Chapter 26

CHAPTER26

Davina sleeps without stirring beneath the weight of our collective scrutiny, unaware that the first ghost she’s about to resurrect is her past.

“We just made her eat someone? I feel super bad.”

Ashen raises one brow.

“Kind of bad. I feel kind of bad.”

Ashen eyes me with doubt before pinning his sharp suspicion to the apothecary. “How did the Guild come into possession of this?”

“I don’t know,” Wynter says, shaking her head as she glances toward Roman. “I’m not even sure if Ammon knew much about its provenance.”

“Franca Duarte,” I interject, looking between them. “When Ember claimed her soul, the Guild must have taken back all her possessions. Maybe it was still among her materials, or maybe if Franca was aware that her client Davina had been reaped, perhaps she got rid of it.”

Ashen hums in agreement before turning his attention back to the stunned apothecary. “How did you obtain it?”

“I was due to meet Ammon at his apartment. He knew I was at the Guild and called to ask if I could bring it on my way. He then called the Vaultkeeper and requested its urgent release. Since Ammon was already on the Guild Council, he only needed one approver, but I don’t know who that was. Approval was granted right away. That was about thirty minutes before…” Wynter swallows and her gaze falls to the floor.

Roman’s stone-faced facade finally cracks, and he steps closer to Wynter as though shielding the apothecary from our questions. “What are you not telling us? You clearly know something about the ushgada.”

“So do you,” I counter, setting the bottle back down and returning to the living room to join Ashen’s side. I slip my hand into his. Roman’s brows flicker, his gaze trapped in the middle distance between us as he tries to work out his thoughts. “You reacted to the scent. It was familiar to you.”

Roman’s tongue traces his bottom lip as though tasting memory from a current of air. “It was, but I couldn’t place it,” he replies, his attention flicking briefly to Cole as he enters the room with Eryx and Aglaope, the three carrying platters of pastries from the kitchen to lay them out on one of the side tables. When Roman shifts his gaze back to mine, it’s as though he’s fighting to remember something he believes he forgot. “I think I know the scent, but I don’t know how.”

I nod, understanding that he’s trying to cast a net around a memory that might not even exist. I pick up one of the vials from the coffee table and pass it to him so he can test the scent again. “I think it’s familiar because it’s the building blocks of us all. The elements of all immortals. Angels. Demons. Witches, werewolves, and vampires. Whatever gods made us, we carry the elements of them, fractured and divided among us. But the demigods, their children, I think they carried all those same building blocks of the magic that made the rest of us.”

Cole’s heart trips over itself, the beat stuttering before it quickens as he lays down his plate, a little tremor rippling through the ceramic when he sets it down. “Demigods? What’s going on?”

“How do you know it’s not just a bit of every creature in there?” Roman asks, ignoring Cole’s question as he raises the vial to his face and inhales. It’s as though he’s determined to hold on to the chance to sort something out without the complication of his damaged memory.

“I don’t know for sure. But given the location listed on the vial, I’m willing to bet it’s likely not just a combination of immortals.” I turn to Ashen, squeezing his hand as Davina stirs on the couch, her hand traveling across her eyes as she starts to wake. “Évora? That’s where you and Davina were?”

Ashen nods, grief rising in his features before he tamps it down beneath a blanket of surging heat. “Davina’s coven was just outside the town. We had a cottage on the southern boundary of their territory,” he says as he nods in Davina’s direction, his voice little more than a whisper. “That’s where I reaped her soul.”

Cole’s voice is so quiet when he speaks, so heavy with the weight of time and loss. But as soft as it is, it cuts through the room like a freshly forged blade.

“Évora?” he asks.

The flesh on my neck tingles. Fine hairs rise on my arms.

Cole’s voice floats up from memory, from the time we sat in the villa in Ravello and drank wine with Urtur. I was supposed to protect him, he’d said. It was my purpose.

A cold wave ripples through my veins as I look down at Davina, her eyes open now and widening with the alarm of sensing something very wrong without knowing exactly what it is. I glance at Aglaope, who scrutinizes the scene as though calculating odds at a gladiatorial battle. Ashen’s confusion pulls at the mark on my chest and I hold tighter to his hand, my palm going slick.

“Cyrus,” I say, reaching my free hand to curl around Davina’s arm as I try to tug her to her feet. “Please take Davina and Aglaope back to—”

“Évora?” Cole says again.

Godno. Not there. I swallow a thick lump of dread that sticks to my sternum and twists around my heart. “Cyrus? Their rooms please?”

Cyrus is about to come fetch Davina when Cole cuts in front of him and blocks his access, his gaze bounding between Davina and Ashen. “You were in Évora?”

“Yes,” Ashen replies, his eyes darting between Cole and Davina, confusion weighing heavily in that one simple syllable.

“I was there too. When I was an angel. I was in hiding, protecting someone.” Cole says, color leaching from his skin.

