“Now I feel truly victorious,” Madael lay down beside her and hugged her tightly.
It’s your defeat, not your victory, you must have sworn you’d never know, she wanted to tell him, but instead she just clung to his shoulder and asked softly:
“Would you fall again for me?”
“Yes,” he answered quickly and without hesitation, his thin, inhuman fingers gripping her even tighter, as if he would never let go.
“Why?” She was probably more preoccupied with the question than he was. Madael only smiled faintly, ran his fingers gently along the line of her spine, touched her neck and stroked her cheek. He must have been learning to love for the first time, but these touches made it possible to melt.
“Because you’re worth it,” he finally answered. “And I don’t need your soul at all. What you can give me, along with your body, is already worth everything.”
He kept his promise and resolved to give her everything he had. And that was a lot. As Rhianon learned, all the treasures of the world came from the fallen. There were gems, metals, especially gold. Everything that causes war and greed the greatest warrior brought with him. To humans it was evil, alluring and destructive. If she had been smart she would have given it all up, but, God, how nice it was to have it.
Rhianon weighed the gold necklace in the palm of her hand, which from a distance might have appeared to be a lace thread with pearls woven into it, so expertly made. She could tell at once that it was not the work of mortal jewelers. And neither was the chest of precious trinkets that now stood before her on the table. There were rings, rings with large stones, bracelets, chains, medallions, tiaras, and crowns. Rubies, sapphires, and diamonds shimmered on delicately twisted gold plates. You could see the colors and the variety of gems, but gold was the main ingredient of everything.
“It does look like you,” she remarked, watching the light reflecting off the gold rim of the necklace in her hands. “It’s like you. When you look at it, it seems to be the only light that shines out of it and that there is no other light source.”
“This is the source,” he reminded her. “A red-hot sunbeam that can make anything you want.”
“You made yourself a piece of jewelry with it?”
“Yes, a long time ago…” He hesitated, as if remembering something. “No one up there had the right to wear jewelry. There was nothing to distinguish us. And we didn’t need decorations. We decorated the heavens ourselves. I was the first to be conceited. I wanted something to distinguish me from the others. And now I will adorn you.”
He dipped his fingers into her locks and suddenly Rhianon felt the weight of the pearls in her locks. The pearls were wound tightly around each strand, as if they formed a net, while at the same time the hair was left loose on her shoulders.
“You did well,” Rhianon ignored the fact that there were now living pearl snakes in her curls and gazed at his hands entwined with gold plates. “It suits you very well.”
He looked down for a moment at his gold-patterned fingernails and fingers. The gold tubercles stood out sharply against his skin, growing into it at the same time.
“You didn’t even ask if I could take it off.”
“Couldn’t you?” She put aside the oval gold-rimmed mirror in which she was already examining herself. It seemed to her, for some reason, that there was someone living inside the tiny glass and laughing watching her, so that at the right moment to correct a broken curl or to erase a mimic wrinkle in her reflection and then these changes would happen in reality. Trying to catch the alien creature in the mirror Rhianon did not immediately grasp the essence of his words.
“I think I can,” he glanced at the bracelets as if assessing them.
He looked at the bracelets as if he were evaluating them. “You need them,” she didn’t know how to say it. It was as if the jewelry was a mystery to him. They merged with his body, but lived as if they were separate from it.
“I must not take them off,” Madael said. Rhianon realized that the subject was exhausted. He let out a long sigh as if he were trying to say something more and couldn’t. But she had already turned her gaze to the box full of exquisite wares of large pearls. She appeared here suddenly. Rhianon had never seen anything like it until a moment ago.
“It’s not gold anymore,” she observed.
“It is tribute from the sea creatures,” he said with obvious disdain. “They always bring back pearls and coral. It is so similar to their tears. They’re always bloody and white.”
“You mean you collect tribute…” she marveled, though what was so objectionable about that, he being their Lord, and didn’t she know before that someone was taxing all magical creatures and putting a terrible fear in them, too. It was not surprising. Of course, he had summoned them and seduced them. Watching him, it was impossible not to be seduced, but now Rhianon partly understood their anger and rage. She involuntarily sided with them. “But they had fought with you.”
“And they had lost. If they had not been cowardly enough, it would have been different. Especially your pet faeries were a failure. Their weapons were nothing but taunts and jokes, and anyone could handle them by force without difficulty. The others were stronger, but we had a weak rearguard. And it was too arrogant leader…”
“Oh, you blame yourself, too?”
“I should have thought more of the battle itself, rather than boiling with hatred and lust for revenge. Anger only takes strength, not strength, even if it’s righteous.”
“Revenge?” She asked incredulously.
“Remember when I stood up for my rights?”
She remembered all that could be read about the rebellion of Dennitsa from the scriptures. Most of it was just incoherent scraps that gave little insight into the whole shattering picture of the celestial struggle, and there were certainly no clear descriptions of its causes and characteristics. How had he risen, accompanied by what forces, why, why, what was he displeased about? All this remained a mystery. Gradually, however, she was learning something for herself. Perhaps the knowledge was passed down to her from him. Often she looked into his eyes and saw in them fragments of his grandiose past.
“You were hurt,” she remarked, not a question but a statement, and she wasn’t referring to the punishment that had befallen him after the battle, but to what had happened before.
“It always hurts to find out what’s wrong before you’ve done it,” he said. “It’s different now. I took the first step into the abyss and the pain is gone. People can die and torment each other around me, and I don’t care. I pass without looking back at their trickery and torment, because I myself have become the worst.”
“No,” she protested so vehemently, as if she were among his legion of angels herself. “You’re not the worst, and you never will be. You’re better than everyone and everything I’ve ever seen.”
“People tend to worship only those who do favors for them.”
She shook her head.
“God’s perfect creation had only rebelled against him because it couldn’t stand the fact that everything around it was imperfect. There is no evil in that.”
“Then there won’t be any, either, if you rebel against me one day. It’s just that the wheel of inevitability will turn again. Then I will suffer the same thing I once did.”
She frowned.
“Is that what you want?”
Madael shrugged only a little.
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“What