Chapter 39
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Gods seek worship. Monsters seek survival. Only mortals are asked to choose.
Shadows danced across the ceiling as the moon arced into the sky.
Sleep eluded me as an awareness of something unknown buzzed in my veins.
I hadn’t voiced it because I didn’t understand it.
Not yet. I picked up Hudson’s arm and shifted it so I could slide out of bed.
He grumbled something about ribbons. My lips twitched.
The wedding was getting under his skin. Good. I refused to suffer alone.
I left the bedroom door ajar and padded to the kitchen to raid the cupboards. My hand clasped the cookie jar, and I shook it. Bingo. Lemon, yum.
Taking my cookie with me, I slid open the French doors to step onto the balcony.
I found myself here night after night, staring at the point my grandmother had last stood.
The darkness was quiet, and I breathed in a peaceful breath of the fresh air, allowing the calm to settle over me.
No violence hid in the shadows. No one was waiting for me to deliver judgment and justice.
I was once more Cora Roberts, supernatural bed-and-breakfast owner, doctor to the factions, and mate to the Principal.
This is what I had wished for—the peace and quiet of a Louisiana night.
The world wasn’t ending, and I wasn’t being called into secret meetings or being recruited for clandestine organizations.
Those still existed; I was just taking a well-earned break to catch my breath. I’d made the choice, the one that fate had delivered to my door. I had fulfilled my role, and now my life should be free.
Should be.
My spine arched, and my wings unfurled. They no longer split my flesh, because I had accepted all that I was. They didn’t fight me.
“Didn’t lose me, though,” Indigo purred.
No, I hadn’t. I didn’t know whether I should be concerned or happy that my alter ego still plagued my mind.
“Plagued? Don’t be rude.”
I snorted as I polished off the cookie. Indigo was my confidante, my balance checker.
My silk camisole and sleep shorts offered little protection against the cool breeze, but I welcomed the kiss of that which connected me to the elements.
The scorched lawn where my grandmother last stood twitched. I frowned and leaned over the metal railing. What was that?
I launched myself off the balcony, coming to settle with grace on the lawn. My bare feet whispered on the dewy lawn as I approached it.
White lilies curled from the blackened area, spiraling into the air. The deep magic, which had rewritten the fabric of my being, answered the call.
“I have no energy for god games tonight,” I said.
Donn emerged, shadows first, death second. The night wrapped around him like a cloak. No matter how much time I spent staring at the god of death, the sight of him still whispered awe in my soul. You couldn’t be so close to the divine and not be moved by it.
I folded my arms and lifted my chin. Nothing good ever came from his visits.
He circled me, and it took everything I had to allow him at my back. “You were spectacular. A worthy weapon.”
I swallowed. “Not a weapon, just an acceptance of what I always was.”
“Wrong. You were born with angelic power and the natural forces in your veins.”
“That is my point.”
Icy fingers skimmed my spine, and his breath whispered against my nape. My eyes fluttered closed. It was an illusion. If I turned, I would find distance between us.
“You can feel it,” he growled low. “The black promise, the way I carved my name on your skin.”
Something pressed against my stomach. “I have many scars, Donn, and none of them bear your name.”
He hummed as he came to stand in front of me. His molten silver eyes studied me, and he tilted his head. “You've found your backbone, Cora.”
“What do you want?”
He smiled, a calculated cruel curve of his lips. “You have my power.”
I couldn’t deny it. “Take it back.”
“It’s too late for that.”
“I used it to destroy Eloise. I am no longer a weapon you shaped. I am spent and tired.”
He chuckled. “I was never making a weapon.”
I frowned. Word games with an ancient? Not today. No, thank you.
“In that moment, you chose mercy,” he said with a point at the lilies still unraveling between us.
“I chose justice.”
“Which is a mercy. You let the universe decide.”
I sighed. “As it should be.”
“And that is why it’s chosen you. The question is, will you let it devour you?”
“I don’t understand.”
In a movement faster than I could see, he appeared in front of me, his fingers curling around my chin while he held my gaze. The power inside me rose to the surface. His smile grew. I knew what he was seeing—a reflection of the otherworldly silver.
“I will not be a prisoner to your power,” I stated.
“No, it is I who am the captive. The night consumes my name and takes yours in its place.”
“I have no need of you.” Pieces of what he had done—the oaths, the promises made in blood—snapped together like a lock.
“The throne has always required a mortal soul willing to choose others over itself. Gods cannot sit there. Monsters cannot survive it. Only someone like you.” A hot tear slid down my cheek as denial blocked my throat. “You were never a weapon.”
“Then what?” I knew. Deep down, I already knew, but I still held out hope that I was wrong.
“I was testing my successor.”
The air left my lungs, and I shook my head. “No.”
“If you don’t sit on the throne, someone worse will.”
“Let them.” Hadn’t I given enough? This world had taken from me and not allowed me the space to grieve or to heal, and now it wanted this?
The world shifted, the stars dimmed, not vanishing but receding. The air grew heavy, layered with echoes that weren’t sound but memory. Every choice I’d ever made pressed against my skin at once, not accusing, not forgiving. Simply present.
I staggered. Donn’s hand closed around my wrist. Not restraining. Anchoring.
“This is the veil.”
The ground beneath my bare feet wasn’t made of stone or soil. It shifted with my weight, responding, adjusting, as if deciding whether I was real enough to hold. Threads of silver and shadow moved beneath the surface like veins, pulsing in a slow, deliberate rhythm, like a heartbeat.
The air shimmered with figures half-formed and unfinished. Not ghosts, not gods, but possibilities that had almost existed. Futures that had brushed too close to being born and were then turned away.
I could feel them. Every soul I’d crossed. Every life I’d touched at the edge of death. Every moment I’d chosen mercy when cruelty would have been easier. They weren’t watching me—they were listening.
“This is where the worlds touch,” Donn continued. “Not Heaven. Not Hell. Those are destinations. This is governance.”
The word settled heavily in my chest. Governance.
Ahead of us, a storm gathered. Clouds folded inward on themselves, lightning stitching through layers of reality, illuminating something vast and patient at the center. With every pulse, the space around it bent, not breaking, but yielding.
There, in the center, sat a throne. It wasn’t ornate. No gold, no jewels, no craftsmanship meant to impress. It looked grown rather than built, carved from the same substance as the veil itself—bone and light and shadow fused together, empty and waiting.
My breath caught as the veil reached for me the way gravity reaches for falling things. “No,” I whispered, cold fingers of dread slipping down my spine. The word scattered uselessly into the vastness.
Donn stood beside me, his expression unreadable, ancient, reverent. “It has waited a long time,” he said. “Through wars. Through tyrants. Through gods who believed themselves worthy. But that was their mistake; you cannot take the veil with demands, it takes you.”
The storm surged, and for a moment, I saw myself reflected in the throne’s surface, not as I was now, but as I had been at every breaking point. Bloody. Defiant. Terrified.
It wanted a constant, a mortal soul heavy enough to bear consequence without becoming it.
My wings trembled.
The veil recognized me.
And I knew, with a clarity that stole the air from my lungs, that it always had. “I am not a queen. I need neither throne nor crown.”
“And that is why it has chosen you. A custodian, a guardian.”