Page 53 of The Ruin of Gods


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I squat, bringing both of the mutts into me.

“Eww.” Finley grimaces in disdain. “You’re getting blood all over my floor and the dogs, Maddox.”

My arm is still freely bleeding, and sure enough, the white patches on the dogs are smeared with red. While I prefer hot showers to clean up, I pull on my magic instead, knitting wounds closed, cleaning up my blood from me, the dogs, and the floor, and changing clothes.

“When did they arrive?” I ask as I resume stroking them.

Carrick looks to Finley for clarification. “Fifteen, twenty minutes ago?”

“About that,” she replies, pacing back and forth with a fretful expression.

“Nothing amiss at her house?”

Carrick shakes his head. “I went to see the Council after. They didn’t appear.”

Dread fills me. “What?”

“They weren’t there.”

“But… they’re always there.” I rise from my squat position and stare blankly out the window. The gods always appear at the gazebo when a demigod approaches. Scrubbing at the back of my neck, I turn to Carrick. “I’m going to see Amell. Maybe he knows something.”

“We’re going with you,” Finley says, and I don’t bother arguing with her. It’s faster if we just go.

We appear on the Bridge of Judgment but thankfully don’t have to search long for Amell. We’re led by a Dark Fae straight to his room where he’s in a meeting with the leaders of the Underworld cities.

He stands from his chair, his posture bracing for potential bad news, likely based on the expression on my face.

“Zora’s missing,” I say.

Amell curses and sweeps a hand to the table where the other fae sit. “Ariman’s gone. We were just discussing it.”

Finley makes a sound low in her throat—clear distress. As Zora’s sister, she knows all too well the pain Zora went through at Ariman’s hands. The priest tortured her for years, and while he did it at Kymaris’s behest, Zora told me once that he enjoyed inflicting the pain.

The thought of what he might do to her—

But no. Zora is a god, and Ariman is the weaker of the two.

Still… nothing here sits right.

“I know you’ve been watching Ariman for some time,” Carrick says to Amell. “Any idea where he’s gone?”

“Unfortunately, no,” Amell grits out. “I should have killed him, but Zora wouldn’t let me. She didn’t want to cause further unrest as he has his own supporters.”

And she didn’t want it to seem like petty payback for what he did, I think to myself. This was also something she told me as we discussed life while lying in bed together.

Yearning hits me hard but I push it away. That’s never happening again.

Carrick fills Amell in on everything, including the baffling absence of the other gods. My mind races, trying to figure out the next logical step.

And it comes to me like a fucking angelic revelation.

The key she gave me.

I conjure it to appear in my hand. Wrapping my fingers tightly around it, I envision Zora.Take me to her.

Nothing happens.

Realization sinks in that when Zora cut things off with me, she really cut things off. She must have removed whatever charm she had on the key for me to find her. It’s a message that validates we’re truly over.

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