Page 30 of Gods of Prey (Parallel Prey #3)

Bash’s eyes immediately flit to mine, the same guarded expression he always wears whenever the topic comes up. Only this time, it’s warring against his desire not to lie to his wife. There’s a question in his stare. Can he share the forbidden information with her?

I want to shake my head. Not because I don’t trust her or Revel, who has gone still against their kitchen island. It’s a kneejerk reaction from centuries of responding this way—evade, deflect, and distract. That’s what I’ve trained myself to do.

“We can’t tell anyone the truth of what happened here,” I mutter into my chest, my voice nearly a whisper. I feel too broken to speak. To think.

The things we witnessed today were straight out of a nightmare. The power of the Divine Council has stretches beyond what any of us ever realized. If they continue like this unchecked, there’s no telling what it could do to the balance of our realms. Of the entire universe.

Still, they’ll pay for their actions. For ripping away the one thing that mattered to me based on politics and power. I don’t care if it takes me thousands of years. I’ll get my revenge, even as the lowly Goddess of Death.

Sebastian tips his chin in a single nod of confirmation. “They’ll punish us for this.”

My arms fly into the air, gesturing to the destruction surrounding us. “What more can they do?”

His expression remains stoney. Where I’m filled with rage, ready to tear the realms apart, he’s devastated. Depleted.

I’ll do anything to avoid seeing this haunted look on my brother’s face ever again.

“I fell in love with a male from another realm,” I explain slowly, making a point not to look toward the kitchen and meet Revel’s intense stare at my admission.

“What’s so wrong about that?” Jovie asks, looking toward Bash.

“He was fae,” he supplies in a careful voice.

I can see Revel's eyebrows lift from my peripherals at the admission, and I frown. This is exactly why I didn’t want to tell him on the plane.

Gods and fae have been at odds since before any of us had been born. Thousands of years. The conflict has run so long, there’s hardly any beings around who can remember where it all began. Their realm, Velvareth, sits far away from ours and has been completely disconnected in every sense.

“Is that bad?”

Sebastian nods.

“So, you dated a guy from a different realm. That earned you fifty lifetimes?”

“He wasn’t just from a different realm. He was from an enemy realm and he wouldn’t have been here if he were following the law,” Revel supplies from the kitchen with a pointed look. I only glare back at his self-righteousness.

“Ashric was in Nytheris for work,” I bite out a little too harshly. Thankfully, Jovie seems to understand that the harsh tone is not meant for her. “To regain access to Umbraeth for their souls to find eternal peace. He was cooperating with the Divine Council.”

Revel just shakes his head, that same familiar look of hatred that every god wears toward the fae plastered across his face.

“Ash grew very sick during his time in our realms,” Sebastian goes on to explain. “Sienna asked if I could use my Life energy to heal him and I obliged. I had no idea it was such a crime.”

“It wasn’t a crime,” I rush to correct. “He was doing amazing work here. We were close to a deal. His passing would have nullified all the work he accomplished.”

“I’m sure that’s what your motivation was,” Revel snarks back sarcastically. I offer him a look so lethal, it would kill him if I weren’t stuck in this gods-forsaken form.

“Don’t you dare try to speak on something you’ve never experienced,” I practically roar, throwing his words from before back in his face mercilessly.

“Have you ever been in love? In all your existence as a god?”

“No. I’ve never experienced love as mortals understand it.”

He had no clue what he’s talking about.

“Ashric was different than anything they described fae to be,” Sebastian calmly interjects.

My heart swells in pride that after all this time—all this punishment—my brother is still willing to defend the man I once loved.

“He was intelligent, respectful, and wise. His true objective was to bridge the gap that our ancestors created between our realms. He wanted us to coexist again.”

Revel offers my brother a condescending look, as if he can’t believe he fell for the fae propaganda.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was the Divine Council who–” I stop myself, clamping my mouth shut at Sebastian’s warning glare.

“They what?” Revel asks, rounding the counter to stand across from me. “You think they made him sick? That’s ridiculous. The Divine Council has been working toward a resolution with the fae forever. It’s them who refuse to compromise.”

I feel my fury burn my cheeks. I’m so tired of hearing all the regurgitated lies that the Divine Council spouts roll off Revel’s tongue. Like he hasn’t had an original thought in all his life. Why should he when Mommy does all the thinking for him?

But he’s wrong about this. I’ll stand by that until the day I die.

