Into Eternity (The Eternals Book 3) Read online

  “Lost?” he said, his voice sounding as if it had been dredged from the deepest ocean trench.

  “You were dead.”

  “He was what!” Merryweather said aghast.

  “Grella died, Walter, at least for a few minutes.”

  Merryweather looked puzzled. He cogitated the implications of every syllable, then asked, “What was it like?”

  “Quiet,” replied the prince.

  “I thought we'd lost you,” Aurora breathed.

  “We'd?”

  “I'd.”

  “You can't get rid of me so easily, dear sister, though eternity was only worth a visit.” Grella coughed, propped himself up on one elbow and said, “Thank you, I was not ready for Death. It was as unwelcome in actuality as one imagines in reality.”

  “You're welcome,” bowed his sister. “I was not about to lose another brother.”

  “What do you mean, another?” Grella raised one eyebrow, his expression almost comical.

  “Now she's gone and done it,” Merryweather guffawed and set off running around in circles and flapping his arms.

  As Grella wrestled himself to his feet, I saw by the look on his face that she had.

  Chapter Five

  -

  Moods

  “They left me no other choice, brother.”

  “No choice! No choice!” Grella fumed. “There is always a choice, whilst free will remains. It is as simple as deciding not to take a life when the opportunity arises.”

  “I thought that restraint, not choice, as our legacy is to always take a life,” said Merryweather.

  He stopped his antics and placed a hand to his chin. The dandy pulled such a face of deep intellectual contemplation, I feared Grella might tear it off just for the implied cheek. Grella, however, had other things on his mind.

  “Whether choice or restraint, I had neither.”

  “But, you killed them. How could you do such a thing?”

  “I killed one of them,” she corrected.

  “Where one's brethren are concerned, I should say one is one too many.”

  “He's got you there.”

  Aurora ignored Merryweather's jibe. She stood, eyes unblinking, chin raised, her long, white hair a shawl in the Arctic night and glowered at her older brother.

  “Might I enquire which?” Grella said from between gritted teeth, undeterred.

  “Ragnar.”

  “Ragnar!” Grella gasped. “But… but… but…”

  “What do you think he's getting at?” Merryweather chuckled.

  When I ignored him, he tapped me on the shoulder and repeated the question, but I remained aloof.

  “Yes, Ragnar,” Aurora confirmed.

  “And you feel no remorse?” Grella appeared astonished by his sister's frank admission. His face had drained of whatever little colour it possessed, his ruby eyes narrowed, forehead wrinkled. He tried to process Aurora's words but evidently could not.

  “I feel something, but it is not remorse. If I had not reacted as I did Jean would be dead through no fault of his own.”

  “Always Jean. I hope he's worth it, dear sister.”

  “He is,” a cold, definite response.

  “Ooh, this is exciting,” Merryweather purred, “a Nordic standoff.”

  “Do you ever shut up?” I snarled back.

  “I don't think so. Not unless I wish to.”

  “And do you?”

  “No.”

  “And if Prince Grella tore your heart out, what then?”

  “He could not,” Merryweather stated.

  It was odd, but as I looked into Merryweather's eyes, I could see he believed it, too.

  “How about if I did?” I said. My most menacing look accompanied the words, but Merryweather seemed unmoved.

  “You could not,” he said, nonplussed.

  “I've already killed you once, Walter, I should not bat an eye at doing so again.”

  “You did not.”

  “All but.”

  “All but, is not, did.”

  “I bloody did.”

  “Anyway, I let you.”

  “You what!” I gagged. A non-breath stuck in my throat, the exclamation muffled by the falling snow. It was lost on deaf ears, my tormentor in chief already having turned his attention elsewhere.

  Merryweather stiffened in the following silence. The Nordics, who'd ceased their argument and now listened to our own, observed the dandy as if revealed in a new light. Merryweather gave them the once-over and in the space of a non-heartbeat decided he'd said too much, too late.

  “Let me get this straight, you wished to die?” I took a step closer to the Britannian, who replied with a proportional step back.

