But Risky didn’t like that. It sounded way too casual for a Destroyer. “You should say something like, ‘I obey!’ Or maybe, ‘All will worship you, mighty princess.’”
“Urgh.”
She was asking the Destroyer to make a choice, and that wasn’t going to work.
“You have no initiative, do you know that?” Risky snarked. “Okay, do this. Whenever I give you an order, you say, ‘I obey the will of Ereskigal!’”
“But all your friends call you Risky,” the Destroyer said.
Risky smiled an evil smile and her green eyes glowed vindictively. “I have no friends.”
Ah, but once upon a time, long, long ago, she had.
LONG, LONG AGO WHEN RISKY HAD A FRIEND
The opening of the temple went better than Risky had expected. The various animal sacrifices were successful—as you could see from the large copper bowl of hearts and the barrels of blood. The blood gutters worked just as well as Gil had promised.
The Pale Queen complained that the temple was drafty. But Risky was used to her mother belittling everything she did. If Risky destroyed a village, the Pale Queen would point out the one pigsty Risky missed. She had always been critical of Risky. Nothing was ever good enough.
But by the standards of the Pale Queen, her reaction to her new temple was pretty good.
Until the unveiling of the statue.
Oy. That didn’t go well.
So in a rage the Pale Queen devoured the sculptors and demanded she be given Gil to chew on as well.
But where was Gil? Gil had totally disappeared, it seemed. And now, the worm of doubt entered Risky’s thoughts. One of two things had happened. Either the Pale Queen had already eaten Gil, possibly without even knowing who he was. Or . . .
Or Gil had run off with another girl!
“Mom?” Risky demanded, hands on hips and staring up at her mother’s bloodstained mouth. (She was snacking on the big bowl of unicorn hearts, like someone with a bowl of cashews.) “Did you kill my boyfriend?”
“Your what?”
“My boyfriend,” Risky said defiantly. “Gil. The architect who designed this temple. I love him, Mom, and if you ate him I am going to be really mad.”
“You’re too young to be dating!” the Pale Queen roared, which sent red spittle flying everywhere.
“I’m a thousand years old, Mother!”
“Nonsense. If you’re a thousand years old, then I’m . . .” The Pale Queen glanced at her not-exactly-lifelike statue as if seeking reassurance that she was still young and beautiful. (If by young you meant two thousand years old and if by beautiful you meant a terrifying, tyrannosaurus-jawed, claw-handed, snake-eyed monster drenched in nine different kinds of blood.)
“Just tell me if you ate Gil Gamesh!” Risky cried.
“No. I don’t think so. Are there any mirrors in this place?”
Risky ran from the temple determined to find Gil, to tell him of her love, and then most likely torture him for running out on her. But though she searched and searched, from Babylon to Erech to far-off Kom Ombo, and though she transformed herself into a huge bird of prey with incredible eyesight and flew over Mesopotamia, Egypt, Assyria, Cappadocia, Hyrcania, and other places that were totally real but so exotic that they would be unrecognized by spell-check far in the future, she could not find him.
Risky as a lonely hawk became a familiar sight over the fields of Lydia, and her harsh birdlike cry, “Gil . . . squaaaaawk . . . Gil!” haunted the dreams of children in far-away Thracia.
Slowly, slowly, her heart hardened. Sadness and loss and the frustration that came from not being able to hear Gil’s loving words and/or cries of pain would leave their mark on Risky.
It was as if her heart had been frozen stiff. And nothing would begin to thaw that cold, cold heart until she first met Mack.
Who she was now totally probably going to kill.
Unless, of course, he was willing to help her rule the world through terror.