When he tensed beneath her at the question, she was hardly surprised. Even less so when he chose not to answer. In the silence, something bubbled to life behind the cherished boxes of memories, somewhere far, far back in the shadows of her mind. Jo tried to ignore it, tried to feel only Snow, as she had before, but the tickling at the edge of her memory was persistent. Eager.
“Snow, I told you, I need answers.” It might be an unfair play, given the circumstances, but she was desperate. His arms tightened around her, as though if he held her tightly enough it could appease her and he could avoid giving her the answers she sought. Jo sighed softly. “How am I supposed to love you the way I used to when I don’t even know who I am?”
Love you? Used to be? Who I am?
Jo had no idea where those words had even come from, let alone what they meant. And when Snow continued to lay beneath her without response, body still tense and breaths pulled so slow he might as well have not been breathing at all, she expected to look up and see her own confusion reflected back at her.
What she did not expect was the look of pure, unbridled horror on her lover’s face.
Chapter 19
Age of Gods
Jo swallowed; her throat had gone dry. “Say something,” she part-begged, part-demanded. She’d never hinged so much on the next words of anyone; it felt like everything she was could be undone by whatever sounds his lips decided to make.
“Jo . . .” Her name was a pained whine. Snow pressed his eyes closed, as if unable to bear for a moment longer the idea of merely looking at her. In contrast, his hands still sought her out—running up her bare thighs, his thumbs caressing the indents at her hips.
“Snow.” She punctuated his name by grabbing his hands and stopping all movement; the bliss had lifted. The reassurance of their relationship—whatever, exactly, it was—couldn’t settle her. The foundation of her world was too shaken to get lost in it again so soon. “I know you’re trying to protect me, even though I don’t know from what. And I believe that, in some way, you feel that you’re doing me a favor by saying nothing. But things are changing—” Her voice dropped to a quivering whisper, but Jo did not let it break or fizzle. “And I need your help now. Please, Snow. I need more than, thansilence.”
After a small eternity, he gave a nod.
Jo pulled herself off of him, willfully ignoring the absent feeling between her thighs that came with the disappearance of his presence; even through satiation, she could apparently ache for him. The lust was gone, but the desire for closeness never seemed to fade.
Snow stood, retrieved his pants, and slowly slid them on. He fussed with the buttons at the front, stalling maybe, taking time to work out his words. Jo did much the same. For all she wanted, needed, answers. . . the idea of getting them after what had transpired frankly frightened her.
“You’re right,” Snow said, having found his resolve somewhere next to his shirt. “This is not the first time we’ve met.”
She didn’t quite recall saying that in so few words, but it was a feeling that’d been so clear, Jo knew they were on the same page. In fact, the feeling had been so distinct that Jo couldn’t even act shocked or surprised, hearing the truth of it now. “How?”
Her heart was pounding, though she had no idea why.
Snow walked back over to the bed, sitting heavily on the edge. The time-worn sheets didn’t rumple under his weight, the floor didn’t creak. If anything it looked. . .better, with him sitting on it. He placed his elbows on his knees and rubbed his palms over his face, eventually folding them together when he seemed to have calculated his next set of words.
“Do you remember the time I told you I came from?”
She’d only been trying to research it for weeks. “I do. The Age of Gods.”
“Yes.” Snow stared beyond her, through the window, utterly transfixed by the rolling green horizon.
“I also know things lingered from that Age,” she said, trying to summon him back. It worked.
“What?”
“I don’t understand it all yet, but I will,” she declared, far more confident than she had any right to be. “I know that lore from the Age of Gods has lingered through time, despite all the wishes, all the remade realities. It seems that every culture has overlapping mythologies and stories—too much to be coincidence. I’ve been trying to boil it down.”
“What have you found?” He almost sounded impressed.
“There’s one particular story that I keep coming back to. A story of a divine war, and destroying a great evil by shooting it. The names are different in every culture, but the roles are very much the same.”
“I should’ve known you would’ve begun figuring it out.” Snow ran a hand through his hair. “We were named after what we were—Life, Death, Pleasure, Pain. But different mortals decided to give us other names like Horus, Thanatos, or Tlazolteotl.”
“Egyptian, Greek, and Aztec.”
“You know your mythology.”
“I’ve been researching. And it was the sort of thing my grandmother would tell me.” Jo paused, thinking of herabuelita. She used to be able to remember the woman with true-to-life clarity, but now. . . She raised a hand to her forehead, closing her eyes. Just one memory. She had to find just one clear memory. “My grandmother . . . Snow, was she really—?”
He was standing before her, pulling her hand gently away from her face, though Jo didn’t recall him moving from the bed. He cupped her cheeks, looking down at her with an expression that could only be described as pure serenity—as if he was trying to pour it from his face into her being.
