4. Kiera
Chapter 4
Kiera
W hen I return to the chambers, shadowed by three dark hulking figures, Regis is standing there along with Carcel and Ophelia. Ophelia’s upper lip curls back. For a moment her scolding gaze lands on me and her eyes narrow, probably annoyed at how close they stand to me. Displeasure fills her expression. I bite back whatever angry words I wish to hurl at her. It’s not my place. I turn my gaze to the floor.
The burn of someone’s attention sears into my cheek and I glance up once to see Ruen frowning at me, flicking his eyes between me and Ophelia and back again. A dull, aching throb begins in the back of my head and spreads outward.
“Regis told me of your … relationship with a trio of Mortal Gods, Kiera,” Ophelia finally says, her voice crisp and tight. I don’t flinch. “But I didn’t think you would be so stupid as to bring them with you for our meeting.”
Sucking in a breath, I lift my head to meet her gaze. “They know the truth now, so it only makes sense that I would bring them.” I don’t bother to mention that the three of them didn’t give me much of a choice.
Her scowl deepens and she pivots to face Caedmon. “Did you know about this?” she demands, accusingly. “About them ?” The way she says the word ‘them’ sounds as if she’s uttering something as distasteful as the name of a soul-sucking puss-inflicted disease.
I glance at them. They’re a bit prettier than a disease, but they’re still definitely infectious. I can’t seem to escape them. Still, I would also like to know if Caedmon foresaw this.
Caedmon sighs as he takes a seat in one of the lounges, and though Ophelia remains standing, Carcel curses quietly and shoots me a seething glare. If I wasn’t still reeling from Caedmon’s presence, I’d punch that look off his face. I’ve always detested the prick.
Carefully, though, I keep my eyes averted away from Regis—it hurts too much to look at him right now—and move toward the center of the room where Caedmon sits. “How long have you known the truth?” I ask him.
Caedmon leans back and casually lifts one arm to perch along the back of the lounge he’s seated upon as if he doesn’t have a care in the world. Yet with that same movement, his other hand drags down his face, making him appear frustrated as much as he is haggard. He’s a dichotomy, this God. Powerful, feared, and yet … he is the one God within the Academy that has never made it difficult to respect him.
“I’ve known who you were from the beginning, Kiera,” Caedmon states clearly. “Since I’m the one that requested your services.”
A frozen wave of shock descends upon me and I stop where I stand. Everyone else, too, it seems, pauses in surprise, save for Ophelia who simply blows out a breath and then moves to a bar cart across from where Caedmon sits.
“ You are the client?” I clarify after a beat as the clinking of glasses grows too loud for my ears—the only sound in the room aside from our collective breaths. It hadn’t been a test?
Caedmon nods.
“Then who is the intended target?” I demand, rage starting to swell low in my stomach and cast warmth outward like long fiery branches because despite how much I pride myself on being so fucking elite, I never saw this coming. It’s hard to admit that I’m not as good as I thought I was; perhaps it’d all been my own pride in the first place. “You never sent a name. I’ve been at the Academy for months ? — ”
“There is no intended target,” Caedmon says, dropping his arm from the back of the couch as Ophelia approaches and hands him a glass. “Well, not for the contract at least.”
My eyebrows shoot up towards my hairline. Not just because of his statement, but because Ophelia never caters to others. The way she’d simply handed him a drink without him even asking makes it clear that even if the two don’t trust each other, they’re more familiar than I’d originally believed. She’s not even attempting to hide it as she drops down at the far end of the couch and throws back her own glass of amber liquid.
I shake my head and fix my attention back on Caedmon. “You’re the client that contracted me to kill someone in the Academy, but you never intended to send me a target?” For a moment, I want to look at Regis. I want to at least confirm that I’m not the only one who feels insane at the moment, but I can’t. I don’t. “What was the point? And how do you know Ophelia?”
“For fuck’s sake,” Carcel mutters, turning and kicking the toe of his boot against the wall. The picture frames hung against the wallpaper tremble with the action and a plume of dust falls from it. “This is ridiculous.” He turns once more and glowers at his mother. “When we traveled here, you told me it was for your damned mutt?—”
At my side, Theos tenses, but he isn’t the one to interrupt Carcel. It’s Ruen. “Now, I’m sure you’re not referring to Kiera, are you?” The question is spoken casually—or at least, it would be were it not for the flash of red in his normally deep indigo eyes.
Carcel throws Ruen a dark look that doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. Even if he can tell by simple context clues who the three men now standing in the room alongside me are, Carcel’s never exactly been the subtle type.
“Forget him,” I snap. “He’s not the reason we’re here. Caedmon,” I refocus my attention—and hopefully the others’—back on the lone God in the room. “Why did you hire me if you didn’t want me to kill anyone?”
