Page 214 of The Gods Order

“There’s always a possibility in the face of impossibility!”

My shout echoes through the house, and my gaze drifts up to V’s nook. He’s the one who told me that. The first night we met and experienced our Calling.

He was so, so right. There’s always a way.

It may be the hard way, but there is a way.

“You could’ve found the possibility. You chose not to come back completely.”

His brow furrows.

“They told you that you couldn’t see me. I couldn’t lay my eyes on you.” I take a step closer to him. “They never told you that you couldn’t contact me. You could’ve written me.”

He stays silent as he stares at me.

“You could’ve sent a message through Derivius or Meridamus.”

His jaw tightens.

“You could’ve let me know you were alive.”

“It wasn’t that simple. Before now, I wasn’t permitted to see you, tell you the truth of who I was, or anything like that.”

“I didn’t need the whole truth!” I shout, throwing my hands in the air. “I didn’t need to know about the Valories, you being a Beginning God, my mother’s punishment, or any of it!”

The words rip out of me and my heavy breathing muffles my hearing. I inhale slowly, deeply.

“You could’ve let me know…” My voice breaks. “You were alive. That you still thought about me.”

A reckless tear slips free and I don’t bother wiping it away.

“I needed to know my father hadn’t forgotten me.”

“Forgetting you is truly impossible.” His words scrape through his throat. “Even attempting to use my own power on myself didn’t stop the longing I had for you. My child. My person. My purpose.”

A shattered breath slips from him. My lips part.

He put an emotional barrier up…

“Every move I made, I weighed against what it might cost you. One letter found by the wrong person. One message intercepted. One mistake. One decision, one chance could’ve taken you from us completely. The Valories don’t make threats, Thayla. They tell you your punishment the moment it begins. You, your mother, you two are the only beings they could use to punish me. I couldn’t risk it. No contact at all was safer.”

“Safer for who?”

He doesn’t answer, and I take another step until only a few feet separate us.

“It wasn’t safer for me,” I mumble. “I spent twenty years believing I wasn’t enough. Do you know how that shaped me before I got here?”

His shoulders sink, and tears cascade down his chin.

“I do. Now.”

I stare at the water flowing freely from his shattering eyes. There is so much regret, and other emotions that war across every fractured feature on his face. It’s hard to hold his gaze.

“What sucks about this is how much I truly do understand,” I tell him honestly, then cast my gaze behind him.

To Amick, Kyzen, Riven, and Creed’s door.

“If you had come back into my life just mere months ago, I wouldn’t have understood your choice. I had to fight like hell to heal myself. They stood by me while I did. Now I know a love that would drive me to make an impossible decision such as that. I also can see how we would’ve handled it differently.”