14. Ash

Chapter Fourteen

Ash

I walked toward the cabin, feeling lighter than air. This bullshit arrangement with Dolus had had me worked up and pissed off without me realizing it. I’d had to make a serious decision, and subconsciously, I hadn’t even known how much it had gotten to me. Now that he’d told me he didn’t care what I chose either way, it felt so much better. I’d thought he was going to be pissed off that I’d wasted his time. It turned out that Dolus really was my friend, after all. He may have been the god of deceit, but that didn’t mean he was out to get me. A lot of us had been born with magic that didn’t define us in every way possible. We were still people with more sides to who we were, aside from the magic we wielded. I’d only really started realizing that with Lorraine in the picture. She had such a different view of the world, it had opened my eyes to different possibilities. Now, it was doing that to me again. I still had to decide if I wanted to stay here and lose her after All Hallows’ Eve broke our bond, or if I wanted to go with her and lose everything else, becoming mortal. It was a harder decision than I’d thought it would be. Not because I didn’t know what I felt for her—I knew exactly how serious I was about her. I was just worried about what she felt for me. A deer appeared, nibbling at the grass that grew around the tree trunks around me. I watched absently as her velvet mouth moved, searching for what was good and what wasn’t. “Ash,” a voice said, and Artemis stood before me. “I should have known the stupid deer meant you were coming,” I said. I’d been so deep in thought I hadn’t put two and two together.

“If you knew I was coming, would you have tried to avoid me?” Artemis asked. She was angry. Her face was twisted in rage, and her auburn hair looked like it was on fire, blazing in the sunlight that fell through the leaves. I frowned. “I don’t usually try to avoid you, even if I don’t want to spend the whole day talking about my feelings.”

“Well, that’s good to know,” she snapped. “You’ve been making a hell of a lot of effort not to hang out with me or any of the druses.”

I shook my head, confused. “Why are you so pissed off?”

Artemis laughed, but the sound wasn’t joyful at all. It was filled with bitterness and scorn. “When were you going to tell me?”

“Tell you what?” I asked. I had the feeling that something was very wrong, but I couldn’t tell exactly what it was. “I ran into Dolus a short while ago.”

My body ran cold. “I didn’t know you two ran in the same circles.”

“We don’t,” Artemis snapped. “There are gods and goddesses who create and give life and protect it, and then there are gods and goddesses who break it down and ruin and destroy as far as they can. We try to stay away from each other to save the peace in this realm, because believe me, if I got my hands on someone who wanted to destroy what we work so hard to create and protect…” Her voice trailed off as if she couldn’t find the words she was looking for. She curled her hands in front of her as if she was strangling someone. I’d never seen this side of Artemis, and I wasn’t sure how to react, although I was pretty sure I knew where this was going. “Okay,” I said carefully. “So, you ran into Dolus. What did he tell you?”

“Everything!” Artemis cried out. “What the hell were you thinking? Did you think I wouldn’t find out you were trying to leave here and do something else? Did you think no one was going to notice?”

“I was just trying to figure out a way to deal with all the bullshit in my life without hurting everyone else,” I clapped back. “I didn’t realize it was against the rules to try to look after myself.”

“If you didn’t think it was against the rules, why did you go behind my back? And, of all the gods, to the god of deceit?”

She had a point. I hadn’t wanted her to know because I knew she’d be upset. What I’d been trying to do wasn’t right, and I’d known it all along. “You don’t get it,” I said, waving my hand at her before I tried to walk around her. She moved so fast, she was in front of me again the moment I stepped past her. I groaned. “You’re right,” she snapped. “I don’t get it. I give you a second chance after you throw your life away for some mortal, and this is what you do with it?”

“I never once felt ungrateful for how you helped me, and I hope I showed that,” I said. When Artemis had allowed me to come back to the immortal realm and continue being a drus after I’d given up my immortality for Ava, I’d been more than grateful. “I just hadn’t realized that I would be living my life alone… as an immortal. That goes on forever, do you know that?”

“I know what it means to be immortal!” Artemis snapped. “Do you think you’re the only immortal being that’s suffered in life and had to deal with it for an eternity? You’re not that special.”

I glared at her. It wasn’t fair of her to minimize my feelings just because others had felt it too. “I changed my mind about leaving,” I said. “I bet Dolus didn’t tell you that.”

