21. Asha
Asha
Every gate.
I let that sink in for a moment and immediately understand the implications.
It’s a fucking natural disaster on a global realm-of-networks scale.
Doesn’t change a fucking thing.
I lift my chin, expecting a barrage of reasons why we have to stop this thrown at me. Instead, I get the opposite.
“Makes no difference,” Tobin says. “Not our problem.”
His silver eyes bore into mine with all the certainty that I need from him that he is in this and not just getting his dick wet.
Hale is next. He doesn’t hesitate either. In fact, he goes one step further and turns to me, striding over and then dropping to his knees, head bowed. “Not our problem,” he agrees, fire steady under his skin.
I stifle my gasp of shock at seeing this monster on his knees in front of me. It turns me on like nothing else ever has.
Leith says nothing. He doesn’t need to. He moves over and drops to his knees as well.
I swallow and wait. I don’t look at Tobin, but his next move tells me whether I read him right.
He doesn’t let me down.
He drops to his knees beside the other two, head bowing in a slow, deliberate movement that costs him nothing and means everything.
All three of them. On the floor of the Astrology Tower, in front of a body that isn’t even mine, pledging themselves to a goddess who can’t currently lift anything heavier than her own spite.
I breathe through it. I will not cry again. I did that once today, and once is already embarrassing.
“Get up,” I say, when I trust my voice enough to use it. “All of you.”
They rise without argument, which is either the most frightening thing that’s happened today or the most reassuring. I can’t decide.
I look at each of them. Hale, with his fire sitting gold and steady under his skin. Tobin, controlled and pale and still carrying the bruising of a day that nearly killed him twice. Leith, calm as a blade left on a cold surface.
Mine.
The word arrives again, and I pull it closer.
“Three days,” I say. “Every gate to every realm opens for forty minutes. Yseld will know. She has to. She’s been sitting inside SilverGate for centuries, watching the calendar tick over.”
“Which means she’ll use it,” Hale says.
“Which means we have three days to get me back into my body, back through a gate that only opens once every nine hundred and sixty-two years, before a dead goddess with a grudge and centuries of preparation beats us to the door.” I pause. “When you say it out loud, it sounds manageable.”
“It sounds insane,” Hale says.
“Same thing in my world.” I turn to the orrery and study the slow, silent rotation of its arms. The largest body sits closest to the copper-haloed moon, and I watch the interval between them narrowing in real time.
Three days. The arm will complete its arc in three days, and everything that separates realm from realm will become a suggestion for forty minutes.
Forty fucking minutes.
I’ve conquered armies in less.
Of course, I had my actual body for those, but… Details.
“We need a plan,” Hale says.
“We need to find the door above the courtyard,” I correct.
“That too, but we need a plan. If the door is above the courtyard, and your real body is miles underground, how do we get the two together without Yseld interfering? We will have forty minutes. Twenty minutes less than an hour. It’s not long,” Tobin states.
“Then we need a plan,” I mutter.
“Also, what happens when you get back to StormGate?” Leith asks abruptly.
I turn to stare at him. “Meaning?”
“These lesser gods who exiled you… what about them?”
“They die. Painfully,” I growl.
Leith nods once. “And then?” he presses.
“And then I rebuild what they burned.” I say it simply, because it is simple.
The Eclipse Throne exists whether I’m sitting on it or not.
Power like mine doesn’t disappear. It waits.
It accumulates interest. “I go home. I sit my arse back where it belongs, and if anyone wants to argue the point, they’re welcome to try. ”
“And us?” he asks.
“I’m going,” Hale says instantly. “Stay or come, up to you.”
His gaze bores into mine. He has said this before, but never have I believed it until now.
I look at Leith, who asked the question and is still waiting for my answer.
“And us?” he repeats, quieter this time, with something underneath the stillness that demands honesty.
I owe him that. I owe all three of them that.
