by Lizzy Ford
“I’d rather protect than love.”
“Then you’re missing the point of family and a mate.”
“I didn’t ask for either.”
“Neither did I! But I will protect and love, whether or not you’re willing to do the same!” she shouted. “I want to be with you. But not if you see me as a weakness instead of your partner.”
He was silent.
Karma gave a frustrated sound. “Whatever. Since you don’t give a shit, maybe I should take your book to Raphael and let the two of you sort it out.”
“Do it.” The quiet dare was spoken with a lethal edge, and a flare of something she couldn’t read in his eyes.
“Would you turn it over to him, if this was about me?” She lifted the book into the air.
“Yes.”
Karma summoned a portal, leaving without another word. She paused in the place-between-places and studied the journal once more.
He gave it to her, believing she’d turn it over to Raphael. She wanted to – gods, she did after their conversation! – but … it was about her mate, the man she was sworn to protect by codes older than time and every deity in existence. This diary was important enough for Raphael to offer to help her when no one else would, important enough for Wynn to place spells on it.
Wynn had offered it up on a silver platter and unlocked it for anyone to read.
She held Wynn’s secrets, and possibly his life, in her hands. Did he really think she could turn it over to someone who wanted to hurt him? He claimed he would but … she wasn’t like him. She didn’t regard the lives of those closest to her with the same indifference. She didn’t use people. If that was what deities were supposed to do, then she was the worst deity who ever existed.
Some part of her was devastated by his rejection. She didn’t understand how someone she’d known for a few weeks could crush her with a few words.
Karma couldn’t bring herself to summon Raphael. She had two more days before he expected her to deliver it.
Her curiosity, and the protective instinct she didn’t want to feel for her mate, were stronger than her desire to deal with the head of the guardian angels at this moment. Perhaps, if she read the book, she could better determine if she should turn it over to Raphael.
She went to the Immortal plane, to one of the many places she visited often, a mercury pond hidden in a forest of black trees beside which was a rock where she sat. The night sky was sprinkled with stars and a large moon, the forest quiet, her surroundings as serene as she was not. In the distance, the dome over Hell glowed in one direction and the dome over the Underworld in the other. Several shifting continents and bodies of liquid of various kinds stretched between the domains of the two most powerful deities. Creatures never before imagined by humans inhabited the seas and lakes, and the Immortals who had chosen not to live in the human world lived on the continents.
Karma turned over the diary in her hands several times, conflicted. She didn’t feel right about giving it to Raphael, but neither did she feel as if she should read it.
Or maybe I’m afraid to. Not because she feared what was between the pages, but because she might understand the man himself. Wynn already had the upper hand when it came to the emotions between them. He had come close to losing control with her in bed, but out of bed, he was cold and calm. If he felt a fraction of what she did, how could he not show anything? She wasn’t capable of holding what she felt in at all!
Maybe he doesn’t feel anything for me. She hadn’t wanted to consider this, but after their exchange, she began to believe it was possible for the mating bond to be stronger for one of those trapped by it than for the other. Nothing else made sense.
With her instincts warning her against reading the journal, in case she strengthened the unwanted connection with him, Karma opened the front cover. Moonlight illuminated the first page.
* * *
I have gone by many names. Of them all, Wynn is my preference.
* * *
With the first sentence, Karma was sucked into the autobiography. She read until dawn, when she finished the journal and then started over.
She read it three times and then set it on the rock in front of her. Her instincts had tried to tell her reading it would only make her life harder. As usual, she’d ignored them and obeyed her impulses instead. Normally, she didn’t care about the consequences.
For the first time in her life, she wished she’d listened to the little voice inside her. If she felt powerless in Wynn’s presence, she was helplessly and hopelessly his after reading the journal.
She sat in silence, numbed from what she’d learned about the very real man behind the cold façade. She’d been right about everything she said to him, everything she’d seen in his soul. She warred with herself about what to do next. She understood why Raphael, or any deity, would try to obtain the tome.
If she gave it to Raphael, he’d help her. Wasn’t that all that mattered? Freeing her brother from Darkyn?
Context. Andre had stressed understanding what was beyond the surface, and if her actions would create greater good or bad.
Karma chewed on her lower lip, hating that she hesitated, hating that she couldn’t in good conscience turn Wynn’s private thoughts and history over to anyone. She stood. A full day had passed during which she read and reread and reread. The moon reflected off the mirror-like surface of the pond.
She glanced at the book in her hand then at the mercury pond.
There was no instinct telling her what to do, only her impulses. Did that mean her gut agreed with her? Or had her instinct for self-preservation given up on her?
I’m nothing like him, she thought. She wouldn’t hurt her mate if given the chance, and she’d never consider him a liability, even if he couldn’t say the same about her, even if he never loved her or considered her his equal.
Karma knelt at the edge of the rock. She tore the covers off the journal and tossed them into the water. She ripped pages two at a time from the interior and shredded them into the tiniest pieces she could before tossing them into the pond as well.
