CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CADI
Cadi pushed open the glass door that led to the street, grimacing at the wall of warm, damp air that slammed into her. The late summer evening was thick, but even the barest hint of a breeze was a welcome relief from the stifling apartment she had just left.
The tips of her fingers wouldn’t stop tingling, even as she shook out her hands and wedged herself between two potted cypress trees to lean against what appeared to be the only section of the ground floor that didn’t double as a window.
Angling her head back against the black stone, she let her eyes drift closed.
The low sun was warm on her skin, but the pleasant heat did little to calm the way her mind was threatening to short circuit in its frantic attempt to align her competing realities.
There was the life she’d known approximately thirty minutes ago, and the life she had just been catapulted into. Sure, she had essentially climbed onto that catapult and all but demanded Elias pull the lever, but it was still a lot to take in.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and a tightness pinched behind her ribs when she pulled it out to see a message from him:
This isn’t how I wanted you to find out. I’m so sorry.
Cadi read his words over and over, but they did nothing to stop the hurt that came from knowing he had kept this from her.
Regardless of what he’d wanted, the fact remained that he’d had almost two months to tell her.
Two months to trust her the way she had trusted him, and he had decided not to.
She had opened herself to him fully, let him see every broken, scarred, terrified piece of her, and the whole time he had been picking and choosing the parts of himself that she got to know.
The brutal realization made her chest ache.
Her thumbs hovered over the keyboard. A hundred responses stood poised at the front of her mind, not a single one of them productive. So instead, she locked her phone, shoved it into her pocket, and let her head fall back against the wall.
All she wanted to do was disappear. To go home and hide in her bed and pretend the world didn’t exist. No gods, no boyfriends, no shady power-stealing religions. But she knew that wasn’t an option. Not anymore.
No, she had wanted to know the truth. She didn’t get to hide from it now that she did.
For all the good that knowing did her.
The only thing she seemed to have gained was a cortisol spike and an ache so deep it felt like it was trying to bury itself in her soul.
How was she supposed to just sit back and wait, hoping her friends didn’t end up on the wrong side of the most powerful deity that currently existed?
But it wasn’t like there was anything she could do to help.
She wasn’t a goddess or a hot bartender with insider knowledge about the Order or a high priest who—
Cadi’s head snapped forward.
A high priest slipping in and out of secure temple offices without a good reason would be about as subtle as a gun.
But an attendant …
She sucked in a breath, her plan taking shape as she pushed off the wall and jogged back inside.
The sound of low conversation greeted her when she pushed open the door to Elias’s apartment.
The three gods sat huddled together in the living room, heads bent low in discussion while Elias leaned against the table next to the door, chewing on his thumb so aggressively Cadi thought he might hit bone if left alone for long enough.
His head whipped toward her at the sound of the latch clicking shut, and he took a single step before pausing his stride, assessing her as if she were a wounded animal, liable to snap if approached too quickly.
Smart.
“Are you okay?” he asked, slowly reaching out to take her hand. Cadi’s eyes flicked briefly to the place where he held her before she fixed him with a cutting stare and slid her fingers from his grip.
“Not particularly.”
Elias nodded, lowering his gaze to the floor between them, but not before a brief glimmer of hurt flashed across his face. At least he had the good sense to know when he’d fucked up.
“What can I do?” he whispered.
Cadi crooked an eyebrow. “I’m glad you asked. I actually have an idea that I think will help you guys.”
Elias looked up. “I don’t want you to worry about any of this. We have it handled.”
A brittle laugh scraped from Cadi’s throat. If this was what he considered “handled,” it was a miracle The Crow had stayed in business for so long. Shaking her head, she stepped around him and made a beeline to where Kai was still perched on the arm of the sofa.
“Really?” she called over her shoulder. “Because, to me, it sounds more like you’re stuck. What with your priest source turning out to be a bust.”
Elias flinched back at her biting tone, his wounded expression triggering an ache in her chest. An ache that the anger simmering in her gut insisted she ignore.
He descended into the living room, moving to stand beside Sera at the opposite end of the couch, wisely placing three deities and plenty of space between them.
