I lean back against the couch, unsure of how to answer that. “Complicated.”
“That’s vague.”
“But accurate.”
“C’mon,” he smirks. “Give me something.”
I sigh, staring at the ceiling, letting the memories flicker across the back of my mind. “Zane is…well, Zane. Imagine the world’s most overconfident man, but with lightning powers and zero impulse control. He’s the type who thinks he invented charisma and can’t understand why the universe doesn’t revolve around him anymore. Last I heard, he was holed up in some small town as self-elected mayor.”
Levi snorts into his glass.
“Porter’s less of a jackass, but only because he’s too busy fawning over the ocean to bother with people. He’s carved out some existence along a rugged coastline where he can tend to the marine life in peace and pretend he doesn’t care about humanity while secretly saving drowning surfers…or something like that.”
Levi’s laughter bursts out, bright and unrestrained. “Wait, you’re telling me the gods are just…out there? Like, doing regular jobs? Blending in?”
I nod. “We scattered after the Act. Everyone adopted their littlemortal personas, tucked themselves into the corners of the world like they belonged there.
“The rest of them are varying degrees of insufferable,” I add, smirking slightly. “Our paths cross every couple of decades or so, but they’ve all moved on, adapted in their own ways. I guess that’s what eternity teaches you. How to pretend you’re something you’re not.”
“And when was this…Act?” he asks over the rim of his glass.
“Oh, I lost count centuries ago,” I admit. “Before that, we were what you’ve read in myths. Immortal. Fixed. Afterward…” I gesture vaguely around us. “We became…something different. Bound to time, whether we like it or not.”
Levi hangs on my every word but I don’t tell him everything. Not about the Fates, or the way they watch, whispering from the corners of every decision I make. The less he knows, the better. As long as I stay the course…keep chasing the Act, the loophole, the thread that might lead us all home…then what’s the worst that could happen?
Levi doesn’t need to know more than he already does. And the Fates don’t need another reason to meddle. If they’ve been following my thread this long, then they’ve seen him coming.
And I…
I can keep this separate. I can.
Maybe, just this once, I can allow myself the distraction of something mortal. That’s what I tell myself, anyway. He’s quiet, pondering the weight of it all. “So, your job…is literally a natural fit, then?”
The statement settles between us.
“Yes,” I say, surprising myself with my honesty. “It is.” I shift slightly, my words finding their shape as I go. “I think…even when I stopped beinghim, it never felt right to walk away from that part of it. Not because I miss the power of the title…”
“Your lack of throne probably doesn’t help,” Levi interjects with a wink.
“Exactly.” I can’t help but laugh. “But honestly, death never changes. Helping people through it feels…right.”
Levi doesn’t attempt to fill the silence that naturally falls between us. He just listens.
“It’s not even really about death,” I add after a beat, my voice quieter now. “It’s about what’s left behind.”
He nods, the smallest of smiles tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Yeah,” he murmurs, tucking his knees up to his chest. “That makes sense. Can I ask whyhere, though? Of all the places you could’ve settled down…why Stonevale?”
I don’t have a tidy, detached answer to offer.
“I think…” I start, my fingers curling around the glass in my hand. “For a long time, I kept moving. City to city like I could outrun what followed me. The grief. The loneliness. The shadows.” My throat works overtime at the admission. “You can’t outrun shadows you cast yourself, because they were never tied to a place. They were tied to me.”
Levi doesn’t interrupt. He just waits, giving me the space to divulge my history on my own terms.
“Eventually, I realized a new city wouldn’t change anything. The weight wasn’t in the streets I left behind. It was in me.”
Levi’s hand finds mine, his thumb brushing over my knuckles like he’s grounding me to the present. “So, the glittering jewel of central Jersey?” he murmurs, the ghost of a smile on his lips.
I huff out a quiet laugh. “It wasn’t the worst place I’d been.”
