Chapter Eight (Part 2)

The sound of the wind battering the walls outside in preparation for a rainstorm was the only sound for a few moments.

And then it was utter chaos as everyone started talking over each other.

“No fucking way – ” that was Ana, of course.

“Ooh!” from Ren.

“Not possible. There haven’t been any new gods since the dawn of time,” one of the little guards. The boy. Dani?

“A god of what?” from Samir, who seemed suitably horrified.

And “Why now?” from Gabriel.

I fought not to cover my ears from the sudden noise, but they were all good points. I was wondering about the answers myself, but didn’t say anything, because there was a sort of familiar tug in my chest that had never once steered me wrong. It was a certainty that Wisdom, like usual, was spot on.

So I watched her, and waited for her to explain herself, because Wisdom wasn’t one to blurt out half-baked ideas – if she was voicing it, it meant she’d given the matter due thought, and had worked out as many of the answers as she could already.

The questions gradually died down, everyone looking to Wisdom for an explanation, which she gave quite succinctly.

“While it is true that no new gods have emerged since the realm’s creation, that doesn’t mean the universe can’t create a new one to keep things in balance.”

“Balance?” the other female guard, Mykala I think, spoke up. “Were things out of balance? Before all this stuff happened, I mean.”

Wisdom nodded, glancing at me out of the corner of her eye, and the answer came to me before she said it. I pursed my lips.

“The realm gained a god of love. Every strong force in the universe needs a counterpart to balance it out. Rook and Idris are naturally counterparts, for example. Light and dark, death and life. But if Rook suddenly became the god of love, a force that is inarguably extremely powerful, well – then yes, it would leave the universe unbalanced.”

“So…what? There’s a god of hatred now?” Peace asked slowly. I saw him grab Samir’s hand out of the corner of my eye, holding tight.

“That makes sense,” Ana conceded, brow furrowed deeply, “but wouldn’t the universe have told you about it, Rook?”

Everyone turned to me, then. As one of two gods who could communicate with the universe, it made sense that the universe would give me a heads up about this happening. To be fair, however, I had been kind of too distracted by everything in my life going sideways to really listen to the universe recently. Even so, this is the kind of news that the universe would make sure I heard, one way or another. But when I thought about it, and listened to the distant howl of the wind outside, the answer came to me.

“The universe didn’t tell me anything. It gave me some vague warnings about Idris, but nothing about a new god. But that’s probably because the universe didn’t create this god. Whoever they are, like me, they gained their godhood, just as I gained the title of god of love. They weren’t created with the intention to be a god of hatred or whatever else, they just became it naturally to keep things in balance. So theoretically, the person we’re looking for could have been living their life thus far as a half-immortal, a mortal, or whatever else, but is now a god.”

Ana’s frown deepened. “Even if the universe didn’t create their vessel brand new, it would still have been the universe’s intention for them to become a god of hatred, right? That wouldn’t just happen without the universe allowing it to be so. Wouldn’t the universe have said something?”

“No,” I said slowly, thinking it through. “Though the universe seems all powerful, it has its own restrictions. I was never intended to be a god of love, and this new person was never intended to be a god of hatred. The universe didn’t necessarily plan for this, it’s just correcting the balance as we go along. The universe can tell me its intent when it pleases, it can give me warnings about catastrophe, but it can’t always tell me everything in detail. After all, that wouldn’t be very balanced either, if I knew about everything before it happened.”

Everyone digested this in silence for a moment. Wisdom shifted again, picking at the velvet on the couch. “There’s something else I thought of, because this person simply being a god of hatred didn’t really account for all the strange things that have been happening, specifically with the souls and Idris. I think, in addition to being a god of hatred, they’re also a god of obsession.”

Hatred and obsession. It made too much sense. Hatred was the counterpart to love, but obsession was something the two emotions shared. Obsessive love could lead to things like souls desperately trying to return to the living to see their lover, or a husband locking up his spouse to protect him. Obsessive hatred could lead to crimes like murdering someone and fusing their corpse with a lichen deer, and other things that I really didn’t want to think about.

“So you think Idris is acting like this because of the existence of this new god? Then what’s the cure? Kill the new god?” Gabriel asked.

“No,” I said sharply, and his eyes widened at my tone. “Killing them won’t solve anything. Another god just like them will spring up right after. And besides, it makes sense that their existence would affect the souls because they have the least protection against such influences. Idris, however, is a god, and not just any god, but the first god. He wouldn’t be so easily affected. By your logic, then all of us would be acting fucked up. Someone must be doing something else to him to weaken his natural protection against their power.”

“What if…” Samir started, and then faded out, looking a bit pale and like the words he wanted to say were making him sick. “Never mind.”