Caedmon twists the glass in his hand, his expression turning contemplative. I’ve never been one for drama, but I swear, even if Caedmon isn’t Dolos, he has the same penchant for production. I despise the fact that I must now sit here and wait for his response when it seems that he isn’t quite sure if he wants to tell me. The muscles under my skin bunch and contract even as I try to force them to relax. Anger does not suit a situation such as this. Yet I can’t deny that it is rising, stronger and faster with each passing silent beat.
As if sensing my impending outburst, the backs of Theos’ knuckles brush against mine. He grabs ahold of my hand. My fingers feel cold in his grip, but I don’t pull away as he threads his fingers through mine. I shouldn’t let myself take comfort in the touch, but I can’t find the energy to pull away either.
I can feel eyes on me, familiar eyes—Regis’ eyes. Still, I refuse to look at him. He is not my friend. Still, a part of me wonders if he also told Ophelia about what happened with the Mortal God he killed. My eyes flash to her before returning to Caedmon. That’s something they’ll have to address later. First, I need to know why Caedmon is here and how he knew about me.
“Send your other assassins away, Ophelia,” Caedmon says, turning the glass and watching the liquid slosh about. “I would like to reveal this information only to a select few.”
“What?” Carcel’s shrill cry of anger rebounds through the room. I close my eyes and resist the urge to roll my eyes. “Why should I have to leave?” he demands. “As the next head of the Underworld, I have a right?—”
“You have a right to nothing ,” Ophelia snaps, cutting him off. “You are not yet titled my heir, Carcel. Disobeying orders and showing your emotions too readily make me think you’re not at all suited for the position. Perhaps if you can prove to me that you can handle yourself adequately, I will change my mind. For now, I will have you and Regis leave.”
My lips press firmly together. Though it amuses me greatly to see Carcel snap his lips shut and purse them in a sour expression like that of a child who’s just eaten a lemon, there is nothing humorous about the current situation we all find ourselves in. Caedmon is part of the God Council. It’s his duty to report my existence. Yet, why hasn’t he?
Carcel growls his anger, but does little more than kick at the wall once more, sending more dust falling from the pictures, and then turns and stomps towards the exit. After a moment, Regis follows. His body slides through the room and I feel my muscles tighten, coiling as he grows nearer. Theos quietly nudges me further into the room and turns his back as Regis pauses alongside us. I wait, but Regis never says anything. Instead, the soft whoosh of air escaping his lips is all I hear before he strides from the room and the door closes behind him.
I release a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding and pull my hand from Theos’. When he reaches for me again, I step out of reach and round the lounge to sit down in one of the few chairs stationed around the center of the larger room. I level a look at the God sitting there with a still-full glass of amber liquid.
“Well?” I prompt him with a gesture of my hand. “You said you would reveal all once they were gone. They’re gone. It’s your turn.”
The side of Caedmon’s full mouth twitches and curls upward. Then he says something completely unexpected. “You are so like your mother,” he murmurs, voice full of amusement. “Same eyes and same attitude.”
“My … mother?” My God parent? My breaths grow shallow and the drumming beat of my heart is all that fills my head. “You know her?”
“ Knew her,” he corrects lightly, the humor fading as his lips thin into a dispassionate line. “I have not seen her since before you were conceived.”
“Is she…” I hesitate to ask if the woman—the Goddess—who gave birth to me is actually dead. Though it isn’t necessarily easy to kill a God, they can die. Somehow, I’d always assumed that she was out there somewhere, living her life and completely unconcerned with the fact that she’d left my father and me behind. Perhaps if she’s dead, though, then it wasn’t her fault that she’d left.
As much as I don’t want her to be dead, another part of me almost wishes for it since that would mean that she truly had no choice in abandoning us. In the next instant, however, Caedmon dashes that kernel of hope.
“I don’t believe her to be dead,” he says, almost picking the thoughts out of my mind as he understands my unfinished question. “I do not know where she is, but I do know that she hasn’t attended a God Council in twenty years and no one has seen her. Were she dead, however, I would feel it.”
“You would feel it?” Panic swells in my breast. Did the Gods know when any other God died? No, that can’t be true. If that were the case, then they would feel the deaths of each God I’d caused and they would’ve … what? Found me? Even Gods do not have the instant ability to transport themselves through space and time.
“In a way,” he says absently, his dark eyes going to the amber liquid in his glass as it sloshes back and forth with the movements of his hand. “Upper Gods, as you know them, as I am considered, all have ties to each other. There are many connections and even if some are cut—those ties dying off and removed completely—we can’t always keep track of them. Your mother, however, is—was—once a very close friend of mine. I often check to see if she’s still there, and as far as I can tell, she is.”
“Can you … would you be able to know where she is? How to find her?”
Caedmon shakes his head, lifting his gaze away from the glass clutched in his fist as he fixes his attention back on me. “No, I’m afraid not. All I can tell you is that I believe she still lives.”
