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The story so far...
Ourangelicagathos,Grace,met bad boy daimon, Riot, outside a club in Milton—a daimon town she’d moved to in a bid to escape her overbearing parents and community. At age 25, Grace had expected to feel a pull towards her four agathos soul bonds by now, but it never came. Instead, she felt pulled to Riot, even though a connection between agathos, worshippers of Anesidora and servants of humanity, and daimons, worshippers of La Nuit and designed to lead humans astray, shouldn’t be possible.
Grace’s parents found out about Riot, and had Grace taken from her job at a shelter and dragged to the basement temple in Auburn for a cleansing ritual to break the connection. Riot was given instructions by the psychic daimon, Bullet, on where to find Grace. With assistance from one of her fathers, Riot rescues her from the agathos attempting to do a cleansing ritual and praying to bond her to recently widowed agathos men. They drive to Bullet’s place, where Grace encounters her second soul bond for the first time.
While Riot is stuck working for the daimon, Viper, as part of a deal to keep Grace hidden, Grace gets to know Bullet. Bullet, as an Oneiroi, has known Grace her whole life. He has visited her dreams every night, and had thousands of “first meetings” with her that Grace doesn’t remember. He teaches her about the true origins of the gods La Nuit (Nyx) and Anesidora (Gaia), and their feud. Grace is given a prophecy and tasked with bringing ‘forth the Second Age of Heroes.’
An attempted meeting with Grace’s cousin, Mercy, goes awry, and Bullet is injured. They are rescued by the silent and mysterious Wild, who reluctantly allows them to stay at his nightclub complex, avoiding Grace even though he is her third soul bond.
Grace seals her bonds with Bullet and Riot, and hunts down Wild to find out why he’s avoiding her. It turns out, Wild has encountered the gods before. In a moment of arrogance where he claimed to be stronger than Death himself, the God of Death snatched him up and spirited him away to the underworld, kicking his ass in front of the deities who reside there. Thanatos stole Wild’s voice and has haunted him ever since. Worried that he’ll pass this curse to Grace, Wild runs.
Meanwhile, Bullet is in increasingly bad shape, and is warned by Nyx to make the most of the time he has left. Riot’s deal with Viper is dissolved after Viper discloses information about Grace to Mercy when he helped her escape town, breaking the terms of the original agreement. Riot, Bullet, and Grace drive to a sacred waterfall, hoping to have a productive conversation with Gaia. Gaia learns of the prophecy, and nearly buries them all in a landslide. Wild has followed them from a distance, and is led to them by a divine voice, freeing them all from the dirt and taking an unconscious Grace back to a motel and calling a daimon doctor to attend to her.
Bullet learns the full extent of Wild’s history with the gods in the dreamscape, telling the others when they wake up. Thanatos appears, bedecked in sequins, and takes them to the underworld to meet Hades and Persephone. They wish to see the Olympians restored to power, and offer their support. Grace is introduced to the soul of a daimon who recently passed into the underworld, who she later discovers is Dare’s mom. She was murdered in her home by agathos, and Dare struggles with the aftermath in the upperworld, enraged at Bullet for not telling him, at Riot for abandoning him, and at all agathos for the violence and suffering. He throws himself into the street wars between agathos and daimons back in Milton and eventually picks a fight he can’t win. He’s found by Mercy’s abandoned soul bond, Dice, who takes Dare back to his sister’s house where Dare recuperates, helping Rogue out with baby Quinn until Onyx can convince him to get his act together.
Persephone gives Grace a mysterious pouch as a parting gift, as well as removing the block on her memories of the dreamscape with Bullet. They all come rushing in at once—Grace remembers everything. The four of them make their way out of the underworld through a cave, finding themselves in a remote corner of Greece. They eventually stumble upon a community of agathos and daimons living together, alongside Kakodaimonistai—humans who drink a hallucinogenic and can know about the other kinds of mortals who inhabit their world. Vasileios, the daimon leader of this ragtag group, invites them to stay, and once they hear Grace’s story, they are all eager to help in the hopes of improving the lives of agathos and daimons. They make offerings and prayers to the Olympians to strengthen them through belief, hosting an orgy in Dionysus’ honor.
