Chapter 19 Creed #2
Thayla comes to stand beside me and the skin contact from her arm against mine has everything within me settling down. The voices fall silent. My soul simmers down, cocooning hers once again.
It’s the most freeing yet strangest sensation I’ve ever experienced.
Delun observes her from head to toe. The dust of death covering her has my throat bobbing up and down.
“Speak.” Amick takes Thayla’s other side, and her shoulders relax a fraction as his fingers lace through hers.
He’s been quiet since the moment we all felt her first pull, but he’s been struggling to gain his composure since the second he realized the truth of what had happened. Her presence alone is bringing him back from the brink of going off his deep end.
“I have nothing to say.”
“You’ll tell us everything we want to know, or we’ll stay here, forcing the words from you.
I’m beyond the point of tolerating pathetic, self-serving, ignorant, and useless gods believing they can and will tell us what they are and are not going to do.
You’ve all grown too accustomed to us not throwing our weight around and that’s coming to an end. ”
Thayla shivers from the authority in Amick’s voice and Riven chuckles, causing her body to shake even more as he presses his chest against her back.
The God of Judgment sneers. “The four…matter of fact, five of you are only as untouchable as you are because of your fathers. Riding their robes gives you nothing and discredits all the respect—”
His head snaps to the side and Kyzen scowls at him as he spits out a wad of blood. The shock on Delun’s face at who it was that struck him is comical.
“I can’t speak for Sevryn, but I’ll warn you once, if you ever imply again that we’re untouchable because of our father, or that we benefit anything from being his spawn, I’ll lock you in a cell for eternity.
The time it takes a seed to sprout into a tree will be a single day for you.
We’re untouchable because we stood against our father, had our power stripped, and crawled back better.
Something you and many other fucking cowards can’t claim. ”
Kyzen steps back into our line, squeezing between Thayla and me. It takes all my mental will not to shove him away and reclaim my spot beside her.
That internal battle gets propelled to the back of my mind when Delun settles his lethal glare on me.
“You’re the one who changed it all, then left.
You abandoned Hellveilious, not me. I stayed.
I took orders from a child and have upheld the responsibilities placed on me.
The beings were growing restless, and the fights were no longer satisfying them.
Especially when you stopped showing up to them.
You’d know if you spent time down here that there were riots happening daily. They needed something more.
“I decided to alter the fights. I gave them a way to face their punishment and gain their freedom. The riots in the lower level slowed. The killings that spilled over into the upper levels stopped completely. I did that, while you frolicked in the Godsdawn like you don’t have a responsibility down here. ”
My fists shake at my sides. This is not at all how I wanted Thayla to learn anything about me.
“None of you batted an eye when it was declared a seven-year-old was to rule you all. Your only request was that each of you got to keep control of your levels. I allowed that as long as you did it my way and that decree didn’t even come until I was fifteen.
“At the end of the day, this is the punishment section of our region, but that doesn’t mean every wrongdoer has to come here to be brutally slaughtered and killed.
There is still redemption to be found in some of them.
Some don’t even deserve to be sent here, and it was yours and the others’ jobs to make sure that quit happening.
Instead, you made a death game for those who DO deserve to rot here forever. ”
He shrugs. Fucking shrugs. “I don’t control what the others do. The vilest of the vile were getting out of hand. I changed that.”
My power blazes to life, swallowing him up to his neck, and my eyes go completely white. I take a dangerous step toward him and lower my voice.
“And you will change it back or I will go against the word I gave you. What will you be then if you have no souls praying to you?”
“You wouldn’t,” he whispers.
“Try me.”
His anger finally cracks and a glimpse of fear peers back at me. He knows as well as I do what he’d be if he didn’t have all these beings down here begging for a more forgiving judgment.
“Fine.”
“How did my Binder end up here?” I ask, stepping back toward the others. I can’t bring my eyes to meet Thayla’s, although her stare burns through me.
“I was simply following an order.”
“You take orders from me, and I can assure you, I didn’t order you to do this.”
“Who am I to question the decree of a Beginning God?”
Thayla releases an outraged groan and my brows scrunch. “Which one?”
“The God of Chaos.”
Her face immediately falls and my heart tugs painfully toward her as my soul attempts to soothe hers. I lock it down, but Amick and Kyzen crowd closer to her. Riven, on the other hand, takes a step back and goes statue-still.
