Page 98 of In Your Light

Fyn squeezed Hadeom’s hand, a silent reassurance.

Hadeom looked at Salem, Aurin, and their four children. “And then I saw his... babies. They were kittens, but I knew who they belonged to. Descendents of the Cat Sidhe, here in Tenebrae. And they were perfect. It struck me,” he said, getting teary-eyed. The lump in his throat made it difficult to speak. “It struck me that if I had found him all those years ago, his children wouldn’t exist. Those four little perfect lives would never have been born, and because that wasn’t bad enough, all I could think about was how true that was for every single life I’d taken.” He shook his head and a traitorous tear fell. He scrubbed it away. “All those lives unlived, voices unheard, dreams never dreamt. The sheer magnitude of loss, all the children who the world would never see because of me, lives that I had cut short.” He let out a shaky breath. “It broke something in me. My mind closed in around itself, and, well, you all saw how that ended.”

“No. It didn’t break something in you,” Fyn said kindly. “It changed something in you.”

“That too. But it broke something,” Hadeom insisted. “And that’s okay. I think it had to break me so I could...” He shrugged. “Get better. Repent, atone for the carnage I’ve caused. I needed to see the extent of it, I guess. Or be reminded. And I have to come to terms with what I’ve done, and I should be held accountable.”

“Even as a god?” Kellan asked.

“Especially as a god,” Hadeom said.

“You were bound by your duty,” Fyn tried. “The blame isn’t yours alone. What about the humans who had you do their bidding?”

Hadeom sighed, and when he looked at Fyn, he couldn’t help but smile. “Thank you, Fyn. But in the end, I am responsible.”

“You are not the god you used to be, all those centuries ago,” Fyn said. “Not anymore. I know you’re not. You care too much.”

“I’m not a god any longer,” Hadeom said. “Well, more explicitly, I’m not certain I hold that title anymore. I asked Cern to take it from me. I wanted no part of it. And he said it was done, so...”

“You gave up the title?” Sawyer said.

“Yes. I couldn’t bear the burden,” Hadeom replied. “And my work was done. The great and terrible Lusca was gone. I cannot be the slayer of monsters when the only monsters left are human.”

“Humans are not your department?” Hendrix asked.

“No, thankfully.” Then Hadeom looked once more at Salem and Aurin and to their four children. Then he locked eyes with Salem. “I will never bring harm to you or your family again. Your little ones are safe. My vow to you.”

Salem didn’t really acknowledge that, but he also didn’t contradict it either.

The hard part of the meeting was over, it seemed. Hadeom looked around the room. “Questions? I know you have some.”

“Lusca,” Sawyer said. “What did you do with her? Just out of curiosity.”

“Killed her, hopefully,” Dylan said.

“No,” Hadeom said. “I didn’t need to. I sent her back to where she came from.”

“To hell? She was from hell, right?” Tobin asked. “Because I saw inside her head, and it wasn’t any place I recognised.”

Hadeom probably should have just said, “Yes, hell, that’s the spot,” but he was here for honesty and the truth, so that was what he went with. “No. She was not from this planet.”

The entire room stared at him in silence.

Until Sawyer raised both arms and crowed, “I fucking knew it!”

One of the little ones gasped. “Dadda, he said fucking.”

A few laughed, and Fray leaned over and hit Sawyer up the back of the head.

Sawyer didn’t even care. “And the bars in the jail cell? It was some alien technology, wasn’t it?”

Ciaran sighed, long and loud. “Oh, here we go.”

Hadeom smiled. “Yes.”

Ciaran shot Hadeom a wild look while Sawyer vibrated in his seat.

He put his hand to his chest. “I have been vindicated! I knew it,” he said, looking directly at Hadeom. “I knew it!”