“Whatever happened,” Sebastian interjects, as he always used to do to diffuse one of mine and his best friend’s arguments.

Funny, regardless of how far Revel and I have come, we’re still stuck in the same spot we’ve always been.

Like quicksand. “He got sick. We healed him. The Divine Council was pissed, claiming we affected forty-three other souls by saving his. We were sentenced to pay for each one of those.”

“And the other seven you were assigned?” Jovie asks.

“Those were added on for fun. Seven is the number for balance. That’s the ‘lesson’ they were trying to teach us. It seemed fitting.” Sebastian shrugs.

I roll my eyes and scowl. “Right, like seven more brutal mortal lifetimes are nothing.”

“And Ashric? What happened to him?” Jovie almost looks afraid to ask.

Sebastian’s lips flatten, his glowing eyes meeting mine in a shared grief. This is what we’ve been fighting for. Why he’s written off his divine duties. Why he altered timelines. Why we’ve both clung to our lies.

Because we know the outcome when the Divine Council gets their hands on Jovie.

“He was erased from existence,” I say in a cold, detached tone.

Erased . Right in front of us. Leaving absolutely nothing behind. Nothing to mourn or honor. Nothing to cling to. Not a single speck of his soul remains.

“What changed with you? From before you became the Goddess of Death?” Revel had asked me in his dream.

This. I couldn’t tell him then, but it was the devastation of losing Ashric that changed me.

It altered me on an atomic level. It showed me how cruel and unjust the Divine Council is.

How their power remains unchecked. How the democracy they claim to defend is just an illusion to keep us all in line.

Every second of this punishment has only solidified my beliefs.

“So, you’ve done this before. You knew what was at stake,” Jovie concludes, looking between me and Sebastian with nothing but raw understanding. No judgement. No criticism. That’s why I like her.

Revel is still brooding across from us, his hands crossed over his chest in a pout.

She locks eyes with Bash. “That’s why you’ve been hiding.”

When he nods, she turns to me. “That’s why you’re protecting him.”

I dip my chin. “I owe him much more than that.”

“Then, we’ll win this fight. We’ll make sure they give us what we want and accept nothing less. And when it’s all over, we’ll continue Ashric’s work. In his honor.”

She makes the declaration with such confidence—with pure mortal ego fueling her. Her jaw is set, shoulders stiff—ready for battle. She hasn’t ever witnessed such corruption or prejudice. She hasn’t been jaded the way the three of us have.

But none of us correct her. We only nod, exchanging weary glances between one another at the prospect of what she’s suggesting.

I won’t allow myself to run away with the hope that Ashric’s soul will be honored the way he deserved, but I’ll certainly see to it that Jovie doesn’t meet the same fate.

W e sit through their dinner without any talk of the world ending or the far or heading back to Nytheris.

Instead, Jovie asks more about Aurelys, and I choose to fade out of view through Sebastian’s beaming explanations of his realm and all their useless rites and rituals, my emotions still too raw from talking about Ashric.

I’m too much of a masochist to actually leave, though.

Instead, I hover in the corner of Sebastian and Jovie’s living room, watching my brother gestures more animatedly than I’ve ever seen to Jovie about the golden spires of Aurelys.

His divine memories have been flooding back more each day, and with them, his nostalgia for that sickeningly bright realm.

It makes me miss the bitter, jaded mortal version of him even more and serves as a reminder that while that’s been his personality in this mortal lifetime, he’s still the ruler of the realm of Life deep down.

My opposite.

“The gardens stretch for miles,” he says, his eyes lighting up in a way that makes my spectral form flicker with annoyance. “Every flower that has ever existed blooms there simultaneously. The air itself hums with life energy. More concentrated than anything you’ve felt here.”

Jovie sits curled against him on the couch, fascination written across her face. “It sounds beautiful.”

Beautiful . I resist the urge to make a gagging sound. Aurelys is many things—overwhelming, blindingly bright, nauseatingly perfect—but beautiful isn’t the word I’d use.

“It is,” Revel agrees from his spot across the dinner table.

Until now, he’s been focused on shoveling food into his mouth but all the talk about Aurelys has had him setting his fork down.

“The sunrise there lasts for hours, painting everything in shades of gold and rose. And the music—” He pauses, settling back into his chair to cross his arms over his chest. “The celestial choirs sing constantly. It’s like living inside a symphony. ”