Yup, Wattpad appears to have banned parts of my book, which I suppose is understandable, given that it is for mature readers. I posted the same book on the site last year, didn’t log in for a year, return today and find the whole book vanished. Okay. I understand, and I don’t much care to complain. . . except that, well, guys. . . You could have sent me a courtesy email informing me that my chapters were going to be banned, right, perhaps ending in a smiley face? Other than that, yes, I do understand that certain topics are taboo and controversial, that there are thresholds, limits, and boundaries. I do.
That said, I present here the “banned chapter” in its entirety. You can read Chapter 1: Kosmos here, on Wattpad, and hopefully also chapters 3, 4, 5 and so on there as well, unless those are banned as well. Kind of cool having banned chapters. I’ve also added the original coverart I did for Wattpad. The lettering is screwy because it took 5 minutes, but the artwork took me about a month to complete, inked on Strathmore paper, shaded with Prismacolor pencils.
Without further adieu, here is Chapter 2 of the first novel of the Godward Sea Trilogy, entitled Chapter 2: Promise. And thank you very much, WordPress, for not banning me (yet?).
***
Chapter 2: Promise
She had lain dreaming; oddly enough, of him.
“Wake up, faerie.” He had stood in the half-darkness at her bedside with a secret item tucked under one arm and the dash of a white grin across his face. He must have stood therein silent darkness at watch over her for a long time, yet the sleepiness veiled why ever she thought it. She waded back into the shallow dream.
“Awaken I say. Today is your fifth-and-tenth. A most special age for a faerie.” He had graced across the room toward the narrow floor-to-ceiling window, where he opened the black lace-pattern drapery. Light from the blond sky drew a beam across his expression, and shocking violet eyes drank of her and thence brimmed with mischief and love.
She sat up in bed and squinted toward the miniature water-clock on the eastern nightstand, then at him, at his back turned to her.
“Father, it’s plain too early.”
“I’ve been up, some-while.”
“Some-while? It’s barely dawning.”
“Walking, my heart. In the garden.”
“By yourself? What for?”
“Faerie, I promise, you needn’t worry so much about me.” Sonorous chuckle. “I come bearing your first tribute. A very special one. I had to make certain we were alone.” He gazed through the windowpane.
That did the trick to reel her like a flipping little fish. Laguna Èva bounced toward him, grinning. The air was cold in her vast bedchamber, yet for all she was indifferent. Her white shift adhered to her form, pale little toes wiggling in the carpeting.
“My first gift–Father you’re simply unpredictable!” She knew he wouldn’t have disturbed her privacy for nothing. It was unusual for the God-King to travel alone, even to his child’s chambers.
He neared her, white-gold hair and dark robes swaying with every step. He idled with his knowing smile.
“Well?” She crossed her heels and fidgeted.
“What have I told you, love,” he said, “about patience?”
She uncrossed her heels and watched her toes wriggle on the carpet. “’Good things come to those who wait.’”
“Indeed. Hold out your hands.”
Wrists together, she spread her palms. She wondered what her guards and chambermaids thought of his unannounced presence in her tower at dawn.
He set in her hands a box wrapped in ruby linen, a luxuriant fabric of Yetzirah.
The weight of it widened her eyes. “Such gorgeous packaging,” she whispered. “Did you wrap this yourself, Father?”
“Untie the ribbon, faer-love.” He watched her disrobe it to reveal a stone box twice the size of her palm, wrought with a chiseled rose across the lid. “Go on,” he urged.
She raised the lid with nervous, watery fingers. Thereupon a plush swirl of lavender silk sat a twinkling gold circlet.
He poised it on his fingertips, his head inclined in tribute.
She whispered, “Father, no!”
He sighed pleasurably at her expression. Perhaps he’d thought she’d think it a mere trinket. “I know you dislike jewelry, faerie, but this I’m certain you’ll admire.”
Her fingertips hovered over the gold. He nodded her on. Touch it.
