It’s the most freeing yet strangest sensation I’ve ever experienced.
Delun observes her from head to toe. The dust of death covering her has my throat bobbing up and down.
“Speak.” Amick takes Thayla’s other side, and her shoulders relax a fraction as his fingers lace through hers.
He’s been quiet since the moment we all felt her first pull, but he’s been struggling to gain his composure since the second he realized the truth of what had happened. Her presence alone is bringing him back from the brink of going off his deep end.
“I have nothing to say.”
“You’ll tell us everything we want to know, or we’ll stay here, forcing the words from you. I’m beyond the point of tolerating pathetic, self-serving, ignorant, and useless gods believing they can and will tell us what they are and are not going to do. You’ve all grown too accustomed to us not throwing our weight around and that’s coming to an end.”
Thayla shivers from the authority in Amick’s voice and Riven chuckles, causing her body to shake even more as he presses his chest against her back.
The God of Judgment sneers. “The four…matter of fact, five of you are only as untouchable as you are because of your fathers. Riding their robes gives you nothing and discredits all the respect—”
His head snaps to the side and Kyzen scowls at him as he spits out a wad of blood. The shock on Delun’s face at who it was that struck him is comical.
“I can’t speak for Sevryn, but I’ll warn you once, if you ever imply again that we’re untouchable because of our father, or that we benefit anything from being his spawn, I’ll lock you in a cell for eternity. The time it takes a seed to sprout into a tree will be a single day for you. We’re untouchable because we stood against our father, had our power stripped, and crawled back better. Something you and many other fucking cowards can’t claim.”
Kyzen steps back into our line, squeezing between Thayla and me. It takes all my mental will not to shove him away and reclaim my spot beside her.
That internal battle gets propelled to the back of my mind when Delun settles his lethal glare on me.
“You’re the one who changed it all, then left. You abandoned Hellveilious, not me. I stayed. I took orders from achildand have upheld the responsibilities placed on me. The beings were growing restless, and the fights were no longer satisfying them. Especially when you stopped showing up to them. You’d know if you spent time down here that there were riots happening daily. They needed something more.
“I decided to alter the fights. I gave them a way to face their punishment and gain their freedom. The riots in the lower level slowed. The killings that spilled over into the upper levels stopped completely. I did that, while you frolicked in the Godsdawn like you don’t have a responsibility down here.”
My fists shake at my sides. This is not at all how I wanted Thayla to learn anything about me.
“None of you batted an eye when it was declared a seven-year-old was to rule you all. Your only request was that each of you got to keep control of your levels. I allowed that as long as you did it my way and that decree didn’t even come until I was fifteen.
“At the end of the day, this is the punishment section of our region, but that doesn’t mean every wrongdoer has to come here to be brutally slaughtered and killed. There is still redemption to be found in some of them. Some don’t even deserve to be sent here, and it was yours and the others’ jobs to make sure that quit happening. Instead, you made a death game for those who DO deserve to rot here forever.”
He shrugs.Fucking shrugs.“I don’t control what the others do. The vilest of the vile were getting out of hand. I changed that.”
My power blazes to life, swallowing him up to his neck, and my eyes go completely white. I take a dangerous step toward him and lower my voice.
“And you will change it back or I will go against the word I gave you. What will you be then if you have no souls praying to you?”
“You wouldn’t,” he whispers.
“Try me.”
His anger finally cracks and a glimpse of fear peers back at me. He knows as well as I do what he’d be if he didn’t have all these beings down here begging for a more forgiving judgment.
“Fine.”
“How did my Binder end up here?” I ask, stepping back toward the others. I can’t bring my eyes to meet Thayla’s, although her stare burns through me.
“I was simply following an order.”
“You take orders from me, and I can assure you, I didn’t order you to do this.”
“Who am I to question the decree of a Beginning God?”
Thayla releases an outraged groan and my brows scrunch. “Which one?”
“The God of Chaos.”