When she was finished, she sat back and watched the pieces float across the mirror.
“I can’t be like them,” she whispered to the night. “I can’t manipulate and lie. I balance people, because they need it. I don’t hurt them because I can. I can’t dismiss those I care about from my life.”
Raphael was no longer an option to help her. She’d have to find someone else – or revert to the method she knew best. She could bully deities into doing what she wanted. Playing by anyone else’s rules was breaking her heart.
Fuck you, Wynn, she thought
As much as she tried, she couldn’t dismiss the story he’d conveyed with his usual eloquence.
When the last pieces floated away, she sat back. It was time for her to make an appearance in his chamber.
Torn between anger and understanding, Karma strode through the place-between-places into Wynn’s chamber. She expected him to be where he was the night before, waiting for her near the hearth.
The lights were on, the doors to the balcony open, but he wasn’t present.
Karma looked around. Was she relieved or disturbed he hadn’t bothered to show up? She paced to the balcony and breathed in the fresh, chilled night air laden with the scent of pine trees.
She waited for a few minutes. Wynn was too deliberate in everything he did for his absence to mean anything other than he didn’t intend to meet her this night.
She’d wanted to see him, not just because of their bond, but because of all she’d read in his short autobiography.
She was ready to cross the line, to give him whatever he wanted.
But he wasn’t interested in her.
She left, devastated by the realization she had been compelled to him, and he would never feel the same.
None of my movies ended like this, she thought sadly.
Twenty-Three
“Wynn, I’d like to visit my family,” Steph
anie said. She’d played the good girl and shadowed him for her second day of court, meetings, and going over administrative shit. “I may not have the chance once we transition.”
Their family dinner was calmer than the recent dinner party and soiree. Rhyn and Kiki were present, quiet and brooding. Wynn appeared distracted.
“Just for fifteen minutes,” Stephanie added at Wynn’s silence. “I’ll go there and come straight back. No deviations.”
Wynn’s look was penetrating, and she suspected he had already figured out that the reason behind her request to return to the Sanctuary wasn’t entirely to visit her sister. Stephanie prepared herself to be disappointed.
“Maybe it’s for the best,” he answered.
She returned her gaze to her food and cleared her throat. She didn’t dare ask what was for the best, because she doubted it had anything to do with her visiting Sammy.
“You can go now.” Wynn motioned to Trayern. “Portal.”
She stood without hesitation and glanced towards her demon guardian. Mithra hadn’t yet found his way to the dining room. Trayern pushed himself away from the wall he leaned against.
Stephanie joined the surly demon, who opened a portal. “What was that you said about not being my bitch?” she whispered.
He gnashed his teeth at her and strode into the place-between-places. Stephanie followed. The demon stepped aside and she went to the yellow portal beckoning her.
It was afternoon in the Caribbean Sanctuary, a place where demons, deities and Immortals alike were forbidden to use magic. Most of them were forbidden to enter the fortress, and the Sanctuary often acted as neutral ground for tense negotiations among the major races.
Trayern observed the stone walls of the fortress in front of them.
“You can’t enter, can you?” she asked hopefully.
“I’m not supposed to enter,” he replied, striking eyes shifting to her. “But something tells me we’re not here to visit your sister.”
“It’s none of your business what I do behind those walls.” She started away.
Trayern snatched her arm. “Fifteen minutes. I will find you if you’re a second late.”
Stephanie wrenched away and ran to the wooden door leading into the fortress. As if expecting her, one of the nuns who managed the sacred sanctuary opened it before she reached it.
Stephanie waited until the door closed behind her. “I need to see the Oracle,” she said.
The nun nodded and led her through the breezy corridors lined with wooden doors to the single tower facing east. They climbed the winding stairs to the single room at the top. The nun left Stephanie at the door.
Heart pounding, Stephanie entered the plain room where the Oracle existed.
A massive book sat on a pedestal near the window in the small room. Words scrolled across the pages, written by an unseen hand belonging to the Oracle who possessed the book. She recorded the Present as it happened, safeguarded the Past, and often predicted events in the near-Future.
Stephanie went to the book. “Hello, again,” she said awkwardly. The idea someone was trapped in the book for all eternity had never sat well with her. “I don’t know what you can show me, but I need to see something about Wynn.”
The Oracle flipped back the pages to a point in the Past. Images sprang up from the pages. Stephanie braced herself, recalling the first time she’d visited, when she’d been reduced to tears witnessing a fraction of the responsibility Fate possessed.
Fortunately, a single image appeared.
Wynn. The happenings and people around him were fuzzy, as if the Oracle didn’t want to give her the entire picture. But he wasn’t alone, and he wasn’t an Immortal.
The air around Wynn shimmered with the ethereal glow that separated deities from Immortals.
“What the hell?” Stephanie murmured, squinting at what happened around him to try to make sense of it.
Three forms emerged from the fog, none of whom she recognized.
Fate. Death. Mercy.