An unbelievable ruby, the reddest she’d ever seen, the roundest, was affixed to the band. She couldn’t bring herself to touch this part of the treasure, the gem of her dreams. Unreal how round it was and how rich the red–like blood in a glass chalice. A base of two gold crescent moons, back to back, made the ruby appear horned. Greek goddesses came to mind, lurid tales of them wearing lavish accessories that imparted their imperial sensuality and persuaded the hearts of gods and men. This was something beyond even that. She felt unworthy to wear it.
His eyes had glazed over. “This jewel is a Sphinx Rose; a very, very,” he faltered, “very rare treasure for you, love.”
“Sphinx Rose . . .” She bit her quivering lip.
“Do you like it?”
“It is heavenly.” She sank to her knees and tucked her chin, uncertain of how else to express the inexplicable heartbreak. Tears burned and rolled, disappeared on the carpet.
He touched her chin, guided her to standing, and murmured, “Pray, do not. Treasure it, my faerie, for I lost the rest of my . . .” He cleared his throat, then turned his expression.
She heard him sigh. He shot her a dark penetrating gaze, his lips pursed as if his teeth were clenched. Such the cold blank expression meant he listened to the sound of her thoughts. She opened herself to let him inside, only to hear him utter a soft curse.
Once, he had told her, “You have the most fastened mind in all the world, love of mine, so pure it makes not a sound to me. Only vaguely is it that I know what you’ve dreamt. Your thoughts are not for me.”
“Why,” she had cried, “why when you can hear every other man, woman and child on the earth so that you must tune them out?”
“It wasn’t in the stars for us, Laguna. Sometimes, it’s best not to know what someone is
thinking.” Beyond that, he couldn’t answer her question. Pressing him for it only enabled the proverbial look of sorrow on him–of which she was worlds from understanding.
Granted, she might have misunderstood him because she secretly coveted his divine gift under the assumption that the power he wielded over others was wickedly satisfying. If she had it, she would never stop listening. She would know everybody so well it would terrify them, and she would know who was against her and who loved her; and she would be able to say what they desired to hear and do what they desired of her, even her enemies, and thence infect legions of hearts and minds. I would reconstruct myself around their thoughts. If I could but hear them. If I could but hear his. It hollowed her out that she could not, that neither could he with her. Even then his expression exceeded ethereal, beautiful yet indecipherable. Merely at wonder over his thoughts was akin to disorientation. Such was his barrier against the probe of other mystics. Frail and bedazzled, she forfeited.
He said, “Luna-ya, my everything, my only child, you will become a woman tonight. Let this mark the occasion.” His sonorous tone summoned color to her cheeks. Luna-ya, he had called her. The name quickened her. It was theirs alone, a play on her Greek name, Laguna, with a Yetziraelite phrase that resembled it, Luna-ya. Under the full moon.
“Then never will I remove it.” It seemed to pulse in her grasp.
To her horror he reclaimed it. His smile tapered into an expressionless line. He stepped nearer to her, his heat strong and sweetly fragrant. “However Laguna,” he returned to the Greek pronunciation of her name, Daphne’s pronunciation, and whispered, “Should you give yourself to a man, you can no longer wear a Sphinx Rose. Do you understand?”
Surprise pricked her cheeks and ears. She kept silent with veritable distress then gave a vigorous nod, jet waves swaying over her shoulders.
Tender and patient, he said, “Do you understand when I say give, Laguna?”
“I . . . do.”
He turned his gaze. “It is very important, faerie. A Sphinx Rose is a rare thing, mayhap the purest of all things.”
The words slathered a chill rash over her skin. Some sourceless wind coerced the draperies. The linen tapped the painfully bright glass with such force as to call her notice. Perfervid, she trained her attention. “I understand, Father. I should be as pure as it is.”
“Yes, my darling. Oh, yes.”
Her knees nigh on dribbled down to the carpet; before she knew somewhat, her brow followed. Dizzied by the independent movements, she yielded. Her puckered lips brushed one of his sandaled feet, and then the other.
“Rise, Laguna.” Taking care with its sharp ends through her hair, he slid the Sphinx Rose onto her forehead. He took her cheek into his palm, and in a voice rich with all the appeal and seductiveness he was known well to possess, he said,
“You’ve become heartbreaking, love, simply beautiful.” His thumb grazed her earlobe.
