“This?” He grabs my hair, dragging me a foot closer to him. “Ifound her without your help and believed her to be nothing more than a Vaile in the throes of linking by the name of Mini. You’re telling meshehas the essence I need?”
“Thatweneed,” my mother corrects. “I tested her. She has enough to get us both into the Immortal Realm. You said—”
“I know what I said,” he growls.
I dig my toes into the furry rug, seeking any possible distraction from the urges whittling away my sanity. Shit, even Coen looks fuckable. I tilt my head enough that Zandrite lets go of me. I’m numb to the whole situation on the outside, an uproar building on the inside. “So you want to kill me?”
“Well, young one, I wanted to use that body of yours to make my endless years a little more tolerable, but it turns out you’re much more than that. And now that I know, why wouldn’t I want to properly meet the daughter of my enemy before I kill her?”
I suppose I don’t have much chance of winning a fight with a god, but I won’t go down without making him wish he knew as many curse words as me. No reason to play nice. “Why make deals with her if she’s your enemy?”
“Not her.” Zandrite’s brows land high on his forehead. “Your father.”
That rocks some feeling into me. I stand up next to his massive frame. “You know my father? Who—where is he?”
He rests a hand over his chest as he lets loose a laugh. “He’s living my life. But not for long now that I have you.”
“Stop being a cryptic jackass and tell me.”
“Your father is a thief.”
Apparently, I take after him.
“Ametrine was mine,” he continues. “We were the first love in existence, and he turned her against me and made her his own. She stripped me of most of my magic over nothing. Then, all I did was kill her, and your bastard father banished me from the Immortal Realm.”
The numbness fades the rest of the way. My constant desire transforms into the raw need to know. “Who is my father?” Each word is an attempt at a threat, a plea for the truth, a breath it hurts to take.
He smiles, awful and beautiful at once. “Malachite, god of death.”
I leave my body. My sanity. Every moment of searching andwondering piles onto this one. “There’s no such thing as gods,” I say. Out of habit, I suppose. And so quietly that my ears ring.
“Of course not. Except Ametrine and me. And my son. And your father and Peridot.” He grabs my jaw. “And you.”
I collapse, stunned, my legs too weak to hold my weight. My throat closes. My riot disperses.
“And now I finally get to return to the Immortal Realm thanks to my enemy knocking up his Vaile fuck buddy.” He ticks his head toward my mother. “I’ll leave this mortal prison and everyone in it behind. But tell me, how is it that you happened to end up with the rarest, most precious magic inside you?”
“Obviously, her father passed it on to her,” my mother says. “And you won’t be leavingmebehind. Malachite will be waiting for me there.”
“He doesn’t want you anymore. Was it not clear when he left you in the Mortal Realm?” Zandrite punches my mother in the side of her neck with what I can’t deny is a godly force. Her body flies back, smashing into the cave wall and landing limp on the ground. He cracks his neck to the left and right. “She annoys me.”
I pretend not to notice. “Wh-what was he like?”
“I tell you that your father is the god of death and abandoned you and your mother in a realm of useless mortals, and you want to know what he’s like?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll tell you while I end your mortal body,” he says, much too casually. “You can thankherfor your mortality. You’re not immortal until you die.”
I stow that information away as impossible and spare a glance at my unconscious mother. Then at Coen and Sola, their eyes wider than the trench splitting my heart in two.
“But she’s wrong. Your father isn’t responsible for your essence,” Zandrite says. “It’s not passed on to children. Essence is finite. It can only be given or taken. I still have mine from Ametrine.” He speaks as though he’s not as murderous as he wants to come off. “But it’s like love—the give and take of it is powerful, but once you have it, it’s pointless.”
I open my mouth to tell him that’s a load of shit, but he’s not done.
“I’m not the god of love for nothing. What’s more destructive thanfalling in love? Than a broken heart? Passion lies in the wreckage. Stagnant love is meaningless.”
“You don’t think you’re a tad bitter?”
