“Teharon's brother,” I whispered. “He could take souls?”
“He could consume them,” she corrected with a shiver. “Then there's Yama.”
I glanced at my husbands, and they grimaced.
“Ah, I see you've thought of him already,” Athena said. “Did you think of the Morrigan?”
I froze. There was a time when I'd thought the Morrigan was dead but it had all been an illusion; a trick. Morrigan stole my daughter while I believed I was killing her. I killed her again—for real—but I wouldn't be surprised to hear that it didn't stick. She was one of those villains who just kept coming back.
“Relax, Vervain,” Athena said gently. “I don't believe the Morrigan has risen from her grave to kill demons. If she had come back from the dead, I think she'd take a far more direct approach to hurt you.”
“Good point.” I sighed in relief. “She was a piece of work.”
“Morrigan brings me to Arawn,” Athena continued. “As a leader of the Wild Hunt, he was able to claim souls.”
We all looked at Odin, who was also a leader of a different Wild Hunt. I hadn't thought he was capable of claiming souls, even though he was a death god. But if Arawn could do it...
“I can't take souls,” Odin answered our unspoken question. “If I could, I would have taken Sabine's to the Well myself.”
“Why could Arawn do it and not you?” I asked.
“His Hunt escorted souls to the Otherworld,” Odin explained. “Mine did not.”
“Yours only rode the fiercest winter's nights to cause havoc and instill fear,” Athena said with a tinge of derision.
“Most times, it was simply a warning of war to come,” Odin glared at Athena. “But occasionally, it was a true hunt, and our prey was always deserving.”
“As a goddess of Justice, I can understand that,” Athena said. “But I find it overly dramatic.”
“Drama is everything to gods,” Odin huffed. “Don't pretend to be unaware of that. You've done your fair share of entertaining the masses. We've all put on shows to receive the sacrifices we wanted.”
“Fair enough.” Athena dipped her head in concession.
“Was that all you found?” Azrael asked her.
Athena gave me a hesitant look, and I stared back warily.
“There is one more—also dead—but there was an item involved that could have been passed to his wife,” Athena said. “Ptah.”
“Fuck,” I whispered as chills ran through my body. “The scepter.”
Yes; it was bad enough to make me forget about creative cursing. Ptah had nearly killed me using his magical scepter. The Staff of Ptah represented life, power, and stability, and it had the power to separate souls from their bodies, or—as was the case with me—separate souls within a body. I had been pregnant with Rian and Brevyn when I faced off with Ptah, but my twins had been one child at the time. Ptah had blasted me with his life stick of doom and my son had taken the hit for me; allowing the magic to separate his dual souls. Because of his magic and the fact that he hadn't been born yet, he was able to split his body in two as well and give each soul a form to inhabit. In short; my son had saved us by becoming my sons.
“Sekhmet,” Kirill growled.
All of my husbands hated Ptah, and, by a slightly lesser degree, his wife Sekhmet, but Kirill especially had a grudge against the Egyptian Lion Goddess. Sekhmet and Ptah had been expecting a child around the same time that I was pregnant with Lesya. I won't go into all of the details, but Sekhmet was denied medical care by the Goddess Hygeia because Ptah got into an argument with me in her clinic and Hygeia learned about him attacking me when I was pregnant the first time. Hygeia refused to help someone who had tried to harm a pregnant woman and told the couple to never return. I appreciated her convictions, but then Sekhmet lost her baby. She went a little insane when her child died, and she ended up stealing Lesya (or crow-baby Lesya, rather, but I won't get into that) to replace it. That was what led to me killing Ptah. So, in a way, I'd been responsible for the loss of her child and her husband. It was a hell of a motive... to act against me, not Luke.
“No,” I said firmly as I lifted my hand toward Kirill. “It's not Sekhmet. I refuse to accuse her again.”
“Vervain, you've given zat voman too many chances,” Kirill snarled. “Ve should have killed her!”
“She's Re's daughter, Kirill,” I said simply. “If Lesya had done those things, wouldn't you want mercy for her?”
“Lesya would never do such zings!” Kirill slashed his hand down angrily.
“Honey, we never know what our children will become,” I said gently. “All we can do is raise them to the best of our abilities and hope they make us proud.”
“We do know.” Kirill set his cerulean stare on me pointedly. “You know how she vill be. Vould she ever take someone's baby?”
“No,” I admitted. “But I'm trying to show you that my kindness toward Sekhmet is not all about her; it's about Re and me.”
“Vhy you?”
“Because I love Re,” I whispered. “And I know what losing Sekhmet would do to him. I can imagine it because I've already gone through losing Lesya, and that was before I'd even held my daughter. I can't imagine what it would be like to lose her after knowing and loving her for centuries.”
“We lost her because of Sekhmet!” Kirill raged.
I just stared at him patiently.
Kirill inhaled deeply and let his breath out slowly. This was an old wound that had never healed for him; it had scabbed over but continued to fester beneath. Kirill had wanted desperately to be
