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The deity rose from her throne. The very way she stood was unnatural; an elegant unbending of the legs until she rose to her full petite height without so much as adjusting her shoulders. She floated down the staircase without moving; the only indication she was alive was the slightest rise and fall of her chest on thirty-second cycles. If not for my shifter vision, I’d have missed them.
She wore the shape of a person, but there was no mistaking her for anything less than an avatar of the moon.
“You ask about my son?” Her head cocked at an unnatural angle, like she was imitating the gesture. “Who could say with children? Never there when you require them, and forever underfoot when you despise them. Besides, life-giver, it is hardly polite to give attention to a lesser creature when you’re in the presence of the moon itself.”
I raised my brows to gesture to the white orb in the sky, not taking my eyes off her. “Last I checked, the moon was still in the sky.”
The Moon Goddess rolled her eyes—as with everything to her, it was unnerving to see. Rather than a sardonic gliding, her eyes jostled from one edge, upward, and then to the other side before they fixed on me. Her irises were nearly as leeched of color as the rest of it, black pinpoints embedded in a silver circle that now fixed on me. “I am theMoon Goddess, the one who controls the lunar world; the one whose power is limitless in this domain; the warden of all shifter souls and fates. Armies have risen to fight in my name and they will do so again. My soldiers are as numerous as the stars themselves. I am the daughter of the sky and the planet itself. I may not be a hunk of rock in the sky, but that is only because I am more. I am a goddess without equal, an eternal force that cannot be stopped by any magic. Those who try to lock me away shall always fail.”
Okay, clearly Her Pastiness didn’t get to make conversation very much. I wondered if I should have brought a crate so I could stand on a soapbox of my own.
“That’s a bit of a mouthful. How about I just call you the bitch who has been ruining my life for the past few centuries?”
“Yourlife.” She scoffed, as if the word itself was a joke. “If in this incarnation you’re meant to be so vulgar, Persephone, you’re succeeding. Since your feeble mind struggles to understand greatness, you may simply call me by the first name I was given.” She paused to let the overwhelming generosity—and suspense—bring me to my knees.
I kept standing.
Finally, she gave the name. “Phoebe.”
“Phoebe.” I just stared at her as I repeated the name. All of that, and she was namedPhoebe.
She inclined her head, the movement smoother than any other, as if the magnanimous, regal tilt was one she had practiced more than any other. “I will also accept ‘Your Luminescence.’”
“Oh, I can think of a lot of names that would be more appropriate,” I snarled.
The Moon Goddess—Phoebe—shook her head indisapproval. “Vulgar, Persephone. But then, you and your beasts always were. It’s only under my guardianship that I’ve offered up a civilizing influence.”
Memories flashed through my head—memories of another life. One where the wolves had roamed free and in abundance, had moved easily between packs, without the constant trappings of today’s civilizations. “You call what you’ve done civilizing?” I recalled every cruelty my old pack had bestowed upon me. “They’re more savage than ever, and in your name. Andmyname isn’t Persephone—it’sAvery.”
Her lips thinned. “Whatever you call yourself, I care not. Understand this, life-giver. The wolves are mine. Their packs, their powers, their very souls, all belong to me. You abandoned them when you ran off with the Death God. Who could blame me for picking up such… interesting toys?”
There was glee in her eyes, even more disturbing than the apathy. She was worse than the foulest Alphas I’d ever met. She didn’t just see herself as superior to them. She saw herself as a creature so far beyond comprehension that they were nothing more than toys to play with. “I’ll kill you for what you’ve done to them. Trapping their souls in the stars, rewriting their history.”
The Moon Goddess laughed. It was beautiful on the surface, but there was a disturbing chord that ran through the sound. “If you could kill me, you would have done so long ago. The best you managed was to trap me and damn yourself in the process. And when you grew weak and reincarnated, you fell perfectly into place.”
My brows furrowed. “What do you mean?”
She grinned, flashing teeth full of fangs. Not canine, like a wolf’s, but jagged like shark teeth. “Do you not remember this part?”
I ground my teeth in frustration. My memories had trickled back,but I still was unsure what had happened.
My obvious ignorance pleased Phoebe. “It’s amazing what a few decades of torture will do. See, while I was trapped on my throne, with limited abilities, you suffered every pleasure Tartarus had to offer. Then, one day, the realm reached out to me. You wanted to make a deal, after all this time. Guess the status quo wasn’t quite what you’d hoped. You wanted to set your soul free, back to the realm of the living. I agreed, in exchange for a boon of my own. I was less selfish; rather than starting from scratch, I carved off a sliver of my own soul twenty-one years ago.”
A chill went down my spine. “Phaidros.”
She shrugged. “Children are so hard for people like us. Yes, I got my son. And you got to escape the pits.” A flash of shark teeth. “A shame you hadn’t bargained to keep your soul in one piece as it reincarnated. I understand it’s quite painful to have it spread across three realms.”
My eyes widened in shock. That’s exactly what had happened. I’d been born again, weak, a fraction of a shifter. Somehow, she’d rigged the deal so part of my soul was left in the underworld. And the final piece had been in Tartarus, where I, by rights, would never have returned.
The memory was hazy, as if it was split in three itself, a hazy collage of images floating through my head. “It was you. You kept my soul from forming again.” Kept me from being able to reach Cole, forced me into the body of a weak newborn, and… a thought occurred to me, but no. I refused to consider it. Everything else was enough to stir my fury.
I reached for my magic to attack her, but there was no magic to be had. It wasn’t like Tartarus, where I’d been painfully stifled. No, I wascertain my magic had been there this entire time until I’d wanted to use it.
I growled in accusation.
Her beatific smile was confirmation. And I knew it wasn’t just my magic she had manipulated.
“You should know better than to try and attack a goddess in her own domain, life-giver. I should smite you for your insolence, but I find I’m a gracious host. Perhaps in a strange way, I am grateful, because your hubris then and now will lead me to my final victory.” She took a step back and spread her arms wide. “That gratitude is why I handpicked your mate after all.”
