Chapter 5 THE COST OF DOMINANCE

"What are you doing here?" Christian asked, as if I were the last person he expected to see.

"You invited me," I retorted, taken aback by the hardness in his expression.

"I've never invited anyone into this room," he replied, picking up the fabric draped around him and tying it like a sarong around his waist.

"Well, you invited me, Christian," I said, hoping that using his name would grab his attention.

"That doesn't sound like my name. It sounds like a lame alias I use to hide who I really am," he said crossly as he stepped down from the altar and approached me like a predator closing in on its prey.

"My name is Damon Christianus. I just call you Christian for short."

"Yeah, that doesn't sound like you truly know me either. That sounds like you're from the village and someone taught you to say that so that I'd tell you everything I know about everything. I admit you're a cute specimen, probably the best they could have found, exactly my type, but no. I don't let just anyone in here." He moved me towards the door leading to the first room.

"I'm your wife," I said, uttering it as if it were the last thing I wanted to say.

He laughed before executing a perfect wall slam next to the door, pinning me between the wall and him. He placed both hands on either side of my head and forced me to meet his gaze. "That's nice. If you're my wife, you should know all sorts of intimate things about me that would prove what you say is true. Go on," he dared, nodding towards me with his chin. "Tell me something about me that no one else knows."

I glared at him, challenging him. "You gave me your heart."

"Did I?" he smiled, running his tongue along his teeth menacingly. "A lot of women think I've given them my heart."

"Your heart is in my body!" I blurted out, wondering if I could make myself any clearer.

That got his attention. He stepped back, his hands tightening the knot on his sarong. "Are you saying that if we go through those doors, we'll be in the forest that changes colors, and it will be your forest and not mine?"

"Yes," I replied firmly.

In the next moment, he was in the first chamber and then out the front door.

I ran after him, catching up outside. He stood, gaping at the red forest visible from our side of the moat.

His mouth hung open for a moment before he covered it with his tanned hand. "This isn't my body."

"Of course, it's not your body," I said, patting him on the back. "I told you, it's mine."

"It's very red," he commented as if he'd never seen the color before. "You must have been very close to death when I gave you my heart."

"Why can't you remember giving me your heart? You've been here the whole time."

His shoulders slumped. "I don't know. I know that I was listening to another part of me. Not the version of me that was in the first room. Not the king... it was a different version... a different part of me. Like listening to the angel on your shoulder and then realizing he's the demon in disguise."

"Was he the demon or the angel?" I asked, recognizing the way Christian talked when he acted like that.

"Both," he whispered. "I was supposed to fall asleep. I don't know how long ago that was or what prize he got for putting me to sleep."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm not that part of myself. The mind thinks all sorts of things it doesn't consult the heart about. It was like that. I was sent here to starve because a higher part of myself decided that I should stop functioning."

I smiled broadly. "Are you the heart?"

The look of horror left his face. "Of course I'm not the heart. I was using that as an analogy."

"This building is the heart," he said, turning to observe the shrine behind him. "It's very red here. That's concerning. Not only should you be near death with your forest so intensely red, but I should be near death too with a heart this color. What have I done to myself?"

"What color is it supposed to be?"

"White." He stared at it and breathed as if his world were unraveling before his eyes.

"Can you do anything to heal it?"

He shook his head negatively. "I can't. I'm the part that controls matter, so I can't control the red forest." Then he turned his gray-green eyes to me. "Tell me who you are and how I met you."

We sat on the edge of the pool, our legs dipping into the blood-filled moat in front of us. I hiked up my skirt, and he hiked up his sarong. The blood was warm, like a bath.

"My parents died, and you became my guardian. I was dying and in love with you, and you chose to give me your heart. I didn't know you'd done it. I woke up one morning and knew I'd had surgery, but nothing else. I was completely healed. No explanation that made sense was given to me, and it was years before I understood what you'd done."

"I married you without telling you?" he asked awkwardly, pinching the wrinkles between his eyebrows. "That's a risky move. I must have thought it was worth it... like loving you was the last thing I'd do. Tell me the good parts. Tell me about the moment I told you how I felt about you. Tell me how sweet it was. How much I wanted you and how we made love under starry skies."

I hesitated. "Um... neither of those things has happened exactly."

The other Christian looked genuinely puzzled. "I haven't done any of that? I didn't take you in my arms and make you mine? That sounds unbelievable. Am I no good in bed without this part of me?" he asked himself, looking down at his distinctive torso. "One wouldn't think losing me would cause such a problem in that area." He got up and paced, muttering under his breath as he left bloody footprints behind him.

"Look, there are good reasons why," I said, feeling the need to explain.

"Were we separated often?" he asked.

I nodded.

"Was I in chains frequently?"

"You had your hand cut off," I supplied.

"Did I get it back?"

"Most of it. The last time I saw you, you were still missing a finger, but I think Brandon has it. Though I have to say, I'm willing to cut one off him if we can't get yours back," I said, letting some of my frustration about Brandon's treatment of me escape.

"Angry at him?"

"He's kidnapped me too many times for me to think of him pleasantly," I said, raising my nose.

The other Christian smiled, looking at me like he couldn't stop gazing at me.

I liked it. It was exactly how I wished he would look at me all those years when he was my guardian. He had

always looked at me like he enjoyed being with me, listening to me, watching me, but now, for the first time, there was a time and place for him to look at me like he was in love with me.

I had been dipping my fingers in the blood, but when I saw his expression, I wiped it off my hands and stopped his pacing by sidling up beside him. "Who are you and the other versions of you that are still inside? What does all this mean?"