“Father.” She rolled her eyes.
He stole her into a ferocious embrace, palms flat on her back. “Luna-ya, I love you,” he faltered. “Gods below, I . . . love you.” He hoisted her into the air and clutched her beneath the crooks of her arms.
She looked down upon him as her legs dangled. He used to whirl her around in such a fashion when she was small, happiest when she was happy, but he had never looked more miserable than he did then. The smile she offered was innocent and inquisitive.
She inhaled the heat between them as he lowered her. Her fingers grasped the dimly shimmering vestment over his breast. “You are not only my father, but my God.”
“Am I?”
“As the heavens are blue.”
One of his heavy hands drew her close by the small of her back. Fingertips of the other brushed her neck, moved her hair behind her shoulder, and they gazed, the lovers’ breath apart. He had allowed her space enough to reel from his clutch.
She did not.
“Tonight will be the grandest, most irritating night of both our lives, Luna-ya,” he groaned. His look coaxed her soft laugh.
“Daphne will have the time of her life,” she said.
“She will,” he cast aside. He and his daughter, as they conversed in private, often referred to their wife and mother by name.
He crushed her with an arm, his opposite fingertips stroking the circlet at her forehead. “This shall symbolize your vow to me. Wear it and I shall forever know your love and loyalty, no matter where I am, no matter what I’m at.” His amethyst eyes glinted with despair. “Say you accept this. Say this for me and mean it, love, please mean it.”
She gazed upon his sadness with much of her own. “I accept, of course. Yes.”
Aught you ask of me, Father, I will do.
“Do you mean this, faerie? Aught.”
“You . . . heard me?”
He said with a low, breathy laugh, “Yes, by the circlet, the Sphinx Rose.” Head lowered, he knuckled his chin. The glassy light on his eyes shivered. “Not only will you hear the minds you seek to hear, but its power will bestow you with a long life, love, long as any goddess’s. As long as you wear it your heartbreaking beauty will never fade. It is the finest thing they ever made. . . . What do you think?”
“I could ask for nothing finer.” She couldn’t resist his laughter; her nose crinkled as she joined in. To see his smile even for a moment was worth everything in sight, for nothing had stirred her as much as the glimpse into his melancholy.
“It’s as if you embrace me fully for the first time. Your spirit and mine, worlds created by our experiences, able to link a crossroad,” he whispered, white eyelashes darkened by tears. Can you feel us, our souls mingling over Love’s inferno? Do you see my world?
I do, she transmitted, bedazzled. The path to a hidden place had unlocked: At the crux of a crossroads, beneath a fiery sky, paced a dark figure haunted by a single, constant, burning light. Father.
His smile, as beautiful as it was rueful, disappeared in the shadow underneath his lashing ivory locks. The living heart upon his bare chest was cast in an opaque shadow, despite the violet-gold fire of the sky. At closer inspection, his heart seemed to crawl not with shadows, but hundreds of jet black insects.
Ye gods, why? Why does it linger in such . . . such?
It has festered since your day of birth, at the knowledge that you would eventually leave me.
I, I will never!
Luna-ya. His words sifted through her forehead, at the Sphinx Rose. She closed her eyes and strained to understand.
This has to be our secret, this new intimate method of speaking, faerie, ours alone. If you speak of it or lose your purity, you will break the spell of the Sphinx Rose and your soul will no longer yield to me and you will cease to hear minds.
I promise, Father. I promise as if we stand in the holy circle on the plain; therefore, it is oath the heavens acknowledge, as you’ve always told me. “Now–I love you. Come here.” She urgently embraced him and soothed herself in the process.
Through his tense grasp she felt the melancholy, cold and crawling like the black insects, yet she had always felt safe in his clutch, as if nothing in existence could harm her. She combed glossy blond strands from his face, tucked them behind his ear, touched his smile. His tears brimmed and rolled. After he swiped them away, they shone on his moon-pale face.
