“I’m so beyond relieved that you all made it out.” My eyes lingered on Sebastian for all of a second, but when he didn’t look up from his book, I deflected with a question. “Do you guys believe all of this crap?”
“It’s hard not to believe when we’re standing in the midst of the proof,” Pia cheerfully supplied. “I mean, look at this place. It’s incredible!”
That, it was. But it didn’t make the situation any less strange. “So you guys made it to the tunnel in time? I mean, you’re all here, so obviously.”
“Yeah. We ran for a while, then stopped about halfway through so I could heal Kohen as much as possible,” Pia answered.
“Once he was conscious and stable, we continued. We heard the castle fall, and not gonna lie, we all thought you were as good as dead,” Sawyer pitched in, dropping into a free chair.
“So glad to hear you had faith in me,” I sneered with an eye roll.
“Dad says it's a coincidence that he passed the exit of the chambers at the same time they all crawled out, but I feel like the gods had something to do with that,” Delani marveled. Her eyesbrightened to a fascinating shade of gold when they settled upon my forearms. “Woah. Those look even more impressive when they aren’t covered in blood and bruises.”
“You came to see me?” I questioned, though I didn’t know why their visitation surprised me.
“Of course! We all did. Your boyfriend would hardly leave your side.”
I cringed. Again, that word.Boyfriend.Maybe it was just my anger taking over, but I couldn’t bear referring to Sebastian as that right now. Boyfriends shouldn’t lie to their significant others—especially not lies as big as the ones he's told me.
“I don’t even know how I’m alive.” I moved further into the room, throwing my body—that still very much ached—onto the cool material of the sofa. “Last I remember, rocks were piling on top of me.” My entire body winced with the reminder of the agony I’d felt when cement squeezed me like a tube of toothpaste.
“Your dad healed you,” Kohen said, taking a seat in a lounge chair across from me, Pia settling herself on his lap.
I raised an eyebrow at Delani as she sat down on the couch by my right side. “How? Dad isn’t gifted.”
“He had an herb of some sort. I can’t remember what he called it, but he gave it to you, and your body began to heal. Slowly of course, but it did the trick until he got you here. The menders handled the rest.” She poked at my arm.
“Ow,” I whined, tearing the limb away from her reach.
“Still hurts? That part was one of the worst. You’re lucky that your arm is even attached after what it went through. It was half torn off at the shoulder and hanging on by some bloody, fleshy?—”
“Jeez, Delani. I’m glad you're here, but shut up.” I gagged from her words, rubbing my shoulder in the process.
“Don’t even get me started on your head,” she added, glancing to the side of my skull.
Leaning back in my seat, I put a hand over my mouth while I drew in a deep yawn. “Alright, can someone please explain to me what'sreallygoing on?” Once more I glanced towards Sebastian, still nose deep in his book.Asshole.
“How much did your father tell you?” Sawyer questioned.
“Well, I know that my formerly presumed-dead father is very much alive. I know that I narrowly cheated death and am living in somehidden kingdomcreated by the gods themselves. I have the mark of a goddess on my arms and can apparently manipulate the cosmos, but besides that, I have no clue what’s going on.” I did a quick glance between them all. “Anything I’m missing?”
Four pairs of knowing, wide-eyes settled upon me, while Sebastian—stillfucking engrossed in his reading—said without looking up, “I told her. Some of it, anyways.” He flipped the page. “She wouldn’t let me tell her the rest.”
“Oh, yeah. There’s that bullshit, too,” I lashed, sweeping my enraged gaze away from him.
“Listen, Maeve, I know how it seems. But try to cut him some slack. We all have,” Kohen encouraged, soft-spoken as usual while his gentle eyes gestured around the room.
“Easy for you to say. You guys weren’t the ones he knew secrets about,” I snapped, the comment coming out ruder than I’d intended. Then again, maybe they also were, and I just didn’t know.
“I was pissed at first, too, when he told me,” Pia chimed in. “But in the midst of everything else that has happened in the past week, what he hid from us seems so small. We’re all alive, and that’s what matters.”
I grunted. Yes, but she wasn’t in arelationshipwith him. She didn’t sleep with a man who had been lying to her for the better portion of a year.
“You wouldn’t have believed him if he told you about your mother anyway,” Sawyer attested, selecting a new seat on my free side and passing me a bowl of fresh fruit that he secured from a food cart by the doorway. “And be honest with me right now—if he told you that he thought you could control the cosmos, you would have thought he was psychotic. Right?”
My teeth almost cracked as my jaw snapped shut. “What about my mother?” I growled slowly in Sebastian’s direction, my mandible a cage for my words to break through.
“I was going to tell you when you woke up, but you told me toget the fuck out,” Sebastian retorted,stillrefusing to look up from thatgodsdamn fucking book.
