I have a feeling he wasn’t even really talking to me.
Suddenly, there’s a ripple of energy through the hall, the tingle of a static shock. A drawer flies open, and suddenly a knife hurtles through the air toward Oliver. He catches it out of the air and smiles as he hefts it in his hands.
“Isn’t it pretty?” he says, studying it.
“Gorgeous,” I say, even though to me it’s just a knife. I can’t get a handle on him. “Let’s get out of here before we're caught.”
“Let me hang onto it,” he says when I hold out my hand.
I hesitate, then shrug. Part of me wonders if he lied about not being able to teleport. What if he brings the knife straight to Viggo?
But I’m going to gamble on him. Carefully.
“Gullveig loves pretty things,” he explains as we head out, the knife concealed under his sweatshirt. “Especially gold.”
In the car, on the long ride back, he’s quiet for a while. Then he says, “You asked what I’d be doing if it weren’t for…all this.”
“Yeah.”
“I’d be home with my parents,” he says, “Getting ready for college in the fall. I had a little brother, he’s a freshman in high school now. I guess he grew up his whole life in the shadow of the missing brother… I read this newspaper interview.”
He stops and shakes off the obvious emotion that’s just come over him. “If Viggo never took me, it wouldn’t just be my life that would be different.”
I nod. “I know all about wishing life would be different. For the sake of the people you love.”
I tell him about my sister when he asks. I don’t have to hide my past anymore. I’m not ashamed.
“I’d love to use this on him myself,” he says, petting the blade, and I don’t think it’s just because of Gullveig that he strokes the gold-etched blade.
He’s asked so many times now if we really think we can pull this off, and he always laughs at the answers. He doesn’t believe us; he doesn’t want to hope.
But the way he looks out the window as we take the long, winding roads makes me think he’s starting to.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Izzy
At breakfast, Van comes in late. He drops his sword in the corner and heads for the table. “I need coffee.”
“Where have you been?” I ask.
He leans over my shoulder to plant a kiss on my lips instead of answering. I kiss him back, slowly, deepening this kiss. My hand slides up his powerful shoulder, up his neck--and catch his chiseled jaw between my fingers when he starts to pull away.
“I know when you’re up to something,” I chide him.
“I’m always up to something,” he says with a wink, which is probably the truest thing Van could say.
I’m grinning when I turn back to the table and see the look on Thea’s face--a mix of contempt and hatred and desire that all translates to one emotion: jealousy.
“I thought maybe you two could spend the day getting to know each other,” Mr. Time says.
“Oh?” Thea gives him a look I can’t read as she stirs her coffee lazily. “I’m surprised you’d want the two of us to do that.”
“You are sisters,” Mr. Time says. “You should get to know each other.”
“We should’ve grown up together,” Thea says, and there’s a fierce edge in her voice.
“Yes, we should have,” I agree, but I don’t want to imagine us growing up twisted in Viggo’s care. I want to imagine us together despite foster care. What would it have been like, moving from home to home but bringing my own family with me?
Or what if our mother had been able to keep us, to protect us?
Mr. Time ignores that. “I need a package picked up. Can you two attend to that for me?”
Thea gets that stunned look across her face--as if she can’t believe Mr. Time is going to send the two of us off together, as if we’re all Too Stupid to Live.
Mr. Time wants me to get her out of the house while they try to find the piece we need to alter the Taka cage. Most of all, I think he wants me to spend more time feeling her out.
And yes, she could betray me.
But if I’m careful, I don’t think she can best me. Neither does Mr. Time.
The conversation goes on around us as the guys tuck into breakfast. Thea seems to be picking at her eggs, pushing them around her plate.
“Not a big breakfast person?” I ask.
“Ha, no,” she says. “Viggo used to force us to eat, and I used to throw up breakfast during my training. Doesn’t really leave one with a lifelong love of the most important meal of the day.”
I stare at her, horrified, and she pulls a face. “I wonder what it would be like if we’d been together,” she says, echoing my thoughts earlier. “I wonder if you’d still be so perfect if your life hadn’t been so easy.”
I don't even know what to say to that. I don’t want to make anyone feel sorry for me, but I don't think my life has been easy by any stretch.
“Excuse me?” Wilder demands before I can figure out what to say. He stares at Thea. “Izzy’s life hasn’t exactly been easy. She grew up in foster care.”
“Comparatively, sounds like cake,” she says, raising her glass of orange juice, only to set it down untouched.
“Maybe comparatively it was,” I agree, because I have no idea what she’s been through. All the stories sound so awful.
But Wilder’s not having it. “When I first met Izzy, she always wore sweatshirts, even in the summer. And I was just a kid, so I didn’t get why she did. But she was taken out of that home because they were abusive.” He glances at me. “I was so scared I’d never see you again.”
“Me too,” I say.
“Worst of all for Izzy,” Van drawls, leaning back in his chair, “we were the closest thing she knew she had to family, and we’re a bunch of assholes.”
Reid smiles faintly. “Are you going to grovel forever about how we mishandled that night?”