  “Well, er, um.”

  “Lost for words again, eh?”

  “Never that, dear boy, just considering which to use next.” He licked his thin lips, the snow having gathered upon them.

  “And they are?”

  “Well, at the time, I wished to die, then I remembered, I couldn't. Not by normal means, anyway.”

  “You mean the sun did not cremate your Britannian skin as expected.”

  “Well, I'll confess that was an unseen and ultimately fortuitous intervention. That little experience freed my mind.”

  “Of what?” I snapped. “There's nothing in it.”

  “The last untruth,” he barked.

  “What are the other untruths you speak of, dear Walter?” Aurora approached the dandy who took another step back.

  The cogs turned in Merryweather's mind, you could all but hear them: considerations; consequences; losing secrets to which only he knew the answers. The latter triumphed as he slipped into impassive silence.

  “I don't suppose there's any point beating it out of you,” I said, fists raised.

  He made no reply. Aurora, once again, sought to soothe the situation.

  “May we walk together, Walter?” She bowed to him and offered her hand.

  Merryweather stared at the limb as if it was diseased, then me, then Grella. A flash of the mania that had afflicted him since his near death flickered across his glazed eyes. Something monumental fought for release, something Merryweather attempted to constrain. He stood there gathering snow, his restless fingers betraying an outer facade of serenity. He thought and appraised, considered and cogitated, before taking Aurora's proffered hand and walking away.

  “I guess that leaves you and me,” I said, turning to the revived prince.

  Grella made no response; his ice-cold stare said enough. He flicked his tainted cloak over one broad shoulder, the wounds of his flesh repaired, and brushed past without a word.

  “I guess not.” He did not respond.

  Grella made for a vivid, crimson stain against the white world of snowy night; still clear as day to my eyes. I watched him stride after the others brooding, always brooding, his hostility towards Aurora held at bay if still apparent in his stiffened stance. The master of the Arctic wastes fell into step behind the others separated only by an uncomfortable distance. He did not check if I followed.

  There was a time when the prince's actions would have left me untroubled. I would have cared not what he thought and probably preferred it that way. That time was gone. Grella's snub made my insides churn for some unknown reason. I wished for the approval of the man I had come to think of as the best of our kind. His rebuke stung.

  “It wasn't my bloody fault,” I muttered, my curses snatched away by the gathering wind.

  It was odd to stand in the middle of an Arctic nowhere, the ocean creaking a new crust over the flooded Hvit, a disparate soul amongst supposed brethren. I would have stayed there even if not for the prospect of the water at my back creeping closer. I would have, an all too familiar threat.

  And so it was that I trudged after the others a raven with clipped wings, friendless, and growing ever more resentful of my lot.

  * * *

  We trudged through the storm, a group of accumulated misfits, not one of us sharing the
same goal. My two male companions ignored me, not once speaking a word. Aurora tried her best to make up for their cold shoulder by casting the odd smile my way, but even they dried up. By the end of a third day of endless wandering, or so I calculated, time was meaningless in such a place as the dark North Pole, I knew myself to have turned insular again. I did not wish to be with the others. I did not require their aid, nor want for it, and at my most melancholy, I stopped. One moment I trudged ever on, the next, my feet refused to move, my mind to think. My failed locomotion went unnoticed by the others, the whipping snows obliterating the distance between us. I cared not.

  The Arctic attacked in waves of maelstrom white, feral swirls of biting, stinging ice snapping at my skin. The storm was so much more ferocious than those of the Alps; I missed my homeland. As was so often my way in times of difficulty, my mind turned to Alba. Perhaps, it was guilt, perhaps, loneliness, but I wondered if she still waited at her windowsill, if she still sought to see me walking up the gravelled drive to our home. I lost myself to the dream of that distant world. My thoughts turned inward to a better time of youth and innocence, of family and love.

