by Lizzy Ford
Sammy took a second swing at the demon.
Trayern snatched the bat before it reached him, glaring at the blond kickboxer who was preparing to pummel him. Trayern yanked the bat away from Sammy.
“Stop!” Stephanie managed.
But Trayern had already retreated and taken two steps away.
Stephanie was too upset to bother asking why her guard demon didn’t attack when he had no reason to spare her sister. Instead, she darted between them.
“Back off!” she warned Trayern.
The demon flung the bat away.
“Holy shit you almost gave me a heart attack! Sammy, you can’t just …” Stephanie sighed and faced her sister. “There are too many dangers for you to go around smashing things.”
“I’ve been worried sick about you!” Sammy exclaimed.
Stephanie hugged her hard. “I know. I promise, when I can, I’ll explain everything.”
Sammy hugged her back. “Mom came to visit.” A note of disbelief was in her voice. “What the hell is going on, Steph? I thought I was starting to understand things, but after her visit … is any of this real?”
Stephanie laughed. “Yeah. It is. I’ll tell you everything.” She pulled away from the sister who shared Stephanie’s almost six-foot height. “Promise me you won’t go around trying to smash anyone else’s head in!”
“I can take care of myself.”
“I know you can. Just … wait for me to fill you in before you do anything else crazy, okay?” Stephanie asked, smiling at her fiery sister.
“For now,” Sammy allowed.
“I have to go. But I’ll explain everything when I can.” Stephanie stepped away from her. “Be good, Sammy.”
Her sister lifted an eyebrow and planted her hands on her hips.
Praying her sister listened for once, Stephanie shook her head and turned to Trayern.
“I’m ready,” she said.
His gaze was past her, on Sammy. Blood streamed from his temple down his face and dripped off his jaw.
“How is it my family members always catch you off guard?” Stephanie asked, unable to help her satisfaction at the idea her sister had beaten up the demon driving her crazy.
Trayern’s focus shifted to her. “Want me to make a snack out of your sister, Immortal?” he returned.
“If you go near her, I’ll kill you, assuming she doesn’t do it first!”
“I prefer my food to fight me.”
“Just call a portal!”
Trayern complied, and they stepped through into the place-between-places.
The moment they were out of the Sanctuary, and away from her sister, Stephanie released her breath. Her mind returned to the much bigger issue of Wynn. Now that she knew the truth, what did she do about it? Wynn did nothing accidentally. The more she thought about why he wanted her to know, the darker her thoughts became.
He’d reveal his plan only if it was too late to stop him.
She was always too late.
Trayern opened a portal. They left the Sanctuary and returned to her chamber in the castle.
Stephanie stood in the middle of her chamber, pensive. Her grim train of thought made it impossible to sleep. After a moment where dread and panic dueled within her, she summoned the only person who could fill her in on the details the Oracle hadn’t revealed.
“I’m inviting a visitor,” she said, glancing at Trayern. “Don’t murder her.”
The demon rolled his eyes.
“Deidre,” she murmured, picturing Past-Death rather than her twin, who was Darkyn’s mate.
Seconds later, a woman spoke from behind her. “I’m not supposed to leave the Underworld,” the small, former-deity said. “But you can come here.”
Stephanie faced her. This marked only their second interaction in their history. Past-Death remained in the place-between-places.
Trailed by Trayern, Stephanie joined her.
“It’s important. I know,” Past-Death said with the uncanny insight of a deity.
Stephanie joined her and leaned against the railing. “How bad is it?” she asked.
“Bad.” With the regal carriage of a goddess, and the warmth of a human, Deidre smiled.
“You knew.”
“We were sworn to secrecy. Everyone involved had hoped Wynn wouldn’t recall who he was this life,” she explained. “And … no deity will ever turn down leverage, which secrets give.”
“I’m figuring that out,” Stephanie responded. “The Oracle showed me pieces, enough for me to realize we’re in trouble.”
“I inherited my position from my father. He was Death long before I existed. He would barely speak of Wynn and what they’d done, except to say it required every deity in existence to stop him,” Deidre said. “Trust me when I say, if every deity in existence agreed on something, it meant all their lives were at stake. Deities by their very natures are distrusting, solitary and manipulative.”
“Wynn tried to recover his power, and you and Fate put him down,” Stephanie murmured.
“With a great deal of effort. For Wynn to return to what he was, he must have a favor from each deity in existence. He was close at that point, but he didn’t have the favors of the newest of the gods, whom he didn’t know existed. We managed to stop him, but it took a great deal of effort and expended much of the good will and favors your mate and I had built up with our respective networks of deity allies,” Deidre said. “Unfortunately, we couldn’t strip the favors he’d been collecting. They returned with him this round, though we managed to weaken him.”
“How close is he to having what he needs?” Stephanie asked, fear churning in her stomach.
“I’d say within one or two,” Deidre responded. “It wouldn’t surprise me to discover it was one, and Karma’s is the final favor.”
“Oh, god. Can’t he give himself his own favor, since he’s her mate?”
“No deity’s mate can give a favor to him or herself. He has to deal with Karma directly.”
Stephanie’s mind raced.