“You said the high priest can’t search in as many places as you need without raising red flags, right?” she asked, turning to address Kai.
The god lifted his eyebrows, clearly surprised by the gumption Cadi had found outside on the sidewalk. His gaze darted to Elias before quickly returning to hers with a dip of his chin. “That’s right.”
Cadi let the corner of her mouth tip up in a confident smirk. “What if I told you I knew someone who could move through the temple unnoticed? With access to every secure area. Someone you could trust.”
Kai blinked rapidly, then turned to the others. The three of them exchanged looks that shifted from shock to confusion to excitement in seconds before the god of the sea faced her again, an intrigued twinkle in his green eyes.
“Who did you have in mind?” he asked as he lifted his drink.
Cadi squared her shoulders, hoping her resolute stance would hide the way her stomach was doing somersaults.
She’d made up her mind, and she was far too stubborn to back down now.
Her eyes shifted to Elias, watching him just long enough to see the pieces of what she was saying click into place. His posture went rigid.
“Cadi …” he warned, “don’t.”
Someone, take this man’s shovel. He could not seriously think he was in any position to be making demands. It took all of her strength to keep her face from betraying her as she turned her attention back to the gods, lifting a shoulder in a casual shrug. “Me.”
At the edge of her vision, she saw Sera turn to look at Elias. But Cadi kept her focus on Kai, his eyes narrowed in quiet assessment.
“And just how is it that you plan to do that?” he asked, his tone suggesting he fully believed she was out of her depth and more than a little insane. Cadi just smiled at him.
“You’d be surprised how few people give a second thought to temple attendants moving in and out of rooms. I have experience, and the head attendant is practically begging me to come back. She’d be too relieved to be suspicious if I agreed.”
Kai tilted his head, no doubt working out the details in his mind before turning to Sera and Seth. “What do you think?” he asked.
Seth stroked his finger and thumb against his beard, nodding slowly. “It has legs, I’ll give it that. This could be the exact thing we need to—”
“No.”
Cadi’s skin flushed hot, her attention pulled to where Elias still stood at the opposite end of the couch, arms crossed, his expression hard as stone as he held her locked in his stare.
She didn’t look away, indignation beginning to boil in her veins.
After keeping this from her for months then practically making her drag it out of him, it didn’t seem physically possible for him to have enough audacity to brush her off so quickly, with just a single word, not even a discussion.
She never imagined herself being this angry with him, but he was doing a good job at showing her how wrong she’d been.
Sera rose from the couch and took a step toward Elias to rest a hand against his shoulder. He didn’t even flinch at the contact, and Cadi was pretty sure she had yet to see him blink.
“It’s not a bad idea, E. With her help we could—”
“I said no!” he snapped, tearing his gaze from Cadi to level Sera with a sharp look. It wasn’t directed at her, but Cadi could have sworn she still felt the bite of it from across the room. “She’s not a part of this. She won’t be a part of this, and that’s the end of it.”
Each word that came out of his mouth inched Cadi’s fury closer to its boiling point.
“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here,” she demanded, drawing his attention from Sera.
He let out a steadying breath, the lines of his face easing almost imperceptibly as he shook his head. “It’s too dangerous, love. I can’t let you do this. It isn’t your fight.”
His tone was soft in what she could only assume was his attempt to be comforting, to stem the mounting wrath that burned behind her eyes. But all it did was push her over the edge.
“Well, you don’t get to decide that for me,” she bit back, her retort echoing through the now-silent room.
Her gaze remained fixed on Elias, but she didn’t miss the way the three deities exchanged nervous glances, their uneasy looks suggesting they were silently weighing whether they should step in.
Or bolt.
If she hadn’t felt as though any attempt to speak at that moment would come out as a scream, she would have strongly suggested they go with the latter.
Elias’s fingers flexed and relaxed at his sides, the crack in his voice the only indication that he, too, was beginning to unravel. “Can we talk about this later?” he asked, his voice eerily soft.
Cadi folded her arms across her chest and rallied the final threads of her composure. A small piece of her hesitated, trying to pull back, but she shrugged it off. “No, actually, I’d like to talk about it now.”