He smiled conspiratorially. "Let's go see them."

Together, we entered the room with the king on his throne.

"Hmm..." he murmured as he lifted the king's hand and let it drop against the armrest with a thud!

I winced. It seemed like a sacrilegious thing to do, though if anyone was allowed to do something like that, it was the other Christian. He pursed his lips and moved to the remaining rooms. I followed him, observing as he pushed the version of Christian with the words written on his skin in the third room and made him twirl over the pool of water. The other Christian dismissed that version and entered the final room. There, he crouched in front of the version who was tied to the mast. He stared at that one for a longer time.

"What do you think happened?" I asked timidly.

"I almost killed myself," he said slowly.

"How?" I gasped. "I thought you were immortal."

His expression was calm, almost playful when considering his own death and looking at another version of himself. "There's no such thing as perfect immortality. I did this to myself intentionally. I fragmented myself to save something more important than me. The reward must have been great." He paused. "It was this one. This is the version of me who put me to sleep. It seems like he did the same thing to himself. We're not able to do it yet, but eventually, we're going to have to wake him up."

I didn't think there was any way to awaken the Christian in the fourth room. I had already tried everything I could think of. Granted, that hadn't been much. There wasn't much in the room to interact with. I let it go.

The only thing I could focus on was the fact that he said he was near death. "All this trouble doesn't have anything to do with us switching hearts, does it?"

"No. At my best, I could have simply ordered my heart out of my body, and it would have complied. My forest was so white in those days that I didn't even have blood. This mess has to do with deliberately severing thousands of years of experience, losing abilities that were once as natural as breathing, and deliberately leaning towards humanity. To have such large portions of myself dormant within my heart, I must have come very close to becoming human... and if I'm human... then I can die."

I knew right away that's why I had suddenly gotten results from Brandon and Pricina. What the other Christian said meant that just because someone was immortal now, that didn't mean they would be tomorrow. I could end my own life. Inadvertently threatening to do so had made Brandon and Pricina back off.

It also meant that wherever Christian was, he wasn't immune to death either.

"You once told me that you severed your memories and burned the bridges within you. You said that was the only way you could move forward," I acknowledged, though that reasoning no longer made sense.

He breathed heavily, contemplating.

"What's the last thing you remember?" I asked.

He smiled reflectively. "It doesn't work like that. What I know about myself is patchy. I'm not the repository of my memories. I am the guardian of a specific secret."

I leaned in. "Can you tell me your secret?"

"I already told you," he replied with matching glints in his eyes and teeth. "I am the ability to reorganize matter."

I stared at him. "Like Pricina?"

"I don't know her, but I can't remember everything Damon Christianus needs to know. That doesn't mean that person isn't a god. It just means I don't know him. Gods and goddesses emerge from time to time. Sometimes they don't handle it well. Obviously, I haven't, but if I've taken a wife, then I'm probably on track for regaining some of my former glory."

"I don't think you realize you're a god," I said slowly. "The Christian I know is always on the run, hiding, lying, disguising, changing his face, and changing his name."

The other Christian's face softened beautifully as his eyes met mine. After all those times he'd been forced to school his abilities, not let his love for me show, seeing his unfiltered love on his face outright took my breath away.

I licked my lips. "I don't know. Are you saying I might be a goddess because I have your heart?"

He nodded. "When we married, I gave you everything that I am. In a human ceremony, they give all their worldly possessions to each other. They do that in a futile attempt to mimic our wedding. I didn't just give you whatever possessions I have. I gave you the gift of becoming all that I am." He leaned in closer and whispered in my ear, "Current circumstances aside, I'm literally everything."

My breath caught. "I thought I wasn't supposed to consume the stones."

"If you hadn't, you might never have awakened me, and thus, our union couldn't have deepened. Can you feel how it's deepening?"

I nodded.

"Good. Looking back, if I were in a position where I had to sever myself, I might not have severed my ability to control matter in one go. I might have done it in sections; one hundred and twenty-five sections, to be precise."

"That's how many stones were resting on you!"

He suddenly looked down at my belly as if he had realized something else. "How are you feeling?"

"Fine. Great, even."

His eyes shifted between my face and my belly a few times before he inclined his head. "I'll check on you later." Then he returned to the previous topic. "The reason I might have chosen to split my abilities into one hundred and twenty-five pieces is that there are one hundred and twenty-five distinct types of matter in the world."

"Are you talking about the elements on the periodic table? There are one hundred and eighteen."

"Don't bore me with what scientists currently think. There are one hundred and twenty-five distinct types of matter that went into the creation of this world. With each of the stones you consumed, you gained the ability to manipulate that element at your will, just as you can move individual cells within your body. The most efficient way is to learn to control all of them simultaneously rather than learn them individually, and I can teach you."

He took me by the hand and led me back into the second room. Once there, he lifted me onto the altar. "Have you ever been sacrificed before?"

"I've never been slaughtered for amusement. Is that what you mean?"

He looked at me seriously. "Have you ever sacrificed yourself?"

I straightened my back. "I thought you didn't want me to die?"

"You're not actually going to die, but the human version of you will cease to exist if I reveal the

secrets of manipulating matter to you. You'll have the power to change anything around you with a thought. Rain will turn back into clouds at your command. You'll have eyes everywhere because the floorboards in a house will tell you everything you need to know. Even diamonds will reveal their secrets to you," he said with the most seductive click of his tongue.

I leaned forward and rested my forehead against his. "I'm afraid it might be too late to do anything else."