“She’s a new deity, born to Fate and Justice. Her power manifested a thousand years ago. It happens from time to time that a new duty and deity are created,” Deidre explained. “Her brother threw her in my dungeon early on in her life. There was enough of a gap between Wynn’s first and second Immortal lives for him not to know she existed before Fate and I rendered him dead-dead again.”
Wynn wouldn’t speak of his relationship with Karma, but it was clearly a sensitive topic, or he wouldn’t snarl every time Karma’s name was brought up. Wynn wasn’t the kind of person to sit back when he wanted something, and Karma was too emotional for Stephanie to guess what the goddess would do, if she fancied herself in love with anyone. All heart, without any impulse control, Karma would likely throw herself fully into whatever it was she did, including a relationship with Wynn.
“I sense there’s a great deal of irony in their pairing for more than one reason,” Stephanie said. Her thoughts were on Karma and how Fate’s sister would react once she discovered she’d been used or worse, if she granted Wynn the favor because she cared about him and discovered his real purpose. Her wrath would be as bad as Wynn’s, if he recovered his ability. “It can end only in tragedy.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. I don’t have the foresight, and your mate would never reveal what he knew of the Future to anyone.”
“He had to have Seen something,” Stephanie said. “He warned me about the Immortals falling into a civil war. I’m not confident that won’t still happen, given Wynn’s leadership tactics. If he became, or tried to become, a deity, I imagine the society would fall apart.”
“Unless he put you in charge first,” Deidre said.
Cold shot through Stephanie. “It has nothing to do with him believing I’ll be a good leader. He needs a puppet to fill his place.”
“If that were true, he’d choose one of your brothers. Wynn is complicated, but what I can guarantee you is that he takes his duty and devotion to the greater good s
eriously. I believe he and Karma are much better matched than anyone else will admit. Wynn has spent two lifetimes maintaining the scales among demons, Immortals and deities. Karma balances an individual; Wynn maintains the whole. They complement each other.”
“Assuming he doesn’t destroy everything.”
“In any case, he wouldn’t put you in charge if he didn’t believe you were the best fit.”
It was difficult for Stephanie to know what to believe anymore. “He wanted me to know. I’m assuming that means he can’t be stopped.”
“Or he wanted you to be prepared to take over sooner rather than later.”
“I’m definitely not ready for any scenario involving my father becoming the god of Wisdom.”
Deidre smiled again. “Sometimes we are asked to step up to the plate before we’re ready. You can do it. Fate believes in you, too.”
Stephanie managed to smile. “I miss him.”
“His exile will be over soon.”
They were both quiet for a long moment.
“I have to go,” Deidre said. “Gabe will freak out if he finds out I’m gone.” She grinned, leaving Stephanie with the impression the tiny former goddess liked to cause trouble for her mate.
Past-Death left through the gray doorway.
Stephanie returned to her chamber and crossed to the balcony. The sense of doom returned as she sought some solution to the issue of Wynn. She was somewhat relieved to realize she wasn’t the first person stuck with the problem, and likely wouldn’t be the last. In the end, she decided to talk to her oldest brother, whose steady wisdom and steadier presence could help her brainstorm about what exactly they were going to do.
Unable to determine any course of action except to do what Wynn wanted, Stephanie turned away from the railing and gasped.
“Jesus, Trayern! Can’t you give me any breathing room?”
He hovered two feet from her. “Can’t spy on you if I can’t hear you.”
“You overheard everything, I take it.”
He gave a chilling smile.
She was going to have to learn to deal with Darkyn soon, if she wanted to have any chance at leading without his immediate interference.
Twenty-Four
The former god Wisdom hadn’t recalled his life as a deity when he was resurrected as an Immortal the first time. He awoke with no memory of his childhood or how he came to be where he was. He was alone, lost – but never in any of his lives had he been weak. He found his place among the Immortals and within a century, was leading one of the clans. Any question about who he had been, or where he came from, vanished in the face of his duty and in his skill at manipulating those around him.
Wynn discovered the secret of his true origins in his first confrontation with Past-Fate. Past-Fate, the god who conspired to condemn and killed Wisdom, and the father of the deity who helped murder Wynn the second time, had betrayed the truth he and others had attempted to erase from all the histories and records of the worlds.
Past-Fate’s fear was so loud in Wynn’s mind, he wasn’t able to rest until he uncovered the full story of who he had been. The deity Wisdom, categorized as an Unseen god, had existed shortly before the time-before-time ended and crossed over into the next era, when time began.
The connection between Wynn and the lost god had been instant. His unusual knack for secrets, for manipulation, and for reading meaning behind and between words suddenly made sense. He was performing a similar role among the Immortals without the extent of the power he’d once possessed.
Ironically, information about Wisdom was scarce to the point of non-existent. The god had been wiped out of every record, memory, and oral history. Aside from the god’s identity, nothing remained of who he had been, which was, in and of itself, an indication of what he’d been. Wynn didn’t have to imagine how powerful Wisdom had been, even if considered retired by the deity corps. If it took every deity in existence to stop him, he’d been invincible – or close to it – before all traces of him were eliminated. What kind of god warranted such treatment?
