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

65

Despite knowing full well that lethargy was the first glaring warning sign of succumbing to a curse, I couldn't bring myself to care, which was the second warning sign that always closely followed: apathy. I was too exhausted to do anything about it even though I knew what was right in front of me, even though I knew I was supposed to stay up, resist it, throw the full weight of my determination into overcoming the insidious magic woven into the sirens' cries. All I could do was fall back into fitful sleep, stirring every few minutes whenever fear made me jolt back awake, and reassure myself in the hellish depths of my all-consuming fatigue that just as soon as I was refreshed, I would do things right. I just needed this bit of good, solid rest first, that was all. Then I would have my head on straight.

Of course, I knew, too, that was how it always went. It wasn't that far off from the effects of hypothermia. I was an idiot for letting it get the better of me when I had all this knowledge at my disposal, when I knew exactly what to do to not end up like the countless other humans who fell prey to dangerous magic.

I used to think I was so smart. If they just had some common sense and an ounce of backbone, they would have lived! I would say, and my grandmother would look at me with a mixture of sternness and amusement before shaking her head and continuing to drill me. In hindsight, that had been a spark of grim resignation in her gaze, too, because she had known something I didn't — that I wasn't invincible, even armed with such knowledge.

I was just a little brat who thought she was built different from all the rest, the hero of the story, the exception to the rule. I'd figured out not long after that I was far from invincible, but traces of that smug arrogance must have lingered in me all these years if I seriously hoped that I could overpower a species that had evolved over millennia to specifically hunt my kind. To hunt me.

But because I had stubbornness to spare, I chose to believe I had a shot at being the exception. I would still fight.

... As soon as I recovered.

I only just almost died. Gruesomely. Life had to have a cooldown period before it could do that to me again, right?

Anyway, Lust was here. Even if Mammon might now be straddling the fence about helping me after our last disagreement, I could rely on Lust to do his best to keep me alive. For now.

For a little while, I dipped into deep dreams, the demands of my body overwhelming my anxiety and forcing me to remain asleep this time. I didn't know how long it lasted, but by the time I righted myself in my dreams and realized where I was, it felt like it had been ages.

Again, I thought. Lucid dreaming. Now that I was here, the other memories flowed back, too, the ones that had overtaken me right before I awoke earlier to find myself being swarmed by the sirens and inches from death. It was this river again, this grassy bank. The blue, blue sky and the puffy clouds floating high overhead, so soft I wished I could bite into them. And most conspicuously, that boy with the big, beautiful blue eyes and feathers in his hair, again, waiting for me on the other side.

It was clearer this time, the ethereal vision of him that floated up through the layers of unconscious memory to the surface. The lines of his boyish face and body became sharper, gained color, ruffled in the breeze. I smiled before I knew it. He smiled back, hands lifted and waving as he called to me.

"Sa...el. S...ael."

His voice was so distant, or muffled, I didn't know which. I patted at my ears, wondering if something covered them, but found nothing obstructing my hearing. Ugh! Why couldn't I hear him, then!

But more importantly, who was he?

He was real. I remembered him, and it wasn't a false memory constructed from loose fragments floating around inside my head. I had lost almost all recollection of my younger childhood years, but this — this remained, and it wasn't imaginary. He wasn't imaginary.