Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Torin
“Riley? Riley…” I anxiously hold him while he lies on the floor of my palace, right next to the Door that I’ve destroyed. “Riley, come on.”
He gasps and jerks forward, smashing his head into mine since I’m so close to him.
I hastily stabilize him before clasping his face. “Hey, it’s okay. It’s okay.”
Riley looks like he’s on edge, and his magic is wildly fluctuating as he grabs his chest and groans.
“Your magic feels like it’s out of control; are you okay?” I ask.
“I don’t… I don’t know. There’s this… pain in my body and I can tell it’s from losing Conquest. It’s like… he was a part of me. Am I that connected to my brothers and sister? Fuck.”
“Well… I guess we accomplished what we set out to do,” Vero grumbles.
“We got Conquest killed,” Riley snaps.
“Yes, which means the fourth world is safe for now,” Vero says. “You didn’t even like the guy.”
“I don’t know what I thought of him,” Riley admits while I hold him close and gently rub his arm. “It just… doesn’t feel good that he’s gone. It… hurts.”
“The connection between the four of you is likely more entwined than you’ll ever imagine,” I explain, setting a hand on his chest before I broach the topic that has pained me the most out of all of this. “Riley… the hourglass was broken.”
Riley hesitates before swiftly reaching for his chest. “I remember the hourglass breaking. Does this mean that I’ll die like Aemon promised?”
I swallow the fear that’s bubbling up inside of me while Riley looks down at his hand where the burn has blistered and there are cuts from the shards of glass.
“I don’t feel that severe longing,” Riley says thoughtfully. “I feel… I feel like… I can breathe for the first time in my life.”
“Does that mean the hourglass breaking was good?” Mickey asks. “I mean, I wouldn’t put it past that asshole to have lied to us about it. Or maybe it didn’t break in the way Aemon was alluding to, but instead, the spell on it was broken?”
“Whatever Conquest did shattered it,” Riley answers. “Right before he died, there was this… influx of magic that felt almost overwhelming, and it just… shattered it.”
“It kept me from getting close to the two of you,” I say, feeling upset that I failed to be the one to protect Riley. I can feel my power growing, but it still wasn’t enough. If Conquest hadn’t been there, would Riley even be—
Riley flicks me on the forehead. “Knock that off.”
“Knock what off? I was just being handsome.”
“Don’t make me vomit,” Vero growls.
“Can gods vomit?” Mickey asks.
“I have the desire to whenever I’m forced to deal with the group of you,” Vero grumbles before dropping a journal on Mickey’s head and walking toward the door.
Mickey grabs it and gasps. “You do want to be my friend! I knew you did!”
“I will burn that journal and make you watch. And then I will rejoice in your tears.”
“Joke’s on you, I only cry when I have to get up earlier than seven in the morning.” Mickey whips open the book and then gasps again. “This is a different language than the last one!”
Vero turns and smirks. “I never said it was the right journal. It was just a book.”
I debate telling them that he went, “This journal seems powerful, I suppose that irritating person could make use of it,” and grabbed it just for Mickey, but I think he enjoys the distress on Mickey’s face too much to say anything.
“Riley… Riley, I need you to read this for me… after a nap. It needs to marinate first.”
I feel rather uncertain how it’ll marinate before he even reads it.
“Vero is a god too, so he can probably figure out the language,” I announce, and Vero whips around and curses me to a thousand deaths. It’s very dramatic for a man who just doesn’t want to do story time with another man who wants to become the best of friends with him… and probably see him naked.
Mickey grins and Vero fucks off with remarkable speed, only for Mickey to whip out the walkie-talkie and say, “Meet me in my room in an hour, big boy. Over.”
I can hear the walkie-talkie Vero is still carrying crackle to life, telling me he heard it but has chosen not to respond. Mickey’s not concerned. He just looks over at Tommy. “Let’s spoon.”
Tommy stares at Mickey before shrugging. “As long as I don’t have to be the little spoon ever again. I will only ever be my wife’s little spoon.”
“You’re so difficult! We need to find you a new woman so you stop being so fussy. I tried reviving Joy for you, but you’re both so picky!” They wander off, leaving me alone with Riley and Quill, who is so happy to see Riley safe that he’s taken to eating his hair.
“Why do you always want to consume me? You secretly want to get rid of me, don’t you?” Riley asks Quill.
“He loves you,” I say. “I also want to eat the one I love.” I gently bite his neck and it makes him squirm. “Tell me… if Tommy has a wife…”
“He does, but she’d remarried years before Mickey brought Tommy back. The three of them had a talk and Tommy assured her that he still loved her, but he was aware he couldn’t be who she needed. So he backed off and instead simply visits his daughter and granddaughter here and there.”
“Mickey’s necromancy skills really are unmatched, aren’t they?
Necromancy is rare as it is, and I’ve only met a few who did it.
Most could raise one or two undead, and only in the current state of decomposition the body was in.
But Mickey… if you didn’t have the magic to tell, I feel like you’d have no idea they were even dead. ”
“Right? And he never has to stop, either,” Riley says.
“He’s left them out for years. Yeah, some of them he’ll dismiss only to reanimate, like he did to sneak them into the theme park, but they’ll only be gone minutes at most. Other necromancers drain themselves and return the undead, but I think this is the first time Mickey ever had to resummon Joy or Tommy after a long period since he brought them back. ”
“Fascinating.” I kiss the side of Riley’s head. “Let’s soak in the hot spring and let the water heal your magic. You feel quite… out of control.”
“I feel like a mess. Do I look like a mess?” he asks as I stand up and pull him to his feet.
I eye his blood-splattered face, his dirty clothes, and his windblown hair. “You look beautiful.”