“I haven’t been gone long enough for anything major to happen, but that doesn’t mean changes haven’t been made in my absence.
Whether they are expecting Yseld to return or have installed Z-man—Zether—onto the throne is a question I can only answer when the gate opens, and I return.
All I know for certain is that it won’t be sitting empty.
My response depends entirely on how they dealt with my exile. ”
“Your response,” Tobin murmurs.
“Complete annihilation is always on the table, but the rebuild is a serious pain in the arse.”
His mouth curves slightly. “Complete annihilation followed by a serious pain in the arse rebuild. I’ve had worse job descriptions.”
“You’re not being hired,” I say.
“No,” he agrees. “I’m volunteering. There’s a difference.”
Hale’s fire flares once, bright and satisfied. He doesn’t say anything else because he doesn’t need to. He already told me he was going before I answered. A low, liquid heat coils in my gut, a response so visceral and unwelcome I shove it down. This isn’t the time or the place for whatever that is.
Leith studies me for another second, then nods once. Whatever he was looking for, he found it or decided to stop looking. Either way, the question is closed.
Good. Because I need them thinking forward, not sideways.
“Yseld,” I say, turning back to the orrery. “Three days gives her three days as well. She’s been here for centuries.”
Tobin stares at the rotating arms with the expression he gets when he’s pulling a problem apart at the seams. “The hook in the designation chamber. The journal that ran. The purple threading through SilverGate’s wards. She’s been maintaining access points this whole time.”
The book that Verne had that disappeared through the wall. The book. The black threads. Verne…
I chew my lip.
Hale frowns. “What?”
“Verne,” I murmur. “Something isn’t right about her.”
“Well, that’s not a newsflash,” Tobin snorts in a rare show of pure amusement.
“No,” Hale agrees. “She’s been absent every time something significant happened. The journal. The library going dark. The door.”
“She’s also never tried to stop us,” Leith says. “She watches. She hovers. She disappears at the precise moment things escalate.”
“That’s not librarian behaviour,” I say. “That’s surveillance.”
Tobin turns from the orrery, his silver eyes sharp. “Or facilitation.”
The word drops into the room and sits there.
“You think she’s helping Yseld,” I say.
“I think she’s been here longer than Yseld has been embedded in SilverGate’s systems. I think every time we got close to something useful, Verne either wasn’t there to stop us or wasn’t there at all. The journal didn’t run from us. It ran to somewhere. The wall behind her desk.”
“The door,” I say. “She knew it was there.”
“She may have put it there,” Leith says.
I stare at him. “What does that mean?”
“As I said, I think she’s been maintaining access points for centuries and hiding it behind a very good impression of a mildly unsettling librarian.”
“Bitch,” I hiss. She’s been spying on us.
Watching us run around in circles and probably cackling about it behind our backs with Yseld.
That places her on my list of traitors. Very near the top.
But right now, she is the least of our worries.
“Look, as annoying as Verne is right now, we do have the bigger issue of reuniting me with my body and getting back to the open gate above the courtyard for me to return home.”
“I’m starting to think that all three of these things are connected,” Tobin states, hands behind his back as he gets that look.
“Go on,” I press when he pauses for dramatic effect.
“The gate opening, Yseld and your body. Yseld is a ghost. She has already admitted to wanting your body to return home. When the gate opens, your body is up for grabs to the quickest goddess essence.”
“Fucking bitch,” I snarl. “You’re right. That’s exactly her plan. I’m going to kill her.”
“Can’t kill a ghost,” Hale points out.
“No, but I bet I can damage her pretty badly if we get our hands on that portrait. Fancy seeing if it burns with your hellfire—which is not part of this realm’s magic system?”
His eyes flash dangerously. “Oh, you have no fucking idea.”
“Right, so our list of priorities keeps getting longer. First up, find the portrait,” Leith says.
“How hard can it be?” I ask, and all three of them groan, shaking their heads at my apparent stupidity for asking a perfectly reasonable question.