The Fox and the Falcon (No Other Gods #2)

Chapter Twenty-Four

I stirred at the light rapping of knuckles against the door, though the sound wasn’t demanding enough to truly rouse me from my slumber. My eyes remained mostly closed, though I looked at the shape beside me through the bleary cover of hooded lashes.

I’d never woken up to Caliban’s broad shoulders, the ripple of his muscular back as he lay on his stomach, his lightly mussed hair, the sheets tugged around him, just barely covering his still-nude form as he clung to sleep. He was awake by the second knock, tilting his head slightly as his attention went first to the door, then over to me.

I tasted forest on the air as he slipped his arm around me and pulled me in to brush his lips against my forehead. Caliban took his time unraveling his fingers from my hair, gaze raking over me until I heated from the intensity of his stare. My toes curled at the hungry look in his eye, particularly as he chose the view over whoever requested his attention at the door. I couldn’t help but be horrified at the idea that I’d ever woken up next to anyone else. There had been average human men in my bed. I’d woken up to drool, to groggy grumbles, even to snoring before I’d shaken them awake and firmly requested that they sleep in their own beds. Maybe my loathing for Caliban’s predecessors had been because I’d always known who belonged on the pillow beside my own.

I swallowed as I looked into the eyes chipped from the moon itself and managed a breathy question. “Are you going to get that?”

The corner of his mouth tugged up in a crooked smirk. “I suppose. If I don’t, they’ll just come in. Then you’d have to get up, and we can’t have that.”

I tugged the sheet around me and sat up in bed, eyes glued on him. I’d fallen asleep next to an unbelievably sexy figment of my imagination countless times. In twenty-six years, I’d never been allowed the pleasure of feeling his weight shift against the mattress, of the pull as sheets moved, of the confirmation that the fireworks he’d lavished over me in the middle of the night were no wet dream.

I wonder how many times I’d find a fresh explosion of dopamine in the same three words: he was real .

He stepped into pants I hadn’t even realized were present, but opted to remain shirtless. I reasoned to myself that I would neither know nor care whether any clothes had existed, as he’d tucked me into bed in the same bleary, half-asleep state that he’d known for nearly three decades. I’d been conditioned to affiliate cypress, mist, and the cool press of his touch with slumber. Convenient for transporting me in the middle of the night in a palace, perhaps, but something I hoped to quickly deprogram from myself. I didn’t want to miss a minute with him.

The moment he turned his back to me, I sucked on my teeth, horrified at the idea that someone so ethereal might be subjected to a human’s morning breath. I raked fingers through my hair, wiped the corners of my eyes, and did a quick scan of the room for water.

He paused at the door, hand extended to allow the knocker entrance, but then looked over his shoulder. He gave me another smile before he abandoned his task and went to the washroom. I heard the sound of rainwater and smelled the flower-kissed scent of perfume before Caliban emerged from the room adjacent to his kingly suite. He returned to the bed and handed me a silver cup of cold water.

I looked at the offering skeptically, then back at him with an unspoken question in my eyes.

“I heard your heart,” he said with a shrug. “Whatever you’re nervous about, I promise I can handle it. But whoever’s at the door can wait until you’re comfortable.”

“I’m fine,” I said, accepting the glass of water. I wasn’t sure if it was true, but not for the reasons he might suspect. The truth was, I didn’t know how to be fine with a partner like this. I was used to kicking lovers out of my bed and rolling my eyes at worms. I knew how to hold out my palm and collect money from those so far below me that they had to extend generous offerings just to spend a few hours in my company. I knew how to swipe left on dating apps, how to politely reject attempted kisses at the end of dates, and how to ghost any gender who tried to schedule a second date when I was tired of them. The one exception had been Eva, and I’d bolted on the eve of Valentine’s Day at the first hint that I was falling in love. I was comfortable with chaos, with indifference. Safety was terrifying.

I was fine with the upper hand. I had no idea how to make sense of a love that wasn’t going anywhere.

Caliban sent me a wink that made my entire body blush before answering the door at long last. The Phoenician in the hall spoke a language I didn’t recognize. It sounded as foreign and musical as the wind over the dunes beyond the palace. Despite Fauna’s compliments at Poppy and Dorian’s table, I wasn’t a polyglot. Still, my strained ear for languages told me this was something that had been lost to the sands of time.

