“If you tickle us, do we not laugh?” I said the next partof the quote and tickled Sebastian, who burst into adorable laughter right on cue.
The guests giggled along with him. But there's always a heckler, isn't there? Even among people who are staunch supporters.
“And if we poison you, do you die, Faerie God?” a man a few seats down from me asked.
“No,” Azrael said. “Poison won't kill me. But I can be killed. Forgive me if I don't tell you how.” He winked at the man.
Another round of laughter circled the table.
“Well done,” I whispered to Az.
The rest of the meal went pretty smoothly. Even Sebastian settled down after he saw that the second course was a selection of crostini. There were a couple of meat options and a vegetarian. I told the twins they were faerie pizza. That did the trick.
After dinner, Azrael returned the ballroom to its original state and a faerie band set up on a dais. There was lovely fey music for the humans to dance to, and I even joined Azrael for a few turns around the floor. Thankfully, it wasn't until after our third dance that Pan came bursting into the ballroom.
Pan's appearance is pretty normal for a god. As long as you don't look too closely at the wild curls on his head. If you do, you might see the little horns hidden there. But otherwise, he looked human. Very handsome but human. So he didn't raise any eyebrows when he made his way through the crowd. Not human brows, at least.
Azrael saw him first—not so surprising with the height he had on me in his Faerie God form. He frowned, then leaned down to whisper, “Pan's here. He looks upset.” Then he smiled and hooked my arm around his before leading me toward Pan.
We collected the rest of the family along the way and met Pan near the wall.
“Through here.” Az reached for the wall as a door appeared.
His hand connected with the handle as it finished forming. Then he was through the passage, leaving us to follow him into a plain sitting room. Well, plain by comparison to the greeting room and ballroom. It was still a very nice room with some thick rugs on the floor and an assortment of seats available for our use. Azrael didn't use any of them. He stopped in the middle of the room and turned to face Pan expectantly.
“It's my father,” Pan said. “He's in my territory and he's very upset. He wants to meet with you.”
“Me?” Azrael asked.
“All of you,” Pan said. “The Squad too. They're already on their way. I'm sorry. I know you're having a big party for the kids tonight, but my dad rarely asks me for anything.”
I pressed my lips together and looked at my husbands. Pan's father was Hermes, the Greek Messenger God. In the God Realm, he published the only god newspaper—the Hermes Herald. It was available in a physical format if you preferred, but most gods received copies of it via whatever message receptacle they used. All messages received in that way were called heralds. I wasn't sure if his newspaper had inspired the name or if it was the other way around, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was the former. Gods listened to Hermes. And he had used that influence to screw me over by announcing when I had lost my immortality. It had been brief, but he took his sweet time updating everyone that I was back to full power. And during that time, gods who wanted me dead came after me. That being said, Hermes had also done me a good turn when Lesya was abducted. And then there was the fact that he was Pan's dad.
“I'll stay,” Azrael said. “The rest of you go. Leave the kids. I'll watch them.”
I looked at the twins, who had gone to one of the couches and curled up, ready for bed. They were on Pride Palace time and even though it was still early evening in Texas, back home it was so late that it was early. It showed how excited they were that they had stayed awake this long.
“They need to go home. They're tired.” I nodded at Lesya and Vero, who were sitting on the couch, awake but doing the sleepy-head-nod.
“I vill take zem home,” Kirill offered as he went to gather them up. “Come, children. Ve go home.” He picked up the twins, setting one on each shoulder, then herded the other two out the door.
I hurried to intercept him and kiss my babies goodnight before kissing Kirill's cheek too. “Thank you.”
“Da.” He kissed me back. “Be careful.”
He wasn't wrong to warn me. Hermes could be tricky. But if he needed our help, I doubted I had anything to worry about. I just nodded and opened the door for them.
“Can we go now?” Pan asked.
“Yes.” Azrael waved us out. “I'll tell the guests that the children need to go home and that's why you're all leaving.”
We headed out of the room, then skirted the ballroom. A few of the guests watched us leave, but no one tried to intercept us. Azrael split from our group and headed back into the fray, while the rest of us left the ballroom and headed for the citadel's tracing chamber.
The tracing chamber was larger than the one at Pride Palace, so we all left together—Kirill and the kids tracing homewhile the rest of us went to Pan's territory.
Visiting Pan's territory was always a delight. Pan collected the lost souls of children. Oh, that sounds creepy. It's not like that. Pan was the inspiration for Peter Pan. Pan had once been spotted holding a dying child and offering them a wonderful afterlife if they'd only follow him. That chance sighting by some random human led to the story of Peter Pan. And that story was more accurate than the author could have possibly known.
Pan had spent a lot of time during the world wars scooping up the souls of dying children who had been orphaned or abandoned or simply never introduced to religion. Unclaimed by any god, they would have gone to the Void, but Pan didn't know that. He thought he was saving them by offering to claim them. Those who accepted got to go to Neverland and be children forever.
