I drop my head into my hands as my body shakes, just shakes. I don’t know for certain if it’s with sobs or adrenaline or something else entirely.
“You can trust us,” he whispers after a moment of pregnant silence. I lift my head marginally and stare at him through my fringe of lashes. He’s scooted slightly closer, his thick lips curled into a frown beneath his dark beard. “You can always trust us.”
“But can I?” I whisper. Because I have a rather long record of being betrayed. Maybe it’s made me cynical over the years…or maybe it’s made me wise.
Helio doesn’t answer, his gaze reminiscent of gravity itself, holding me in place and refusing to release me.
And I know the answer before I say it out loud.
Yes. Yes, I can trust them.
They’re probably the only people in both of these worlds that I can trust. They loved me as Emily, Goddess of Pain, and they love me even now as Emily Lopez, college student extraordinaire struggling to remember her past. I don’t think there’s anything I can do to turn them away. People like us? We’re inevitable and infinite. A love like ours can’t die, even with all of our memories wiped. Even in an entirely separate universe. We’ll always be the moon and the stars—the two things that appear almost every night. Monsters like us thrive in the darkness, but our combined lights are able to illuminate something beautiful, something ethereal, something distinctly ours.
“Guys, I think I found something!” Desmond calls from farther down the hall. He reappears a moment later, a naked Sin directly behind him. The God of Flame’s cock presses against Desmond’s fully clothed ass, and I almost laugh at the expression on Desmond’s face. “Man, we talked about this. Personal space. Personal. Space.” Without thought, he swats at Sin’s cock, but it merely bounces back into place, brushing against Desmond’s hand.
“It’s rude not to say hello to it,” Sin deadpans.
“You found something?” I interrupt, diverting their attention back to me as I clumsily stand. Desmond sighs in noticeable relief, easily sidestepping Sin’s dick, but my God of Flames almost appears annoyed, as if he’s pissed his cock isn’t getting any attention and love. I’ll have to rectify that situation, and soon.
Desmond holds up a vibrant, neon slip of paper.
A flyer,I realize dumbly. Ripping it from his hands, I pore over the words on the sheet.
“There’s a rager happening on the corner of Main and 8th street. At the club there,” I summarize.
“And you think Rebecca’s going to be there?” Desmond quirks a dark brow. “Shy, soft-spoken Rebecca? Who constantly carries exactly three pencils and a pink planner?”
A pang of jealousy hits my chest with the force of a wrecking ball at the realization that he knows so much about my ex-best friend. Especially considering the fact that she kissed him. I know he claims that he didn’t return her kiss and that he has no feelings for her, but even his reassurances can’t quell the blinding jealousy percolating inside of me.
“She circled the location twice,” I snap before I can stop myself. “And I bet if we take a look at her calendar, it’ll say—”
“Crystals?” Tate supplies, entering from one of the bedrooms. He holds an opened calendar in his hands. “At nine PM sharp?”
“So we’re going to a club?” Sin claps excitedly, jumping up and down. My eyes fix automatically onto his bouncing cock. “I always wanted to set a club on fire.”
“You know what?” Desmond casts my eccentric lover a long, indecipherable look before shaking his head in disgust. “Someone else deal with him. I can’t.”
He makes a beeline towards me, yelps suddenly, and spins towards Sin with his hands covering his ass. His rather nude ass, seeing as a certain someone burned away his pants and boxers.
“Whoops,” Sin deadpans.
“Come on,” I break in before a fight can commence. Because a fight between gods? You can bet your ass that whole continents will be casualties. “I don’t think there’s anything else here.”
“What’s your plan?” Avery queries, emerging suspiciously from what appears to be the main bedroom. When my eyes narrow, he quickly shuts the door, prohibiting me from seeing whatever he did.
I really, really don’t want to know.
“My plan?” I catch my reflection in the hallway mirror, and I can’t help but note that my smile resembles the sharp edge of a scythe glinting in the moonlight. Something primal and dark and dangerous, something that embodies death and sin. “We’re going to confront the traitorous bitch.”
“And then?” Avery presses.
“And then we’ll do what needs to be done.”
Even if that “thing” means killing one of my best and oldest friends.
HOURS LATER, after attempting to scarf down dinner, I enter my bedroom, fully prepared to take a short nap before we leave in a few hours for the club, to see Avery and Desmond in the midst of a heated conversation.
Desmond’s cocky smile is firmly in place, but I see it for what it really is—a shield. There’s too much darkness and hatred in his eyes for it to be anything else.
Avery, on the other hand, isn’t bothering to wear his boy-next-door persona today. Remember when I said that monsters come out at night? That’s not true for my God of Death. He strides out in broad daylight, a perfectly content smile on his devilishly wicked lips. But the world doesn’t know that those lips are capable of tasting death, that little facet is reserved only for me. Maybe that’s what makes him so terrifying. Unlike the other monsters and beasts in the world,
