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“Someone is coming,” he told me.
I nodded, sliding to one side of the door as he moved to the other. The door opened, and a cloaked figure stepped through. Faris grabbed him, putting him into a headlock as I shut the door. Then I turned back around. The hood had fallen from the intruder’s face, revealing something impossible.
“Zarion?” I gasped.
The god slithered out of Faris’s hold, rising, slowly and silkily, to his full height. He brushed his long, slender fingers down his shimmering robes, smoothing out wrinkles that weren’t even there.
I looked at Faris. “So, I guess he’s not dead.”
Faris’s eyes went wide, then narrowed sharply. “Explain yourself,” he demanded of his brother.
“I don’t answer to you,” Zarion shot back, then folded his arms serenely in front of his chest.
“Look there.” I nudged Faris, then pointed out the bracelets on Zarion’s wrists. “Those are the same teleporting bracelets that Ava has.”
“You are working with a demon?” Faris hissed.
“You did far more than work with a demon,” Zarion countered with a slow, sardonic twist of his lips. When his gaze fell on me, his eyes lit up with a hungry, disgusted kind of calculation, like I was a weapon that Faris had dropped into his lap. “There are thousands of immortal artifacts, but only one of her.”
Ignoring his creepy stare, I turned to Faris. “He’s working with Regin. Just like Ava.”
During the interrogation, Parisa had confessed that Ava had hitched her chariot to Regin’s psycho crusade, but she hadn’t mentioned Zarion at all. Of course, I hadn’t thought to ask about him. I’d assumed he was dead.
“That’s why Bella’s and Stash’s curses are so similar, isn’t it?” I said to Zarion. “You two traded notes and coordinated your attacks.”
His chilling smile was all the answer I needed to confirm my theory.
“How did you fake your death?” Faris demanded. “I saw that girl kill you. When her venomous magic hit you, it vaporized you.”
“The bracelets,” I realized. “He must have used them to teleport away. And the rest of what happened in the gods’ hall—” I waved my hands around. “—it was all just a show.”
“Not just a show,” said Zarion. “It was a demonstration. We penetrated your defenses, Faris. We cut through anything—anyone—you threw at us.”
“That only happened because you betrayed us,” Faris bit out. “And allied with the enemy.”
“Regin is our own brother.”
“He lost the right to call himself that when greed and vanity consumed him,” Faris said, “and he turned against us.”
“Faris—”
“And so did you.”
“I do not require your admiration.” Zarion’s voice snapped like a whip. “Only your surrender.”
Faris laughed.
“I am quite serious,” Zarion told him. “You witnessed our power firsthand. If it comes to war, you must know you have no chance of victory. Surrender now, and we will allow you to hold on to some of your territory.”
“No,” Faris said, his voice iced over.
“We have thousands of immortal artifacts.”
“And only a dozen dimwitted deities to wield them,” said Faris. “Against the full armies of heaven and hell.”
Zarion’s laugh was haunting. “We have millions of humans subjects.”
“We have more.”