I grin at that. I don’t mind if they do grovel, to be honest. They’re cute when they grovel.
“No one rescued me,” Thea snaps back. “And there were a lot more than bruises.”
“I’m sorry no one ever rescued you,” Wilder says. “I wish we could’ve helped somehow. I wish Mr. Time had found you...”
Mr. Time looks sad, but Thea asks, “Were you even looking?”
Her tone is barbed, and he hesitates before he admits, “No. I figured if I watched over you, it might reveal where you both were. I tried to hide the mark, and then your mother hid you away. That was all I could do.”
Thea scoffs, obviously not believing him. “Yeah, that was all you could do.” She stands abruptly from the table. “Ready, Izzy? Gods as bike messengers, picking up packages?”
“Ready,” I say, because I feel some strange sense of loyalty to my sister, so I leave my coffee unfinished and drop my napkin on the chair. She’s obviously in a rush to be out of here, away from all my men and from Mr. Time.
The two of us hop into a car, and I drive us to Mr. Time’s destination where we pick up a package from a mysterious woman.
“Do you like being the good girl?” Thea asks me. “Mr. Time seems to like you.”
There’s a stiffness in her jaw, and I wonder why that irritates her. After all, she doesn’t know that Mr. Time is our grandfather, does she? I want to tell her, but Mr. Time thinks she’s rotten at her core and, well, I worry what that will do to her.
I don’t think she’s rotten. Broken, maybe. But who wouldn’t be?
Do people really break so badly that they can’t heal, if they want to, if they’re loved?
I don’t know.
I have to laugh at her words, though. “I don’t know if I like being the good girl. I’ve been the villain in a whole lot of people’s stories up until now. No one wanted the gods to come back.”
She looks as if she’s about to say something snarky, and then suddenly she shoves me. “Look out!” she shouts, her eyes widening.
“This is Viggo’s doing,” she says. She suddenly has blades in both her hands. She looks at me with worry across her face. “Do you have a weapon?”
“I have Loki,” I promise her.
We’re supposed to keep our powers as much a secret as we can, but there’s no hiding what I can do now. The two of us close up on the monster. My heart pounds in my chest, not just because it’s terrifying, but because I’m trying to trust my sister to watch my back.
When Thea nods, I dive in and I knock its legs out from underneath it. She pounces on it with her blades. It throws her off and whirls on me.
I transform into a snake and slither underneath it, striking out with poisoned fangs. The monster screams and I slip out the other side of its legs, behind it, transforming already.
“Nice work,” Thea says approvingly, and a warm glow lights my chest at her words.
“We make a pretty good team,” I admit.
The monster falls, but it lashes out at me one last time. Huge claws fly my way.
But they don’t land, because Thea is there, protecting me.
She slams into the ground, deep wounds gouged into her chest. The monster falls to the ground and disintegrates into a hundred pieces, as if it were never there.
But my sister’s bloodied body tells another story. I kneel over her, horrified, my breath strangled in my chest. Then I gather up her body and teleport home.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Reid
I don’t know how I managed to fall asleep while I was working at my laptop, but I know I did because a familiar setting surrounds me. That of Hell. This place is different in so many ways than the legend, but maybe it’s only because I’m only seeing a part of it. The part Hel wants me to see. The earth is blackened and burned. A huge cliff stands before me, and I can hear the lapping of water far below. But the sky above… There is no sky, there’s just a darkness that seems to loom over us all. And yet, I can see perfectly in this place.
I am the ruler of the underworld, after all.
Hel is seated on a silver throne of bones. She looks out over the cliff, and I know she means for me to join her. I can’t help it, I do as she asks. And when I approach her, I can see the oily black waters rolling in and out on a shore of bones below.
Feeling uneasy, I sit beside her. She turns, and I can see both the half of her that looks almost inhumanely beautiful and the half of her where I can see bones and muscles beneath her skin.
“We need to talk.”
That’s never good. “About what?”
“All of Hell can feel you on the surface, and through you, me. Soon you will need to leave the surface world and return to Hell to rule it as we were intended to do. If you don’t, Hell will swell to the surface of your world, and you won’t like what happens when the souls of the damned are set free.”
“What?” I stare at her in shock. “That can’t really happen.”
She looks solemn. Sad even. “I can’t imagine you being happy here, away from the people you love, in the darkness and gloom, but it will happen, Reid. Because you won’t let the world suffer for your own happiness.” She turns away and stares out at the black waters. “You know the tale of Persephone? It was actually based on my love, Proserpina, and I never stole her away. She was the product of a monstrous god and a mortal woman. Even though many saw her as monstrous herself, her mother protected her only daughter. Until the mortals came for her. They burned down their home and chased them into the woods. I happened to be on the surface, and I saved them both. But Proserpina fell in love with me, and I with her, and yet I couldn’t force her to remain with me in the darkness forever. And so, she returned to the surface for part of the year and then returned to me the rest of the year.”
I don’t know what to say. “I guess…at least you had someone, but it doesn’t mean I have to stay down here.”
