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Maddox watched, his head cocked curiously. I stole a glance in his direction as if I might be able to read his wolf face. The man had a lock on his human face. His wolf expression wasn’t going to reveal anything.
Did he blame me for the world’s lost time? I doubted it. This wasn’t something I’d asked for. I hadn’t gone to Hel and begged her to pluck a leaf from the world tree. He would understand, especially now that I’d given it back.
Persephone turned, her form growing larger and larger as she twisted away from us. When she reached for the tree, she was as tall as the lowest branches. She raised her cupped hands to the thin, white twigs and gently tilted her head as she worked.
“Do…do you think it’s possible?” Hel asked.
I cut a quick glance at her. There was a childlike hopefulness on her human face. This was an odd family, but it was mine. I looked forward to seeing what the years would be like moving forward.
That was, until Hel’s expression turned grim. She slid a pale blue glare at me.
“I know what you did to your own fate,” she warned.
Eyes wide, I tried to shrug and act like I didn’t know what she was talking about.
“You took matters into your own hands and changed your fate so that you could stay in the world of the living. There will be consequences for what you’ve done.”
I stiffened, expecting her to smite me right there and then.
“They will not come from me. I do not control fate. My domain is at the end of all things, not along the way. I suspect that you will begin to see the effects of your tinkering soon. It will start off small. Perhaps you will return to find your cat is now black, and you might look back and remember that she was the color of midnight all along. Are you following?” Hel tilted her head like a parent scolding me about my report card.
I sighed. “What else did you want me to do? Die without experiencing anything?”
“Is that not what Paige said? Do you realize the thin ice that you are treading upon?”
Eyes closed, I tried to rein in my rage. I wanted to riot against the natural order of things—a natural order that I never agreed to. Hel was…right. If I wasn’t careful, I would become exactly what we’d been fighting against. So many others tried to take fate into their own hands, and it’d put the world in peril each time.
“Don’t worry,” I told her. “I’m done messing with things. I have what I want, and I gave my power back to the world tree.”
Hel snorted. “Like that small world means much in the veins of my own descendant. You might find that you are capable of more than you expect. That man of yours will be more taxing on your reserves, but only barely. Learn to balance his needs with your own. You will not be able to pour into him with abandon. You have what it takes to keep him sated, but only if you are mindful.”
Maddox turned away from the world tree. A wide smile spread over his face as the wind tousled his pale hair. He looked like a Norse god, himself.
Wait. When had he shifted back to human?
I glanced down to where he’d been at my thigh a moment ago. Hel laughed and informed me that this was a place of divinity. Nothing was as it seemed, and I should just accept the odd disparities here and there.
Maddox informed me that he’d shifted while Hel and I were talking. Hel was just messing with me. I narrowed my eyes at the goddess trying to tease me. I hadn’t known that she had a funny bone in that big body of hers.
“How do you feel?” Maddox’s lips tickled my ear as he whispered, his arm slung low around my back.
I knew that he wanted to make sure that I was all right after having an entire world pulled out of me, but I said, “Like I want to go home and get my world rocked.”
An almost indiscernible blush spread across Maddox’s cheeks. His eyes lit with a bright spark, and he tightened his grip on me.
“Please, go get a room,” Hel said.
Persephone cleared her throat. “They’re adorable. Two valiant souls against the world, willing to fight all odds just to be together. They were not fated mates before this, but their path has catalyzed a mate bond in the end.”
Hel’s upper lip curled. “I tire of you hopeless romantics. Get out of my pantheon, Greek whore.”
I gaped at what Hel said, but Persephone—now young and vibrant compared to the older woman I’d met so long ago—waggled her fingers at Hel before vanishing completely.
“What?” Hel snapped when she found me staring at her. “Can you blame me for being jealous? It’s not like I had a fertility god wander in and fall wildly in love with me. Who would love a face like this?”
Well, at least she was open about her jealousy. That was the first step.
I quickly diverted the subject. “Will you be okay? Fenrir took a lot out of you. Do you…do you think you’ll be able to return to your old power level?”
