I stare at him, my mind boggling.
“But others…they just don’t feel the same. Like your mother.”
“Spiriting,” I whisper. “The gods are spiriting and using temporary placement to be here and affect the future. But how? It’s dangerous; they’d need to have themselves hidden in Remmilow somewhere. How did they escape the massacre?”
“I can answer that,” Cadel says. “Gods have been going missing since you three disappeared. One at a time, all knowledge of them being wiped away. No one speaks of them. I can’t recall who, though, I just remember chasing dead ends.”
“Cadel isn’t spiriting or temporary placement,” Mordecai says.
I turn to Cadel, who raises an eyebrow. “No, he’s breaking all the natural laws to be here. A god who is truly a god in his own body. There is nothing human about him. He destabilizes the world, shifting the balance and being an impossibility that will make things worse the longer he’s here.” I stare at Cadel, my heart breaking. “You have to go back.”
“No. I belong with you.” His jaw sets, and he glares at me.
“We can’t be together. Not here, and I can’t go home.”
“I’m not leaving you again,” Cadel snarls. “Fuck the worlds.”
I turn away, swallowing hard on the emotion that is trying to choke me.
Jarek clears his throat and steps between us. “Let’s table that one.”
“We should go and find Legion and see what he knows, if he knows anything.” My suggestion is tinged with urgency. I feel like I need to move.
The memories keep coming. Mixing and twisting. Throughout the years, we have been born and died. Only in times of extreme stress for the world. Not all the deaths have been easy; some of them have been horrific. I don’t like remembering how I died; it is disconcerting.
We step out onto the street, and I look up at the teens that have been strung up. Their lives extinguished. The guilt and grief that had been drowned out by my resurfacing memories return with a vengeance.
“I gave them money and ran at the Path and managed to run straight into Walker. While I was running from him, I found Cadel. It’s all a bit—”
“Coincidental?”
I jerk my head away from the bodies. “Yeah.”
“Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. Hope is hard to come by. You gave them a chance.”
I press my lips together and lead my pack away from this street of ghosts. I promise myself that if I survive, I will come back and set them all free.
After hours of searching, I call an end to this hopeless hunt for Legion. When the omega doesn’t want to be found, he won’t be.
We crawl into a building and go up to the tenth floor and sit down. The wind howls through it, but because of the surrounding buildings, it’s not strong enough to be a concern.
Cadel sits beside me and hands me a bottle of water. I take it, drink some, and hand it back.
There’s a strain between us now. I don’t want it there, but I don’t know how to undo it either.
“You have to go back,” I murmur.
“Stop saying that!” he growls. “I could fall.”
My heart slams against my ribs, and I twist around so I’m staring at him. “Don’t say that. Please, don’t ever say that. You could, but that wouldn’t guarantee we’d end up together. I don’t want you to be here alone, Cadel.” The thought of what that would do to his beautiful soul hurts me.
“I wouldn’t be. I’d find you.”
He’s so confident, and I want so badly to believe him. I reach out and take his hand and hate that one touch from him makes the world right. I lean my head back on the concrete pillar and exhale roughly.
“I was so young back then. Do you remember? I think about it, all excited over butterflies and happy all the time. I was always smiling.”
“You were beautiful, you are beautiful.”