“Izzy and the others can visit you here, Reid. That’s what I was trying to say. You don’t need to lose them entirely, but soon you will need to lose the surface world. Except on rare occasions, this is where you belong. Staying here will protect the world from the creatures who would follow you.”
“But I’ve been safe this long…”
“Yes, because I’ve spent your dream hours with my soul here, calming my creatures, but I grow weaker inside of you. I can no longer keep making this journey. I am becoming just a shadow of the goddess I once was. And while it’s a relief for me, it changes things for you.”
My stomach churns, and my gaze moves to the bones on the shore. “I have to go here… I have to stay in this place? I’ll lose Aiden, Wilder, and Van? I’ll lose…Izzy?”
“Yes.” The word holds the same blow as shackles falling around my wrists.
And as much as it kills something inside of me, I believe her.
“How much longer do I have?”
She reaches over and takes my hand in her thin one. “I can give you until you deal with your enemies, I think.”
I let her hold my hand. It feels almost like a grandmother offering me reassurance as I die. “I don’t want the others to know. They’ll try and fight it.”
She’s quiet for a moment. “You and I are a good match. When they marked you, when I awakened inside of you, I wasn’t sure if you had the strength to be the god of Hell, but I’m sure now.”
Suddenly, my eyes flash open, and I realize I’m lying on my bed. My laptop is still open from where I was researching the gods and how to destroy them, and my phone is ringing. With hands that shake, I answer it.
It’s Van. “Izzy and Thea were attacked. Izzy is fine, but you might want to come down here.”
“Thanks,” I say, then hang up the phone.
Looking at the ceiling, I wrap my arms around myself. The day I became a god, I lost the future I had planned, my family, my freedom, and even my safety. But somehow, I’d grown to accept it, because I had Izzy now. And because our future plans would have sent all of us to different places, and this way, we were still together.
But now? Now I was going to lose Izzy and the guys forever. Because even though Hel said they could visit, I could never make them go to a place like that. If I didn’t want to be in Hell, they certainly wouldn’t want to either.
When the bad gods were dealt with, I would have to leave them all and say goodbye forever. There wasn’t another choice.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Izzy
“Thea got hurt protecting me,” I tell the guys.
They don’t look like they believe me. Aiden and Van exchange that look. Wilder’s mouth draws into a thin line, and no one rushes to help her as she settles on the couch, her wounds looking painful.
“Heal her,” I plead.
A minute later, Reid comes down the stairs. Something is off with him, I can tell by the paleness in his face and the tightness in his jaw. I make a mental note to ask him about it later, but I hold his gaze as he comes to stand next to the guys.
“Thea got hurt protecting me from one of Viggo’s creatures. Tell them we should heal her. We can trust her. We don’t need to hide our powers anymore.”
Reid releases a slow breath. “This doesn’t mean we can trust her…”
“She got hurt for me!” I say. Don’t they understand that? If she wanted me hurt, she could’ve just let that creature attack. Hell, she could’ve sided with it against me. “It attacked both of us. That has to prove that Viggo sees her as an enemy now.”
Reid and Aiden exchange a twin-look, which is annoying as hell. The two of them can have entire conversations with their eyebrows.
“If you want to say something, say it,” I snap.
Aiden doesn’t hesitate. “We can heal her, but this doesn’t mean we trust her.”
“Fine.” I glare at him. “But I do.”
Th
ea lifts a brow. “I don’t care what you guys do. I’ve had worse than this and not needed to be healed.”
Wilder sighs and goes to sit on the couch next to her. “Give me your hand.”
She looks surprised. “You’re Odin? Where’s your spear?”
“I can call it to me when I need it. Now, your hand.”
She holds it out stiffly, and he takes it. His eyes close, and he bows his head over her. A blue light pours from his hands, and as irritated as I am at the guys for not listening to me, for not trusting me about Thea, it’s amazing to see how quickly he works now. Her wounds slowly knit back together. The blood stops, and the pained look on her face vanishes. When he draws his hands back, he looks every bit the powerful god.
I go to him and plant a kiss on his lips. “Thank you.”
And he pulls me gently into his lap. “You know I’d do anything for you.”
Thea scoffs beside us. “This whole white knights and damsel in distress thing is getting old, you know that right? You guys fawning over her, being all gentle like she’s something fragile, it makes me sick. I know damn well if it isn’t an act for me, then it’s an act for Izzy. Guys aren’t like this.”
“Like what?” Izzy asks with a frown.
“Well, Barret loves me, but he doesn’t just do as I ask, or touch me like I’m something fragile. He’s a man. He takes what he wants and no one stops him.”
“He sounds like an asshole,” Van says, frowning. “Taking what you want isn’t a guy thing, it’s the mark of a guy who thinks women are objects to use or throw away.”
“Oh, and you see the princess so different,” she throws at him.
Van steps forward and points a finger at her. “Don’t talk about Izzy like that. I know it makes it easier for you, more black and white, to see her as having lived this awesome life, and you as the one with the hard life. But guess what? Life isn’t black and white. Sometimes you have a shitty situation, and so do other people, so you can’t justify acting like an ass because you had it so much harder. Get over yourself.”
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