Page 232 of The Gods Order

Her eyes alight with wonder and she holds her hand out for me to take as she stands.

“Let me show you.”

The newfound excitement thrumming from her has my heart pounding in my chest. It throws me back in time to when we’d roam around a forest and I’d ask a question about a random plant or flower.

She loved explaining things to me. So did my dad. They both had a wealth of what I thought at the time was pointless knowledge. I know better now. They’re so much older than I ever would’ve imagined.

We step up on her dais together and she lets my hand go as she takes a few paces from me.

“When our souls enter the realm, they fall straight from the Valories’ Stargate.”

She waves her arm through the air, and I stagger back, wide-eyed and purely astonished. The stars race across the glass as if she’s controlling the night sky. They spin and spin until she finds the ones she’s looking for. She pinches her hand shut, and they suddenly stop moving.

Holy shit.

My eyes damn near bug out of my head when she spreads her fingers wide, and the stars zoom in closer to us.

“It’s a truly remarkable process. One of the only processes in the realm the Valories have no true control over.”

“What process is that exactly?” I ask slowly, stepping closer to her once again.

“Each star you see up there is the mark a soul left behind on its fall to our realm. On their way down, they find their perfect match—or well, matches. The souls pick each other as they fall from the sky.”

She smiles from ear to ear like this subject means something special to her.

For a breath, I watch her instead of the stars.

“The Starwoven is as old as the Beginning Gods’ first creation of gods beneath them. Souls bound to one another for eternity. They knew who they’d spend the rest of their lives with before there was even flesh for them to live in,” she says with pure affection in her tone. “For most of our history, a Starwoven consisted of only two souls. They were destined for one another long before either of them ever drew their first breath. Entire traditions and sayings were built around these pairings. A god is only granted his worthiness by the goddess who stands before him.”

My eyes snap to her knowing ones, and she gives me a small wink.

Phoelius told Creed that saying in Hell.

He said he looked forward to seeing what he was worth.

Before I can say anything, she continues.

“People often mistake that quote as a declaration of power, but it never was. It meant that a god wasn’t considered complete until the soul woven to his own stood beside him.”

Her expression grows more thoughtful, but I don’t dare interrupt her train of thought.

“Then the portal to Elementra closed. The Beginning Gods began obsessing over her power system and the brief information they believed they understood about a Nexus. They thought if they could recreate even a fraction of that balance, our realm would flourish. So they began shaping their own power structure.”

“Derivius explained this before he split my soul,” I mumble. “The gods were manipulating groups before they were even called Valtrues.”

She hums and nods.

“That’s right. Those groupings became common among the gods, but they never possessed the strength everyone expected. They were individuals who were forced to stand together, not souls that had been woven together from the beginning.”

She pauses, shaking her head.

“I can’t explain how, and neither can the Valories, or they’ve chosen not to tell me, but the realm itself shifted. Somehow the souls recognized it before anyone else did. For the first time in history, Starwovens began forming in groups of five.”

She glances toward the group of stars she has zoomed close to us before continuing.

“It didn’t replace the pairings of old. Those still exist, just as they always have. They’re just as strong. There’s not a thing wrong or missing when two souls are bonded, but the new structure of five emerged alongside them. I’ve spent centuries watching those bonds form, and one truth has become impossible to ignore. If it’s more than two, then the only grouping that makes sense is five. There’s balance in five. Three lacks the stability to endure. Four and six can’t come to an agreement. Seven carries too many competing wills. But five…finds harmony.”

She laughs lightly, her eyes glossing with a teasing touch.