Caliban responded easily in the speaker’s tongue. They exchanged a few more formal words before he shut the door behind him. At least, I knew it to be a door, despite its slab-like appearance and utter lack of hinges. He leaned against the vertical rectangle and put his hands in his pockets.

“So, Love, what name does Anath know you by?”

My lips parted in surprise at the question. It had taken me a while to get a handle on giving out my pseudonym whenever I encountered a nonhuman, but I thought I was getting the hang of it. I specifically remembered demanding a meeting with Astarte’s clinic while throwing Merit Finnegan’s weight around. I struggled to recall whether my cover had been blown before everything had gone to shreds.

“I used my pen name when meeting with Astarte. It’s how I got the quick appointment and VIP treatment. I don’t recall them having another name, but then again…” I chewed on my lip as I looked into my memory. “Caliban, what did you say that got you into the room that day?”

He arched a frosted brow.

I nodded to double down on my question. “I was all set to fuck a very handsome—” At the unimpressed look on his face, I changed the course of my sentence. “Astarte had arranged a meeting with a number of potential suitors. Whatever you said had you sent directly down to the room. You told Astarte who you were? You identified yourself as the Prince of Hell?”

“I did,” he said easily.

Something about the answer was disquieting. It didn’t hold enough gravity.

“You just said you were the demon prince and she let you down? For…breeding?” I felt like a cartoon, the way a horrible, cold lightbulb went off in my mind. “A cambion. That’s what she said on the phone. Cambions are half-demon, half-human children. That’s…that’s what you said to her.”

He rested his head against the door, eyes still on me. “Breeding kink not your thing?”

“You’re not funny. And she had no follow-up questions? She isn’t from your realm. She didn’t know I was your human. I was just some human. Why would she want to facilitate that?”

Caliban considered the question. “It wasn’t altruism. It might surprise you how many pantheons have tried to tip the war in Hell’s favor. Everyone wants Heaven to fall. You have… qualities …that would make you the perfect vessel to expedite the process.”

“A winsome personality and huge tits?”

He chuckled. “Yes, precisely.”

“I guess I understand the motive for other pantheons to give Hell a helping hand, at least a little. Hounds can’t scrap for the role of top dog until the top dog’s been eliminated,” I said.

I watched him cross the room and was caught by something almost unsettling. His lips tugged up in another partial smile as he asked, “What’s on your mind now, Love?”

I felt my hair on my shoulders before I realized I’d been wordlessly shaking my head. I blinked rapidly before saying, “I’ve never seen you out of the human space—”

“Mortal realm.”

“The mortal realm, right, have I?” I wasn’t asking a question, and he knew it. I’d seen him as an arctic fox, as an imaginary friend, as a guardian angel. I’d seen him in my college dorm, in my apartment, and at the seedy motel in Bellfield. My encounters with Caliban stretched across time and space, but they’d always been duller, somehow. I reached out to touch him, dragging my fingers along his jaw as I appreciated an almost imperceptible shimmer beneath his skin. Starlight pulsed where blood should be. “You’re different here.”

His smirk bloomed into a true smile. “And?”

“You’re too beautiful,” I said, throwing the sheets over my head. I was mortified that I was a disheveled human in a flesh suit before glowing interdimensional royalty. I hated that anyone had ever perceived me as I wiggled deeper into the bed. His fingers found my shape, but allowed me the privacy of the sheet cocoon. He rolled me closer to him in the bed.

“You’re beautiful in every form,” he said, “but you don’t look like yourself here, either.”

I poked a cautionary eye up beyond the sheets. “What do you mean?”

He smoothed unruly hair away from my face as he said, “I’m bonded to your soul, not to your body. Your essence shines through in the realms in a way it can’t when we’re on mortal soil. Have you seen yourself?”

After arriving with Fauna, I’d been scrubbed, dressed, and held until we’d fallen asleep in a dark, windowless room. I hadn’t looked into a mirror in the Phoenician realm, or in álfheimr. I had looked wickedly handsome in Azrames’s bathroom, but I’d assumed that was mostly due to his wildly flattering lighting and expensive taste. I sagged as I thought of Azrames, instantly saddened as I remembered why we’d come in the first place. Caliban may not be a prisoner, but he was perhaps the only exception.