The strongest of them all.
Throughout his first Immortal life, Wynn collected the breadcrumbs about who he had been. The source of most of his knowledge came from an unexpected direction: Hell, which possessed the only other Oracle in existence. It had taken a great deal of time and favors to bargain his way into Hell to speak to their Oracle. But the journey was worth it; the Oracle told him what no other deity or Immortal could or would – to include how his power had been stripped in the first place.
After everything he learned, Wynn had determined the only way to return to his power was by the same method used to strip it away from him.
He needed every deity in existence to agree to it.
Or, knowing they’d refuse, a favor from every deity in existence he could use to extort their agreement.
He began collecting favors midway through his first Immortal life. He sought out the Unseen, the Seen, the lost gods who – like him – had been scraped from the memories of all but a handful of deities and historical records. Meanwhile, he served the purpose he was compelled toward. His need to balance the worlds, to protect Immortals and humans, and to prevent any single race from overwhelming the others became his primary purpose in his first Immortal life.
He’d never been able to determine if this ambition, and his ability to heal, were part of who he had been as a god – or something programmed into him by none other than Past-Fate, who would’ve Seen the many chains-of-events Wynn would become entangled in.
Whatever caused him to be who he was, Wynn had never been able to resist his calling and never failed at what he did. He was the sole reason the Immortals and humans existed.
During that first Immortal life, Wynn had massacred entire clans and faced off against deities with the power to crush him and everything he worked towards. He’d brought together the entirety of the Immortal world, and safeguarded humanity for so long, no one could remember a time when the race of lesser beings hadn’t been expected to survive. He’d manipulated more deities than anyone knew existed, and he’d prevented the Dark One from taking the human world during the first breach. He’d mastered the game of deities, destroyed resistance to unity among the Immortals, provided a haven for humans and even managed to make the heavyweight gods – Death and the Dark One – think twice before crossing him.
He’d then tried to reclaim his title and status as a god. Fate and Past-Death had stopped him when he began cashing in the favors. He was murdered by the children of the gods who killed him the first time.
He’d planned for this as well and made a complex deal with Past-Death, along with a few others, to return as an Immortal once it was over. He’d always considered his mental prowess to be the reason this plan worked. Anymore, however, he suspected they’d known something he didn’t, namely, he was needed in the role he’d mastered, as the balancer of the worlds and races. If they had no need for him, they never would’ve agreed.
In hindsight, he began to think he’d let arrogance dictate his agreements during those final days.
He also began to understand Past-Fate and Fate had acted as much from the need to stop a power hungry former deity as for a more personal reason – because they had Seen the identity of Wynn’s mate, if he were allowed to live. He didn’t put it past either god to risk the worlds falling into chaos, if it meant Karma was safe from Wynn. As much as Past-Fate and Fate professed to respect free will, they were shrewd enough to tinker with the Future when it suited them.
His efforts, on the grander scale, boiled down to combinations of violence, brilliance, foresight, a few favors, the power to heal, hundreds of secrets, unshakeable will and the ruthless goal of acting for the greater good, no matter what the cost to anyone involved. When he viewed his life from this perspective, he hadn’t done much at all but been in the right place, at the right time, and said the right words for the right ears to hear.
Karma had boiled his life down to an even simpler pers
pective – one he hadn’t considered.
Words. That’s all he did, all he was, all his power consisted of. Just words. Wynn had managed to play the role of Wisdom with none of the power associated with a god. It was simple on the surface – and infinitely complex beneath.
He smiled, darkly amused by the dual nature of power.
Ruminating over his history, Wynn stood by the lake near the castle. The breach between the Underworld and human world had appeared within the lake, not far from the second breach between Hell and the human world. The Underworld breach had threatened the existence of all the worlds instead of the human one alone. He’d help finish healing these breaches as well.
Of all he’d done, seen and experienced, the hardest action he’d ever taken was not to return to his chamber when he knew Karma was going to be there.
Wynn had come here, to the lake, for the second night in a row, far enough away he couldn’t return in time to see her, if he lost the battle in his mind. He’d never experienced inner conflict to this level before. He’d never had to outsmart himself or fear he was going to lose his focus and abandon his goals for the sake of a woman who wreaked havoc on his life.
He’d given her his autobiography for the sole purpose that he wanted her to betray him, because he needed the motivation to stay focused on what really mattered. It was easier to put distance between them when he had a reason for that distance.
He wasn’t counting on the depth of his sorrow, though, at the idea of losing the first partner and lover he wanted to share his life with. Whether or not she betrayed him, he lost, and it was this realization that drove the fissures around his heart to shatter into something that left him reeling.
Pain. It wasn’t physical or mental, but somehow, it managed to cripple both his body and mind. All his power, focused on himself, could not heal the anguish thrumming through him.
He hadn’t just needed her to betray him – he hoped she would and prayed she’d learn to stay away from him. He needed her to hate him long enough for him to regain his power and end the mating rite skewing his judgment and consuming his soul. He couldn’t bring himself to evaluate if it was possible. He needed it to be true, like he needed to be by the lake to prevent himself from failing to follow through with the plan he’d made during his first Immortal life.