Ana noticed his weirdness too and scoffed. “No way. Speak up, squirt. We’re all throwing out ideas right now, so don’t hold anything back.”

I leaned forward so I could look into Samir’s face and smiled with my fangs showing. He gulped in fear and shrank into Peace’s side, causing Peace to shoot me a warning look that was eerily similar to his sister’s. “Don’t be shy, son-in-law. Spit it out.”

Wisdom pinched my waist, a warning to behave, but we were all being so serious that I couldn’t stand it. What better way to ease the tension than to do my rightful duty as a father-in-law and give him heart problems?

“I just thought…Well, Idris is your counterpart in everything else. Wouldn’t it make sense for him to be…” he trailed off again, but I picked up his meaning and the smile immediately fell off my face.

“Not a fucking chance,” I deadpanned.

“He does have a point, though,” Bela, the pretty guard spoke up. Her voice was quiet but surprisingly steady.

She had a lot of balls to say that to me right now, though. I whipped my head over to glare at her, but to her credit, she didn’t flinch, just pursed her lips and lowered her gaze.

The air in the room became so tense it would have broken a knife, dead silence falling over us.

“Absolutely not,” I uttered, tone frigid. “The universe might not have told me explicitly about a new god, but it would have told me if the new god was my own fucking husband. And besides, his behavior was obsessive, yes, but not hateful.”

There was more awkward silence as I dared everyone to meet my eyes. The only ones who did were Ana and Wisdom, the former looking grim and thoughtful, the latter just looking at me with a conflicted gaze that only made my stomach sink further. If Wisdom didn’t immediately deny the theory, that meant there was some credence to it, but I refused to acknowledge that.

Idris was not a god of hatred. He was light, he was creation.

How could he possibly be hatred?

“Rook, as much as I want to agree with you, you didn’t see how he behaved with us during your confinement,” Peace spoke up softly, eyes full of sympathy. “He was…gods, he was like a different person. We couldn’t even mention your name or he would fly off the handle. And that’s not even the worst of it.”

I didn’t want to know what the worst of it was. I simply couldn’t even imagine it. Idris’s behavior had been possessive and controlling and selfish, yes, but he still treated me with some level of care, regardless.

“It doesn’t make sense,” I said firmly. “After all, if becoming the god of hatred made one automatically act hateful to everyone around them, then the same would be true for me, on the opposite end of the spectrum. If I’m the god of love, shouldn’t I be treating everyone with ooey gooey affection? I’m exactly the same asshole as usual. It doesn’t make sense.”

Silence.

“And besides,” I continued, a bit desperately, “we’re assuming that the new god made the deer, right? Idris doesn’t have any surgical knowledge, and he wouldn’t have had a chance to make something like that without one of us knowing. And besides, why would he have sent it after me if he did make it? That’s completely insane.”

This argument was, thankfully, a bit more sound, and I could see that everyone was carefully thinking it over. My chest had just loosened a bit in relief when Wisdom spoke up again, but unfortunately not to agree with me.

"Sure, except...you told me that Idris was acting oddly about you leaving the palace long before the deer. He was anxious about your new worshippers mobbing you. I think it’s a little farfetched myself, but it’s worth noting that it’s possible he could have staged the attack with the deer as an excuse to keep you trapped.”

I slowly turned to look at her, incredulous. She winced, but continued on.

“Didn’t he leave to ‘take care’ of something right before the attack, too? It’s just a little coincidental to me, that’s all. I also don’t think he would have gone to such lengths but…it would make sense.”

I stood up abruptly, and her mouth snapped shut with an audible ‘click.’

My voice was little more than a snarl. “Sure. Except if Idris wanted to keep me trapped like a princess in a tower all along, there were much easier ways to go about it than sending a fucked up creature to attack me. He makes most of my meals. All he would have had to do is slip something into one of them, and bam, I’m helpless. Not to mention, you saw him after I was injured. He was devastated. Absolutely. Fucking. Not.”

She had another argument cued up on her tongue, I could see it. Probably something about how a public attack would have given him an excuse to lock me up without suspicion for longer, or how he never intended for me to actually get hurt fighting it, and that’s why he was upset, but she kept quiet, and thank all the gods she did, because I’d had about enough of this.

Idris was not the god of hatred. He could be my counterpart in everything else, but not this. Not this.

Because what it boiled down to, if it was true, is that it was still my fault he was like this. Just for a different reason.

The problem with that was that it was much easier to distance myself from Idris to save him if my presence was the issue than it was to somehow take away his status as a god of hatred and obsession.

It wasn’t Idris. Period.

But when I found out who the new god was, I was going to kick their fucking ass into the next lifetime.