Arati nods, looking lost in a memory from eons ago. “Yes. You see, after being driven from the Nether, the fae have worked to uphold their culture and remember their past, but there are things even they have forgotten…such as the story of their fifth queen. The world was still young when she came to be, but even I can recall how beautiful and fiercely protective of her people she was. All of us gods favored her—of course, at the time, our pantheon was different,” she adds, shrugging. “A lot changes over the millennia. Only my sister and brother and I seem to stay the same.”
The queen of the gods sighs and settles into a seat I previously didn’t notice on this balcony. I sit in another one, watching the constellations twirl and shift above us as I listen.
“So favored was she that we gods decided to give her gifts from Paradise to bless the fae people with. We sent an angel down to deliver the gifts. He fell for her at once, and before I knew it, he came to my palace to beg me to turn him mortal so he could live one lifetime at her side. I had never heard sucha thing—giving up an eternity of perfection here for the never-ending difficulties down there,” Arati adds, shaking her head in amusement. “But he was determined. I told him it was outside my power, but if fate itself agreed that he should become mortal, it would provide a way.”
“And it did,” Memory Me points out, impatient. “So what did he do?”
Arati looks at the mountain in the distance. “In Paradise, there is a flower called the corruinum that is so toxic, it is said to poison one’s very soul. It grows at the foot of the mountain. The angel took one seed of that flower and watered it every day with his blood for months until it fully bloomed, and then he turned that poisonous bloom into tea. Drinking it weakened him enough that he could fall to mortality—and I do mean fall, for nothing mortal can remain in Paradise,” she adds.
So he became mortal through…a blood blossom.
No wonder that term is still ingrained in the fae vocabulary. It almost makes Memory Me smile, remembering Silas calling me that—but at the same time, I ache. I’ve watched my matches through ravens in the mortal realm, so I know just how much he’s suffering even as I’m sitting here talking to Arati.
“What happened to the angel?” I ask.
My aunt, the goddess of love, looks pleased as she explains that the angel barely survived his fall to the mortal realm and lost his wings in the process, but the fae queen found him and nursed him back to health. They quickly became obsessed with each other and had many, many children together. They were two of the most honored rulers to reign over the Nether, long before it fell to Amadeus’s corruption.
When she’s done with the tale, I stand.
“Where are you going, niece?” Arati asks, arching a brow.
“I have a seed to hunt down before I talk to your lover, because I don’t have months,” I tell her, turning to walk away.
“Koa’s magic cannot speed up the process,” she calls after me. “That bloom must be watered with your ichor until it matures. Magically growing the bloom will merely sprout another corruinum like the rest.”
Memory Me swears vehemently in this recollection, but everything shifts and changes around me as I’m swept into a new memory. In this one, I once again sit at the edge of Paradise looking out over a sea of clouds. I’m holding my bleeding hand over a tiny green sprout that’s barely visible above the dirt.
Each drop of ichor slowly soaks into the ground around the start of the flower, but Memory Me isn’t focused on the flower. Her attention is on a winged silhouette far below Paradise, circling round and round beneath the very place I sit.
Oh, my gods.
It’s Baelfire’s dragon.
It was drawn to me even in Paradise, with no way to reach me.
A tall shadow appears next to me in this memory, and I glance up to see Syntyche hold out a scythe—Cuttrina.
“The memory-yielding scythe you requested. Consider this a reward for being far less annoying than most offspring I have witnessed,” she says with no expression.
“Don’t get sappy on me,” I tease as I stand to take the wickedly sharp etherium weapon.
My mother’s attention moves to the small sprout. “Falling from Paradise will be a pain unlike any you have experienced.”
“How do you know?”
She looks out over the sea of clouds. “Years ago, I asked my brother to venture into the Beyond and ask the fallen angel about it. Even in his peaceful afterlife, the angel shuddered to recall that pain.”
I stare at her, slowly putting it together. If she went far enough to find out from someone in the Beyond about this process…
“Oh my fucking gods. You were considering falling from Paradise to live a mortal life with Pietro Amato,” I realize aloud, gawking at her.
Syntyche says nothing for a long time before she pulls her hood back up, preparing to go down and reap more souls. “In all possible attempts, Galene only foresaw my demise, for fate knows my path is one of immortal reaping. You carry more humanity within you, so perhaps your outcome will be more favorable.”
“Darling?” Crypt’s voice checks softly as I jolt back to the present.
As the memories fade, I realize I’m still standing on the stairs leading down into the dungeon. My incubus is standing on the step below me, pulling me close as he studies me as obsessively as ever. His scent, like sweetreveriumand leather, is comforting.
“Remembering more of your attempts to piss off the gods?” the Nightmare Prince asks, grinning.
