smiled. “You do care for me?” He did not wait for a response, as though he didn’t know by now that the hunger in his eyes always stole Emery’s breath. He took so little, as if he truly did not understand what he did to Emery’s heart. “I will keep that if I can’t keep you. But,” his smile fell away, “I cannot watch you go or I will fight. So I will leave you here, Rough One.”
Emery stared hard at the ground and ignored the name. “Will you keep them alive for me? At least the honeysuckle?”
He imagined the king extending one hand, fingers curled warm and tight around Emery’s. But he did not think the king moved. “It is not in my nature to grant life. I can try. But I don’t think I’ll have the will.”
Emery looked up. “What if…” But he had no options. There was nothing on his tongue. He had not even had water for far too long.
And anyway, it didn’t matter. The king had gone.
~~
Emery walked over fields without looking at his trees, or the grass, or the flowers meant to remind the dead they were remembered. He could not. Nor he could he linger in his garden to say goodbye to nettles and cabbages, cowslip and a carpet of ferns.
He went to the gates and saw his mother.
She stood, short and curving, near the dog that made not a sound as it watched her, its tongues lolling happily when she glanced its way. Wheat and poppies rested at her temples like the laurels some humans wore. Her tunic was brown and gold.
Emery saw no sign of rage or of crushing grief about her, or if there had been, it had vanished at her first glimpse of him.
“Should I kill him?” she asked when Emery was near enough, calling it out for countless shades and the boatman to hear.
“You can’t kill him,” Emery called back, voice rough.
“I can make him suffer,” his mother returned smoothly. “If you wish it.”
Just past the start of the necropolis, Emery stopped, though he didn’t dare look back. He wasn’t certain what he wanted to see more if he did, the king there, or the king gone.
“He does suffer,” he told his mother quietly, “though I wish he didn’t.”
His mother raised elegant eyebrows. “He didn’t offer disrespect?”
“He offered a throne,” Emery revealed, and frowned while his mother reacted to that with confusion and then pride. The King of the Dead had offered his hand, but Emery had made that throne for himself. He stared blankly at the trees of the necropolis, already seeming to droop as if they knew Emery was leaving them forever. He had made those grow where nothing should have. He had called water to ground that should have stayed barren. He had brought flowers to the bed of Hades himself. “I…” Emery hesitated. “I am… Shoots and Sprouts and Green Things.”
“As I am Plenty, and the Harvest.” His mother stared at him lovingly, if impatiently.
Emery imagined her charging to the very mountaintop and promising, threatening, to destroy them all if Emery were not returned to her. And she had done it, or started to. Taken life, as the King of the Dead himself did not do. She and Emery were meant to give, but she had taken. So could Emery.
A fearful lord, his husband might say, fondly, warmly, between kisses that tasted of pomegranate. A king not to be spoken of by name.
Mistress, the king had said instead. Flower-bringer. Rough One. Angry One. Bringer-of-Fruit. Like-Honey, but that one only in bed. Because Emery must be kept happy. Because Emery was the more powerful.
For Emery, the king would fight his very nature and let him go.
Emery swallowed, and found the lingering taste of love to be tart as well as sweet.
Then he went still. He met his mother’s eyes.
“I can’t leave,” Emery pronounced slowly. “I know the taste of food from his table.”
His mother’s lips parted in shock, but then worried anger replaced it. “But you can’t stay here! You need the air and true light! Not this!”
“I know.” Emery raised his hands to try to calm her.
It didn’t work.
“And I have only just gotten you back!” she yelled, even though Emery had not yet crossed through the gates. She lowered her head and showed Emery the mother’s fury that would have saved him. “I will have his head if he tricked you. I will leave no human in peace if I have to let you waste away here! Forget that rule! Forget his throne if it will lead to your destruction. Come away with me now!”
“I can’t.” He needed her to understand.
His mother gave him a good, long study, then crossed her arms. “You choose now to be stubborn?”
“These are not my rules,” he reminded her.
She narrowed her eyes. “No, we know whose they are.”
“And we know one other besides the King of the Dead himself can enter and leave these gates as he pleases,” Emery added. “So the rules can be changed, can’t they?”
His mother stared at him, expression stunned before her sharp focus returned. “You would ask for that?”
“I would stay beside him.” Emery let the words out and then sighed. “And I would stay with you, so you can know I am safe and the world can go on. And because I love you too.”
She smiled and frowned and smiled again. “That would be your choice?”
“To feel the ground warm with summer and to have the stars bright enough to read by. To watch our beans grow in the furrows, and to smell lavender and marigolds and lemon verbena under the heat of midday.” Emery gave her a smile in return. “And to sit here in the shade of the afterlife and feel his gaze on me.”
“It would take someone very powerful to grant that… to even ask it,” said his mother softly.
“I think so too,” volunteered the leaning, languid figure nearby with a flowering vine curling up his bare leg and dipping down behind the wings on his gold sandals. His pursed, pouting lips curved into a smile. “Your petition has been heard,” he announced grandly, “as has yours.” He nodded to Emery’s mother, then to Emery, and he grew serious. “This is the life you choose? Half of one, half of the other?”
Emery held out a hand as his husband might have done. “If it is that or to have neither.”
“Heard, but not granted?” Emery’s mother interrupted, questioning the both of them at once. “I want my son alive, and I would prefer, happy. Must I demonstrate my power again?”
She had the right idea. “And must I demonstrate mine?” Emery added, then considered before going on. “And, I think, should my husband’s as well?”
“Husband,” his mother remarked, disapproving but not of what Emery might have expected. “Without even a proper wedding.”
“The three of you standing together?” The Messenger gave them a worried look, but it was brief. The smile full of mischief was back in an instant. “Give me a moment.” He was gone and then there again after Emery blinked. “Such an agreement would require the acceptance of terms from all parties, and one is not here.”
Emery’s heart fluttered, and he thought of the rose he had created for it, and who it might have pleased to argue his case so strongly though he could not hear her.
He raised his voice. “I will answer for him.”
“Emery,” his mother chided him, “you don’t even know the terms.”
They both turned together to stare down the Messenger.
The Messenger quailed a little.
Angry One, Emery remembered, and thought it right that the Messenger should be wary.
~~
When he returned to the fields, through the necropolis, over ridges and down slopes too gentle to be called valleys, he had no destination in mind until he found it.
The King of the Dead sat crosslegged under a tree that Emery was certain had been a birch the day before and not a large, drooping willow.
The king looked up when he heard Emery’s approach, and his eyes lit with hunger even as he murmured, “I said I could not watch you leave, beloved, for I know you won’t come back.”
“About that…” Suddenly nervous, Emery fell down—knelt down—in front of him, dropping poppies and pea blossoms recklessly onto the black cloth over the king’s lap. He wished for months to go by so that he might return here with his arms full of roses. He wished for time to stand still so he would never have to leave. He wished that at least the king would finally understand what Emery felt for him. But all he could do now was reach out, but then he was warm again when a slender hand took his and held it tightly and kissed it with lips still stained red-purple. It was that and the familiar warmth which allowed him to smile as he raised his head. Then he gave the king a choice. “…I have a suggestion.”