She leaned her ear against his beating heart and imagined it the host to ravenous parasites, surely doomed. “Father, what can I do for your pain?” The whisper had been so timorous she hadn’t heard it. Her gumption for the answer trembled like an autumn leaf. Your heart is so dark, so forlorn, and you say it is my fault by birthright; thus what is my promise if it only doubles your sufferance?
Oh, it brings me happiness, Luna-ya, the likes of which I’ve never known.
Then why did you show me, Father, why–
Are you so innocent! His arms consumed her waist, reckless and clumsy. The friction from his palms was oven-hot. His fingers squeezed a gasp from her, and he vented a pained moan. “Think on this and you’ll know why. Or maybe . . . maybe you couldn’t possibly know.” Maybe you couldn’t possibly know that no other man will ever love you more than I, nor the extent of what I would do for you and how magnificently I would do it, my love. Maybe you cannot know. I would die so willing in your arms with you crushed beneath me, crying my name, clawing, thrusting . . . .
One of his hands held firm, fingers in her hair; the other kneaded over her gauzy shift. Lips on her brow, he shuddered.
Gods, no. Gods! I fell not on purpose, Luna-ya. But I fell.
By the Sphinx Rose, she heard his every thought and felt the piercing ache of his desire.
Quickened blood had vitally improved his flesh and thrust him snug against the seams. It prodded, hot, restrained.
Already in my arms, soft, beautiful thing; relenting. Once in the name of Love, just once. His thoughts. She followed his gaze to the bed across the chamber and took a step toward it. He tightened his grip around her.
“No, faerie. Have you so soon forgotten?” His fingertip touched the ruby. “The promise.”
She thought on it, daunted by his tone, then whimpered, “But what is it?” She cupped his face and wiped his tears. “What is it if it destroys you?”
He softly pushed her away, lines of misery creasing his expression. We cannot think it, love. You are too innocent to know the consequences, to understand them. Unlike other people, I am wicked as they come. But I know I am wicked. This separates me from the common villain that I know it–I admit it to myself. That in itself is good, when you are fully aware of your own propensity for evil, because when you’re aware of it, you can turn it off. You can sincerely turn it off.
For a pulse, she held his gaze. His tears fell and dabbed her breast. Then he turned, and the hem of his mazarine vestment swept the carpet as he glided away. She winced as the doors crashed shut behind his heels, the effect amplified that he hadn’t so much as cast a glance her way. Wounded, ashamed, she could only gaze at the doors. The hinges were destroyed and would have to be fixed.
She shivered at a sudden chill as if all the warmth had gone with him, and tucked her sleeved arms around herself. You aren’t evil. I saw such a love in you, like an inferno surround about your dark heart. I understand now, the faith you take from love, for it is beautiful and consuming. Thus, is it not worth the risk to lay my dignity down before it?
The Sphinx Rose hummed on her forehead.
*
Alone in the monumental atrium, he wept to himself, fingers trembling on the curved golden knobs. He realized he had broken both doors at the uppermost hinges, and lingered beneath them aware that he could not leave them in such disarray. Nor could he leave her.
You cannot go back to her. That’s all there is to it. She is not the only one who needs for you to be the strong one, the rational one . . . her father. You are her father. Always this flesh reminder. In the air between them it hung, a disembodied plea, Take me!
He whimpered. “Give me solace . . . my Münin, your solace, please.” A great presence rushed the hall, caressed his skin, and moved his hair. It took his tear-dampened face in its hands and whispered.
He closed his eyes, pacified by the astral landscape unfurling before them. Calm. Precious beseeched calm. My doting
Münin. My Dark Angel.
He escaped through the labyrinth of ornate corridors and winding stairwells, the torches along the walls hushing and withdrawing their light by his narrow-eyed will. His hard-heeled footfalls echoed as he passed the bent prostrate forms of his daughter’s Guard and handmaidens–who were intimate enough with their King to know when he didn’t wish to be bothered and kept their faces to the floor–far enough until he felt safe once again. To wit, free from the harm of the most delicious temptation he had ever known.
He locked himself away inside his private library. Darkness. There he resided by candlelight, writing, until he left to await the priest by the Lake of Heim.
***
lipsonthewhistle 