“What are you offering me?” His voice was deceptively soft, and I knew I was treading a cliff edge with him.
He was the god of connection.
He was the god of destruction.
I hoped that would work for us and not against us.
“Our trust.”
Lula’s hand went slack, then she held on again. She leaned forward so she could speak to him around me.
“If this book could have been found by you, you would have found it,” she said. “If this book could have been used by Atë, she would have used it. Both of you have come to us. Both of you have wanted to use us as tools to get to the book. Maybe for different reasons, maybe for the same.
“If you help us find the book, help us kill the god who has put us through years of hell, then we’ll help you. We’ll put our trust and our loyalty in you. Whatever power we have with the book, oroverthe book, we will use it for you.”
It shouldn’t be enough to catch a god’s interest. We were just two people among billions. There had to be other people who could do what we did, who could find the book, unlock the book—
—use the spells within the book—
—contain the book’s power. Whatever it was that tied us to this spell book, to the gods, had to be replicated in some other people in all the world. What chance did we have of making deals with forces much, much stronger than us?
“There are other mortals in this world,” he said.
“No two like us.” Lula called his bluff.
Eunice hummed, and it sounded like agreement.
Cupid stared off in the distance, searching horizons I could not see.
“You were born for this,” he said, “more’s the pity you had no say over it. I found you because I was curious. You were an anomaly. I didn’t know a god was behind your pain, that she tore you apart, spirit and flesh. Once I found you, it was clear you were connected to the book. But how you are connected to it isn’t something I’m familiar with.” He smiled, and it was rueful.
“There are very, very few connections I don’t understand, but how the spell book of the gods is tied to you is one. It isn’t chance. It isn’t because you have lived your lives bound to the Route, broken by Atë.
“There is something else about you, Lula and Brogan, that will forever draw you toward the collected powers of the gods.”
“Neat,” Abbi said, and then after a look from me, “Oh. Not neat. But you’re going to look after them, right? You’re still going to be a good god?”
“That’s what we’re trying to decide, little rabbit.”
“Then I want to say some things too. I want to stay. With them.”
Cupid shifted his gaze to her. “You think I would tear you away from them?”
“You do those things. Sometimes,” she said.
“Is there a reason I should do that? To you? To them?”
“You might be mad. Sometime, when you know more things, you might be angry.”
“What things?”
“No,” Eunice said, her voice a clear note that cut through the kitchen and seemed to roll to the world’s end. “That is not a question you should answer, Moon Rabbit. Not…not if the future is to tilt toward good.”
“She has free will,” Cupid grumped.
I huffed a laugh. “She does. She can ignore both of you if she wants.”
“Okay,” Abbi said. “This is my free will. I want to stay with Lula and Brogan. And I want you to keep being a good god.”
