I resist the urge to smack the back of Dreven’s head.
“Serve?” she whispers, the word scraping out of her raw throat. “You mean like slaves?”
“Guardians,” Dreven corrects, his tone unyielding. He stands at the end of the bed, looking like a dark king delivering a sentence. “Anchors. The power of the Firsts was given to your kind so you could walk beside us, not hunt us. You were the tether that kept our divinity from burning the mortal realm to ash.”
Dastian, sprawling naked beside her, picks at a loose thread on the duvet. “Until your ancestors got greedy. They didn’t want to be the leash anymore; they wanted to hold the whip.”
Nyssa flinches. The air around her ripples, smelling of ozone and ancient dust. The energy we pounded into her is finally waking up, responding to the shattering of her worldview.
“So how are you walking around all not burning up the earth right now?”
“Why do you think?”
Her gaze bores into mine. “So that’s why you all showed up being a fucking nuisance. You needed me!”
“In more ways than one, as it turns out,” I murmur, brushing a strand of damp hair from her face.
“Why did the Firsts turn on you?”
“They got together and decided to rid the world of anything that wasn’t mortal. That included us.”
“Wow, that must’ve burned,” she mutters, pulling her knees up as she sits.
“It scorched the earth,” I correct, tracing the line of her jaw. “It created a divide that should never have existed. We were cast out, locked away in the Pantheon realm, while the Order rewrote history to make themselves the heroes.”
Dreven stares at her, his gaze heavy and unblinking. “We didn’t tell you to hurt you. You needed to break the mental conditioning before you could accept the power.”
“Well, consider it broken,” she mutters, wincing as she shifts. “Along with my pelvis.”
I scoff, a half-smile tugging at my lips. “Don’t be dramatic. You’ll be walking fine tomorrow. Probably.”
She shoots me a look that suggests she’s contemplating adding deicide to her CV, regardless of our earlier activities. Dastian chuckles, stretching his limbs like a satisfied cat.
“I feel like a discarded chew toy,” she complains, swinging her legs over the edge of the mattress. Her movements are stiff, wincing slightly as her feet hit the floor, but there’s a new grace to her movements. A vibration in the air that wasn’t present an hour ago. The static hum of the Firsts is no longer chaotic; it’s a steady, thrumming baseline that makes the hairs on my arms stand up.
“A chew toy with the power to level cities,” Dastian points out. “How does the truth taste? Better than the lies the Order spoon-fed you?”
“It tastes like betrayal,” she mutters, rubbing her face with her hands. She pauses, staring at her palms as if seeing them for the first time. “And it feels... heavy.”
“That’s the anchor,” I explain, reaching out to grasp her hand. Her skin is cooling, but the fire underneath hasn’t gone out. It’s just waiting. “You were hollow before, Nyssa.Trying to fill a god-shaped hole with duty and violence. Now you’re full.”
“Full of shit, mostly,” she counters, though she doesn’t pull away from my touch. She looks up at Dreven, her expression hardening. “I’m supposed to be your leash?”
“Our partner,” Dreven corrects. “The Order severed the connection centuries ago. We just repaired it.”
“Violently,” she adds dryly.
“Effectively,” I amend, giving her hand a squeeze before letting go. “You feel it when you are with us. Like it was meant to be.”
“Never stop fucking me,” she murmurs.
“Exactly.”
“So you fucked your otherpartners?” The question is harsh, grating. She is jealous and pissed off at the answer she thinks she knows.
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “They weren’t you.”
She clenches her jaw, not quite sure what to make of that. Quite frankly, neither do I. This is new. But the feeling of possession is too strong. She is mine. Ours. She can’t walk away from us, or the worlds will burn and not just in a divine sense.
