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She saw the resignation on my face and her features hardened. “You still think I’m going to turn into a batshit crazy goddess.”
“The thought had crossed my mind, yes,” I said.
“Well I’m not.”
“And yet you just said you were taking this world back and there was nothing I could do to stop you.” The energy coming from her conflicted with her words, but I still felt Adora’s presence. Not Kali’s.
“I was being dramatic, Pan,” she huffed. “It’s a fucking dramatic moment. Technically, yes, you can stop me. Those psychos used me. That won’t happen again.”
“And what of you taking the world back?”
“I saw what Kali is capable of—what I am now capable of. I held those bones in my hand. Felt the souls that haunt that damned temple. Now I remembercausing it, but the memory feels more like a nightmare. That isn’tme. I can’t undo any of it. I can’t right any of those wrongs, but I can help fix it.”
I raised my eyebrow in question, and she glanced at my weapon that I still held firmly in my hand.
“Fix it?” I asked.
“If you’d let me, yeah. I know Kali did nothing but destroy, but I want to help repair the damage she’s caused in Arcadia. I’ve always felt a pull to something greater, and something unknown. Like I’d never belonged on Earth to begin with. I just didn’t know what it meant until now. I didn’t know about you and this world. I didn’t know about my past, but I know who I am deep down inside, and it’s nother. That shit ends here.”
There was a lot she’d wanted to say, and she had the floor. She’d more than earned it.
“The rebirth was complete,” I commented lightly, wanting to see how she’d respond.
“Don’t I know it.” She shuddered.
“That means you’re a goddess again.”
“I’ve always been a goddess,” she said, shrugging playfully.
“That is not what I meant.”
“Yeah, but it’s still true in both senses. Kali doesn’t live within me, but she is a part of me. Do you understand?Thisgoddess”—she swept her hand over her body—“ has never existed before.” She sighed, throwing her dagger down. “Look, I know you’re capable of killing me. You’ve had to do it every lifetime I’ve lived. I also know I can’t stop you if you decide you can’t let me leave this temple.”
The weapon clattered to the floor, and she didn’t look at it again.
“What are you doing?”
“The only thing I can do. I’m not going to fight you. Never again. This is me, Pan. The real me. Unindoctrinated, uninfluenced, unfiltered, and true to myself. Take it or leave it. If you’re going to kill me, get on with it. You owe me that much. Save your people and put an end to this lifetime.”
“And if I let you live? If I go against what every lifetime of yours has told me?”
“I have no idea. Great as my powers are, reading the future isn’t one of them. We were bound to each other by a cruel fate, you and me. I know the truth of my creation now. You succumbed to millennia in solitude and begged the fates for a partner. A true equal. They warned you that they would test you. That if you failed, your world would pay a heavy price. You were so lonely, though . . .” Her voice trailed and those brown eyes, ancient as my own, I saw her sorrow. “You took the bargain, but you had no idea thatIwas the test.” She looked toward the ceiling, shaking her head. “They made me to be everything you desired. My base nature was and always has been this. Me. But the priestesses, my temple . . . they were my test as much as I was yours.And I failed.” She paused, then cleared her throat before speaking again with hesitation. “When my past came back to me and I remembered everything, I had a clarity that I’ve never had before. In every life, a part of me loved you, but never my whole self. I didn’t understand love, so I didn’t know what it was when I felt it. The priestesses taught me that vulnerability was a weakness, and I wasn’t allowed to have those. I couldn’t love you with all of me, not when I didn’t even love myself. It was like only a glimpse of my soul was present. I don’t know if that means anything to you, but it ... it was real to me. Even beyond Kali’s—my—madness, that was buried inside.”
Silence spanned between us. Droplets of water echoed in the quiet darkness of the cave. Her discomfort at my lack of response was palpable. Her eyes shifted, trying to gauge my thoughts. I felt her power tickle the edge of my mind, teasing the edge of my consciousness. She wanted to see my intentions. My truths. I’d kept the shields up around her. For too long she had used it to her advantage, but this time was different. I knew that now.
Her lips parted in a gasp as I removed the block and gave her access to see what she needed.
She saw herself from my point of view. She witnessed the times I loved her more than my world and the times I loved her, even when I hated her. The fights, the fucking, the pain, the sorrow, and the ultimate endings that occurred in every life before. But she saw what she was now. What I could see when I looked at her. That I had already known the truth of who she was. That I loved her more deeply than I had in a thousand lifetimes.
She ran to me, and I dropped my weapon to the side.
Washed clean from the blood of her past lives and sins, Adora wrapped herself around me. Our chests pressed together when she jumped, and I caught her. My hands went to her ass where the tiny shorts that had been driving me crazy for days now had ridden up. I palmed the curve of her, grabbing a handful of what I found there.
Adora groaned. Her arms wrapped around my neck, fingers fisting in my hair. She yanked my head back, looming above me. My lips parted. What she breathed out, I breathed in.
For many lifetimes, I’d been alone. Ones with Kali. Without Kali. They started to blend together when they all ended the same.
Not this time.
