The room is small, and Jupiter feels the weight of its heady simplicity closing in about her. Something wicked stirs within these walls. They themselves breathe and sing and groan under the weight of ten thousand souls and ten thousand stars. She feels a flicker of fear dance upon her skin, but fear is for the living and she walks among the dead.
The galactic Hades stands before her, back greeting her gaunt form.
Lightening in veins, thunder in hearts, and eyes like city lights with dust seeping off fingertips. Something real and raw stands before her with hands clasped and dripping with golden death.
Jupiter thinks he was created from the air of every beautiful place in the universe. The ruins. The temples. The pyramids. The crypts. Vicious but mesmerizing, cold but with fire in his eyes, strong and captivating and mystical and manipulative and calculated and unnerving.
She struggles to keep her footing. Jupiter is weak; the sickness of the mind overwhelms her in his presence. He hears the slight shuffling of her feet as she shifts, nearly imperceptibly, attempting to keep ramrod straight in this room of memories and of fear. She cannot falter.
Balem Abrasax turns and regards her with indifferent curiosity.
Jupiter wants to rip the invisible crown from his head, claw scratches down his cheeks, and scream until her throat bleeds as she cries out for reverence. Her God demands sacrifice, and her altar has been empty far too long.
Instead, she readjusts her feet. All her wild and furious energy is channeled into the simple act of standing. She hates herself for this weakness.
The immortal circles her slowly, drinking in the racing heartbeat of one sick and weak.
Whispered words upon her ear appear out of a wisp of lavender and sage.
"You may sit, Jupiter Jones. Rest your weary body."
Jupiter resists the urge to flinch away from the doubly repulsive and enticing breath that dances upon her neck. She refuses to show fear to the immortal with galaxies for eyes. No, no indeed, she senses his larger purpose with this meeting.
"There are no chairs," her simple response, lacking all formality and terms of respect for the powerful ruler of worlds.
Balem Abrasax lingers at her back before finishing his strange circuit about her body, coming to rest barely touching her face. This time, Jupiter flinches away as slim fingers ghost along her cheekbones, drawing her toward his lips with gentle encouragement that is too kind for the steward of the underworld incarnate.
"Then you may kneel," he whispers, his words dancing upon her own parched lips.
Jupiter does not dare move. She cannot stand for much longer; indeed, every breath she takes seems to draw life from her very bones. But she will not kneel. Her face makes contact with Balem's fingers as she shakes her head in response, rejecting the snide offer of the immortal and preparing herself for the chase, the fallout, the sky set ablaze.
She is met only with a twisted smile.
It is far worse than any physical retribution.
"I thought not."
Fingers drop from her face as Balem floats away on airy footsteps. Somewhere behind her, a door opens, the sounds of shuffling feet fill her empty ears. Jupiter knows better than to look, knows that somehow, this is only the beginning of the test, of the pain.
"Do you know why this system works, Jupiter?"
Balem's words are marred by the scuffle behind her. Still, she does not dare turn, does not risk taking her eyes off her source of imprisonment and her source of salvation, a twisted messiah amidst the stars.
He turns to face her again, his eyes pools of liquid starlight flashing in the dimming light of the room. Behind Jupiter, the struggle has stopped. Silence exists now, silence except the words that continue to drop like poisoned diamonds from Balem's lips.
She sees the immortal's nod a second too late.
Suddenly, her arms are pinned behind her back – an unnecessary precaution, she muses, as she is far too weak to fight or attack. She is spun around to face the doorway and the strange sight before her eyes.
An old woman kneels before her, milky eyes and leathery skin telling the story of a life lived in servitude and pain. The gun pointed at white hairs seems ignored as her eyes focus, unseeing, upon the force before her.
Jupiter cries out as she understands, she struggles against the arms of her captor, but the wails of the injured are unheard in the galaxies of Balem Abrasax.
The immortal is at her side, leaning into her ear, whispering words already spoken but not yet understood.
"It works because some lives will always matter more than others."
The woman whispers something unheard. Prayer, Jupiter knows. Oh, she knows, she knows, she feels the fire and water dripping from parched lips. Save one, save them all, she remembers from something far away, from another time.
"What do you want?"
The words grate against her throat. Balem moves in response to her question, an answer provided without words.
Jupiter feels cold lips against her neck, working their way along her jaw, dancing toward her mouth. She cannot move, cannot fight, cannot breathe as they capture her own lips in a gesture without love, lacking any emotion but the passionate hatred that flows from the immortal's body.
Then they are gone. Jupiter drops her head, her arms still pinned firmly, a captive of some unseen guard. Her eyes close against the harsh truths of the small room whose walls add another painful memory to their records.
A single shot rings out.
Kalique's cryptic warning sings in its wake.
Jupiter is released. She collapses to the floor, head hanging and eyes cast downward, awaiting tears that will never come.
"You are the life that matters more, Jupiter," he speaks, the words rushing over her with unintended calm. "I can give you everything once you acknowledge your worth, once you relinquish your riches to the thing which matters most."
The night overtakes her. Blackness replaces all thought of the murderous immortal as she strays out of space and time.
She wakes in a bed that is not her own. Jupiter knows, somehow, that the bed is his, that the room belongs to him. She does not think, but only drifts back into a harsh and dreamless sleep, six pomegranate seeds dancing across her memory.