Page 197 of Jinxes and Drumsticks

My throat tightens painfully, I swallow past it, blinking the tears from my eyes.

I feel the Stag God’s eyes on the side of my face, unnervingly steady even as I don’t meet his gaze. “This is a pain I understand,” he says.

Part of me thinks that can’t possibly be true. How could it be? He’s a god. He’s immortal. And so is his ancient love. But then again, he had said he’d consented to his imprisonment within The Aberrant.

“How did he manage to consume her?” I ask, trying to couch it in a tone that is equal parts timid and polite.

I look at him just as he shifts his gaze to Damien. “It was a horrific act of injustice that he could only carry out because I’d grown complacent and overly trusting,” he says. “Humanity is a confusing thing. The ability you all have to lie and deceive. The complicated workings of human emotion. How two conflicting feelings can exist in one heart at once.”

I huff a laugh. “Well, if we’re that way, you made us so, didn’t you?”

He looks at me again, golden eyes set like stones in his irises—pupilless—making him appear like a startled animal in some ways. His pale brows climb up his forehead, the tufts of his blond hair shifting in some soft breeze. “We are not the creators of humanity, child,” he says. “We come from the very same source you do—just far, far older. We claimed our power before you were thought of.”

“Hm,” I say. “So then... Who made us?”

“It was a very long time ago now. And it’s difficult to remember,” he says. “My attention has been otherwise focused. As yours is now. Split between this banal conversation of philosophy and the body lying before us.”

I twist my fingers in the fabric of my dress. I only just realize that I’m wearing a linen chemise now, and not the plum-colored dress The Aberrant made me wear. He’s right, though; I’m not really invested at all in the story of the Moon goddess, and how her assault made her consumption possible.

What I care about is that he ritually cleaned Damien. And that I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop regarding the bargain he’s mentioned.

The Stag God lets out a low breath and smiles softly. “I will bring him back,” he says.

I still, hearing the sound of my breath going into my lungs and sawing back out. My heart kicks into a gallop. “You can do that?”

He nods. “He’s not ready to go yet,” he says. “He lingers between the two veils. Awash in dreams of you. I can pull him back. But you must make a choice for him,” he says.

I don’t like the sinking feeling that comes with this revelation. “What choice?” I ask.

“I am weak, without my Lady Moon,” he says. “Part of the reason I followed her into the darkness of her torment was that, without her, I cannot carry out the cycle of death and rebirth. Without proximity to her, my death becomes final. And I rot in the earth like any other dead thing.

“But the season of her annual death nears. And with it, the dormancy of his powers. He’s already retreated to lick his wounds, of course, after I tore apart from him. But her death is also mine. And without a vessel, I vanish.”

A passable vessel approaches.

The familiarity of his voice clarifies in my recollection. And I realize that when I saw him in my mind’s eye, when he spoke to me about vessels, he was talking about Damien.

“You want to possess my boyfriend?” I ask.

I want the words to sound disgusted or horrified. But they don’t. They just sound confused. Or maybe weary.

“I need to possess him,” he says.

“And what if I say no?”

“Then I die. And you do, too. And his death is etched in stone,” he says, sounding weary himself.

“So, he’s just... what? A body you puppet around?”

“No,” he says. “I’ll pull him back, and settle into his subconscious, as I did with our common enemy. And we’ll work together to free my Lady Moon by this time next year.”

“And if we fail to do that?”

“Then I take his vessel as my own. And he dies his true death. He won’t be able to hold the power for much longer than that, anyway. You saw it with your own eyes, how incompatible it is with humanity. How it darkens and corrupts. It’s why that whoreson couldn’t leave his little labyrinth for long. Outside of the confines of his own delusion, he starts to corrode, like iron pulled out of stale water centuries too late.”

I look at Damien’s pale, peaceful face and go quiet. I go quiet for a very long time.

Is it really my right to decide this for him? If the power could corrupt him, one could assume that it won’t be all at once. It will be a slow process. And it might be painful or terrifying. And Damien would have to share his body, his mind, with another entity.