  * * *

  I paced New Washington, strolling up the tree-lined avenues, happy in my own way. I spied my love. She watched from that window of ours smiling, happy, all I should have ever wished for. Then I remembered that would never be, not again. Alba's face faded from behind the fogging glass, her eyes elsewhere, the shining emerald of Linka's taking their place. She glared at me in defiance, so strong, so independent. She looked right through me, shook her head, raven hair spilling across her pale features, and retreated into a false night. I disappointed her, but no less so than I did myself. My hand reached out to her, mouth begged for her return, body trembled in the moonlit night. She neither saw nor heard me, her mood displayed by her absence. I was left alone. I was always alone. Was I born for nothing else?

  * * *

  “Jean.”

  For a moment, I thought it Linka returned, but New Washington had vanished into a windswept winter.

  “What are you doing, we missed you?”

  An apparition in white emerged from the snowflakes, a ghost of the two women I'd known most intimately, an amalgamation, so alike, yet not.

  “Just taking a breather,” I replied.

  Aurora gave a quizzical look. “But, you don't breathe.”

  “I like to pretend to,” I quipped. “It makes me feel more human.”

  “Pfft!” spat another. “You're the least human man I've ever met. A shaggy dog with a penchant for walking on its hind legs is more human than you.”

  “Merryweather,” I moaned.

  “At your service,” he replied with a flourish, back to his usual annoying self.

  “Your mood did not last long.”

  “Unlike yours,” he quipped. “It is incessant. You are an incessantly moody man. That's a good word, don't you think?” he said to Aurora. “Incessant,” he said again as if to check.

  “If you say so, Walter,” she replied in a diplomatic fashion.

  “Well, what is he doing?” Grella's deep voice rumbled out of the maelstrom.

  “He's taking a breather,” Merryweather chimed.

  “But we don't breathe,” Grella said, a replica of his sister.

  “I don't think he realises that,” Merryweather whispered in conspiratorial fashion just loud enough for everyone not to miss his brilliant wit.

  I shook my head.

  “Would you like me to carry you?” Merryweather asked.

  “I'll carry you in a minute,” I rumbled.

  “Charming, I'll take that as a no then.”

  “Take it however you like.”

  “Not again,” Grella grumbled and turned to leave. “Don't you two ever shut up?”

  “It's him, not me.” Merryweather appeared slighted by the prince's words.

  I did not respond. Instead, I took Aurora's arm and allowed her to guide me somewhere else that I did not wish to go.

  * * *

  “Why on earth would you people choose to live here?” Merryweather bemoaned.

  “We enjoy the solitude of an uninterrupted existence.”

  I thought Grella's reply sarcastic; Merryweather did not.

  “But it's so… white.”

  “So are we,” Grella replied.

  “Hmm, good point, but not altogether convincing.”

  “How long before he annoys your brother as much as me?” I asked Aurora, who still clamped my arm.

  The princess tilted her head, held out her free hand to catch one of the now much lighter falling snowflakes. She watched one into her palm, observed its un-melting form upon her skin, then replied, “He is always annoyed. Perhaps you forget, he has spent an eternity with the twins.”

  I didn't know what to say to that, so said nothing. I considered the subject of the Nordic royalty a topic best avoided.

  “Did you and your brothers never desire to wander?” Merryweather continued, unabashed by Grella's dismissive air.

  “We were not permitted to wander,” his reply.

  “I wonder why? Why should it scare a woman of such absolute power to have it tested?” Merryweather mused.

  “I do not understand?” Grella stopped in his tracks, as did his questioner and us to their rear.

  “What I'm trying to say is that if your mother, Serena, said you may not go here or there, but only there or here, if you catch my meaning, then you would not.”

  “So!”

  “So, my dear boy, why feel the need to impede you?”

  “She did not.”

  “She must have.”

  “Are you calling me a liar?” Grella bristled.

  “Not at all, just under the misapprehension you were a lesser Eternal than she.”

  “That is an untruth.”

  “If you thought yourself her equal, you would have taken the throne, as is a male heir's birthright. There only is and ever has been one Eternal queen, namely your mother. We're not counting Chantelle yet, are we?” he asked me.

