“Your lies insult me,” she bit. Her voice contained the snarl I’d heard in wolves and polar bears from my time in the Arctic. She bared her teeth as she said, “You can’t hear of that mortal’s death without leaving a massacre in your wake. The rumors might have been extinguished in a lifetime or two if you hadn’t reacted. Three, perhaps, but no more than that. Each retaliation buys your precious mortal’s soul ten more murders, ten more lifetimes ending in torture, ten more?—”
I broke her locked gaze, jerking my head to the side. “Stop it.”
“They’re drawing you out, and you’re falling for it in spectacular fashion.” She planted two small hands on my chest and pushed with the force of a queen. “You are the only one who can stop this. You’ve doomed our realm. Let her go, or?—”
“Or what?”
Silence became its own shadow. It was a lingering darkness that puddled at our feet. After a quiet eternity, she said, “Or become what they hope, and give us a champion.”
The fight leached from me. My arms fell to my side as I looked at her with true disbelief.
“I don’t believe it either.” Her dismay was a breathy whisper. “But they do. Every god, every fae, everyone who wants Hell to act and take down Christendom and its cockroach-like infestation. Those of us in the Cradle of Civilization were the first to fall. The Hellenic gods? Their Roman counterparts? All deities too powerful to believe something like this could happen to them. Rome’s only mission was to conquer, and for yearsthey did it under Ares and his banner. Now?” With a snap of her fingers, she gestured to the wide, dark nothing. “Heaven and its armed militia marches on the regions Rome once claimed, destroying temples, pillaging holy sites, erasing every holy book and name and practice that doesn’t belong to Heaven. Everywhere they go, the region’s mortals are forced to abandon their gods and convert against the tip of a blade.”
I grinded my teeth so hard I nearly felt a crack.
Her voice pitched, hands animated as her intensity swelled. “Deities need to hear from Hell. The gods have a vested interest in this prophesized antichrist. They see you and your human as the conduit for their grand hope. Their belief is more valuable than any truth.”
“…they…”
I hated it.
Whether I believed it or not was irrelevant. The world was acting upon it, each step manifesting the reality upon two unwilling participants.
“We’re talking abouteverything, Amagi. Not just the mortal world, but the countless realms while our sworn enemy usurps their power. Heaven’s reach continues to expand. Do you know what this means for us?”
I knew my sister well enough to understand that this was not a dialogue. I didn’t bother speaking, knowing she’d scramble over me with her next outburst and finish her thought.
She tensed, practically wiggling with excitement. “They’re all looking to Hell, brother! Every pantheon has turned its eye to us. They see our value. They need us. And what’s more: they see your human’s role in ending Heaven’s colonization of their land.”
My silencing hiss did nothing to stop her.
She leaned in. “They’re provoking you to return to her.”
“And if I do?” I bit off the question.
Her small shoulders lifted. She looked at me with too-large eyes as if all her fight had evaporated. “Don’t. Not unless you’re ready to commit and give them what they demand. Birth the child that will end the world.”
I shut my eyes.
After a long sigh, she said, “I know you’ve already decided.”
My brow furrowed. My eyes opened, locked onto hers as I said, “I won’t facilitate their superstitions. I won’t be a pawn in this lore.”
“If you return to her,” Izi said, “you won’t have a choice.”
And Izi won.
Her victory lasted six mortal years—a little more than a week in Hell.
This messenger expected to die, and I was almost sorry to kill him.
Almost, but not quite.
He had to receive the report about the things that had been done to a child, internalize them, walk to my room, and report them while expecting he had no culpability. It was ludicrous to see him as innocent.
It would have been unfair to kill the messenger alone, however.
I found the one who’d given the report and smiled while he’d backed into the nearest wall. He’d lifted his hands in a placating gesture, doing his best to remain amicable until I punched through his chest cavity, puncturing his sternum, grabbing his spine, and ripping it from his body. I’d hoped for a little more relief when his lifeless form slumped around my arm, but there was no satisfaction.