His mouth twisted in a layered frown.

He looked up to see if there was a mirror in the room. Not finding one, he tucked a knuckle beneath my chin. Before I could react to the gooseflesh sent down my spine at his touch, I was jolted into the out-of-body experience of looking at myself through the eyes of another. My lashes fluttered rapidly, and I saw my body blink in response. I gasped, watching as my lips parted, quickly intaking air. I saw a pale hand cup my chin, a strong forearm, my muddy hair, my green-gray eyes, my upturned nose, the fingers holding a sheet against my chest to cover my uncomfortably full breasts. I swallowed at the sight and watched my own throat bob.

“I’m looking at me…through your eyes,” I said, watching my lips move.

“Mmm,” he agreed, not bothering to elaborate.

I pushed past the initial shock to search for something unfamiliar, something new, something…soul-like. I tried to shake my head in denial, but he forced my chin toward the ceiling, and I watched myself tilt my face upward obediently. At first I thought he was trying to show me my throat, but as I watched myself swallow, as I watched my throat bob, my heartbeat in my jugular, my dips and curves and skin, I began to notice…something. It wasn’t within, but a quality just beyond the limits of my body. There was an opalescent glow humming with an almost static quality, its border outlining my own perfectly. I tilted my head and watched the static crackle and react like subtle lightning. I lifted my hands, wiggling my fingers as I observed the electricity stringing between my fingertips. I smiled with the realization and watched the light in my eyes ignite. I saw it there, too. A crystal spark, almost as if it had been broken off from his starlit features, shimmered behind my eyes. When I smiled again, he crushed his mouth to my parted lips.

His fingers left my chin as they wove into my hair. His tongue lifted mine, pulling me against him until I dropped the sheet. I gasped against the sudden change in energy, forced from his body back into my own as he pressed into me. The sheet was gone in a flash. The only barrier between my still-naked form and Caliban was his pants. Part of me was surprised that he was hungry, that he was interested, that he had room to want me as much as I wanted him despite our predicament, despite the morning, despite the interruptions and the Phoenicians and the realm around us. Then again, I reminded myself as his fingers drew cutting lines from my breast to my inner thigh, he was a demon.

This otherworldly, beautiful, perfect man was no man. He was the Prince of Hell.

I inhaled sharply as two cold fingers slipped inside the warm, ready place that had always been meant for him.

“Caliban—”

“Nothing you don’t want,” he murmured, index and middle finger curling slightly until they pressed against that perfect spot within me. My intake of breath was so quick it made me lightheaded. My back arched off against the bed as a moan I couldn’t have held in even if I’d wanted to escaped my lips. My hips rolled against him without any conscious effort on my part. I grabbed on to him as if the morning was a forgone conclusion, and he took the unspoken nod of consent.

I didn’t hear a zip, or a button, or a rustle of fabric. There was no noise or earthly indication that anything had changed, but in one moment, his fingers were inside me, and in the next, the still-wet hand was around my throat. I gasped as the blood flow to my most important parts was restricted, starlight dancing about the room.

He took the moment of inhalation as an invitation. He matched his perfect penetration with my breath, entering me as I coiled with air, with life, with shock. My neck curved until I was only supported by the crown of my head, my tailbone, and the tips of my toes. His arm was underneath the small of my back in an instant, pinning me against him as he thrust into me. I jolted upward, burying my face into the space between his neck and shoulders. My hips opened up as I wrapped my legs around him, pulling him in close.

I panted against him as he rammed his hips into mine. As my breath hitched, so did his intensity. His fingers bit into my ass as he cinched my hips against him, pinning me to him as he pounded into me, harder, harder, harder still without changing his pace. Higher, higher, higher I rose as my breaths became shallower and shallower. Each thrust was a musical swell, the crash of a wave, the summit of a mountain. Louder and stronger and further he carried me as he crushed me against him.

“Breathe,” he commanded, but he said it through gritted teeth. I could feel the cool vindication of his sweat as he bit back his own pleasure.

I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t want to.

The moment I attempted to bury my teeth in his trap was his signal that I was close. His hand tightened against my throat, shoving me into the pillow. His arm straightened as I bucked against him, writhing against the relentless manacles of his fingers on the piece of me that fed my life, my breath, my blood, my brain. My fingers went to his hand, and he met my eyes for the barest of moments to confirm what he already knew.

