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“Sort of,” he said.

“What—”

“The Hinterlands are a lost home for a lost race,” he interjected. “Please permit me to explain before I fade away for the final time. I have been waiting for you, blocked by Caer and the Knife of Fractured Rapture.” He nodded at the pond.

Caer…

I kept my lips sealed, enduring the headache until the wolfy side of my blood kicked in to ease it.

Caer…

Please don’t make her a villain.

“I am Gavriel, a seraphim. What you know as the Hinterlands was once known as the Seraphim Domain.”

A fifth race. I’d always wondered if anything had lived in those arid lands way back in the day.

Wings burst from his back, the plumage matching the brown of his hair. When he stretched them out, his biceps seemed to expand.

Whoa.

“What you are seeing here is the remains of what once was,” the winged guy continued, “and what shall never be again. Yet within you lies a trace of our blood. Our hope to enact our revenge.”

Puppet…

“Seraphim were spun into existence by The Wheel of Beginning to correct an imbalance of power.”

“The Wheel is real?” I blurted.

He nodded. “It is the source of all things, and we were its wardens. We were sent there to temper the deities, much like Selene made her vampires to control those terrible humans of her realm.”

I listened on, flabbergasted.

“The deities’ terrible wars and endless bloodshed needed to end. We carried a song of The Wheel to bless the world. It filled the skies, the seas, and the land, reducing the might of the deities.”

I had to push the brakes for a moment, a thought occurring to me in a sea of what-the-fuckery. “Wait. What about Heaven? Isn’t Heaven the source of everything? Not some Wheel?”

Gavriel’s wings shivered. “Heaven is a realm the deities made for themselves. And hell, or the hells, is nothing more than a mortal idea.” He pointed at the sky. “Heaven is beyond the clouds, an empty place now, once rich with debauchery and scheming and plotting. They were supposed to be tending to their races, not spilling blood.”

Another lie exposed? Or more to add to the pile?

This is home.

This is truth.

“Before we came, the Hinterlands were a lush land teeming with natural beauty,” Gavriel said. “We respected every corner of it, settling there without harming anything. In the end, it became the terrible place it is now. Though I am sure it will heal once the scourge of deity filth is removed. This is where you come in.”

Ugh. My belly flipped. “This is a lot to take in, especially in this position. Can I have my hand back now?”

He shook his head. “Not until we are done, for this fragment of my existence will end for good.”

Why did I feel so sad? Because I was like him? Because I had this seraphim essence inside of me?

I let him continue. “Before Aidan discovered the other world—Selene Haven—him and his ilk pushed against our song, orchestrating a war more terrible than those before it. They moved their races around the world to slaughter, maim, and burn. The Wheel sought a cleansing, to completely remove the deities and allow the races to take care of themselves. To give them a chance to build a better world.”

My poor head.

“And so, we wove a new song, drawing upon the power of ourselves and The Wheel upon its command. If unleashed, it would have torn down Heaven and pulled the deities back into The Wheel to be undone. For true death can only come to a deity in The Wheel. The deities Aidan killed are not gone, but trapped in stasis.”