6. Ash

Chapter Six

Ash

M y mind was full of Lorraine when I finally left her at the cabin and made my way through the forest. She’d forgiven me. If our sex was anything to go by, she’d forgiven me in a big way… again and again and again. She liked this life with me, at least for the time being, and that was all I could ask for. I liked having her around, too. She was nothing like Ava, nothing like I’d painted all human women to be. I knew it had been stereotyping for me to assume all human women were like Ava, but it wasn’t an unfair statement to say that humans always wanted power—more than they could handle. Somehow, Lorraine was nothing like that. Everything about her was different, sweet, new, and I didn’t know what to make of it. She forced me to think about who she was, and not just what she was. She forced me to get to know who she was under her facade, and I liked peeling back the layers and really getting to know her. Let’s pretend that it won’t end eventually. She had no idea how dangerous it was to do that. If I pretended that things between us wouldn’t end, I would be a lot more attached than I was. I was holding back because thinking about a permanent life with Lorraine was fucking dangerous. It was the kind of thing that would get me all twisted up and full of pain when she finally left. The fact that she wanted to not think about the future made me want to ignore that it was happening, too, but I couldn’t forget that after All Hallows’ Eve, she would leave and I would never see her again.

“You’re deep in thought,” a voice said suddenly next to me, and I jumped when Dolus appeared. He laughed at me, his broad smile splitting his face in two, showing his perfectly white teeth. “You should see your face right now.”

I raised my eyebrows at him. “I was thinking.”

“You seem to be doing a lot of that lately.”

“Is there something wrong with it?”

Dolus shrugged and tucked his hands into his black blazer pockets. He always wore all black, and it worked with his whole brooding, mysterious look. “It wasn’t like that when I met you and we started hanging out. It just seems to me that lately, you’ve got a lot going on in your mind.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Where does that leave your plans?”

I frowned at Dolus. “What are you getting at?”

“You said before that this human girl isn’t important enough to make you give up your plans. Is that still true? Was it ever true?”

I thought about it. My mind had been filled with Lorraine lately. Looking after her, making sure she was safe, she had what she needed. Not only that—making sure she was happy. The latter was a bigger deal now than before, when I hadn’t given a shit about her emotional state, as long as I’d managed to keep her alive. Did I want things to change if they were going so well with Lorraine? She liked who I was. My magic, my life as a drus fascinated her, and that made me look at who I was and what I did with fresh eyes. Seeing it through her point of view took away a lot of the fucked-up side of it that had been there since Ava had trampled all over me.

When I looked at my life through Lorraine’s eyes, I could almost see myself doing this for the rest of my life again. Lorraine wasn’t going to be around forever, though. In fact, we only had two weeks, and no matter what, she was leaving after that. No matter how much she wanted to pretend this would carry on forever, the truth was that it really was pretend. It wouldn’t ever be that way. She wouldn’t stay—the moment she had her freedom, she would go back to her sister. That was where she wanted to be, anyway. She would leave, and even though she’d never meant to hurt me, and we both had known from the start this thing wouldn’t be permanent, the outcome would forever be that I ended up alone. When Lorraine wasn’t here anymore, what was the point? “It’s still true,” I finally replied. “She’s not going to make me change my mind about what I want.”

Dolus’s grin broadened again, eating up most of his face. “Good. That’s good.”

“You keep checking with me about what I feel and if I’m ready for this,” I said. “Of course. I need to know you’re serious, or else it will never work. You know how magic works.”

I nodded. Most of the magic we wielded was born from the courage of our conviction—without it, it didn’t go through. If something went wrong, it was as if the magic just couldn’t carry us completely without the power of what we believed to go along with it. “What I mean,” I continued, “is that you keep checking if I’m keeping up my end, doing what I need to do to make this happen, but what about you?”

“What about me?” Dolus asked, frowning again. His expressions changed so quickly. “Are you going to do what you promised to do? Are you going to give me a place in a new life, with new magic and a new role?”

“Do I look like I’ll lie to you?” Dolus asked. I studied him. I couldn’t say for a fact that I believed he wouldn’t lie to me. He was the god of deceit, after all, but I wanted to trust that he would follow through. Why would he be this invested, otherwise? “Where am I going when I leave all this behind?” I asked and waved at the forest around me. “Where will you find me a space to exist?”

“I have something very special for you in mind,” Dolus said, his grin back but his expression was sly. “Like what?”

