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I shook my head. “No way. I’m just me. Nothing more.”
Don’t lie to yourself. You deserve better than that.
I remembered the way Fenrir had panicked when I grabbed the threads of fate. I’d taken my body back from a handful of vengeful shades. When Hel snatched me from my body, I’d waited in a sea of my own power while Maddox tracked me down.
I wasn’t like the others.
I was a Reaper, of course. But I was also more. I had Hel’s blood running through my veins. Divine blood was notoriously difficult to dilute, apparently. That meant I was holding onto far more arcana than any other Reaper outside my own bloodline.
That was how I’d broken Bastien’s rosary. A tiny little thing like that could barely hold the vastness I kept inside me.
“I could light this whole place up if I wanted to,” I said as I stared down at my own family rosary.
Maddox made a sound in his throat that sounded like a warning, but Paige urged me on. When Maddox turned to scold her, I held up a hand.
Instead of arguing that I would still have plenty of energy left, I decided that I would show them instead. This time, I didn’t pull my arcana out. I simply released the barriers holding it all back. I’d erected those barriers as a child, scared when the roadkill from the nearby highway crawled to my bedroom window. Those barriers had been reinforced when my dad and step-mom tried to start their own family for the third time.
Down here, in Hel’s domain, I didn’t need these barriers. There was nothing here that I could hurt. I exhaled and felt my arcana rush out in all directions. It stretched further than ever before.
Beside me, Maddox’s breath hitched in a stifled gasp. The sound faded into a low, almost silent moan of satisfaction. I poured arcana into him and still had plenty more.
Man, was this how Vi felt? She and I were near the same chain of divinity. I’d come from a god, and Vi had come from a fallen angel. It had to be similar, right?
I’d always wanted to be more like her. I never thought that this was how it would manifest. We were the children of two very different gods. It was strange to look at our two paths. Hers had kept Hell out of the mortal realm. Now I found myself in a different kind of underworld.
When I looked up from the rosary in my palms, the blue fire light floating like will-o-wisps in the air illuminated a thread. For a moment, I blinked in confusion. It made sense that there would be fate threads here, but I expected them to be gathered around the Norns that watered the roots of the world tree.
Hel had shown me the world tree once. I wished I could have glimpsed the threads there, but that was for another time. Right now, I had to follow this thread. Something deep within my chest commanded me to.
“Hold up!” Paige called out.
Maddox groaned, but the sound became a growl behind me. When I couldn’t hear his footsteps, I realized that he’d changed shape. The soft slap of his padded paws against the dusty ground caught up to my side. He loped alongside me as I chased this taut thread to its destiny.
Maddox
Realizingwhere Addie was leading us, I threw myself in front of her and snarled. She rocked back, eyes wide with alarm. When she threw her hands up, I worried that maybe I’d been a little too aggressive, but Paige’s eyes were on the road ahead, too.
I looked to my ex-wife. Our gazes locked. Her lips pursed. We both knew what was ahead. What we didn’t know was what had brought us here. It could have been a trap.
But Fenrir wasn’t trapped in that dark cavern anymore. He’d been unleashed upon the world. Whatever we were about to face, it wasn’t Fenrir. That didn’t settle my nerves, though.
The last time I’d been here, standing at the entrance of Fenrir’s prison, the spirits of the underworld had been trying to pull me away. Right now, I wanted to do the same for Addie. This could spell disaster.
She buried her hand in my fur and knelt to look me in the eye. A slight smile lit up the corners of her mouth. “Trust me?”
I looked at her other hand. It was open, palm up. Her fingers curled around something that I couldn’t see. The way she moved as she stood was like feeding a cord through her hand. That’s what she was following.
It was getting rather annoying not being able to see what she could. As a detective, I hated being unaware. I missed the days of simple crime scenes instead of musty underworld caves.
Would I ever be able to go back to work? Or was I looking forward to a fate like Fenrir’s, trapped in Hel’s stinky domain?
I’d been ready to give up until sleeping with Addie. Feeling her around me had broken something in me. I wanted nothing more than to fight for a future that seemed farfetched, even now. Maybe we would never get there, but we would both go down knowing that we’d fought for it with everything we had.
We approached the cavern entrance. Though the fires burned, their blue light washing everything in a strange blue cast, the cavern remained dark, like no light could penetrate it.
Addie swallowed, audibly. I leaned against her thigh and tossed my head to tell her that I was ready.
“Are you sure?” Paige asked, her voice wavering. “This is where you think Hel is hiding?”
