“As I once told you, my fearless one, I know you far better than you might think. I’m aware how futile it would be to try tochange your mind,” she says softly. “I also know what you wish to ask next.”
I ask anyway. “Why did Arati call me your secret earlier?”
Galene speaks slowly, as if she’s not sure how to break more news. “You are my secret because I am the reason you came to be.”
Remembering Iker Del Mar’s words about my existence being orchestrated, I make some quick deductions and take a stab at it.
“Let me guess. Once you realized the Immortal Quintet sacrificed humans to suffer like animals in the Nether, you looked into the future and decided that the way to fix it was by sending me into the Nether.”
Galene gives me a sad, almostguiltysmile. “Not quite. The truth is, I foresaw you long before the Immortal Quintet. You see…it was my fault that Amadeus conquered and corrupted the Nether in the first place. He was one of my chosen saints, back in his mortal days long ago.”
I pause to stare at her as that sinks in. I suppose if Amadeus got his abilities from Galene, the goddess of prophecy, that does explain his foresight.
But Amadeus being a saint, even when he was human? That’s…
“Hard to believe now,” the goddess agrees quietly. She looks away as if she’s looking back through time. Millennia ago, the Nether teemed with life. It was the land of the fae and of wild magic, and though it could be dangerous for humans because of the monsters there, those monsters mostly kept to themselves and caused no harm. I often descended from Paradise to admire that land. That is where I met Amadeus, in one of my temples that the fae had built. He was a pure soul then, one who desired little more than having a family of his own one day.”
Her expression darkens as she looks back at me in this memory. “They call me The Knowing, but I am not omniscient. I cannot see everything at all times. I thought Amadeus admired me just as any mortal revered the gods. But after nearly two decades serving as my saint, his worship of me grew strange. Lewd. I realized he desired me, and nothing would deter him from believing he deserved a place at my side in Paradise.”
She gestures around us at the ridiculously beautiful woods as we begin walking again. Fairies flit about through the treetops, and constellations continue to dance in the perfect sky overhead. It smells like crisp fall woods, but the temperature remains perfect.
I want to hate it here, but I can't stop staring when a herd of pure white deer amble across the path ahead of us. They're followed by two giggling girls who look like they're literally made of leaves and wood. They bow when they see us before skipping away, holding hands.
“Dryads,” Galene supplies, running her hand over tall golden ferns as we pass them. “You’re right that it is easy to love Paradise. In fact, I can see a future of you finding a form of happiness here, far in the future, if you decide to stay.”
Not interested.
“You were just about to tell me how you rejected Amadeus. Let me guess. He didn’t take it well and retaliated by becoming the king of the Undead,” I muse.
She looks sad again. “In greatly simplified terms, yes, that is what happened. Once a saint is selected, their holy powers cannot be taken away. But after I spurned him, Amadeus wanted nothing to do with holy matters. In an abominable dark ritual unlike anything I have seen before, he corrupted his powers and sacrificed his own heart in order to gain his immortality and necromantic powers.”
Yep. That sounds much more like my dear wannabe father.
Galene nods in agreement. “Amadeus then used his life force to corrupt the Nether, slaughtering the fae until they fled by the masses to the mortal realm to start a new existence there. Times grew exceedingly dark until the Great Wars, when we finally put the Divide in place. The Nether had already become the terrible dimension of darkness it is now—I could no longer even see into that dark place, nor could we gods hear prayers from that place. We have no power in that realm. By the time we realized that humans were suffering so heavily there, it was too late. They were out of our reach.”
I consider that. “You didn’t think about just popping back down into the mortal realm and killing Amadeus yourself?”
We come to a place where the path splits. The goddess of knowing turns left as she sighs, shaking her head.
“We gods are explicitly forbidden from meddling directly with the workings of the mortal world, unless fate so decrees it. We can only send messages, servants, and the like. Any deity who meddles without permission simply ceases to exist. My own meddling to bring you and your quintet to fruition was slight, but enough that the other gods were quite terrified I would vanish.”
Galene turns to face me, her expression brightening. “But fate knows best, for one fateful midnight, I had a particularly powerful vision. I saw Syntyche freeing the humans of the Nether. I witnessed great bloodshed and horrors just before a time of unrivaled peace unlike the world had seen in ages. The vision confused me until I later foresaw Amato and realized it was not Syntyche ending the reign of Amadeus, butyou. Of course…”
She pauses and looks sheepish. “It is quite difficult for humans and gods to conceive together. Not to mention, the other gods frown upon such unions. I could not tell them any of this, not until Amato became an admirable doctor in the mortalrealm. Finally, I told Syntyche, because the only future in which I saw Amadeus defeated and the Nether cleansed was the one in which you existed.” She laughs lightly. “And so it came to pass that the goddess of life asked the goddess of death for a favor.”
A favor.
As in, Galene asked Syntyche to conceive me with Amato.I’mthe favor.
Damn. My existence reallywasorchestrated. I was born to be a means to an end.
Galene shakes her head quickly, her pretty face distressed. “No, Maven. You were born for far more than that. I could not observe you in the Nether, but I know there were a great many chances for you to give up or act selfishly. There was no certainty that you would do what needed to be done, but look at what you accomplished. Think of all the future human lives you have given a brand new existence to. What I see going forward is so much brighter, thanks to you.”
Ignoring all the pretty words she’s throwing at me, I squint at her. “What did Syntyche get in exchange for getting knocked up by a mortal?”
“Nothing yet. I still owe your mother a great favor of her choosing, whenever she wishes to call it in.”
Still. She basically pimped out the goddess of death to fix her ancient mistake.