“I won’t tell you until everything is in place. It doesn’t do to create expectations, right? That’s just a recipe for heartache. Just trust that I know what I’m doing.”

I nodded. I guess I had no choice but to wait and see what Dolus had in store for me. “You’ve been spending more time with Artemis,” Dolus said. “Yeah.” I nodded. “I don’t look her up or anything, but she likes to hang out here in the forest, and now that I’m awake more, she sees me more.”

“Hmm,” Dolus said. “How much do you share with the goddess of chastity?”

I frowned. That was right. Artemis wasn’t only the goddess of the hunt, but the goddess of chastity, too. It was ironic that she wanted to know so much about my relationship with Lorraine when it had started based on sex. The idea made me grin. “What’s so funny?” Dolus asked. His eyes were sharp, mouth pursed into a line. “Nothing,” I said. “You wouldn’t get it.”

Dolus narrowed his eyes. “You didn’t answer me.”

“What is it you’re asking? How close we are? Gods, how close can you get with a god or a goddess? I’m not closer to her than to you, if jealousy is your thing.”

Dolus snorted. “Being jealous would suggest that I find myself lacking in some way, which I really don’t.”

I was asking more to find out how much she knows about us hanging out, about your future plans.”

I snorted. “I’m not going to share what I’m doing with anyone, least of all Artemis.”

“No, you might not… your friends might, though.”

“Like who? Rowan? He’s the only one I really talk to, and he was the one who suggested I do this in the first place, helping me find someone who will do it for me. It’s fine; he won’t tell on me.”

“Good, good,” Dolus said, nodding. He appeared satisfied. It was my turn to narrow my eyes at him. “Why are you so worried about who knows?”

“It’s not exactly conventional,” Dolus said. He was right about that. If Artemis found out, she would try to stop me. She would lecture me about how what I did was important, how we all belonged in a fine balance that was called life, and no matter how much we hated the hand we’d been dealt, it was our responsibility to play that hand no matter what. It was easy to say for someone who’d never really been broken the way I had. It was easy for someone who lived at the top of the world to judge those beneath them. No matter how friendly Artemis and Philotes (or Philippa, as Lorraine liked to call her) and even gods like Dolus got with us sprites and nymphs and druses, we would never be equal. They would always be above us, looking at us as some charity case. Artemis had saved me by giving me back my immortality, but she’d still done it as an act of kindness to help a lesser being, not because she’d been so damn worried about the rest of my life. “She won’t find out until it’s too late,” I reassured Dolus, who nodded. “Good. You better get ready; it will happen soon.”

“Not until after All Hallows’ Eve,” I said. Dolus turned to look at me with a hard stare. “You’re giving me a timeline?”

“It’s less than two weeks from now.”

“Why All Hallows’ Eve?”

It was about Lorraine, but I couldn’t tell Dolus that or he would think that I wasn’t serious about doing this. I fumbled for an answer. “It’s just that… all the gods and goddesses who spend time with us will join us in our tricks and jokes, and they’ll notice if I’m not there. I don’t want that kind of attention.”

Dolus thought about it for a second before he smiled at me. “That’s clever thinking. I don’t partake in bullshit like that, so I forget that there are petty gods who think it’s fun. Fine, we’ll do it after All Hallows’ Eve. It’s a good amount of time for you to work with.”

“Work with?” I asked, confused. “For what?”

“You’re lying to me,” Dolus said casually. “You keep telling me this human woman doesn’t mean anything to you, but that’s not true.”

“She’s not involved and she won’t get in the way,” I said tightly. It was true that I downplayed how I felt about Lorraine so Dolus could give me what I wanted, but after she was gone, I would need this escape more than ever. “We’ll see how things go,” Dolus said, nodding slowly. “Just remember, I’m the god of deceit. I can smell a trick and a lie a mile away.”

“I’m not lying,” I said.

“Sure you’re not,” Dolus said, and I knew he didn’t believe me. That was fine. He didn’t have to believe me if he didn’t want to. I was determined to go through with this, just as determined as Lorraine was to go home. It would just be a matter of time before everything fell into place, and then I would be ready for the next chapter in my life.

Because the gods knew that after I’d had my run with Lorraine, I would be more than ready to finally leave this shitty life with all its shitty memories behind and start over somewhere else. It was the next best thing I could think of to losing my immortality, and fuck if I was walking that road again. No, this was the way to go, and I would stick to the plan, no matter what. I just wanted to ride out this time I had left with Lorraine first. She mattered more to me than a lot of things did before, but I accepted that all good things came to an end.