Chapter Sixteen
THE OTHER KINGS WERE already waiting when Devyn arrived.
The forest convergence point looked the same as it always did—ancient trees, mist curling between them, amber light filtering through the canopy in slanted columns.
The kind of wild beauty that made humans feel small and insignificant.
His soldiers had secured the perimeter. No hikers would stumble upon them today.
Quinn stood like a statue carved from ice, silver-blond hair catching the weak sunlight. Skye leaned against an oak with deceptive casualness, golden and warm, though his eyes were anything but. Wolfe paced at the edge of the clearing, a predator who couldn’t stand still.
They’d all felt it. The summons that wasn’t a summons—just a shared knowledge, bone-deep, that they needed to be here. Now.
“We saw it.” Skye’s voice was uncharacteristically grim. “She went back to her old world.”
Devyn’s blood turned to ice.
He had asked for this. He had planned for this. Hurt her to keep her safe. Shattered her in front of his entire household so thoroughly that she would have no reason to stay, no hope to cling to, nothing left but the door Hewhay offered.
So why did it feel like his chest had been hollowed out with a rusted spoon?
“The Bailey here.” Quinn said quietly. “No one remembers her anymore.”
Of course they didn’t.
This was the cost of being marked by Hewhay.
You didn’t even have the right to grieve, because the people around you had never seen what you lost. His staff would go about their duties with no memory of the queen who’d learned their names, who’d made Marguerite wink, who’d defended him at Court with escalating tales of puppies and blizzards until even his enemies were laughing.
Bailey Sutton had never existed here.
Only to him. Only in his memory, where she would live forever—violet eyes and secret dimples and the way she said you’re blushing right before he kissed her to shut her up.
“Why did you send her away?” Wolfe’s voice was a low growl. “Did she turn out to be one of the others?”
The others.
Nameless beings that wanted to destroy worlds for the sake of destroying.
Passages carved out of sacrificed blood.
They weren’t like Devyn and his brothers, who’d been brought through Hewhay to fill a need, to protect, to serve.
The others came through different doors—darker ones—and they left nothing but ruin in their wake.
Abigail had been killed by such a one. They’d known the moment they saw her corpse. The markings on her body weren’t just violence. They were ritual.
And whoever that man was—whatever he was—could have set his sights on Bailey next.
“No.” Devyn’s voice came out rough. Scraped raw. “She wasn’t one of them. She was—”
The pain hit all four of them at once.
Sharp. Piercing. The same pain they’d felt days ago, when Bailey first arrived in this world. The pain that meant Hewhay was moving, shifting, rewriting.
They checked their watches simultaneously.
Time had moved backward.
Again.
“Six days.” Wolfe’s voice was grim.
“Abigail is still alive.” Skye’s tone was musing, calculating.
Quinn said nothing. He only looked at Devyn, pale eyes steady, no need to voice what they all knew.
Still-alive Abigail meant still-engaged Devyn.
For better or for worse.
The other kings left. Not physically—years of bearing Hewhay’s mark had unlocked certain abilities, and one of them was this: their souls could see and speak to each other without being in the same place.
The forest dissolved around Devyn as they withdrew, leaving him alone with the trees and the mist and the weight of what he’d done.
He should be glad.
His old life was back. Uncomplicated. No wife who made him laugh, who made him blush, who defended him like a warrior and hid under blankets like a child. No soft violet eyes looking at him like he might be worth trusting.
No weakness.
But all he could think about was her.
I had no choice, he reminded himself. A broken heart heals. A broken neck doesn’t. Being spurned by your husband is always a better fate than having your life taken by something that wears a man’s face but isn’t one anymore.
He’d done the right thing.
The right thing had never felt so much like dying.
DEVYN TAPPED INTO HIS kingdom-wide surveillance network the moment he returned to the estate.
Cameras first. A quick confirmation that Abigail was alive—there she was, in her father’s manor, trying on wedding accessories with a maid.
