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“Honestly, I’m surprised the gods didn’t kill me,” she muttered.

“Because I didn’t let them,” I said. “Ava very carefully planned when the attack would happen. When I’d be there. She knew I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”

“Ava has me right where she wants me,” Bella gasped.

“I think she’s going to send you after Faris,” I said. “She wants to kill the King of the Gods.”

“And use me to do it.” Bella retreated from the glass. “Leda, you can’t let that happen. You can’t let me kill again.”

“I won’t,” I promised her. “I’m going to go talk to Faris.”

The trick was telling him what Ava had planned without making him go berserk and order Bella’s immediate execution.

“I’ll figure it out,” I promised Bella.

I wasn’t sure she even heard me. She was sitting on the floor, her head buried in her knees, sobbing softly.

21

FAMILY BONDS

Faris’s soldiers were adamant that his talks with Grace would not be disturbed, and considering the fate of the universe might very well depend on the gods and demons not killing each other, I didn’t push the issue.

So it was many hours before I was allowed into the massive private wing of the gods’ castle that Faris occupied. His soldiers led me down the hall, past a dozen different meeting chambers, one for every day of the week and then some. It was a tad excessive, even for a god. After all, it’s not like he could be in more than one place at once.

“Where is Faris anyway?” I asked his soldiers.

“Lord Faris just spent six hours meeting with a demon,” replied the burliest of the bunch. “And now he is relaxing in his library.”

I didn’t think Faris even knew how to relax. He was probably scheming in that library. No matter. I’d tell him what I’d learned, and then we’d scheme together until we’d thought up a way to stop Ava.

Faris’s soldiers brought me as far as the door to the library. Then they took up position on either side of it and waited, as still as mice, as alert as hawks. I took a step forward and knocked.

“Enter,” Faris’s voice called from the other side of the closed door.

Hmm. Maybe his soldiers were right about the relaxing. He sounded uncharacteristically chilled out.

I went inside, closing the door behind me. Faris was lounging on a day bed. He looked so small in the amphitheater-like library, but he was clearly the room’s centerpiece. Tiers of shelves rose from the soft, carpeted circle where he rested, like petals peeling back from a daisy’s central disc.

“Leda.” He didn’t rise, but he did pat the day bed. “Come. Sit.”

He was acting so weird. Faris was always so put-together. His clothes were always perfect. And yet here he was, lying on a day bed dressed in nothing but a pair of loose pants. He hadn’t even bothered to put on shoes—or a shirt. That was pretty weird for an ultra-paranoid god who never met with anyone without wearing at least two layers of chest armor.

“I visited Bella.” I sat down next to him. “In your dungeon.”

“She surrendered herself to me,” Faris said, stretching out with languid grace, setting his hands behind his head. “She begged me to lock her up.”

“She told me.” I frowned. “But we had a deal.”

“I agreed I wouldn’t capture her by force. I didn’t say I wouldn’t put her in a cell if she surrendered herself by her own free will.” And with that said, Faris, King of the Gods, shrugged. Like a real, honest-to-goodness shrug.

Faris was never this relaxed. I felt like I’d gotten sucked into an alternate reality.

“But it’s free will that this is all about,” I argued. “Bella’s free will. She thinks she’s lost it to Ava.”

“Her recent massacre is proof of that.” Faris arched his dark brows at me. “Unless you’re suggesting that your sister willingly killed all those gods?”

“No, of course not,” I told him. “That was all Ava.”