I wasn’t pulling him away.

I pressed his hand further against my jugular, daring him to choke me out as he pounded into me. My legs tightened, thighs flexing, back straining with its arch. Blood pounded in my veins, my head, ears ringing with the delicious, rising threat of looming unconsciousness. Water gushed out from the apex of my thighs as I used whatever remained of my strength to hold him against me. He took the hint well, teeth glinting in wicked delight as his eyes locked on mine.

He didn’t look away, silver flames dancing with hunger as he held my gaze, pinning me down as he railed me until I saw the creation of the goddamn universe. I knew he felt it coming. From the sound he made as my most sensitive muscles tightened around him, to the way his eyes fluttered to a close, to the grit of his teeth, I reveled in the pleasure he took from my satisfaction.

I would pass out any second. I didn’t care.

He leaned in close to my ear in my last conscious moments and, in a growl, demanded, “Who do you belong to?”

I didn’t have the wherewithal to hesitate as I gasped, “You.”

“Say it again,” he said through clenched teeth, flexing his fingers once against my throat. The black vignette pressed in on my vision as the life around me died.

“I’m yours,” I tried to say, the words a phantom on my lips as I felt the countdown from ten, to five, to three, to two, to one.

The flex of his jaw as I signed over my ownership sent me over the edge. My entire body buckled. My fingernails dug into his back as I clung to him for dear life, riding a wave of want, of stars, of moss, of power, of desire, and of pure fucking bliss.

Maybe it was because he understood my body, or because he was perfect, or because he was a literal goddamned demon, but Caliban rammed into me time and time again, riding the wave as I crested over and over until I was little more than a twitching shell of a person.

He relaxed his hold on my throat, brushing gentle kisses against my neck and tracing them to my temple. He ran his fingers through my hair, panting as he reined himself in, absorbing the residual shocks as I trembled, moments stretching like taffy between the clenches and lurches as my body relaxed. I was cum-drunk, too lost on sweat and sex and the sweet, perfect oxygen deprivation that could only be performed to this exquisite extreme by someone you trusted implicitly. By the time I’d fully melted back into the bed, a thought clicked.

One piece of information had been irrelevant when Caliban had been fictional. I hadn’t wondered, or worried, or cared for years when I’d been certain beyond all shadow of a doubt that I was the best brand of satisfied and insane, even as it had ruined my life and destroyed my chance at happiness with other partners. I looked at him now, taking in the Milky Way pulse of stars beneath his skin, feeling the way he throbbed within me until the last possible second. He gripped the headboard as he spilled pure starlight onto my stomach.

I was struck with a realization. “You’ve never finished inside me.”

His jaw flexed again as he tightened his hold on me. “My pull-out game is strong.”

I searched my memories. It was hard to catalogue the times we’d made love, the times he’d fucked me over the sink, or railed me in the shower, or feasted on me beneath the sheets. They’d been masturbatory fantasies from the vivid imagination of a writer with a family history of hallucinatory mental illness. I’d hated and loved the encounters in equal proportion. I’d wanted him and resented him. I’d relished my encounters with him and wished he’d never return. The memories ended with something glistening and warm, as if the Milky Way itself had dripped down my inner thighs, pooling in my belly button, adorning the bedsheets.

“Wait, that cambion thing…that’s real? Is that why you…?” I reached for the still-warm silvery sheen decorating my stomach.

His weight relaxed onto mine, interfering with my detective work.

“Caliban, for the love of god—”

He lifted his head to shoot me an amused brow.

“For fuck’s sake, can I not reference god anymore? Is that not Hell-approved? Listen, Satan-spawn.” He laughed at that, but I pressed on. “That can’t be it. Astarte let you into her fertility clinic because, what, if you finished inside me, we’d definitely create a—”

“Love, no,” he cut me off. His fingers traced along my outer curves until he was ready to slip out of me. I hated the moment I relinquished my hold on him. I missed his fullness instantly. “I promise I’ll explain it to you—”

“When I’m older?” I glared.

