I scoffed, but chose not to comment on that. “I can’t … I can’t imagine you and her.”
“I can’t imagine it either.” He lost the smile. “It seems too long ago. I guess it was. We never took our hook ups seriously, and honestly, I can’t really remember the last time we were ‘together.’” He made air quotes with his fingers. “Maybe two hundred years ago? Something like that. It never lasted. We were never like Levi and Ceris. We didn’t belong together; we weren’t soul mates. Imha and I simply had fun together.” He shook his head. “Living as a human made me realize how pathetic my affairs with her were. I regret them now.”
His unexpected confession crumbled my tough facade. Unfortunately, regret didn’t make everything right.
He was right, though. I was jealous. Too damn jealous, and I was fighting not to show it. I was trying to hide it even from myself, because honestly, I didn’t know what feeling that meant.
Jealousy aside, I also wanted to ask him about the other times Imha inflicted chaos on the world, but I was already pushing my luck.
I cleared my throat. “Remember you said you wished there was something you could do for me?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I know what.” He stared at me with his cryptic black eyes, and I took that as a cue to continue. “I want to strike a Soul Oath with you.”
“What?” He stood—tall, large, and powerful. I fought the urge to cringe. “How do you know about the Soul Oath?”
“Morgan’s books.”
He narrowed his eyes. “He showed that to you?”
“No. He doesn’t know about it.” I paused, thinking of the best way to approach this. “Please, hear me out.”
“Only a handful of Soul Oaths have been struck in this world, and most of them didn’t do any good.”
“This isn’t about doing good or bad. Just listen to me.”
He sighed. “I don’t see why.”
“Please,” I begged, sure I had sad puppy eyes, even though it wasn’t a conscious act.
He sighed. “All right. Tell me.”
I inhaled deeply before blurting it out. “After all this shit is done, when you’re a full god, and we defeat Imha and Omi and restore the world to order, I want you to bring my family back to life.”
He crossed his arms. “And what do I get from it?”
“My soul.”
His eyes widened. “What? Of course not!”
“Yes. Yes. You will do—”
“Even if I wanted to strike a Soul Oath with you, the Fates have your soul. You can’t give it to me.”
“They gave it back to me.”
He stared at me. “What?”
“Back in New York, a few days before the attack. They visited me and gave me my soul back. They said I would need it.” I took a step in his direction. “This is why they gave it back to me. I know it.”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“But it does,” I said. “You will strike this Soul Oath with me, because if you don’t do it, you might as well kill me right now.” Trying to be bold, I walked around the table and halted before him, the tip of my shoes touching his. I reached to the neck of his shirt and pulled the necklace from under it. He tensed. “I … I’m not sure how you feel about your human family now that you remember who you are, but try to think of what it was like before, of what you would have done for your parents. That’s how I feel. I will do anything for my family, and this is the only thing I can think of. They are my reason to live, my reason to fight. I need you to accept this, to do this for me.”
It took him a full, tense minute to answer. “One soul for five?”
“Six.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Six?”
“Yes. Since you’ll bring them back to life, I want Troy to come back too.”
“That’s even worse. One for six.”
“It’s what I have to offer.”
He watched me, thinking. “And your soul will be mine?”
“Yes. You can send me directly to the underworld or whatever you call that, I don’t care.”
His jaw tensed and he took a step back. “No.”
A punch in my stomach. The air leaving my lungs. That was how his response felt. “What? Why not?”
“You didn’t think this through. You will die. Don’t you realize that? Die, as in never be alive again. You don’t want that.”
Tears sprung to my eyes. “I do! That’s exactly what I want.”
He turned his back to me. “No, Nadine. I won’t do it.”
“But—”
“I won’t change my mind.”
I pressed my lips into a thin line and clenched my fists, holding back from jumping on his back and punching the hell out of him.
If he wouldn’t strike the Soul Oath with me, then I had no options left, nothing to reduce the pain, to feel like I could do something. Oh, God. Sorrow replaced the anger and a tear rolled down my cheek.
Defeated, I ran back to my bedroom, threw myself on my bed, and hugged Pinky.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t keep you safe.”
16
“You have to get up,” Keisha said. She placed the plate on my nightstand and sat on the metal chair beside my bed.
She came to check on me at least five times a day for the last four days. During her visits, she tried to convince me to eat and then get up.
“Think about what your family would want,” she said. “They wouldn’t want to see you like that.”
I just put the pillow over my head, hugged Pinky, and ignored her.
Who cared about what my family wanted? They were dead. They had no say in my life anymore. Ugh, a life I didn’t want anymore, a life I wanted to end, though I wasn’t brave enough.
Knowing this shelter had a gym with weapons, I hashed out plans of sneaking in there, grabbing a dagger, and piercing my heart. However, I wasn’t brave enough. I wouldn’t be able to hold the dagger still and stab myself. I needed someone to do it for me. Unfortunately, asking the others for help was out of the question. They would never agree to it.
So I stayed in my bed, praying to wither away in my sleep before any nightmares came to me because they hurt too much. They made me feel more guilty, more hopeless. They increased the dull ache in my chest until it was too difficult to breathe, and all I could think of was stop. Stop breathing.
Victor and Morgan also visited me at least once each day, but there was no sign of Ceris or Micah. Micah had no excuses, other than the fact that he wanted distance from me. Which was true, right? He had left me alone on that island, and he refused to strike the Soul Oath with me, proving to me he didn’t care about my feelings and didn’t want any association with me. This dismissal only added to the pain in my chest, making everything worse.
As for Ceris, I suspected she was still out, searching for the scepters because, if I knew she was here, I would go to her. I would ask her to bind the Soul Oath with me. However, whenever I thought about it, I knew it wouldn’t work. For one, Ceris didn’t like me and wouldn’t do me any favors, even if in the end it meant she would be rid of me. And two, she wasn’t the goddess of death and the dead. She couldn’t bring anyone back to life.