Slowly, I nod. It was ridiculous to get my hopes up. She’s been gone for twenty years. Why would I ever expect that she’d return now?
“Fine,” I say, sitting back. “Then tell me why you put in a request for my services and why you never intended to send a target.”
Finally, Caedmon moves his glass closer to his face, places the rim to his lips, and downs the fiery liquid. I almost wish I was the one drinking it. His throat bobs as he swallows with a gasp and then sets the glass down on the table before him before focusing on me.
“Do you still have the book I gave you?” he asks, surprising me. The question reminds me, though, of the strange text that had changed—altered from the original title to a new one that I hadn’t understood.
I nod solemnly, biting down on my lower lip.
The corner of Caedmon’s lips lifts. “And did you notice anything different about it?”
I swallow and nod again. “It … wasn’t the same book the second time I read it,” I say.
“What book?” Ruen asks.
Caedmon ignores the interruption, never taking his eyes off me as he responds. “That book is special. It’s not from the library of the Academy but from my own personal collection. It informs the reader of something they need to know versus what they want to know. I spelled it myself.”
“It…” I glance away from Caedmon to Ophelia who watches on with a calm face. I know it’s a facade. She’s hard to read, but there’s no chance she’s as composed as she seems. “It said that the Gods aren’t Gods at all.”
Dark eyes flare. Caedmon sits forward. “Yes.”
“I don’t understand,” I say when he doesn’t elaborate. “The Gods are?—”
“Liars,” he says, cutting me off. “They— we —always have been. What else did the book tell you?”
“It said that the Gods came from a mountain of brimstone—I think it meant the original Mortal Gods Academy. The first one.”
All those years ago, my father and I had traveled to Ortus, and from the seaside cliffs, I’d seen the great beast that was the very first Mortal Gods Academy. It had jutted up from a small island set in the crashing waves of the water, a dark crown of jagged black rock. It had been an intimidating thing, a monstrous creature of ancient stories. Sunlight had glittered off the black stone, shining back at where my father and I had stood on the shore, a beacon of warning.
“That’s correct,” Caedmon states, drawing me back to the present and away from my memories of the place in question.
I shake my head. “That still doesn’t explain why you did what you did,” I say, confused.
Caedmon inhales and releases his breath, the wide chest beneath his dark tunic expanding and deflating with the action. “What am I called, Kiera?” he asks instead of answering my unspoken demand.
I blink. “The God of…” Prophecy, I finish silently as my words trail off. “You … had a prophecy then? But you just said that the Gods aren’t?—”
Full, masculine lips turn into a deep frown. “What makes a God?” Caedmon asks. “Is it the ability to control the weather? To alter time and space? No. A God is simply a being of worship that maintains total authority over life and creation. When the Gods as you know them came to this world that is what they wanted to become so that is what they became.”
“I still don’t understand.” Why is he talking in circles? Why can’t he just come out and say what he means? What is the point?
As if he feels the same, Ruen steps up to the side of my seat and frowns down at Caedmon. “You’re saying that the Gods are not actual Gods at all?” he demands in that gruff baritone of his. Behind him, Theos and Kalix remain silent.
Caedmon shifts his gaze up to Ruen’s. “What you know as Divinity is simply magic, Ruen,” Caedmon says. “It is something we brought with us from our world and when we came to this place and found it devoid of magic, our ruler decided that we would become Gods in this new world.”
“Your ruler … Tryphone?” Ruen asks.
Caedmon nods. “Yes.”
“But what about your prophecy?” I demand. “You still haven’t explained why you brought me here, why you contracted the Underworld for my services if you never meant to use them.”
“Oftentimes, my visions do not come clearly. They show me moments in the future that are murky—unsure as to whether they will happen or not. Then there are other times where my visions are so clear there can be no doubt as to whether or not they will come to pass. My ability is powerful, but it is not all seeing as one might think. I see all that will happen, but the choices made between when I see the future and when the future becomes the present may threaten to change the outcome.”
I wait and this time, Caedmon doesn’t stop.
“Twenty years ago, I had a vision such as that. A prophecy that is set within the fabric of time. They are rare visions, ones that cannot be changed and from what I have experienced, they only ever happen when the balance of the world has been altered too far. I fear that my people—Gods to this world—have taken their greed too far.”
My gaze skitters to Ophelia, now holding her empty glass as she watches Caedmon with a cold look that tells me nothing of her inner thoughts. I frown as I notice the strings of silver in her naturally dark hair have grown wider since the last time I saw her. The lines around her lips and at the edges of her eyes are deeper too. It hasn’t been that long … has it?
“What does your prophecy have to do with Kiera?” Ruen’s voice drags my focus back to the conversation before me. “Answer her question—why did you bring her here?”
A beat of silence passes through the room. My muscles tense as Caedmon and Ruen stare at each other, then Caedmon’s lips part and he speaks.
“Because she’s the answer to all of our salvation.”