He rolled onto his back, enjoying his smirk. “I was going to say that I’ll explain it to you when we don’t have to get ready for a banquet with the Phoenician pantheon surrounded by listening walls, but I suppose you’ll be older a few hours from now, so, sure. Yes. I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

My post-orgasm glow was cut short as I gagged at the images of parties and crowds. “I can’t believe I’m expected to be social.”

“It’s pre-trial tradition. The realm likes to eat, drink, and be merry before a beheading.” He rolled onto his side and propped up his head with one arm. He snatched my wrist with the other, pressing my fingers against his lips as he asked, “Did you forget we were here with a job to do? Or would you like to make this our new home? Because, to be honest, I could think of a worse fate.”

“Did you say a beheading?”

“Gallows humor.” He smirked.

“Oh, sure, hanging is better.” I rolled my eyes. “You can think of worse than being trapped in a windowless room while our friends are held captive? If Azrames and Silas are set to be executed—”

“I meant ravishing you with no further thoughts or obligations. But your thing, too, I guess.”

My eyes narrowed. “You’re a bad friend.”

His wicked grin was fueled by my condemnation. “I’m a spectacular friend,” he argued. “I’ve stayed here with a citizen of Hell I’ve only known by his reputation before I met him through you.”

The sudden shame I felt at having bathed in love and sex and joy while my friend suffered was suffocating. I was already so bonded to the love of Fauna’s complicated life.

Caliban nodded. “He would have deserved my regard long before what he did for you and me in Bellfield. But the angel—”

I winced. “Is Silas okay?”

Once again, Caliban’s eyebrow arched perceptively. “You’ve developed an attachment to the angel, haven’t you?”

“I just know him,” I mumbled. It was true, and it wasn’t. Perhaps there was a bond forged by survivor’s guilt that had leashed me to Silas, but the angel had been present in my worst moments. He’d come through for me in a spectacular way time and time again. Without him, I would have died at Richard’s hands. I wouldn’t have ever truly understood Caliban’s existence. I would have been eaten by a parasite. I would have died in the clinic. I owed him.

“It’s more than that,” Caliban said gently. “And that’s okay. He was there for you in a way I couldn’t be, and I’m not so stubborn that I can’t be grateful. I’m indebted to him, literally and figuratively. He’s the reason you’re here, Love. I’d move mountains for you. And sometimes those mountains take a heavenly shape.”

“Haven’t you been relieved of your debt? He called in his favor to send you to Bellfield.”

“I’m free from a formal debt, yes. But he did me another favor altogether by snaring me in a god-catcher. No one—angel or otherwise—would come for my head while I was in an unbroken seal.”

“Do we think—” I lowered my voice as if whispering would make a difference. Then again, perhaps if spies were listening, this was something they should hear. “Could he be rebelling?”

“He certainly isn’t in lock and step with his boss. But I’m not willing to gamble on him defecting from Heaven. His motives are murky. What matters is he showed up for you, and he’s behind bars now because of you. Whatever loyalty you’ve forged seems to flow both ways.”

I’d never forget the metaphorical chains I’d wrapped around Caliban when I’d banished him from intervening. There had been no way for me to comprehend the binding nature of my words when Caliban and I had struck a bargain that he couldn’t do anything without my explicit consent. Had it not been for that promise, he could have been the one who’d intervened when a man had broken into my apartment with the intent to kill. Caliban could have been the one who’d reached through Richard’s throat and forced him to choke on his own tongue from the inside out.

Instead, Silas had answered Caliban’s elite bargain.

I was still gnawing on my thoughts when Caliban brushed a thumb over my forehead.

“This is your friend Fauna’s handiwork, I’m guessing…” he murmured.

I looked down at my body, then around, confused. His comment had come out of nowhere. “I forget you haven’t met her. And sex reminded you of Fauna because…?”

His eyes crinkled. “Not at all. I see what she’s done to your eyes. It was very wise. We can’t very well have you going insane just yet.”

I straightened slightly in bed. “Excuse me?”

He made a compassionate face before saying, “Your tattoo is lovely. It helps you see things rightly in the mortal realm. But when you’re in other realms, you need to see things…wrongly.”

He spared me the embarrassment of having to repeat the word.

“What is your Norse ambassador? Do you know?” Caliban asked.

I tensed at the question, looking over his shoulder at the door.

“I only caught a glimpse of red hair while abducting you in the night. The Phoenicians will know who and what she is moment they meet her. I might as well know, too.”

