Atlantis will sleep.
The pen stopped, and I leaned over, wondering what Axl was doing. “That’s all there is,” he said, flipping through the pages again, double-checking the earlier entries. “That’s where it cuts off.”
“What are Hellbringers?” I whispered.
He shook his head. “I’ve never heard that term before. We should try and find something in the library.”
He closed his eyes and murmured something, and not three seconds later, eight books flew toward us.
Axl flipped through the first one, and about halfway stopped on a page with one line of translated script.Hellbringer: Mythical creatures. Part of the end of days prophesy. Can kill the gods.
Axl slammed the book closed and we both stared at each other. This was not good.
21
Ilet Axl fill the others in on what we’d discovered; all the while I was having a minor panic attack. I couldn’t quite figure if I was supposed to be freaked out by this or not.
“So Atlantis was sunk by the mother of all gods,” Jesse said, running a hand through his hair, leaving the strands disheveled. “And it wasn’t because they discovered some sort of ‘fountain of eternal youth,’ but because her children had children in the bodies of mortals, which was forbidden.”
Axl nodded. “If this diary is to be believed, then yes, that is essentially what happened.”
All eyes turned to me. “Are you the Hellbringer?” Calen asked, a smirk playing about his lips, even though his eyes were filled with darker emotions.
I snorted. “The way my luck is going lately, probably.”
Mab settled on my shoulder, and I found her brief weight comforting. “Myth and legend,” she said simply. “It’s not always correct. Many things you thought you knew about Atlantis have already been disproved. If Maddi is the Hellbringer, she will disprove that prophecy as well.”
I would a hundred percent agree with her—I was not really keen on ending the world—but there had been a little something there about parents controlling us. Which was … worrying.
At this point I was reasonably drunk, Ilia was shit-faced, and Larissa was shaking her head at us both. “You know we have to leave in two hours,” she told us, her mom voice in full effect.
I groaned and waved her away. “Imma gonna be the ends of the world. If anyone should be drunk, it’s me.”
She swatted at me. “You don’t know you’re the end of the world. This is all thousands of years old, not to mention roughly translated text. It could mean anything.”
I snorted. “Yeah, tell that to Asher.”
My laughter cut off and that pressure was back in my chest, pushing down on me until I felt like my sternum and ribs were about to crack. I must have whimpered or something, because Jesse was there, wrapping himself around me, hauling me up and into his lap.
“Breathe, Mads,” he said softly, rubbing my back while I gulped for air. “Breathe, baby girl. Asher is not your fault. You did not get him killed. And trust me, if it had been you that died, we wouldn’t have Asher any longer. Not the one we all knew and loved. It’s better this way.”
My heart cracked then—I could have sworn I heard the break—and I was sobbing against his chest.
“I can’t live without him,” I said, so broken that speaking hurt. “I can’t do it.”
His hands never stopped stroking me. “You can and you will, Maddison James. You are important. To the world. To us.” Small pause. “To me.”
Rone leaned over, his icy energy washing down my side. “Give yourself time,” he murmured, and when I lifted my face, his thumbs brushed away my tears. “It won’t fix your pain, but you’ll learn how to live with it. You’ll function again. You’ll remember everything beautiful about what you and Asher had, and you’ll think on it fondly.”
The tears wouldn’t stop coming, and nothing eased the pain inside, so I just remained where I was. Cradled in Jesse’s lap, with Rone’s hands holding my face as he wiped the never-ending tears.
“Thank you,” I finally said.
No one asked what I was thanking them for; they all knew. If I didn’t have these guys, my friends and family around me at times like this….
They were holding me together the best they could, and hopefully one day soon I’d be able to hold myself together.
* * *
