Chapter Five (Part 2)

cw: violence

I turned to him slowly, incredulous. In what world was that any of his fucking business? I just told him that he was being nosy. Was he brain-damaged or something?

My eyebrow twitched, mouth settling into a sneer, before I grinned sharply. “Oh, I’m very particular,” I said sarcastically. “They have to be male, taller than me, with white hair, blue eyes, and they have to let me call them Idris when I cum. And if they aren’t rough with me, I don’t pay them. Satisfied, asshole?”

My smile dropped into a scowl and I shoved away from him, crossing my arms over my chest and hoping I disgusted him enough to drop the fucking subject. There was a grain of truth in that, I supposed. I did prefer males and I liked it rough. But any thought of Idris while I was getting fucked into the mattress would probably make me go limp.

He didn’t say anything after that, and eventually, I got bored, getting up to wander around the pool on my own. Of course, he fucking followed me, but at least he wasn’t asking about my sex life anymore. Thank the gods for small mercies.

We hopped from tree to tree, scanning the outside of the pool for signs of disturbance. At first, nothing was visible, but when I looked closer to the other side of the pool, there was a ring around the base of one of the trees that looked like someone had tied a length of rope around it, letting friction wear away at the surface layer of the bark. Possibly a tether in case something happened and whoever was here had to pull themselves out of the water quickly. Or perhaps the tether for a bag to put the Butterfly Root in once it was harvested.

Butterfly Root dried out quickly when it was removed from the water, and once it was dry, it lost its ability to reconnect with the ground. So if someone was going to take it from this pool and all the way to Abdos, they would need to keep it wet somehow. A reinforced bag filled with water was the simplest way to do that. I muttered this observation to Idris, who then pointed out a bare spot in the water nearby where a bunch of the roots had clearly been harvested.

We already knew someone had taken the roots, but would they really bother to come back here for more? I suppose it depended on what their end goal was. If Nen managed to clear out the riverbed and get the water drinkable again, would this person come back to pull the same trick?

Or would they try something new? I personally thought it would be really fucking stupid to come back here. It was stupid to come in here in the first place, and I was incredibly curious as to how they managed to get in and out of the forest without dying. Me, Peace, Wisdom, and apparently Idris, were the only people I knew of who could navigate the forest with relatively little injury.

So who the fuck was this person? And how did they know the forest well enough to know what Butterfly Root is in the first place? It was pissing me the fuck off.

Yeah, this forest was a shitstorm, but it was my shitstorm and someone was messing with it – and not to mention, fucking framing me in the process. Not that I was particularly surprised. Anything and everything was my fault, according to the other gods. It was my fault storms damaged their palaces. It was my fault plague wiped out their followers. It was my fault their fucking lizard was flattened. Me, me, me. Gods these people are obsessed with me. Get a life for fuck’s sake.

True, I was the god of evil, darkness, and death. My presence in the universe is what caused people to become ill, caused lovers to kill each other, caused the sun to go down at the end of every day. That was just the cold hard truth. Without me here, none of that stuff would happen, but hey, that’s just my lot in life. Someone had to be the bad guy. Did I consciously decide to do any of that? Hell no. It’s just an unfortunate part of being me.

Honestly, they should be fucking grateful for me, because if I wasn’t the one the universe decided to shit on, someone else would be. There had to be balance. I’m the balance. The counterweight. The dark to the light, the yin to the yang, and all that cliché bullshit. Without me, none of the good parts of life would exist.

Knowing that didn’t make it any more bearable when people did shit like this just to fuck with me.

Idris and I searched for a while longer, but didn’t find anything of interest, and we ended up just going back to our respective trees to sit in stony silence. And based on the constipated look Idris was sporting, either he really was constipated, or my teasing earlier had upset him. Either way, he was uncomfortable, and I felt like the cat that got the cream. Maybe he’ll learn not to be such a pushy bastard.

The branches on my tree trembled in excitement once I returned to them. Now that I had unintentionally fed them, they were looking for their next fix. And they were pretty cute, so I didn’t really think about it when I bit into my hand and held out a palm full of blood for them to suckle.

Except Idris noticed, because apparently even when he was giving me the cold shoulder, I couldn’t take a piss without him having something to say about it. Before I even noticed him moving, he was right up on me, grabbing my wrist to pull it away from the poor thirsty branches.

“Hey!” I shouted and hit him on the chest with my other hand. “Hands off, bitchass.”

Idris glared at me, something a little wild in his eyes. I must have pushed him too hard earlier, because he was losing his ability to pretend to be calm.

“Why are you feeding it? Don’t you know it’s just going to want more?” He spoke roughly, borderline shouting, and I faltered, anger fading as I got the oddest feeling that we weren’t talking about the same thing.

Idris never lost his cool with me. He never lost his cool with anyone. Even back then, back when I’d done something so unforgivable that it was a wonder I had been allowed to live, Idris had spoken to me calmly. He’d been frustrated, angry, and hurt, but he hadn’t actually raised his voice at me.

