Excerpt: Sea of Fallen Dreams

The lights were dim, dark, fading… like a lost soul begging for the last light of morning. Shadows stretched their withered, fatigued fingers across the icy landscape, a dreary and dark curtain hanging over the country like an angry omen. The people there, all witnesses to evils borne of the night, prayed for light most every bleak day. Their prayers were left unanswered, twisted in matters concerning their emperor. He had no intention of ever seeing the sun rise high and proud and mighty in the sky again—he preferred the cool calm that a blanket of black brought as it draped itself neatly across his broad shoulders. Forever denied the sweet ambiance of dawn’s peaceful glow, a doll-like face pressed hopelessly into a frosted window, eyebrows knitting in an expression of forlorn lust; a certain hungry desperation lingered in the whites of his eyes, clinging to his irises like watery poison. Lead seemed to simply spring from his stomach, growing like a fungus and swelling deep inside his belly. Its weight tugged on his heart, the familiar strings beginning to wear from rapid decay, sighs met with internal aches and on rare occasion distraught tears.
Terra. Gabriel had rebuilt earth and reshaped all the oceans and landscapes that went with it. And Gabriel, as he rested above them all, his dwelling raised further in the atmosphere, found it decidedly amusing to tear all his little people down. Their agony brought a certain sense of comfort to his mind—soothed his soul like a relaxing, healing balm. He could not taste that anguish as he once could, real flesh and skin and bones. His friend—yes, his very best friend—destroyed what remained of his human shell. And in doing that, the dark-haired bounty hunter thought he had rid the worlds of Gabriel’s tyranny forever and past that date. Instead he was rewarded with an ill, shattered fate that he’d roped Ziggy into. And for that… he simply could not be forgiven.
Two torturous years had since passed, dating back to the separation of Krisstoph and their headfirst spiral into perpetual oblivion; winter had once again set its icy breath and snowy tendrils across earth’s changed landscape. A head full of dainty, full, starlight curls rose from the glass languidly, forest green eyes training their focus elsewhere. His equally silver eyelashes fluttered tiredly, a delicate hand settling on the windowsill to support his weight as he slowly rose from his cushioned seat. Free. Free… he seemed so miserably free. Free of shackles, of iron bars—free to wander wherever he wished. But the clothes he wore and the chains squeezing his heart spoke of an entirely different story. A long, woeful tale filled with countless days of strange and unique torture. The beautiful, calligraphic G burned on the tender, delicate flesh just below his belly button claimed he was simply property and nothing else. Free, yes—free to be tossed away at any given moment, thrown to the wayside without so much of a whisper of a reason. Shoved into a muddy, despairing death like a torn, beautiful, once resilient doll. But Ziggy was woven from the finest fibers, each curve and muscle carefully crafted by a brilliant designer. Each sigh that escaped his full mouth was a sigh not of defeat, but a careless breath spent thinking of the way it felt to be lovingly kissed with warm, moist lips in the pleasant shade of a tree.
Pearly white teeth grazed lightly against dark skin, the vague clicking of heels meeting with the fae’s pointed ears, fabric billowing gently against his still tanned calves.
“I won’t have you look like a ghost.”
“I may as well be.”
“Watch your mouth.”
Fingers twisted idly in silver tresses, eyelids slowly covering a wide expanse of green. Had he forgotten the feeling of a soft caress tickling across his skin? Had the memory of a loving embrace left his mind, leaving the recollection gone to the wind? Tiny tendrils of reminiscence licked at his cheeks, making the tattoo on his slender back prickle in slight sensations of barely remembered pleasure. It was there, somewhere in his mind, and the feeling remained dormant until it felt necessary to return to him once again. The excruciating nights spent with his new master gave way to little leaks of that memory that allowed him to maintain a sane state—to not let go of the hope that Krisstoph would some day come, clad in leather with Vega by his side, and tear his blond captor to pieces.
And then… there was Dante.
Flickering moments of dark, deep silence permissed Ziggy to slip down into the cells, past the guards who had given their souls to a ritual that occurred only once a year. By that time, he shouldn’t have winced from the whimpers that slid from underneath those huge iron doors… nor flinched from the ragged breathing of the sick and the dying—however, if he hadn’t, he would’ve felt nearly as horrible as Gabriel himself. He had not seen Dante, though, except in the sense that he caught a glimmer of those deep eyes and a shallow, breathy curse drawn from his cracked lips. And he had stayed long enough to glimpse at his pale, overworked body covered with thick splotches of brilliant bruises and vicious lacerations. He’d felt bile rise in his throat, and before Dante’s name curled off his dark lips, a tremendous howl tore through the castle. He’d wanted to reach out, to heal Sirius and all his other lives, but his fingers couldn’t reach and the sound dragged him hurriedly up the steps. Fear, fear… sometimes he could taste it, smell it, breathe it, let it shoot up the lengths of his limbs. Late into the harsh nights he’d liked to let himself believe that it was not his own pain that tortured his heart, but his comrade’s deep beneath the earth.