I haven’t called him on it. Haven’t thanked him either.
If I do, it becomes real. And if it’s real, then I have to admit how fucked I am without it.
Because honestly…
At this point, I don’t know if I can survive him pulling back.
I fear it. Truly. Down to the depths of my soul. I fear the moment his restraint eases and everything I’ve been holding at bay comes crashing back in all at once.
I already know how it’ll feel. I tasted it.
Those unbearable, brief but endless seconds when every calling ripped through me at once was pure agony.
Other gods, maybe even my brothers, think a calling is only a sound.
A voice. A plea.
It starts that way. Then it becomes a tug.
A violent, desperate hook that sinks into my soul and yanks—hard—demanding to be answered. When I answer, the pain resolves. It hurts to watch life leave a set of eyes, yes, but answering the callcompletesthe cycle.
When I don’t…
When Ican’t…
The hook doesn’t disappear.
It rips free.
Each missed calling tore a piece of me loose, leaving raw absence in its wake. It’s ragged, burning, and screaming even after the voices are gone.
Multiply that by dozens. By a battlefield full of innocent souls who needed me and never felt my answer.
That’s what’s sitting inside my chest right now.
Grief. Guilt. Damage.
And I don’t have the luxury of stopping to bleed out and rage.
I want to be selfish, but I can’t be.
So I walk.
I breathe.
I let V hold me together.
My feet step along with the others as we walk through the tree line and stare at Thayla’s back door. I want nothing more in this fucking realm than to head in that direction rather than go to the house next door.
The longer we sit here and stare, the more my feet sink into the ground.
“Come on,” Kyzen says, lacing his fingers with Thayla’s as he pulls her along.
We clear the distance to Yemi’s back door faster than I’d like, and I grit my teeth, waiting for V to release his grip on me. His wings brush my arm for a millisecond as he ruffles himself out and gets more comfortable on Thayla’s shoulder.
“Are you coming in with us?” she asks him low.
“Yes.”