Breathing. Moving. Unaware that in another timeline, her body had been discovered in a dungeon, cold and still and marked with symbols that made even hardened soldiers look away.
He should stop there.
He didn’t.
His fingers moved across the controls, pulling up feed after feed, searching for the telltale sparkle that marked where Hewhay touched the world. The shimmer was subtle—like heat rising off summer pavement, like light catching on water that wasn’t there. Most people couldn’t see it at all.
But otherworlders could.
Otherworlders like him.
Like Bailey.
He found her near the local market.
His heart—the heart he’d spent years convincing himself he didn’t have—clenched so hard he couldn’t breathe.
She was wearing a wedding dress. White silk pooling around her feet, her dark hair tumbling over her shoulders, her face pale and confused as she spoke to—
White.
She was wearing white.
In his world, white was for funerals. For death. For endings. But in her world—in the world she’d come from—white was for weddings. For beginnings. For hope.
She looked like a bride. A real bride. Not the black-clad stranger who’d stumbled into his chapel like a beautiful omen.
Mrs. Lyme.
Bailey was talking to Mrs. Lyme, who was looking at her with polite confusion because in this timeline, they’d never met. And Devyn watched the exact moment Bailey realized where she was. When she was.
Her face crumpled. Just for a second. Just long enough for him to see the devastation before she pulled herself together and said something to Mrs. Lyme that made the older woman’s brow furrow in concern.
He should pretend he’d never seen her.
He should let her go. That was the plan. That was the point. Hurt her so badly she’d leave and never look back. Keep her safe by making her hate him.
Instead, he found himself moving.
Through the estate. Down the stairs. Out the door. Moving with an urgency that was almost clumsy—and Devyn Chaleur was never clumsy. He was precision and control and deliberate efficiency. He did not stumble over thresholds. He did not take corners too fast.
He did not chase after women who were better off without him.
And yet.
When he reached the market, she was gone.
He scanned the crowd. The vendors. The side streets. Nothing. No wedding dress. No dark hair. No violet eyes.
A door began to sparkle.
Not a real door. A space between two buildings that hadn’t been there a moment ago, shimmering with that unmistakable light. Hewhay. Opening a passage for him, or perhaps laying a trap. With Hewhay, you never really knew.
He stepped through anyway.
The space beyond was small. Intimate. Warm light, velvet armchairs, the smell of old books and something sweeter underneath. It looked like a reading nook. A sanctuary. The kind of place someone like Bailey would feel safe.
On a small table in the center sat a book.
Leather-bound. Midnight blue. Silver lettering on the spine that caught the light even though there was no visible source.
Bailey Sutton: The Life She Might Have Lived.
His jaw tightened.
He should leave. Should walk out of this pocket of Hewhay and never look back. What good would it do, seeing the life she could have without him? The happiness she deserved? The safety he could never provide?
But his hands were already reaching for it.
The leather was warm under his fingers. Body temperature. Alive.
He opened it.
THE FIRST PAGE SHOWED her in a wedding dress.
Not the crumpled silk from the market footage. A different dress, in a different place—a photography studio with exposed brick and high ceilings and natural light streaming through massive windows. She was smiling. Actually smiling, with the dimple he’d memorized showing on her right cheek.
And beside her stood a man.
Golden hair that caught the light like spun sunlight. Chiseled features, elegant and powerful. Hazel eyes warm with adoration as he looked at Bailey—his Bailey—like she was the only thing in the world worth seeing.
The caption beneath read: Paul Theodore,Greek god masquerading as human. Bailey’s Fiancé.
Devyn stared at the words.
Read them again.
Greek god.
Ten years navigating Hewhay’s impossible geography. Ten years of otherworldly politics and shadow kingdoms and dreams that connected four kings across impossible distances. And apparently Greek gods were also just... walking around. Getting engaged to photography assistants from Rhode Island.
He turned the page.
And the knife went deeper.
Paul Theodore—known to Bailey as ‘Mr. Handsome’ since the first chapter of OLYMPUS BEWITCHED, an audiobook she has listened to one hundred and seventeen times.
