Connor actually chuckled, the arrogant fuck. “I don’t know much more than you. In fact, if you’d bothered to research as much as you could, you’d know even more than me.”
I snarled. “Yeah, thanks for that lecture.”
My power shot from me and smashed into his chest, sending him tumbling back across the ocean. I followed in a zoom of energy, moving faster than I’d ever moved in the water before. I wondered if I’d even be visible to humans at this speed.
Connor and I clashed as he came at me, but while I was trying to destroy him, he was simply detaining me. Which allowed me to get a few more good hits in before I calmed enough to back away.
“Talk. Now!” I yelled.
He held both hands up, his hair drifting in the tides, the low light giving everything an eerie look. “You, me, and Asher were all born of gods. Two gods, but in a mortal body.”
“How could this happen?” I said shortly. “Explain better.”
“Lotus and Draconis are our biological parents. They used their energy to place a child in the womb of Queen Helene and Queen Marie, of House of Jervania. Asher’s biological parents did the same, but I don’t know who they are. It’s the reason your energy calls to me—we’re siblings. Asher, on the other hand … his energy is very different.”
Hellbringers.
A dark twisting in my gut was the only response from my body. “We’re the reason it fell, aren’t we?”
Connor’s face sobered. “I don’t know. Clearly the gods and the leaders of Atlantis were cooking something up together. I don’t know what the plan was, but it was enough that it caused the end of our civilization.”
Shit. “So what did our parents just do to us? I mean … it felt like I died. But…”
Here we were, clearly not dead.
Connor’s face brightened. “Ah, for the first time I know the answer to this for sure. Our parents killed our mortal bodies, allowing the demigod inside to be reborn.”
I pursed my lips and shook my head. “What? I’m not sure you truly understand how to answer a fucking question clearly.”
He looked at me like I was an idiot, but seriously, I had a point. He couldn’t answer questions for shit. All cryptic. “If our bio parents are gods, how the hell do we have a ‘mortal body?’”
“Because we were actually born from the flesh of a mortal. The energy created the baby, but some of the other stuff that went into creating us was normal supe. Technically, we are demigods, or two-thirds god, but there really isn’t a name for that. Suffice it to say, we can’t die in any normal way, and our parents were just now destroying the mortal part of our physical makeup.”
“My powers,” I whispered. “I never could control them well before, but now…”
Connor nodded. “Yeah, you have the power of a god. We all do, but yours are particularly strong for some reason.” He shrugged. “Genetics are weird.”
There were so many questions I needed answered still. They smashed around my head with force, but before I could voice them, a staggering truth hit me.
“Asher,” I breathed, the tears I was immediately shedding stolen by the water.
Connor nodded. “Yeah, that’s why I wasn’t too sad before. Asher can’t be dead. His mortal body was destroyed, yes, but that was just so his stronger, more powerful version could emerge.”
Hope flickered inside of me, and I tried desperately to smother that ember, put it out before it took root and got too big. But nothing I did made it go away.
“If Asher didn’t die, then where is he? Why didn’t he come straight back and tell me he wasn’t fucking dead?”
I might have been screaming at this point, and crying, and swimming back and forth like a lunatic trying to pace under water.
“We’re not dead,” Connor reminded me. “Did Asher disappear in a burst of light?”
He did.He fucking did. Just like we had…
I nodded, and Connor shot me his smug grin.
Could Asher be alive? Was it truly possible?
24