His eyes immediately narrow like I could have possibly said something wrong. “Why did you grimace when you said that?”
“I would never. I think Kit needs to get her eyes checked. Maybe she needs glasses, huh, Kit?”
The familiar makes a happy noise and jumps to me, ditching her owner who is trying to glare at me while I try to ignore it.
“Well, now all I can see is a very up-close view of your face, so you have to lead me,” Riley mutters.
“Happily.” I clasp his hand in mine and pull him after me while Kit leaps off me and onto Quill.
“Now all I can see is Quill.”
“Which is the second-best thing to look at. My body is the first.”
Riley snorts and I gasp, looking over at him. “Excuse me? Did you just diss what I said?”
“I would never,” he says as I lead him to the bathing room. We get the blood and dirt off him before I pull him into the hot spring that’s imbued with magic to help heal wounds and recover from magical exhaustion. Riley just flips onto his back and floats there.
“I’m enjoying the view,” I comment since his naked front is very much on display.
He flips over and practically drowns himself so all I have to see is his ass.
“I’m enjoying this view even more.” I catch him and draw him over to me, then pull him down into the water so he can lean against me with his back to my front.
“I don’t even know Conquest, but it hurts,” he says.
“It’s okay to mourn someone you didn’t know.”
“Yeah. This means he’ll be reborn, right? We need to find him before Aemon does. The real question is how the hell do we find him?”
“Maybe you’ll be drawn to him?” I’m trying to sound hopeful. “It’s not like you’ll be able to ask him, with him being an infant and all…”
Riley sits on my lap in silence for a minute before slowly turning his head toward me. “We’re too young to be fathers,” he says as he looks at me in horror.
I stare back at him. “Do you realize we’d actually be some of the oldest fathers in existence? Hell, you’re older than me if you really think about it. No way the bringer of the apocalypse is younger than a thousand-year-old god.”
Riley looks appalled for some reason. “Let’s just worry about this later. Like… he’ll have a mom, right? His new mom can raise him.”
“Fuck if I know. You have a mom?”
“I assume,” Riley says, and it occurs to me that he’s never spoken about his parents.
“You never met your parents?”
“No. I know nothing about them. I was raised in foster homes and group homes. I think my magic scared families that considered adopting me, especially when I was young because I didn’t know what I was doing.
I’m told that I would just touch someone, borrow their magic, and create chaos with it.
They kept me away from people after I demolished the group home we were staying in.
No one was hurt, thankfully… but after that, they kind of kept me isolated.
I was only allowed to be around people who either didn’t have magic or had very weak magic.
I don’t blame them. I could have killed the other children…
but I just didn’t understand. I was too young.
I knew as I got older that I wasn’t allowed to be around other kids, and I hated the isolation so much. ”
I pull him in close so his back is against my chest as I wrap my arms around him. “I’m sorry. That had to have been so hard.”
“It was really lonely. And it made me hate my magic for a long time. Then I met Mickey in a group home when I was about fifteen. Even at that age, I wasn’t allowed to interact with others much, but they also kept him separate from the others because he kept raising undead and freaking the other kids out.
The other kids were terrified of him and called him creepy and a necrophiliac, so of course everyone thought he was weird.
At that time, it was mostly just him and Tommy, so I don’t know why they were so hard on him.
I guess when he was in middle school he was supposed to interview someone for career day, and since he’d decided that he was going to go to school to be a medical examiner, he raised a dead one to hear about it.
It… didn’t go over well with the school, but Tommy’s been with him since.
I think Mickey and I bonded over being lonely…
Sadly, he was tossed somewhere else after he raised our asshole manager’s undead grandpa to berate him.
Then I didn’t see him again until the academy. ”
“What happened to Mickey’s parents?”
“He doesn’t talk about them,” Riley says.
“He’s always kept that part of his life very quiet.
He’ll make jokes about bringing them back from the dead, so I know they’ve passed.
It wasn’t a good time for either of us. I just know that I’m really lucky to have found you. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
I squeeze my arms tighter around him and kiss his cheek. “I’m not going anywhere.” I run my fingers down his arm as he sighs with pleasure and closes his eyes.
“It feels so good,” he murmurs. I run kisses down to his neck, nibbling it a little while a smile plays at his lips.
“You’ll never be alone again,” I promise him. “I’m right here and Mickey is here… and hopefully Vero won’t stick around for long.”
Riley’s grin widens. “I’m glad you’re making friends.”
“Possibly with Mickey,” I say. “I will not be friends with another god who laid his hands upon your precious body.”
“That sounds sexual when instead he simply murdered me.”
I growl and try not to remember any bit of doing it myself.
Instead, I try to soothe my soul by running my hand up and down his naked body.
He’s quite pleased as he closes his eyes and sighs contentedly.
I smile at him right before he sits up, eyes opening wide, even though Kit doesn’t seem quite sure what he’s sensing.
“What’s wrong?” I ask when he leaps out of the water, scrambling on his hands and knees on the wet surface while he pats around for a towel he can’t find.
Kit rushes over to see what’s going on as Riley snatches his clothes, grabs his genet, and just zooms off before I even get out of the hot spring.
“Riley, what the hell!” I shout while I grab my pants and say fuck it to the rest. I race after him, dripping water everywhere, but the man is fast when he wants to be.
I catch just a glimpse of him as he dashes out into the garden and skids to a halt. I finally catch up to him and see what he’s so fixated on.
There’s a pale horse standing in the middle of the garden, his white mane hanging in mats. His eyes are wild as he throws his head and paws at the dirt. A strange white mist is swirling off the ground where he stands with his attention on us.
“Riley, I think you got your horse.”
He stares at him for a long moment before he says, “Oh fuck no,” and tries running for the palace.