Chapter Nine (Part 1)

Peace and Wisdom took care of showing everyone to a room while I stormed off to my own, leaving a heavy silence behind me.

But what were they expecting? To tell me my husband was now quite possibly an entity of hatred and obsession and there was no fucking cure, that he was just going to be like that forever, and I would just be okay with that?

Fuck off.

I found my room and flung myself onto the bed, rolling around angrily in the sheets for a moment.

I had mixed feelings, and it was frustrating, because I wanted to be black and white like Samir. Just kill the new god and deal with the consequences later.

But I couldn’t justify that kind of coldness, because I’d been on the receiving end of those wishes before. People had suggested killing me for centuries. Get rid of the source of evil and everything will be fine, right?

But that’s not how it works. Balance had to be maintained. Kill off one god, someone new will take their place. It would solve nothing.

Over the last thousand years, every time one of the other gods suggesting just killing me off, it was Idris every time who told them no, who insisted that I was necessary even when he himself didn’t really know what to make of me. He may have been responsible for forcing me to stay in the venomous forest and he may not have done anything to make my life easier, but he’d never wished for my death.

So I couldn’t help but sympathize with the new god on some level, because what if everything they were doing was unconscious? What if the person they killed to create the deer deserved that fate?

What if all these problems we were experiencing were simply because of the new god’s existence, and not because of anything purposely done by them?

I knew very well how cruel it was to have an unfortunate fate thrust upon you.

I couldn’t assume the new god was being purposely malicious until I had more information.

So where did that leave us?

First, we would have to find the identity of the person fused with the deer. If we could get information on them, we were one step closer to the new god, hopefully.

…Unless it really was a random murder. There was also the possibility, however small, that the deer was sent by someone else entirely.

And I still had the issue of my own worshippers to deal with. I’d never gotten the chance to find the owner of the temple and question them.

…Plus we had to figure out how Idris was being poisoned. If he was being poisoned at all.

Ugh! There was too much to focus on at once.

Cure Idris, a part of me whispered immediately, do that first, worry about everything else later.

Maybe that was my selfish side talking, but it would make everyone feel better if we got him out of immediate danger. Not to mention, a sober and sane Idris was also a valuable asset in terms of investigative power. His help would allow us to find the new god much faster.

But curing Idris meant we had to figure out what he was being poisoned with. Easier said than done. When the realm merged, old poisons disappeared, some remained, and others became something new entirely. Nothing came to mind immediately as a slow-acting poison that would gradually disintegrate a god’s ability to shrug off the powers of another.

Except for me.

I was a poison that slowly degraded my loved ones’ ability to fight off their darkness. That included hatred and obsession.

Fucking…

Everything kept circling back around to the same conclusion. Despondent, I curled up like a shrimp and hugged a pillow to my chest, glaring at nothing in particular. I was throwing a tantrum, and I knew it, but I felt it was deserved. I had a lot to be unhappy about.

I sulked for about half an hour before there was a knock on my door. The presence didn’t feel like Peace or Wisdom, so it was probably Ana coming to bug the shit out of me. And unfortunately for me, Ana was the persistent type, so she wasn’t just going to walk away if I didn’t answer.

Sighing, I dragged myself up to answer the door, only to frown as it wasn’t Ana revealed on the other side, but one of Gabriel’s trainees. Bela.

Despite the late hour, she had yet to take off any of her makeup or let down her hair. She was wearing a gold eyeshadow that made her green eyes pop, and her black hair was done up in an elaborate bun with a gold filigree clip keeping it in place.

I was too lazy to greet her, so I just stared at her blankly and waited for her to say something, but it seemed like she was waiting for me to speak first, and so we ended up just watching each other in awkward silence. She shifted from foot to foot.

I wasn’t angry at her for speaking up earlier, but maybe she thought I was, so she hesitated, eyeing me warily. I couldn’t blame her for her caution. The widespread image of me as a creature of evil and destruction would take time to truly fade, if it ever did at all.

I lost patience eventually. “Did you just come here for the view, or did you need something?”

Her hesitant expression was quickly replaced by a scowl that amused me. They were all scared of me, until they realized I was more annoying than I was terrifying.

She paused and then gestured toward my room with her chin. “Can I come in?”

I squinted at her. “Do you have to?”

She just shrugged, which was annoying, but I was curious now, so I stepped aside to let her in and closed the door, watching impatiently as she examined my room with a judging eye.

She walked along the bookshelves scanning the titles, stood at the panoramic window covered with vines for a while, and made a face at the accent wall painted with swirling colors. Eventually she passed by my open closet door, seeing the almost completely empty dresser within alongside the full-length mirror. She paused, frowned at the mirror, turned to look at me like she was going to ask why it was inside the closet, then appeared to think better of it and finally came to a stop in the middle of the room.

“If you’re done inspecting my bedroom, can you get to the point?” I said dryly. She rolled her eyes.

How bold. Gabriel didn’t really need three trainees, did he? Two was plenty.

“Dani, Mykala, and I were talking and we had something to say to you. They sent me as the messenger.”

“Only one stupid enough to bother me, huh?” I said under my breath and went to sit on the edge of the bed.

“Apparently.”

I sighed. “And what exactly do you have to say?”

“We wanted to say that we don’t think Idris is the new god, and we came up with a plan to sneak into the palace to capture him.”

“…”

I tilted my head, confused. “Weren’t you the one who said Samir had a point earlier? Why did you change your tune so quick?”

She scratched her cheek awkwardly. “I think it’s important to explore all possibilities. But after thinking about it, it really doesn’t make much sense for him to be the one who made the deer. Forget all the other reasons, but he doesn’t have any surgical knowledge, you said so yourself. How could he have made it?”

While it was nice to have someone finally on my side on this, I was still confused.

“Okay…and why are you telling me? Why not tell Gabriel about this plan?”

“We tried,” she deadpanned. “He said it was too dangerous and that we hadn’t learned enough yet to pull off something like that. So we figured if we got you on board, you could convince the others.”

“Why come to me? Why not Ana?”

“Because you care the most about getting Idris out of danger. Don’t get me wrong, Ana cares. But she’s too cautious, and that caution might end up making Idris’s rescue take too long. After all, if he is being poisoned, then surely whatever he’s being given is harming his health, not only mentally but physically. It’s better to get him safely contained as soon as possible.”

She had a point, and she’d touched on something I was indeed quite anxious about – Idris’s health. The problem was that in all likelihood, the most likely poison to be doing this was just me, and bringing Idris anywhere within my vicinity wasn’t going to do him any favors. It was so frustrating. On the one hand, I was desperate to know how he was doing right now, but on the other, I wanted to keep him as far away as possible. I didn’t know what call to make.

“…Plus, we need you to be bait,” Bela added after a moment.