“Oh, he did,” Artemis said, seething. “Then what are you so mad about?”

“The reason you decided to stay!”

My stomach dropped. Right. Dolus had betrayed me completely by telling Artemis literally everything. What a dick. She’d been serious when she’d said she knew it all. “Imagine my surprise when I found out that you’re getting seriously involved with that mortal woman. I told Dolus it wasn’t possible, you wouldn’t be so stupid, but I guess I was wrong! I should have left you in the mortal world; then you could have fallen for as many mortal women as you liked, and it wouldn’t be my problem.”

“Then don’t make it your problem,” I snapped back at her. “Why don’t you just stay out of it, and it won’t have anything to do with you? I won’t ask for your help again, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“At this point, I’m not worried,” Artemis sneered. “I’m furious. How dare you take what I gave you and throw it away like that? You need to pay me back for what I did for you. Temporary gratefulness isn’t enough.”

“What?” I gaped at her. “You heard me! I want you to pay for what I did for you. I felt sorry for you and helped you out of the goodness of my heart. Since then, you barely talk to anyone, you push us all away, and now you’ve gone behind my back, dealing with Dolus and hiding your relationship with a mortal from me, one that you’re apparently getting more and more tangled up in. I won’t let you make a fool of me.”

I shook my head. Her anger came at me like waves, her words stabbing me like knives. Her fury was difficult to manage. “I wasn’t trying to make a fool of you,” I said. “I didn’t mean for this to happen. They were going to kill her, Artemis.”

“You should have let them,” she said coldly. “Is that what we do here? We let humans die? I thought our role was to protect.”

“Your role is to protect the forest, and that’s it,” Artemis seethed. “You already stepped out of your role, and now you’re just making it worse.”

“I love her,” I blurted out before I could stop myself. That pulled her up short. “You what?”

I shook my head. “That’s not the point, though, is it? The fact is that she loves me, too.”

Artemis narrowed her eyes at me. “It sounds a hell of a lot like a repeat of three centuries ago. I’m pretty sure we had this exact conversation then. What makes her different?”

I wanted to answer that, but I decided against it. Artemis didn’t deserve me telling her what was real, what my life had become like since I’d met Lorraine. She’d come here furious with me, and she hadn’t even bothered to listen to my side. She’d decided whatever Dolus had told her was law, and I wasn’t going to make the effort to set her straight. “It’s none of your business,” I said. “If you decide to leave here and become mortal again, it is my business,” she clapped back. “Not if I don’t want your help again.”

“You can’t do it without my help!”

I glared at her, my anger rising to match hers. I knew Artemis was a goddess and I was just a drus, but that didn’t mean she had the right to treat me like I was a pathetic piece of shit. “I think I can get by without your help just fine,” I said tightly. “And since you’re so sure that I’ll fuck up, you’re more than welcome to back off and let me screw up my own life. Thank you for your help back then, but I’m not asking for it now.”

Artemis pursed her lips. “You’re making a mistake, Ash.”

I didn’t answer her. I walked around her, and this time she didn’t try to get in front of me again. I didn’t give a shit what she thought.

She’d told me I couldn’t do it by myself, and all that did was make me want to prove her wrong. Who the fuck did she think she was, anyway? I knew what I felt, and I knew what I wanted to do. Actually… that wasn’t entirely true. I knew what I felt, but it scared the living shit out of me, and I had no idea what I was going to do. I didn’t know if I could let Lorraine go and then live the rest of eternity without her. I didn’t know if I could take the risk and give up my immortality again, trusting her not to break my heart the way Ava had. I had no idea which way to turn. Maybe, if Artemis hadn’t come at me, firing on all pistons and tearing me apart like that, I would have asked her advice. Maybe she could have given me the answers I needed. If she’d bothered to ask me what my side of the story was, things could have been different, but she’d pushed me away by telling me what a fuck-up I was, and there was no way in hell I was going to talk to her about all of it now. Even though I could really use an objective point of view to give me advice. Whatever. I’d gotten by without advice until now, hadn’t I? I still had time to figure out what I was going to do. It wasn’t a lot of time, but it counted for something. I just had to decide if Lorraine could be trusted enough for me to give all of this up for. It was strange—I hated my life, but the fact that I was immortal meant there would always be space for me to deal with something. When I was mortal, it was all so final, and that scared me almost as much as losing Lorraine. Was there anything that didn’t scare me these days?