It was my purpose, Cole’s voice echoes from memory. Loving him was an unexpected gift.

Ashen’s hand grows hot around mine and I try to tug him with me to shield Davina from Cole’s increasingly wild gaze, but his feet seem to have cemented to the floor as the realization takes hold.

“Protecting who?”

“His name was Dimitrios. He was a demigod.”

Shit. Oh shit.

The scene around me freezes, just for an instant. Davina stops breathing as Ashen shifts his glare between her and my sister, smoke billowing from his back to kiss the floor. Aglaope stands straight and still, her lips set in a tight line. Eryx seems to have lost all light. Even his wings are dulled by heartache. Ediye’s hand is curled in a fist at her chest as her eyes swirl with the universe of power trapped beneath their immortal lens. Roman still blocks Wynter from view, his arm hovering behind him, his muscles bulging as though he’s ready to grab her and run. I feel the weight of Cyrus’s gaze on me as his hand tightens on the hilt of his sword. And Cole, he’s the worst of all. His gaze is fused to the vial clutched in Roman’s fingers, his grief stitched together with threads of brightening rage.

“Dimitrios?” he says, his voice so small that I want to fall to my knees.

The stillness lasts only a breath longer before the room erupts in a salvo of sound and motion. The furious stampede of heartbeats hum like war drums beneath the rising voices. Smoke and cinders crackle in Cole’s wake as he rushes toward us, his hand outstretched for either the ampule on the coffee table or Davina’s neck, I can’t be sure. Cyrus wraps a thick arm around Cole’s chest, keeping the point of his drawn blade trained on my friend’s neck as sparks hiss across the floor.

“Settle yourself, demon. You will not touch her,” Cyrus says, his words as much a soothing reassurance as a warning in the distraught demon’s ear, the only sound of calm among the string of his soul-shattering cries that mix with Davina’s apologies. The scent of tears fills the air. Cole’s. Davina’s. Ediye and Eryx’s. Mine. But through the glassy film, my eyes find Aglaope, and her expression is grim as she begins to understand the dynamics unraveling around her.

“You,” Cole seethes, his skin reddened by blotches of fury and streaked with tears as he stares at Davina. “It was you?”

Cole’s lungs heave against Cyrus’s hold on his chest as Eryx and Ediye attempt to comfort him. Ashen steps between them, blocking Davina from view.

“No, brother. I was the one who told Davina there was a demigod nearby. It was my knowledge to protect, and I did not. It was me who failed,” Ashen says as he bows his head, folding a fist across his heart. “I am sorry. Truly sorry.”

“As am I, Cole. I am so sorry,” Davina whispers.

“It was my doing also,” Aglaope says as she steps forward. “I was the one who killed him.” My sister glances at me and I try to infuse my expression with my appreciation that she’s taking her share of an egregious wrongdoing, but not much comes beyond the heartache I feel for Cole’s loss.

Cole’s shoulders slump and Cyrus loosens his hold, handing him over to Eryx’s embrace. The angel’s razor plumage sings like wind chimes as his feathers shift to shield Cole’s resurrected grief from view. I look to Davina, who sits with her head bowed, her elbows on her knees and her palms facing upward, the sigils of her new rank shining with gentle green light.

I stand in silence, looking at these people I love who have been tied together as enemies and friends and even lovers, caught in the whirlwind of history. The secrets of our immortal pasts seem to sharpen beneath the sands of time. Those blades cut so deep when they emerge. We’re all hurting from these wounds, from the things done to us, by the wrongdoings we’ve committed against others, even by the actions we’ve taken against ourselves. We all suffer from guilt and shame. Love and loss. Decisions that can never be taken back. ‘Perhaps some things cannot change, no matter how much we wish them to,’ Aglaope said. Maybe she’s right, that no matter how hard we try we’re always destined to hurt one another. To keep hurting one another, no matter how many centuries pass.

I watch as Cyrus holds out a hand for Davina. She looks up at him, her eyes red with tears, her skin stained with them. He gives her a nod. She gives him a fragile smile in return. When Davina slips her hand into his, he squeezes her fingers, and a different kind of tear falls from her lashes.

I turn away and drift toward the mantle of our fireplace, the gentle hum of the Deathfate stone singing to me from a hidden safe in the wall, its locks encased in magic. I wonder how much these unseen forces have always toyed with us. Bringing us together. Tearing us apart. Maybe I should hate the last of the gods for what they put us through. Or maybe it was our own doing all along, that we can’t help but crash into one another, like ships being sung to shore.

Aglaope was right. Some things cannot change. But I have to believe we can still mend them. We can heal our hearts when they break. We can find a way back to ourselves and one another. If Ashen could help me do it, then I can help the people I love too. Maybe I can even help this realm, whether it is my fate or not. I can give them what they need to keep going.

And I’m ready to start trying.

Even if I have to spill a little blood to do it.