  I ignored him.

  “I can think of at least a dozen of our kind that would have challenged her if not for her being removed from society,” he continued.

  Grella appeared bewildered by Merryweather's reasoning. He touched at the healed wounds of his chest and flexed his shoulders before replying, “But, she is my mother.”

  “Your point being?” Merryweather pressed.

  “I would not wish to harm my kin.”

  The dandy noted Grella's quick glance to his sister, as did I.

  “Unlike your sister, you mean.”

  “Ragnar was uncontrollable. If anyone had it coming it was he.”

  “But you have already claimed you were all controlled.”

  “He pushed those boundaries with a persistence unbecoming to a prince of the realm.”

  “Not much of a realm, though, was it.”

  “I dislike your tone. Hvit was still our home regardless of what we thought of it.”

  “Just inquisitive, that's all. What I was getting to in a roundabout manner was that your mother has departed, flown the roost, upped and gone, so to speak, so does that not by default make you king of the Nordics?”

  Grella considered the words, his face troubled, his eyes unusual in their expression. “But she still lives,” was all he managed.

  “Yes, but for how long? If you took the reins now, then you would rule, and the Hierarchy would listen to you as no other ever has. There is no so powerful a figure in the Eternal fraternity as an Eternal king and you are the foremost of all.”

  “I have nobody to rule,” Grella's simple reply.

  “You have Ekatarina, Narina and even the twins, or one at least, I cannot be certain of Serstra's state, and me,” Aurora interjected, her attention piqued.

  “Ah, you are ever wise, dear Aurora.” Merryweather made an elaborate bow. “Your sister knows of what I speak.”

  “I wish I did,” I said.

  �
��You leave the thinking to me, Jean-boy.”

  I tried not to bite; a difficult pastime where Merryweather was concerned.

  “What is it you suggest, Sir Walter Merryweather of Britannia?” Grella said in a most formal address.

  “I suggest that when we reach Duke Gorgon of the Baltics, you introduce yourself as king.”

  “Damn!” I blurted.

  “Jean?” Aurora's response.

  “Sorry, it's just there's no love lost between Gorgon and myself. I hoped we might head elsewhere.”

  “Is there anybody you have not affronted?” Aurora enquired.

  “Good grief, you're becoming a female Merryweather.”

  “Am I?”

  “Ahem,” Merryweather cut in. “If you don't mind, I was asking King, I mean, Prince Grella a question.”

  “I will consider it,” Grella replied, his eyes cast back to the decimated Hvit.

  “Don't think too long,” Merryweather pressed.

  “Why?”

  “Oh, nothing, I just have a hunch he shall be upon us sooner than we think. Not just yet, though, eh, Aurora?”

  The Nordic princess did not reply for she had sunk to the ground in a catlike pose. She sniffed the air and touched the snow with outstretched palms as she had when hunting. Aurora felt the environment, sampled every detail of every atom even the snowflakes halting in flight to assist her. She sensed something, but I for one knew not what.

  “What is it, Aurora?” asked Grella.

  A raised hand, fingers outstretched, silenced him. She turned her palm in the air, her fingers splaying then twirling to point away at an acute angle. Then, in a whoosh of displaced air, she vanished.

  Grella looked astonished. Merryweather smiled a wicked smile. I shook my head in disbelief, so swift had she moved. It was Walter who broke the silence.

  “Shall we?” he said, pointing west. And we did.

  The three of us moved as one conglomeration of mixed colours. Merryweather's gaudy ensemble, a bruise upon the world, merged with Grella's crimson-splashed regalia and my own dark night. We were Eternals on the hunt, the elite in pursuit, and still no match for the girl we tracked. Aurora was an unstoppable force of nature, more powerful than any hurricane, more dynamic than the ocean. Yet, her lightness of step belied the power of the one who made them. Her footprints were almost invisible, so light had she trodden, almost as if in a dream. But trace her we did as we ran and ran and ran.