21. Hecate
T he home I had planted myself in was destroyed.
The second we realized that Ares was working with Raziel, we rushed next door to check on my other halves, only to find they were both gone.
There were clear signs of a struggle.
A pang of sadness twanged through my chest as my boots crunched on the remnants of the smashed mermaid lamp.
All my human memories had been fabricated with a cloaking spell I had cast on myself to help me blend into this human world.
Though they still felt real. I still felt like Astrid and my grandmother were my family, which was somewhat ridiculous.
They weren’t real people. They were clay golems I had crafted and animated with pieces of my soul to use as decoys.
But still. The memories of us living together in this house felt real, and they were gone. There was a strange, quiet sadness in my chest as I took in the trashed house that I had temporarily called my home.
Shemhazai was quiet, and I knew he was angry at me for being so foolish. I hadn’t been thinking about Ares when I had hidden myself here. I had done it as part of a four thousand-year-long game of cat and mouse Shemhazai and I had been playing.
It hadn’t occurred to me that I still had scarier monsters to worry about than the chaos demon. Now, I was paying for it.
I should never have tried to play mortal. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be in this situation, and from the way Shemhazai was glaring at me, he agreed.
“You’re a fucking idiot,” he hissed at me, his green eyes burning with rage as we stood in my wrecked house.
The pictures had all been torn off the walls, and my couches were shredded. Glass and cutlery were strewn across the floors, and my kitchen table had been split in half.
The golems had clearly put up a fight, but against the seraphim and the literal god of war , they hadn’t stood a chance.
“I didn’t think—” I muttered, and he hissed at me. Literally hissed like the cat he was.
“No, you fucking didn’t! I would have kept you safe if you had just stayed in Hell and waited for me when you woke up.”
“I was playing the game, Hazai,” I snapped, and he narrowed his eyes on me.
“It stopped being a game the second Raziel took you. I didn’t think I needed to fucking explain that to you.” He looked vulnerable for a minute, and my heart twinged. “I thought you knew that underneath it all, we were friends. I never wanted to leave you like that.”
I softened, shooting him what I hoped was an apologetic look.
“I know, Hazai. I knew it was just a game… We are friends… I just didn’t think, after all this time, there was still a threat. You nailed Yahweh to a cross. I thought we were back to our usual shenanigans.”
Trying to get playful Shem back, I winked at him, but he just darkened further.
“Until Raziel is unmade, we’ll never be safe,” he muttered, and my heart broke at the hopelessness that haunted the chaos demon’s eyes.