“Gods don’t have souls,” I said. “Not like human or supernatural souls.”
“That’s one.”
“Delaney, Jean, and I wouldn’t let that happen.”
“That’s two.”
She didn’t say anything else, and I ran back through the information again. I felt like I was missing something. And it was big. And it was bad.
“What aren’t I seeing?” I asked. “What am I missing?”
Then it hit me. Hard.
“Bathin has Delaney’s soul. He’s going to use it as a bargaining chip, isn’t he?” I could feel my blood cooling, my guts knotting. “He’s going to hand her—the bridge to Ordinary, a rare soul touched by many god powers—over to his father to save his own life.”
“Or,” Xtelle said, “he consumes her soul. And in doing so, becomes greater than his father, destroys the King, and saves Ordinary and all of humanity.”
I heard her, I really did. Bathin could be a hero.
It was just that my mind was still slogging through the mud of betrayal, the huge swampy realization that Bathin had been hiding out from this confrontation with his father all the time he was holding our dad’s soul hostage.
Now that he had Delaney’s soul, he could still betray us. Could give her soul away to save his own hide.
Or he was going to eat her.Eat her.
A small part of me, very small, wondered if the unicorn was lying.
That small part of me didn’t believe Bathin could do something so very deliberate, calculating, and cruel. The rest of me thought he was in the position to do exactly what the unicorn said.
But…
His smile, his strength, his hands, steady and strong catching me so I didn’t fall, didn’t hurt myself. He’d saved Ben, saved Ryder. He’d fought with us against Lavius, helped us close the vortex.
“How?” I breathed, though I didn’t even know which question I was asking. My mind was spinning.
“If he consumed the soul of Ordinary’s bridge, the one true doorway into Ordinary,” Xtelle recited, as if this were already written down, in ink, in stone, in blood, “he would control Ordinary, and all the monsters, gods, and powers within it. It is possible he would use those powers to fight his father. He might even defeat him. But in the end…”
“In the end,” I said, my voice a ghost of what it had once been, “he is still a demon. He would destroy. Ordinary, the world, and all the gods.”
“It seems what a demon would do. Any demon. All of them. Given the chance,” she said.
I inhaled, letting the shock wash through me. Letting the shuttering flashes of imagined horror chase lightning down my nerves.
Then a great calm, a great silence washed over me. My resolve was bone deep.
I had to stop Bathin.
And find a way to kill his father. The tug in my chest was pulling on me, this wasn’t where I should be. Not here. Not how.
“We need to go home,” I said.
Than was silent. The unicorn might have said something but I was too busy working out how to stop the one man—
—no, demon—
—I almost liked—
—no, loved—