“Impossible.”
“The parchment is in my pocket.”
I step forward, reaching my hand through my cloud of power holding him in place. The thin piece of paper weighs a thousand pounds.
My eyes devour the letter multiple times over. Each line I reread has my vision darkening.
I’ll kill him.
“Give me that,” Amick demands as he snatches it from my fingers.
His power blasts across my skin and he scans it even faster than I did. His lids fall closed as though he’s thinking, but I know better.
“We’ve got what we need,” he says, folding the parchment and placing it in his pocket.
I grit my teeth as he walks up to Thayla and leans in so close to her there’s no space between their bodies. Whatever he whispers has her shoulders dropping and a loud exhale falling from her lips.
“So it was merely a coincidence my do not kill order was lifted the same day you received a decree from a Beginning God to kill her?” Sevryn’s tone drips in accusation.
“He wasn’t ordered to kill her. It was to hold her and Yemi here until he was told otherwise,” I say.
Thayla scoffs and crosses her arms. “That’s crazy, seeing as I did almost die.”
“I had no intentions of letting you or her die. I was attempting to step in when the God of Death tied me to my chair. As for you”—he cast Sevryn an unsavory glance—“I received that decree from your father on this past Veiling Day. He told me to use my judgment for when to announce the order was lifted. He said if you survived, you were free to come home. If you didn’t then… well, you didn’t.”
Sevryn’s face recoils for a second before he fixes it. I caught it, though, and it was a small flash of the past. I remember the kid who followed his father around like a shadow but who would also flinch if he raised his hand too fast.
I don’t know how he ended up here, and frankly I don’t give a fuck. He’s the least of my concern and I’m ready to get the hell out of here.
“You tell whoever asks or worries about him that he died here today, in your sudden death taurnshit. As far as you or anyone else is concerned, Sevryn, son of the God of Pain, is dead.”
“What?” We all turn to Thayla, but her glare of steel is set on the God of Judgment.
“He’s coming with us.”
“The fuck he is. Thayla, you have no idea—”
“I don’t. I don’t have any idea about a lot,” she cuts me off, but her tone isn’t fierce or angry. It’s just matter-of-fact, with a touch of tenderness.
“I can find out whatever is going on between all of you out there and we can work it out from there. What I do know is, he said he was going to help protect Yemi and me, and he did. He tried anyway. He never left her side. Plus, he betrayed his father. I don’t know what that means, but in my opinion, I don’t think he should even be here.
You know people better than I do, though. If this is where he belongs, say that.”
I already know he doesn’t fucking deserve to be here. His soul is purer than my brothers’ and mine, so who the fuck am I to say he should stay. It’s our personal issues that motivate me to say fuck him and leave him.
Yemi’s movement catches my eye and takes me by surprise once again. She drifts closer to him as if she’s ready and willing to defend him.
From us.
What the fuck happened?
I grunt and face Delun. “You heard her. You betray me on this, and you’ll get your wish. You’ll see a hell of a lot more of me when we come down here to bring you food in your cell.”
“I fucking get it. No need for threats.”
I huff and use my power once again to lift his ass back up to his throne. He can sit there for a while and think about this shit show he’s created.
I want more than anything to kill him instead, but that would throttle Hellveilious into mayhem. After this fucking scavenger hunt we’re going on, I’m going to have to bite the blade and make some serious changes down here.
Again.
Fuck, I’m nowhere near ready to integrate myself back into this life.
It damn near destroyed me, my relationship with my brothers…everything.
“Let’s go.”
My gaze lingers on Sevryn, and he stares back just as fiercely. I have no clue what we’re going to do with him. The last thing we need is a traitor in our business.
I stomp toward the largest arch in the center that will lead us back out the way we came. This maze is unfortunately branded on my brain. I know every nook and turn.
Instead of continuing straight, which would take us out and onto the lifeless, dangerous path that leads into the heart of the lower level, we cut to the right and enter a darkened hallway.
“Damn it,” Thayla groans.
“Are you okay?” Kyzen asks.
“No. Not at all. V told me we can’t starshoot here, not like I can anyways, and the last thing I want to do is walk my ass through Hellveilious.”
“Who’s V?” Sevryn asks and we all ignore him.