Sinners' Kingdom #1: The Book of Lust (Complete)

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The oddest dreams afflicted me. Understandable considering the circumstances, but it wasn't the warped visions of blurry, giant birds swooping on me every few seconds that unsettled me so much. Nor was it the sort-of-blank, glacier-sized blob feasting on sharks that my mind cooked up in the depths of my subconscious. And if anything, the part of my dream where I kept falling into the underground labyrinth under the Kunlun temple was comforting, with the Enochian symbols carved all over the walls, ceiling, and roof lighting my way like gentle beacons, even if I had no idea where I was going.

The culprit was a memory from my childhood, one of the last untouched slivers I possessed, from before magic almost did my brain in. Those were the old days when Mom and Grandma still thought I was a normal Solaria who could do normal witch things — well, extraordinary witch things, per the bloodline. In any case, they saved my life even if I lost nearly all my memories from before I turned six. Or was it five? Not important. Living to see another day and survive for the next two decades was more important than a few years' worth of memories that probably didn't amount to much more than learning to tie my shoes and pretending to cast spells while running around in the backyard, like any innocent witch child who didn't yet know she was magic-barren.

But there was a faint shadow of a memory that sometimes surfaced every now and then. I never told anyone about it, not daring to give them false hope that maybe I could be fixed even though Mom and Grandma always badgered me with questions, probing to see if there had been any improvement. I couldn't bear to disappoint them, and that fear had only turned into an even deeper sadness as I grew older. They'd already had to suffer through me turning out to be totally mundane, even though outwardly, they pretended it was a blessing and a freedom from onerous responsibilities. I wasn't stupid. I lived day to day, pretending not to know how desolate they must feel at not being able to pass down hundreds of generations' worth of carefully curated and nourished secrets, knowledge jealously guarded by Solaria witches and passed down only from mother to daughter for thousands of years.

So I snuffed out anything that might give them false hope, including the memory of a bright-eyed boy with feathers in his hair and the sweetest smile I had ever seen.

But it might have all been a dream to begin with, I guess. Just like now, as I watched him jump from stone to stone ahead of me until he crossed the wide stream.

"Come on," he urged. His hairfeathers twitched around his ears like a bird's tail as he motioned at me. "Hurry before they're all gone!"

I wondered — why feathers? What were they supposed to represent? I couldn't fathom the answer. I couldn't be certain it was the only metaphorical imperfection in my memories, either. The soft, white-blond curls like the locks of a little painted princeling's, the sparkling blue eyes that somehow had both a young boy's innocence but the mischief of an adolescent, even the snake tail that he slithered along on could all be figments of my imagination replacing what was really there.

Wait. What?

Snake tail?

"S...ael.... rael! Hurry!"

Now I couldn't even make out his voice properly. He must be calling my name, motioning for me to come over, quick — or was he? That didn't sound like my name. The stream rose, water spilling over both sides until they ran over the grass and rocks. I stepped back, inching up the slope to keep the water from swamping my ankles, but in moments, I was hip-deep and stumbling against a current strong enough to sweep me despite the water coming up no higher than my waist.

I pawed for anything to grab on to but stumbled before I succeeded, taking the water right to the face when I fell through and landed on my hands and knees. The steep incline of the grassy slope had me almost tumbling down to the bottom of it, but I caught myself with a lucky grip on a half-buried tree root just barely protruding from the earth. I coughed out the lungful of water I accidentally swallowed, reminded bitterly of the moment Lust, Mammon, and I landed in the damn ocean after teleporting God knew how many miles—

Whoa. Hang on. That was right. I remembered everything. Going blind. Retreating to the island. Lust and Mammon... Even the Indra's Net that we miraculously found against all odds, though it was probably ridiculous of me to make light of the effort to find it when I idly stood by and let two demon Princes do all the work for me. But more importantly, what happened after? I slept. This was a dream, I knew that already.

But why did everything feel so real?

Maybe it was temporary. Who knew what dreams really felt like if you forgot everything upon waking up? Maybe it always felt this real, and I would forget this, too, when I opened my eyes and wondered why my heart was racing fast enough to burst. I closed my eyes as I bear-crawled up the slope against the current, fighting the strange suctioning force that seemed to want to drag me back into its depths.

"Sa...el. Sa...!"

That voice again! The boy! I couldn't stop moving or else the water would move past my chin and over my head, and I didn't have enough faith in myself to think I could keep my balance then, but I dared to look back over my shoulder while continuing to climb. There, on the other side of the flooded river, he stood at the top of the sloped bank and waved his arms at me.

"Be careful! You can't go there! Wait for me, I'll come to you!"

I heard and comprehended every individual word, and even though I had to turn back around and pour all my attention and strength into scrambling for higher ground, I heard plainly the deep fear in his voice, too. He was worried for me. If this was a memory and I was recalling something he said to me before, something dangerous must have happened — the fear was too genuine and panicked to be imagined. This was a direct memory, even if it was only the audible portion. If only I could remember everything else. Why had he called out to me like that? What had I been doing? And who was he, anyway?

But the taxing wet and cold pressure sinking into me, bone-deep and freezing, dragged me away from the memory before I could grab hold of it. Something was wrong. This wasn't only a dream. I pried myself free of the invisible, paralyzing cocoon that wrapped around my body, trying to control my limbs against my will with jerky marionette twitches, until a sensation like a hundred taut wires snapping jolted through me. With a soundless scream, I catapulted into consciousness, hurtling through layers of nothing and everything all at once while that voice called out to me again and again and again—

"Sa... Sa... el! Sab...el! I'm coming! Hold on! Don't let go!"

When I opened my eyes, all that met me was darkness smudged with a palette of dull, barely distinguishable colors. Sight, gone again! Sickening despair slammed into my gut when I realized I had no idea where I was, what was happening, why I was suddenly drenched and freezing and choking and surrounded by deafening screams about to rip my eardrums open if this went on any longer—

"Sable! Sable, wake up!" Lust's voice exploded in my ear in a harsh shout, louder and rougher than I'd ever heard it. Fear. That was fear in his voice, just like the other voice in my dream that I'd dredged up from memories so old I thought I'd forgotten them. But I hadn't. This time, I remembered.

But there was no time to dwell on it, because along with the wet and the cold, the drowning sensation filling my mouth, nose, and throat wasn't imaginary, either. I hacked and gagged as Lust held me to his chest, nearly crushing me in his urgency, while I all but puked out more water than ever should have fit in my lungs.

Terror seized me. What was happening! Why weren't we in the cave? Why were we in the rain, and what were all those noises like heavy canvas fabric billowing and slapping in the wind? And those snarls, that was Mammon, and the screaming — the screaming — all of it shoving into my ears to inflate violently inside my skull, until it squeezed my brains out of my nose, my mouth, even out of my eyes as gushing warmth flowed out of them like waterfalls—

"Hold on, Sable!" Lust shouted. "Hold on to me, don't let go!"