Page 345 of The Gods Order

Before we can reach the others, a pissy Veilatara stomps in my way.

“I can’t believe you aren’t letting me come. This is very sentimental to me,” Seismet huffs.

“Oh my goodness, for the millionth time, I told you that you, Verlet, and Fausta could fly over if you want.”

“Yes, but I want you to fly on my back with your wings spread out. Imagine the entrance that would be.”

“Seismet, we don’t need a grand entrance. Everything about the day is grand enough.”

He stomps his hoof.

“Fine, whatever. Have it your boring way.”

“Fly safe,” I call after he prances away and flaps his wings.

Goodness, that Veilatara is so damn sassy.

Our entire group waits for us and at my nod, we starshoot to the room the Gods Veil is in.

The last year and a half wasn’t just planning this moment. It was full of learning.

How to open a starshoot but not step through it ourselves.

How to use each tool available to us.

How to accept the fact that some of the ideas the Beginning Gods had were good ideas.

They actually could’ve worked. I had to have multiple coming-to-acceptance conversations with myself in order to understand that the whole system wasn’t horrible. Those before us just didn’t execute things properly.

That was much harder than it seems to accept. I was ready to throw everything they had implemented away and start over.

That wasn’t realistic.

It’s always been said that the Volreen measures your worth and potential power from the blood you offer it leading up to the Veiling Day. That wasn’t completely true. It was the gateway for the Beginning Gods to measure you and decide if you possessed potential they could use. From there, they’d decide and manipulate how much power would be released.

So, we put it back in the Gods Binding.

We didn’t need that anymore.

The Gods Veil, on the other hand, we did decide we needed.

The Gods Binding could just release the power at our request, but that left us blind. We’d have no way of knowing what someone was going to step out with and therefore, we didn’t know how to help them.

We’ve come up with a solution for that.

Amick, Kyzen, and Riven get in position on both sides of the Veil along with over half of our group. Yemi, Mara, and Rose surround me as I take a deep breath. V and Lestari soar from Yemi to me and snuggle into my neck.

“You got this, little burden.”

“No mischievousness, my little psycho.”

He winks at me. I don’t know if that’s comforting or not.

“Ready, ladies?” I ask.

“Oh, so me, Lambrit, Meridamus, Sevryn, Gladian, and Barir are just afterthoughts, huh?” Creed asks, sarcastic as fuck.

“We’re the pretty faces everyone’s going to be staring at. You all are just the muscles.” I laugh teasingly, sending him a wink.