Latham tilts his head to look at me from the corner of his eye.
“No. The inhabitants of these realms are one of several things—newcomers, those who pass on to the afterlife, gods like Torben, creatures born here like Aric, or the offspring of gods, like myself.”
“What category does my mother fall into?” And what category do I fall into for that matter?
Latham shakes his head, his inky locks fanning across his eyes as he scans our surroundings.
“I don’t know. I’d never met your mother until the day I left here with orders to retrieve you.”
It occurs to me then that Latham is the informed one of the bunch. And even he isn’t well informed about me…
What kind of twisted secrets was my mother hiding?
A wave of heat washes through the air, and I barely collide into Aric to avoid the splashing of the river. The breath in my lungs shudders, and I try hard to focus on the information I’ve just been given.
My mother is an inhabitant of Hell. Possibly a goddess, more likely a creature. A reckless wolf like me perhaps…
“If Torben is a god, why is he in Hell?”
Aric chuckles as he wipes a hand down his face to stop the sweat that’s beading against his forehead.
“It’s not like the fairy tales of gods or goddesses that you’re familiar with.” Aric slides his attention to me, and his humor seems distracted as his gaze travels from my eyes to my lips… to the sweat soaked shirt that’s now clinging to my breasts. “Gods aren’t always good. Even the good ones aren’t very good,” he whispers with a shake of his head. “The bad guys don’t walk around with pitchforks and pointed tails. Hell is ruled by gods, and just like in real life, it’s impossible to see which ones are the good guys and which ones are the bad.”
That information is a bit harder to process. Because it means my mother might belong in Hell for a reason. She might be evil…
But Latham’s from Hell and he isn’t evil.
And Aric… well… maybe I should just stick to the example of Latham for now.
A single deserted tree stands tall up ahead. It’s the first one I’ve seen, and it splays out against the red horizon like a skeleton greeting us with open arms. Not a single leaf adorns the white limbs that line the trunk like the shattered lines of a cracked window. It feels ominous in a simplistic way.
It’s just a tree.
Nothing more.
A cawing strikes through the quiet and I leap at the sound of it. My shoulder jostles into Latham’s, and his warm hand instantly covers mine.
“It’s just a hell hawk,” he tells me.
I squint at the blushing sky to see a creature resting on the lowest bony limb of the tree. Its inky feathers are sleek and natural, but the blood-red eyes looking back at me are not.
It’s just a hell hawk. Totally normal.
I can'’t even make eye contact with the thing.
We carry on, following the path of the riverside, but it unnerves me to walk beneath the clawing branches of the dead tree. Those hellacious eyes burn against my face as I walk as casually as possible beneath the creature.
“Hate birds,” Aric murmurs.
“I thought dragons hated mice.” Latham looks up at the demonic thing, and he’s the only one who has the balls to make eye contact.
“Dragons hate all the darting little beasts. Too fast to track and nefarious as hell. Fucking monsters is what they are.” He shakes his head hard, and I note how much he’s slumped down at his shoulders as we slip under the watchful red eyes following us.
A loud squawking shrieks out at us. It sounds like the sky is falling and a hailstorm of satanic birds are raining down on us. Aric snatches my hand in his and drags me away. His boot catches on a twisting tree root. He staggers and takes me down with him, and we land in a cloud of dust with my legs sprawled between his. My fingers dig into his shirt as he sits up, lifting me against him to see the destruction that must have happened.
Except… only uncontrollable laughter echoes in the wake of the chaos.
Latham still stands just a foot away from the bird. His smile is so broad a sweet dimple peeks out against his cheek as an unfiltered chuckle rumbles out of him while we lay sprawled in a tangle of limbs in the dirt.