But now he had, over something as trivial as giving some branches a small drink of my blood. It wasn’t going to harm me. And yes, the branches were going to want more, but they wouldn’t kill me to get it. Why kill off a willing food source? If anything, the blood would placate them, make them less likely to slide into my mouth or my pants when I slept.

And now Idris was yelling at me about it like I was a goddamn child. What gave him the fucking right? He wasn’t my dad. He was like three seconds older than me, and while that may make him king of the gods, it did not make him my master.

Suddenly hot with rage, I shoved him with both hands, which successfully got him to let go of my wrist and left a single bloody handprint over the left side of his shirt.

“What the fuck is your problem?” I seethed. “It is not any of your business what I do or why. This is my forest. My kingdom. My life. Now do us both a fucking favor and stop trying to talk to me, stop trying to get to know me, and stop fucking policing me. I’m not your goddamn lover, so stop acting like a crazy controlling bitch.”

Idris gritted his teeth, a similar rage to my own glowing in his eyes, and it only fired me up more. I fed off the heat of it, savoring the burn of it between us. Gods, I wanted to rip him to shreds.

And then Idris set a blazing match to the fucking gasoline that was our relationship. “You’re right, because if you were my lover, you never would have spread your legs for strangers off the street and you never would have killed Calix.”

It felt like a bomb went off in my head. My vision went red, and my heart stopped for a moment before it started back up, beating twice as fast. My breath hitched and a split second of regret crossed Idris’s face, but I didn’t care. He’d said it, and now it was out in the open instead of carefully restrained behind Idris’s noble façade.

“Don’t you ever say his fucking name, you prissy piece of shit,” I barked, and then lunged at him. I tackled him and we both went down, splashing into the pool. The poisonous fish scattered away from us, too startled by the intrusion to try and take a bite out of us.

The water closed over Idris’s head, and I went to grab him by the hair to keep him under, but he bared his teeth at me and grabbed me by the waist, flinging me to the side so that our roles were reversed. My head went under, but I never took my eyes off Idris, glaring at his distorted image above me hatefully.

I clawed my way out of the water by grabbing onto Idris’s fucking head and not letting go. He cursed under his breath as I climbed him like a spider monkey, ripping several strands of his hair out in the process. Idris sat back on his knees, dragging me up with him, and I took the opportunity to punch him in the throat. He choked and fell backward and I was right fucking there to slam my fist in his annoying chiseled face. I made sure to aim at that big fucking mouth of his too. Blood coated his teeth and dripped from his nose and the sight made me feel fucking feral like a shark in a feeding frenzy.

Seeing Idris’s calm composure torn to pieces was making something within me purr in satisfaction. And when Idris surged up, flung me into the roots of a tree, and climbed back on top of me to pin me down, that something got louder instead of quieter. Perhaps it was the fact that some part of me knew Idris wasn’t seriously trying to hurt me, not like I was him. He was fighting defensively, even though he could easily beat the shit out of me.

Regardless, the rage and the hurt were still bubbling up inside me, and Idris was the target for it. I thrashed under him, trying to knock him off me, but he just pressed his whole body weight to me to keep me pinned. He grabbed my wrists so I couldn’t claw at him and ignored my kicking at his side, essentially treating me like a child having a temper tantrum, and that just made me angrier, but there wasn’t anything I could fucking do about it.

Except bite him. That, I could do. I sank my slightly elongated canines right into Idris’s throat and tore, making him grunt, but he didn’t release me. He instead let go of one of my wrists so he could bury a hand in my loose, wet hair to yank my head away, but I tightened my jaw and held on tight. Hot blood rushed into my mouth like sweet wine, and I moaned unconsciously, drinking my fill.

Strangely, after that, Idris’s hand went lax on my head, fingers rubbing against my scalp in almost a caress. My first thought was that the blood loss was making him weak, but I hadn’t taken that much, and Idris was too powerful for my little sip to do more than tickle.

I took one more gulp before slipping my teeth from his skin, a little dizzy from the power in his blood. Gods that was fucking good. Like concentrated caffeine straight into my bloodstream.

Idris remained on top of me, waiting to see if I’d calmed down, but fuck that, I just remembered that I’m a god and I have fucking magic, so I punched the hand Idris had freed to grip my hair straight into his ribs with a blast of energy behind it, sending Idris flying into another tree with a crack.

Breathing hard, I lay there for a second, letting my heart settle in my chest. To the side, Idris was slowly getting up with a wince, covered in his own blood, hair askew, and the sight was satisfying enough that I lost interest in continuing the fight.

Idris leaned against the tree he’d been thrown into and looked at me silently, expression unreadable once more. I stared back, dared him to try to fucking talk to me about what he’d said, and he seemed to get the message because his eyes dropped to the ground in what I would suspect is shame if Idris were capable of such a thing.

Kings didn’t feel shame. And they didn’t apologize, not for anything.