The Secret World of Briar Rose(65)

Malicine watched King Samael beg Oleander to extend his life. He couldn’t handle the pain that came with a deteriorating body of old age. Oleander rejected his pleas, for granting humans immortality was forbidden among faeries. They reached a compromise where he would let the king pass peacefully instead. He began setting candles around the chambers, each flame a delicate piece of the magic circle he would cast.

Then King Samael attacked.

It happened before Oleander turned around, before Malicine could even blink. The knife flashed underneath his robe and pierced through Oleander’s skull. A squelch of flesh, an eruption of blood. The blade went through his head, two holes for him to bleed from.

Malicine tried blinking away the bloodshed. They gripped onto the edge of the table to anchor them to reality, not the flashbacks and anguished sounds of pain. “It was Samael who struck first,” they breathed. “Not you.”

Their vision crystallized from one Oleander to another. Where two holes gaped in his skull, black horns sprouted. The look of betrayal melted into a clenched jaw with resignation.

“Stories are written by the rulers of the world,” he spoke, “which means not every story is true.”

He evaporated back to his old self, a frail creature bleeding across marble floor. King Samael towered over him, but the sight looked pathetic to Malicine. It was not a fair battle. The king breathed heavily, weak and old, a coward who needed to bring another creature to his knees to put them on the same level. Before he struck again, Oleander grabbed one of the candles and set Samael’s cape ablaze. The king stumbled backward to put the fire out. Oleander lunged forward and tackled him to the ground.

In the flames, they fought for their lives. Blood spilled, red mingling with gold. Blinding light traced around the magic circle and lit the entire room. Malicine covered their eyes from the searing brightness. Between their fingers, they saw the floor open. The portal gaped wide as the men fell below.

Wind rushed past Malicine before gravity inverted. Floating boulders nearly knocked them over as they flew across sprawling mountains. They grabbed one of the tendrils of a climbing plant and clung onto it for balance. Strange spores entered their lungs as they breathed heavily, turning to watch the scene below.

“Samael got his wish, after all,” Oleander’s voice echoed. “He found a way to escape mortality and never age.”

Through the fog, something picked up under the light. Malicine strained their eyes to make out the figure sprawled in the sand. His skin had thickened into a garish shade between yellow and orange. Samael’s graying hair had melted into his crown. As he stood, his body looked limber, his bones solid and sturdy. He moved like a new man. But unlike any other man, his stature was drenched in gold. He stared at his hands with a sense of awe. He would never rust or tarnish, let alone depreciate the way that regular humans would.

Malicine remembered one of Talon’s first words upon entering the Otherworld. In here, your sin becomes part of your skin.

If Samael’s greed took over him, then surely, Oleander’s envy had turned his skin green. Malicine caught the flash of vitriol in their father’s eyes as he stared at his gold-drenched king. Horns sprouted from where his wounds once were, then twisted themselves into gnarled hooks. His expression softened once the king returned his gaze, yet resentment radiated from him in waves that Malicine could sense too well in its familiarity.

“Samael wanted to rule this world and start a new life here,” Oleander said. “We called for a truce, so that we could build a new beginning.”

Malicine sneered. “What a foolish thing you did for a human who betrayed you.”

“I dismissed it as an act of desperation, one that would no longer happen now that he could live. I couldn’t imagine abandoning him after he took me in when no one else did. You must understand: I had no family. My parents were dead. He was the one who found and raised me.”

Oleander gripped the chalice tight, regret twisting his lips to a downward curve.

“One day, he ordered me to deliver a book he wrote to Gyldan so that his family would learn about what happened and cross to the Otherworld. I forged my magic and our blood into this amulet so I could travel between worlds easily. It would have been a simple task. Yet suspicion kept gnawing my mind. I knew he must have written about me.”

Across the dining table, his amulet glowed in burning red. Darkness shrouded Malicine’s vision once more, the clouds dissipating once they stood in the middle of a library. The polished oak shelves and stained-glass windows indicated they were inside the Gyldan castle. A door cracked open to a hidden alcove. Malicine peered inside to see their father hunched over Samael’s book. His body trembled as text melded together onto the pages.

Malicine turned away. They didn’t need to see more when they had already read it themselves. They remembered the night Amelia opened the book and they read the last page of his story. Out of all the lies Samael wrote, there had been a grain of truth in the end.

These unusual spirits aren’t innocent faeries, but demons. They are wicked creatures, but they can be tamed. That is what I have done with Oleander. My instincts had been correct when I killed his parents.

There is no such thing as a good monster, after all.

For how many years did Oleander spend his life, thinking Samael had saved him in the wild forests? Perhaps at one point he even considered the king to be his own father, Malicine thought bleakly.