“What?” he asked.
“I came back exactly as I was. Every scar, every single thing about me, was identical.”
“Well, you’re a god,” Ezra chimed in.
Avesh sighed heavily.
“It doesn’t work like that. Dead gods become stars, or they choose to be reborn, and they do not come back the exact same.”
“Well, I didn’t become a star, and I was reborn exactly the same.” I hesitated. “Did you say that gods get a choice to be reborn? Do they vote on it?”
“No, they don’t vote on it. That is stupid.” He looked at me oddly. Avesh glanced around for a moment. He held up his finger to shush me before he muttered that he would be back. I began pacing around the room trying to figure out anything about this mess that made sense.
“Am I the only one who has no fucking clue what is happening?” Ezra asked.
“No, none of us know what is happening.” Cassius sighed.
We waited for Avesh for a few minutes before he came back holding a giant golden book. He set it on the table and started flipping through it. He seemed very confident in what he was searching for, so we waited quietly. Avesh looked up at me after a moment and then continued to look through the book. After a minute he said, “Aha!” and stared up at me before turning the book so we could read it.
My eyes scanned the short list of names quickly. I recognized only two: Malamay and Diath.
“My parents are on a list?” I looked up at him, confused.
“You looked at this book when you were trying to find the God of Fate, and there was something in here that you thought was interesting. You left the book open when you left. But do you know what this list is?”
“No.”
“It is a list of all the dead gods. Do you see this symbol?” He pointed next to the names of my parents. My eyes scanned the falling star. “It means they went on to become stars,” he smiled. “There are only sixteen dead gods on the list, and nine went on to be stars.”
I looked at the names again.
“How does the list get updated?”
Avesh smiled and nodded.
“This is theBook of the Gods; it updates information on its own.”
“Haden’s name isn’t on the list, but his siblings are,” Cassius muttered. “Wouldn’t it still be on the list even if he was reborn?”
“Yes, that is unless he never died.”
“I definitely died.” I looked at him in confusion. “I was gone for 300 years.”
“You remember things from your first life and this life; even a god couldn’t do that. You must not have died fully. But honestly, that isn’t the only thing on this list that is odd.”
Avesh pointed to Ardella’s name toward the top of the list.
“Do you see how her name is not at the bottom with your siblings?”
I nodded.
“It should be. The list adds names in the order in which they die. Della’s name should be on the bottom, but according to this, she died before you did.”
I was trying to wrap my mind around everything he was saying, but I had no fucking clue what any of it meant. I stared at her name and didn’t understand why it appeared so far up on the list.
“She told me my father killed her by accident,” I said. But even as I looked at the list, that didn’t make sense. Della’s name was second on the list. She died a very long time ago.
“Haden, even I don’t know how old this book is, and she is at the top of the list for deaths. However, the book records the first death, not all of them. Della has been around for a very long time,” Avesh said knowingly.
