As soon as I have my feet steady beneath me, I scramble out of there and promptly empty the contents of my stomach in the bright green grass growing along the side of the building.
Yep. Breakfast tastes just as bad coming up as it did going down. Fuck you, Grumpy Lurch.
Someone tries to hold back my hair, but I bat them away as the dry heaves kick in. “Don’t. Touch. Me.”
“Delta, let us help you. We know this can’t be easy.”
“I told you she couldn’t handle it,” Jerif says with cruel arrogance, and that’s it.
That’s the final straw.
I round on him, not even caring that I just puked my guts up. “You know what? Fuck you!” I scream, pointing in his face. “I don’t need this shit. I don’t need to fucking help you with the Gate.”
Iceman’s blue brows pull together in a frown as he steps forward. “Delta—”
“No,” I say, cutting him off. “Ever since I first came here, my life has turned upside down. I’m pretty fucking easygoing. I’m used to shitty things happening to me, but this? I don’t have to do this,” I snap, looking at each one of them in turn. “I quit. I want nothing to do with you guys or Hell or the fucking Gate. It isnotmy problem.”
“Pathetic,” Jerif snaps. “You take one look inside the very outer edge of Hell, and you’re bailing?”
I swipe the back of my arm across my mouth, grimacing at the taste of bile still on my tongue. “Yeah, I’m bailing. Who the fuck wouldn’t? I have no stake in this. You four are the Gate Guardians. If you can’t stabilize the Gate, that’s your problem, not mine.”
He gives off a humorless, harsh laugh and looks at the others while holding a hand out at me. “See? Unreliable. Weak. Scared.” He says each word harsher than the last, making me flinch at the disdain in them. “I don’t give a shit what Ring she’s from, a Diluted would be better than her.”
His words are sharp pricks in my pride, just adding to the hurt and fear I already feel. “Fine!” I say, chest heaving. “Then go fucking find a Diluted.”
“Wecan’t,” Crux says, intervening. “We’ve been trying to fill this position for a long time, Delta. Every time we get an Outer Ring or Diluted in here, they don’t last and we have to start all over. Our Gate isn’t stable. We’re barely holding it together as it is.”
“Then find someone from the Inner Rings to help,” I reply.
Echo laughs bitterly. “The last thing any Inner Ring would do is give up their life to become a Gate Guardian,” he tells me. “The only reason the four of us do it is because it’s our familial legacy—a vow that’s been passed down to us through the generations.”
I dig my heels in, crossing my arms in front of me just to feel like I can close myself off from them. “If you’ve been doing it this long, then you shouldn’t need me.”
“Unfortunately,” Iceman begins. “We do. Without a true Gatekeeper, this Gate has needed more and more power, and therefore Guardians, to come forward to try to stabilize it, but like Crux said, nobody lasts.”
“Because they all die,” I point out. “I’m not fucking interested in dying, Iceman.”
His blue eyes soften at my use of my nickname for him. “You won’t die. We believe you’re more powerful than that.”
“But you don’tknowfor sure,” I argue.
“Which is why we want to take you to Hell and see which Rings you have access to. Once you do that, we’ll know for sure,” he answers.
I’m already shaking my head before he can even finish his sentence. Just the thought of being sucked back down there, where the air felt like it was crackling with electric otherness...the thought of being away from the Mortal Realm that I know...it’s enough to make me want to heave again.
“No. I can’t,” I gasp.
Echo curses under his breath, but Iceman nods, though I don’t miss the disappointment that flashes over his face. “Okay.”
“Okay?” Crux turns to Iceman, bewildered. He runs a frustrated hand through his long blond hair. “You can’t actually be fine with just letting her walk away. She has a scythe! What if she’s an actual Gatekeeper?” he demands.
“We’re not kidnappers,” Iceman replies coolly, repeating his earlier words. “It has to be Delta’s decision.”
The vise-like grip that was banded around my stomach lessens slightly, and I nod at him in gratitude. “Thank you.”
“What about the attacks?” Crux says, refusing to give up. “Since she’s not fucking blocked or whatever she used to be, the Outer Rings and Diluted will be able to sense her. More of them might attack her. She’s safer with us.”
All of the tension returns, and my shoulders lock up. Iceman must sense that I’m about to dive into another panic attack, because he replies quickly. “We’ll figure it out, Delta. We won’t just leave you high and dry to be attacked. One of us will stand watch until I can find a way to reapply the block that was somehow on you before.”
