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He grabs my wrists and pulls me back to him. “Kaleida told you about the gods?”

“Yes.”

“About Ametrine and the three Vaile she shared her essence with and turned into gods?” He rubs his thumbs over my collarbones, the softest touch from his cold, rough hands. My heart swells, and I smother it in guilt and emptiness, sacks and chains, deadly rainbows and wretched green grass.

“The gods aren’t even real, and—”

He leans forward, squeezes the sides of my face and plants a bloody kiss on my lips, and as he pulls away, he shushes me. “Shut that little mouth and listen for a minute.”

The kiss lingers, salty and sticky. I seal the blood between my lips.

“One of those gods, Peridot, also used some of her essence from Ametrine to create her own being. The Vaile and Hollows each have a part in the cycle—magic moving through the beings, to the plants and back to the gods. It was already a perfect design. As long as magic keeps flowing and never leaves the cycle, the Vaile continue to receive gifts from the gods through the connection to their Immortal Realm. But Peridot wanted a safeguard in case the cycle was disrupted, causing magic to die. She made another immortal who was to be the source of new magic if ever needed, but”—he casts his eyes down and takes my hands in his, trembling fiercely and holding so tightly that I keep quiet—“she made a mistake.”

He blinks far too slowly. “The new being couldn’t do the one thing he was meant to do. He couldn’t create magic. He could only block it. Peridot was fucking livid. She was given one opportunity to create, and she wasted it on a mistake. So she took the essence back from him—violently.”

He hauls my hands to his chest. “But it couldn’t be used to make a new being, and Ametrine couldn’t give any more of her own essence. Peridot ruined the only chance at creating new magic, and she didn’t want Ametrine to find out. So the cruel bitch goddess lied and kept her mistake locked up in a cage for thousands of years, leaving him just a shell of a being without the essence used to create him. When Ametrine found out, she was furious that a being in her world had been locked up like that, so she freed him and punished Peridot. Ametrine sent the being to live with the Vaile, and eventually he fell in love with one of them.”

Love.I didn’t think he knew that word.

“And they had a son, who grew into a man—half-Vaile, half-mistake. And when the being died…” He pulls me closer. My knees bump my chin, and he wraps his arms around my back, trapping me in a ball against him, my hands still on his chest.

“Eli—”

He shushes me again. “When the being died—”

“I thought the being was immortal.”

A sad smile finds his face. “He was. Is. But without his essence, his immortality was broken. His body died, but his mind and soul joined his son’s—they merged into one, inside the son’s body—and then his son had a son, and every time a father died, it happened again…and again, eventually merging thousands of souls into one.”

He stares at me.

I stare back, unsure of what to say and still shivering.

So he continues. “And sometimes the son knows it’s coming because the father tells him and prepares him for the combined future that awaits them after his death. And sometimes”—he hugs me tighter—“he doesn’t find out until he comes home to his mother standing over his father’s dying body, watching him bleed out on the carpet with a knife in her hand. And with the final beat of his father’s heart, his body changes in an instant. Colder, thicker skin, stronger—so much so that he doesn’t know his own strength—and other things too.”

“What are you saying?” I grit out.

“I’m saying…I’m a mistake.”

“How? I don’t understand.”

“Never—” he sighs a lifetime’s worth of sighs and kisses the tip of my nose. “I’ve lived thousands of lives, and every time I die, my soul and all my memories and thoughts from all my previous lives join with my son’s mind and soul and body, and we become one.”

I’m not sure if I’m more terrified of the words he’s saying or the fact that he’s saying the words, opening up to me—with pure fucking nonsense.

“Your son? You’re not making sense.”

“So many sons,” he says, eyes glossy.

He’s serious…and not at all sane. I’ve found someone as unstable as myself.

I humor him. “So, you are your father?”

“And my grandfather and my great grandfather and—”

“All the way back to the beginning,” I finish for him, my mind swirling.

“Yes, but I’m also me. Mostly me.” He touches his forehead to mine. His curls graze my eyebrows, and the beat of a thousand hearts hammers into my hands. It’s too gentle, too intimate, even with his tight hold.Who is this man? These men?