“Good thing you guys are already dead, or I’d have to kill you for seeing shit this embarrassing,” I grumble.
Some ghosts look fresh, while others look faceless and foggy, like they’ve been here for a while. It makes me wonder if Syntyche has fallen behind in reaping souls. High death rates around the mortal realm must mean she’s busy as fuck.
Shoving the door open with my good foot, I drag Everett inside the cold office, which brightens slightly thanks to dim mage lights. As I try to catch my breath, I again find myself staring at the scar etched into the left side of his gorgeous face.
The shiny scar tissue is jagged, a darker shade than his pale skin, and runs nearly vertical. It crawls up his neck and over his jaw, passing the left corner of his lips on the way up his cheek and over his eye until it thins out and stops above his temple, bisecting his eyebrow on the way.
It’s not the most severe facial scar I’ve ever seen, but it completely changes his appearance. Where my elemental was once perfectly flawless, there is now an unmistakably savage harshness to his scarred beauty. His already stunning face now has a vicious edge that makes my pulse pound.
He looks like a scarred angel.
It’s fucking sexy.
I’m still ogling him when a ghost impatiently waves its hand in front of my face. I glance at the veritable crowd of dead people hovering around me and realize most of them are also checking out Everett.
Or maybe they’re just waiting to see if his ghost joins them, since his breathing has grown alarmingly shallow and he’s still bleeding.
Damn him for insisting on carrying me in that state.
Annoyed, I withdraw my new etherium knife. By the time I face the whispering ghosts, I'm holding my scythe again. Just as I finish reaping the last of them, a strange current once again ripples from the glowing scythe, directly into my system.
Abruptly, I’m jerked into a memory.
I find myself standing on a floating balcony, overlooking a crowd of richly dressed beings. I can make out glowing fairies, animals chatting excitedly in a language I somehow understand, and men and women who appear almost human, except for their angelic, feathery white wings. They stand beside nature spirits made of leaves, trees, pure water, earth, starlight, and more elements.
They’re all looking up at me and smiling. Cheering. Clapping.
Their applause is overwhelming, but a powerful woman’s voice beside me rings out effortlessly over the thousands below.
“For the first time in nearly three thousand years, it is my great pleasure to introduce another member into our beloved pantheon: the daughter of my dear sister Syntyche and our new goddess, Maven!”
“I’m not a goddess,” I say in this recollection, quiet enough that only the woman speaking should hear me.
Something is bothering me in this memory. I’m annoyed.
No—I’mlivid, but I can’t remember why.
I catch the barest glimpse of the goddess beside me. She is built like a true warrior and fiercely beautiful, with fiery red hair, golden eyes, and faint scars along her arms, chin, and one of her cheeks. She’s dressed in gleaming golden armor and a crown made of fire.
This must be Arati, the queen of the gods, introducing me to the Paridisians. She brushes off my irritation, beaming at the crowd below.
“As you know, my niece lived no ordinary mortal life. Though we gods have no power in the Nether and therefore could not see where she was raised, we eagerly observed once she emerged—and lo and behold, she earned her divinity by rescuing thousands of souls and their future posterity from the very hell she once endured. Because her mortal life and death exceedednobility, fate has decreed her future here in Paradise. One and all, welcome our newest goddess?—”
“I am not a motherfucking goddess,”I snap.
Yikes. My voice carries much more than expected.
The Paridisians fall into a shocked hush, and Arati turns to glare at me just as the memory cuts off and another swirls into place. This time, I’m walking with Galene through a bizarrely idyllic forest dappled with otherworldly sunlight.
“What was the point of matching me to them if they were just going to be left behind like this? What game were you playing, binding us together like that?” Paradise Maven asks.
Galene smiles softly, her all-seeing kaleidoscope eyes shifting between all the colors of the rainbow. “There was no game, my fearless one. That was all you.”
“I think I’d know if I was?—”
I cut off, recalling the intimate moments with my quintet. During sex or not, as I grew closer to each of them in irreversible ways…
Galene nods. “It’s true. You bound them to yourself, albeit unconsciously. You see, we gods derive our power from worship. As you grew closer to your quintet, who worshipped you in their own way, you naturally became more powerful. As a revenant, you could not access many abilities that were your birthright. However, you gained access to your holy magic—the very same magic that binds legacies together. Thus, your bound quintet and their broken curses.”