I blew a tuft of hair away from my face as I considered the question. “She’s a sugar-addled, Scandinavian chaos goblin,” I murmured. After a moment of reflection, I said, “She once made a comment about me committing deicide. I thought she was being hyperbolic. But then, not too long ago, I saw her do something with…wolves.” I struggled not to say more than was wise.

“Wolves?” he considered. “I wish there was a clear-cut answer in the Norse pantheon. But if she can command wild animals, your friend might be a forest deity.”

“That sounds right. She’s also claimed she’s a skosgr?. But I don’t know if they get deity status.”

His mouth bunched to the side. “A skosgr? who can command wolves? Has she done anything else?”

I thought of the security guard’s twisted, horrified expression the moment before he was swallowed by a tree at Fauna’s behest. Given that I wasn’t supposed to share secrets while the walls were listening, I could only ask, “What do you mean?”

His eyes unfocused, as if reading a text in the depths of his mind. “Is she the reason you brought your dog with on this excursion?”

I chose my words carefully. “She reminded me that time passes differently in every realm. We couldn’t leave him home without a dog sitter if we didn’t know how long it would take me to get back.”

He touched my cheek. “I suspect she won’t tell you her true name. Few of us are open about such things. But you could do worse than a deity. It explains her ability to take corporeal form, and how she accomplished this,” he said, brushing his thumb over the same spot.

I joined him in the mind-library, wracking my brain for references to Fenrir. There was no overlap with a forest deity that made sense. “My… dog …isn’t a wolf to command. Those things can’t be related.”

“I’m sorry that this is happening to you,” he said. “All of it. I’m sorry that I happened to you.”

“I’d rather die with you than live without you,” I said. “Now, are you going to keep touching my head or are you going to tell me what the hell you’re talking about?”

He smirked, but something akin to guilt colored his words. “True forms would be overwhelming for you, and that’s not your fault. You’re human. Your Norse deity friend has done you a great service. While the two of you are in the mortal realm, she’s bound in human form. When you’re in other realms, you’re perceiving those around you in relatively human forms as well. If I didn’t already like the Nordes…” His words trailed off, leaving me to consider how much had happened both to and around me without my knowledge. “If she’s meddling in your mind, I should, too.”

“I’m not so sure—”

“Only good things,” he said, pressing both thumbs to my temples. After a brief compression, he released his hold on me. “I suspect Azrames has already done as much for Fauna. After all, Hell’s affiliation with the Canaanites is far older than that of the Nordes.”

“With language? I thought Fauna spoke everything. Eternity is a long time, or something. She speaks Klingon.”

“You did say she watches a lot of TV.” Caliban’s expression was as reassuring as the low vibration of his words. “The Scandinavian timeline is a little different from that of the Cradle of Civilization. I don’t expect the Nordes to have been around when Canaanite languages were thriving, but Hell certainly was. It’s only fair that you also understand our hosts, Love. Forgive me for not allowing everyone to speak around you while you remain in unfortunate ignorance, but we simply don’t have the time for you to loosen your tongue the human way. Now, you’ll have that linguistic access, too.”

I gaped at the implication, but Caliban’s affection knew no bounds. He brushed another of many kisses that morning against my temple with cool ease as he slid out of bed.

“Wait, get back here. Let’s make a cambion, or whatever Astarte said.”

He chuckled as he pulled a shirt over his head. “You’ve always been too smart for your own good.”

“Fauna would disagree.”

“Fauna is teasing you because she knows precisely how intelligent you are,” he said.

I was decidedly displeased as my toes sought the warm obsidian floor. The entire room glittered with the dark, oppressive gemstones of a tomb. I fished the thin dress off the floor that I’d been brushed and groomed and slipped into the night before.

“Want to lend me your power so I can look at myself in the mirror?” I asked, voice dry.

“You look better than anyone deserves,” he promised.

I sucked my teeth and let my expression settle as I muttered, “My mother always said demons lied.”

That amused him far more than it should have.

“Why are there no windows? Hell had tons of windows.”

“The sand, I expect,” he said. “The important rooms are also deeply embedded within the palace to protect those who matter. Attendants, servants, and animals will presumably occupy the outermost ring.”

