Her voice became quieter as I marched.
“If you go to our father. You’re damning yourself. You’re damning us all.” When it didn’t stop me, she added three chilling words. “You’re damningher.”
I stopped mid stride.
“Her soul won’t be permitted to return if she’s this much of a distraction,” Izi argued. I kept my back to her but hated the logic in her words. They were poison, they were hateful, they were a blight.
She made her final plea.
“Bend humans to your will far and wide. Love them, use them, leave them. But this fixation with a single soul is a mistake. Not just for you, but for the kingdom. Others are going to notice. You’re putting Hell at risk, and no one in our realm will stand for it.”
My shoulders remained tight, fists clenched, teeth together. “Izi…”
“You’re going to have to let her go.”
Chapter Seven
NINE MORTAL MONTHS LATER
Asoul. An egg. A pale, wiggling, microscopic tadpole.
Once upon a time, I was an entity who swam with the glittering metals that burned between galaxies. I’d obeyed the obligation to visit the surface with its unpleasant odors, its ignorance, its blood and death and itchy, ill-fitting air. Then and now, I despised the crushing frustration of watching raving madmen rise to power and perpetuate the drama of the short-sighted.
Yet here I was begging for a clump of mortal cells. A womb.
Only the gods knew where. A soul yet to find its way back into the world.
She’d be back.
I knew it the way Shala had known her god would come for her. I knew it the way Eleni knew Athena would accept her sacrifice. I knew it in that… I knew nothing but trusted in a conviction that meant no matter how wrong I was, I had to see this through.
It was a faith that defied explanation.
Was this what it was like when human knees hit the ground, folded their hands in prayer, and took a chance on a god becausetheyneeded the entity to exist?
And if so, why did faith curdle at the sour intersection of hope and abandonment?
Focus. This isn’t useful. Any further down this path and you’ll draw the sort of attention that lands you in front of the Soul Eater while Izi and Father debate the sacrilege of their heir, a Prince, an immortal, deifying the fleeting uncertainty of a woman.
Stop it, stop it, stop it.
These thoughts are useless once you’ve found her, and equally useless until you’re certain she’s nowhere to be found.
The pursuit continued.
My human refused her mortal name when I’d spoken it. She’d insisted that I needed to see her—not Eleni, not Shala, buther—in this life and the next.
I knew there’d be a next.
But when? Where? Who?
Once, not so long ago, time had been a tedious, endless river of nothing. Between courtly duties, I’d dabbled in the Bacchanalian pastime of drinking and fucking to pass time’s unyielding, tiresome progression. I’d play ambassador to courtiers, then sample the gory delights of Hell’s Nightmare Court. I’d follow through with princely obligations before losing myself in the lawlessness of the primordial realm. And since eternity was a long time, and only so much could be asked of the King’s heir in the span of forever, I’d spent more than enough of my existence in the chiseled stillness of nothing upon nothing, stone-still, apathetic, unfeeling, as days bled into months, bled into forever.
That was before Shala. Before Eleni. Before Love.
She’d be back.
Somewhere out there, she was taking form. Maybe I couldn’t feel it yet in a logical sense, but the part of me that latched onto her knew her return was in the making.