Wild and Grace seal their bond, while the tentative feelings between Wild and Bullet grow. At the same time, tension comes to a head between Bullet and Riot, when Riot grows frustrated with Bullet’s decision to keep Dare away. A plane crashes off the coast of Greece, which they later find out was carrying Dare, and the relationships grow more fraught, but there’s no time to reflect on it because Gaia has set a plague of giant scorpions on Athens. Gaia possesses a local Basilinna, speaking through her body on live television, telling the humans that they enraged Gaia with their disrespect. Exposing agathos and daimons to the wider world, promising it will be made wonderful again when the daimons and their influence are eliminated.
Their group of allies rallies around Grace, and they all head into Athens together by bus.The scorpions won’t attack the agathos, so Grace and the other agathos run off on their own, heading for the Temple of Zeus. Some enemy agathos have lined up in front of the temple, and Grace’s side livestream what they’re about to do. Grace steps forward alone, pulling out the pouch Persephone gave her and dropping the sharp seeds into the earth, little scratches on her hands mixing her own blood in with them. From the “seeds” grew a hundred Ancient Greek soldiers—the Spartoi—armed with spears and shields, who quickly dispatched the scorpions.
The temple’s magic drives the agathos away, and the mysterious voice of guidance tells Grace to offer her blood and her service, her devotion to a world of gods and mortals, to the ideal. The others follow, lighting the temple up gold as the marble knitted back together. Grace makes a peace offering to Gaia, but promises that she will see the prophecy through. The group, including the confused Spartoi, travel to a nearby villa used for agathos retreats. After some thought, Grace reveals herself to the world with a video explaining who she is and what she has been tasked with. Recovering in a nearby daimon’s home, Dare sees the video and rushes to Grace’s side. They meet for the first time, and that is where our story picks up.
Chapter 1
25yearsago
“It’s a girl,” the doctor pronounced cheerfully, holding up the bright red, squalling creature that was apparently, my daughter.
A daughter.
The bonds buzzed with excitement—Chance and Creed’s, more than anyone—and I tried to temper my irritation before they caught onto it. It was the kind of thing that would upset them, and then I’d never hear the end of it. The bundled-up infant was placed on my chest, and I gave the doctor a brittle smile, my arms moving mechanically to hold the girl in place.
Grace.That was what we’d agreed to call her if we had a girl.
A swell of bitterness arose at my unanswered prayers. I’dbeggedAnesidora for a son. A son who would always love me, who would always feel some sense of loyalty to me. Even if he found his soul bond one day, she was only one woman. There would still be room for me in his life.
All I’d asked Anesidora for was a boy. It wasn’tthatmuch to ask, and I rarely asked for anything else. Why couldn’t she have given me thisonething?
The girl in my arms would have many soul bonds, as agathos women did. What was the point in raising her, only to give her to her bonded when she reached maturity and never see her again? What was the point in investing in her future, when she’d only turn her back on us eventually? It was a waste.Shewas a waste.
A daughter was nouseto me. To my family.
“Give Grace to me.” Chance’s voice was quiet and cold, the expression on his face making it obvious that I hadn’t hidden my anger as well as I’d hoped to. I didn’t protest, lifting my arms slightly so he could take her from me, while Earnest and Valor leaned in close, stroking my hair and whispering reassurances in my ear. Creed gave me a long, unreadable look, but the disapproval radiating through the bond made his feelings perfectly clear.
There was no point trying to appease Chance or Creed. They were perpetually let down by me, even though I was Anesidora’s own gift to them. Perhaps their ungratefulness would lessen, now that I’d given them a child. Neither ofthemcared that it was a girl. They weren’t smart enough to realize how pointless raising a daughter was, and I doubted they’d figure it out until she encountered her first soul bond. I made a note to myself to make them grovel for my forgiveness for the disrespectful looks they were giving me now.
“What can we do for you, my love?” Valor murmured, eager to soothe my irritation. “What do you need?”
I looked around the spare bedroom of my home in dismay, hating the clutter and assortment of things the agathos midwives had scattered everywhere. The baby had barely been here five minutes and she was already disrupting the neat order of my home.
Despite the number of people in the room,no onewas paying me any attention. A few hours ago, I had been the center of everyone’s focus, but now the baby was out, all anyone was interested in washer.
“I want to be alone to pray,” I announced loudly, cutting a glare at Chance who was cradling the baby in his arms while Creed leaned over her, cooing like an idiot.
Embarrassing.
The birth team had made claims of patient confidentiality, but agathos traded in gossip. They’d probably leave here and tell the entire Auburn community how pathetic two of my bonded had been over the baby.