“Is that necessary? They’re in their own realm! Why would—”

“Humans are in their own realm,” he said, not bothering to let me finish my thought. “Are all humans safe from one another?”

“No, but—”

“Name a pantheon that’s never been under siege within its own walls, mortals included.”

I scanned my memory. I knew of the Nordic gods not only from my books, but from my experience with Fauna, Fenrir, and their history lessons. Greek mythology was taught in most schools, and along with it came the sieges and infighting of the gods and goddesses. Christianity had the division between Heaven and its fallen angels…

My eyebrows perked. “Hell!” I said, a bit too cheerfully.

He extended his hand for mine, and I took it.

“I wish you were right, Love. But Hell has many courts. My court—the one you belong to—is unified, sure. My father is recognized as Hell’s King, but within our kingdom, we are legion, for we are many.” He smiled at his joke, even if the reference triggered my gag reflex. “That said, what if the Infernal Divine changed their allegiances? Or the Solar Court? Or if the Draconian Court were to turn on us? Or if the—”

“Draconian Court…” I interrupted. “As in…dragons?”

The fingers of one hand remained intertwined with mine, but his free hand tapped twice against mine with an almost paternal, placating gesture. “Excellent word association,” he said.

“Fuck you.” I glared.

“There’s the spirit.” He smiled. “If you’re up for another round…”

“With you? Always.”

There was a hollowness to his answering chuckle that twisted something anxious within me.

“What?”

He flattened a hand against the wall and leaned into it for support. “ Always is just such a funny word, given that you’ve spent this entire life cycle sending me away, convinced I wasn’t real. Yet, the word still fits. Time has its cracks, its regrets, its imperfections. But you and I? We’re always.”

He succeeded in taking my breath away for a full eight seconds.

On the ninth second, something very human within me wanted to ask if he’d found other outlets—other lovers, for the times I’d sent him away—but resisted the urge. My body count was higher than any serial killer’s…albeit not for the same reasons. He’d never expressed jealousy. He’d only wanted to know I was happy.

I was not evolved enough to feel the same.

So, I opted for wisdom. I wouldn’t ask questions if I couldn’t handle the answers, even if the concept tortured me.

“Are you ready, Love?”

“For the banquet?” I asked. “Isn’t it morning?”

He pushed away from the wall. “Banquets aren’t a meal. They’re an event.”

The introvert in me shriveled up like a pill bug at the thought. “They expect us there all day?”

“We’ll have much to discuss. A major goddess has been murdered, after all.”

“Yeah, but she—”

He shook his head once, cutting me off. “Don’t use mortal logic here, Love. You bound yourself to her in a fair agreement—albeit, not one I’d have allowed either of you to honor. You consented. You offered your name, your word, your blood. It is you and I who broke a fair bargain. It would be a mistake to superimpose whatever black-and-white morality tempts you. Astarte was not a villain.”

“She held Dagon…”

He nodded appreciatively. “There we go. Let’s hinge on that. God-on-god crime is a much better argument than anything enacted by you or me.”

The muscles between my shoulder blades knotted.

“We’ll get Azrames out. But to do that, we have to leave this room. Now, I would never ask you to be anything you aren’t, Love, but with deities, there is a level of respect required of all of us. We aren’t talking to humans. Spirited responses that might be admirable banter from one human to another, even lower class to upper, would not be received the same between gods, entities, or fae. Even Zeus, Odin, Allah, and Elohim speak to one another with respect. Tell me that you understand I’m not in any way attempting to temper your spirit or control your expression.”

I shuddered at the casual mention of the gods that humans had bled, conquered, and died for. He continued to watch me for a response.

Be reverent.

Azrames had muttered the command to me on no uncertain terms before I’d met Dagon. Az was my friend. We had been on human soil. We had been meeting someone who’d been under a thumb, trapped in a terraformed god-catcher. And yet, his message had remained.

“I understand,” I said, and I did. Perhaps I didn’t need to grasp the gravity. The nuances weren’t important. What mattered was that I’d believed Azrames then, and I believed Caliban now. Speaking to gods was not about personality or pride. Even Fauna, chaotic fae of sugar and sass, had put wolves under her dominion as if they were hers to command. I didn’t have to be a believer or a showman, but I did have to show respect.

“I’m ready.”