Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
Van
I’m relieved to be back to my old self. I sit beside the fire as the evening grows colder. I was far from being a good cook, but I’d manage to make some hot chocolate for all of us, and now we were gathered in random spots around the living room. All of us quiet.
“I need to…to say something.”
I turn to look at Reid. He sits on the couch next to Izzy, and his expression is thoughtful.
“I wasn’t sure if I should. I didn’t know if it’d make things harder…”
“Spit it out,” I say, sounding irritated, but beneath that I’m actually worried. With all the shit that is going on, what could possibly make Reid seem more nervous?
He stares down at his hands. “So…you guys know Hel and I aren’t like you.
She doesn’t necessarily want to be in charge.
She isn’t fighting me constantly. She’s more like…
a friend…or the voice in the back of my mind that warns me of things she knows more about than I do.
But, we also sometimes have dreams together--”
“Dreams?” Aiden laughs. “You share dreams with your god?”
Izzy lightly snaps Aiden’s shoulder. “Let him finish.”
Aiden sighs and leans back on the couch. “Okay, brother, tell us about these shared dreams.”
Reid nods and keeps talking. “Hel showed me the Underworld recently. She told me the creatures are drawn to Hel, so now they’re drawn to me, and that if I don’t return to the Underworld soon, the undead will come to Earth.
” He finally looks up, and for some reason he’s looking at me.
“If we’re not able to funnel our powers away, I might have to spend the rest of my life in the Underworld.
And if I do, I’m never going to be able to see any of you again. ”
Izzy gasps and grabs his hand. “What are you talking about? No matter what, we’re always going to be together.”
And I realize why he’s looking at me. He knows I’m the only one who is enough of an asshole to tell everyone what needs to be said.
“The Underworld is a dark and terrible place,” he continues, “if you went there, it’d change you forever. If I go, I won’t have you come down to see me.”
Aiden rolls his eyes, but with how tensely he sits now, he’s not fooling anyone.
“We’ve seen a lot of bad things, Reid, we can handle the Underworld.
And that’s if we’re willing to just accept this whole, you have to stay in the Underworld thing, which we’re not even going to consider.
We’re gods. If we have to fight some undead creatures to keep you here, that’s what we’ll do. ”
Reid looks at me, desperation in his eyes.
“He’s right,” I say. “If we can’t get the gods out of us, we can’t risk the whole world just because we want to stay together. Reid will have to go to the Underworld, if that’s the case, and we’ll have to let him go.”
“Van!” Wilder looks at me like I’m an asshole.
“Absolutely not,” says Izzy, glaring at me.
I don’t back down. I know we all love Reid, me included. I could bear the Underworld for him, but I don’t think he could live with himself if Izzy and the others had to leave life behind and go to a terrible place, just for him.
“I guess we make sure we’re able to get the gods out of us. No sense crying about what could happen now.”
Izzy draws her legs to her chest, looking lost.
Aiden speaks, as if to himself. “It’s weird to know that tomorrow we could be just…normal again.”
“It’d be a relief,” Wilder says, softly. “But it’d also be strange to be powerless again.”
Izzy looks at Wilder. “Honestly, I don’t think we were ever really as powerless before as we thought we were. And now, we don’t have to be at the mercy of the adults in our lives. We can be free. We can be safe and together. Does anything actually matter beyond that?”
She’s absolutely right. I hate the idea of losing the god inside of me in so many ways.
Since the moment we’d gotten these powers, it’d been one challenge after another, but it was nice to have the magic to handle them.
The idea that we might actually be able to go back to a normal life, with the added benefit of having godly powers, is kind of nice.
But maybe I was foolish to believe that, even for a minute. I think if we keep our powers, there will always be more trouble, more problems, and at this point, all I want is a life with Izzy and my friends.
This woman has done crazy things to me, because instead of wanting to explore the world as some rich asshole, I want to buy us all a house.
Even if my parents hadn’t given me another penny, the trust fund my grandparents left would be enough to give us all a normal life.
Pay for our colleges. Our living expenses.
These people who had been with me through thick and thin could finally have stability. I could give it to them.
And wasn’t that better than slinging around a sword?
I can’t help but smile. “We don’t need the gods’ powers. We just need each other.”
Izzy actually smiles back at me, some of her worry fading away. “Then now all we need to do is win.”
And we would win. We would win so Reid didn’t have to go to the Underworld. We would win so that the dangers of being gods would fade. And we would win so I could give the people I love everything they deserve and more.