How the Oracle conveyed their identities, she didn’t know. Or perhaps, it was the dormant power of a goddess in her blood she’d inherited from her mother.
They appeared to be confronting Wynn, whose godly identity didn’t whisper to her like the others did.
Unseen. This, too, was knowledge Stephanie had no way of knowing.
Wynn was one of the Unseen. There was no sound to the images, and Stephanie struggled to understand what happened.
The three confronted Wynn. More shapes appeared out of the fog, hundreds of gods and goddesses who shimmered, but whose faces were hidden. They surrounded Wynn, moving towards him steadily. He disappeared into their midst. The deities dematerialized like fog and drifted away, leaving Wynn’s body alone in a location she couldn’t see clearly enough to identify.
Fate, Death, and Mercy remained. One by one, they knelt and touched him. Death took his soul and turned it from the purple soul of a deity into the green belonging to Immortals and humans. He replaced the soul, and the three of them stepped away.
The images faded.
“Wynn was a god. All the deities came together and killed him? Stripped him of his godhood?” She puzzled over the images. “Then they brought him back as an Immortal. That’s a hell of a lot of trouble for one god. I thought Unseen deities were useless or retired.”
A soft whisper emerged in her mind.
Wisdom.
Stephanie’s eyebrows shot up. “That makes too much sense.” What would it mean if Wynn knew everything? Not just secrets and fears, which he did now, but everything? With his ambition, he’d become omniscient and omnipotent.
It was a damned good reason for the deities to strip him of his power. Was Mercy the reason he was brought back as an Immortal? Or did Wynn serve a greater purpose?
Balance.
Stephanie drew the same conclusion the moment the Oracle spoke to her. Wynn was all that stood between demons and humans, and his maneuvering protected Immortals and humans alike from power hungry, manipulative deities, like he used to be. His gift of healing meant the breaches between the planes remained sealed. Likewise, he could mend – or sever – the good will and balance that existed among the different races of all the worlds.
“He was meant to serve the greater good,” she murmured. “No wonder he’s so damned obsessed. Did he tell you to show me all this?”
The Oracle’s pages flipped forward in time and stopped once again on another image of Wynn.
She recognized Past-Death and her Fate confronting Wynn. A dozen other deities hovered in the fog of the background.
Wynn was starting to shimmer, pulling power from the deities in the distance.
Past-Death and Fate came between him and the power he collected.
“He wanted his power back. They killed him again and brought him back even weaker.” Stephanie shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “If you’re showing me this, you need me to know. Because I’m connected to Fate?”
No answer came, but she didn’t need one. With Fate out of the picture, there was no one to alter the course of whatever Wynn was planning, no one to ensure one of the sacred bonds of the deities remained in play. Stephanie didn’t have to witness the images to understand what Wynn’s goal probably was.
How helpless did her mate feel, knowing he couldn’t interfere with the chains-of-events required to stop Wynn?
Can I? She asked herself.
The Oracle didn’t respond.
“He’s never stopped plotting to return to who he was,” she whispered. “Why would he want me to know this?”
The Oracle whisked the images away and returned to the Present, where she recorded events as they occurred.
Stephanie stepped away. She’d come for the single purpose of learning more about Wynn. He hadn’t tried to stop her. Was it because he knew no one could interfere in his plan this time? Had he known the full extent of what the Oracle would show her?
If Wynn could manipulate deities, demons a
nd Immortals using their secrets, what could he do if he knew everything?
Stephanie didn’t want to imagine any world where he had absolute power.
“Immortal!” Trayern’s shout came from the courtyard.
Stephanie went to the window and peered out.
The nuns were gathering near the demon, who was tense and didn’t appear ready to leave any time soon.
“I’m coming!” Stephanie shouted.
She ran out of the room and down the stairs, not wanting Trayern to hurt anyone.
The demon was growling at the nuns.
“Stop scaring them!” Stephanie snapped. She faced the nun who had escorted her. “Daniela, I think? Thank you for your help.”
“My pleasure. When you see your mate again, let him know I’ve missed his visits.” She signaled for the other nuns to leave. They filed out of the courtyard quietly.
I have, too, Stephanie thought with no small amount of sorrow. She shook her head, temporarily stuck in her emotions.
“I will,” she promised. “Is my sister – “
The sound of a bat smashing into something hard came from a short distance away. Stephanie and Daniela both whirled.
Eyes blazing, Sammy stood ready to hit Trayern again. He had staggered back from her first blow, stunned, and held a bloody hand to the side of his head.
“Are you okay, Stephie?” Sammy called. “That thing is a demon!”
Stephanie stared, too surprised to react.
“Daniela says you have to kill or run from a demon, and I’m not about to run!” Sammy said.
Fear flooded through Stephanie at thought of Trayern slaughtering her sister, and an image of what had happened to Olivia flashed through her mind. She was safe from Trayern because of a deal her mate had made, and because Mithra assured it.
But Sammy?
Her sister raised the bat to hit Trayern again.
“Sammy, don’t –” Stephanie shouted.