Her comfort. Her escape. Her door out when the world becomes too much.
She fell asleep to his voice. Dreamed about his rare smiles.
Swooned over his magnetic hazel eyes and quiet intensity.
He was her book boyfriend before she knew book boyfriends could become real.
Devyn’s hands had gone white-knuckled on the book’s edges.
One hundred and seventeen times.
She’d listened to this man’s story one hundred and seventeen times. Chosen him, over and over, every time she pressed play. Every time something bad happened. Every time she needed to escape.
He turned another page.
Paul calling her my love. Paul calling her sweetheart. Paul looking at her like she hung the moon—not with the cold assessment of a mafia king evaluating an asset, but with open, uncomplicated adoration.
Paul’s voice: calm, gentle, steady. The kind of voice that soothed instead of commanded. The kind of voice that would never call her unfit in front of a room full of crying servants.
Paul saving her. Deflecting danger with one hand while holding her safe with the other. Powerful and protective without being destructive. Without being dangerous.
Paul, who was literally a Greek god.
Who could not lie to her the way Devyn just had.
The pages kept turning. Devyn couldn’t stop. Every image was a fresh wound, every word a reminder of everything he wasn’t, everything he could never be.
Paul was patient where Devyn was impatient.
Warm where Devyn was cold.
Gentle where Devyn was intense.
Golden where Devyn was shadow.
And Bailey had chosen him. Not once, not accidentally, not because she’d stumbled into a chapel wearing the wrong dress at the wrong time. She had chosen Paul Theodore one hundred and seventeen times before she ever knew he could be real.
Devyn Chaleur had been the route she refused to read.
The dangerous one. The one she avoided.
And now he’d confirmed every fear she might have had about him. He was the dangerous choice. He had hurt her. Exactly the way she’d probably always suspected he would.
He turned to the final page.
The next time Bailey returns to her world, it will be her wedding day.
She will marry Paul Theodore.
She will be happy.
She will be safe.
She will be loved by a god who has never made her cry.
The book fell from Devyn’s hands.
He stood in that pocket of Hewhay, surrounded by warmth and soft light and the smell of books that Bailey would have loved, and he understood.
This was what she deserved.
Someone who didn’t break her heart in front of the entire household staff. Someone who didn’t make her cry. Someone who could protect her without destroying her in the process. Someone she had already loved, for years, before she ever stumbled into his world.
He wasn’t competing with just another man.
He wasn’t even competing with a god.
He was competing with her heart’s first choice. The one she’d picked a hundred times over. The hero of the story she’d used to escape every time life became unbearable.
Paul Theodore was the love story Bailey wanted.
Devyn Chaleur was just the one she’d gotten by accident.
A bitter laugh scraped out of his throat.
Why hadn’t Hewhay just told him straight? Why the games, the doors, the books that showed him exactly how inadequate he was? If the universe preferred a literal god for Bailey, it could have just said so. Could have kept her from ever stumbling into his chapel in the first place.
But no.
Hewhay had let him have her. Let him marry her. Let him fall so completely that he couldn’t breathe without thinking of her.
And then shown him this.
The door behind him shimmered. An exit. A way back to his world, his territory, his still-living fiancée who wasn’t Bailey and never would be.
He didn’t move.
Because there was one more line of text appearing on the book’s final page. Ink spreading like blood, words forming that hadn’t been there before.
Unless.
Devyn’s breath stopped.
Unless you fight for her.
Unless you become someone worth choosing.
Unless you prove that the dangerous choice can also be the right one.
The words faded as quickly as they’d appeared.
But Devyn had already made his decision.
He was a man who decided. That was who he was. Not brooding, not conflicted, not hesitating while he wrestled with feelings. When he wanted something, he took it. When there was a problem, he solved it.
And he wanted Bailey.
He wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anything. More than his territory. More than his crown. More than the safety of walls that kept everyone at a distance.
She was his wife. His queen. His.
And he was going to get her back.
Even if he had to fight a god to do it.