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My eyes teared. “Where’s Naomi? Edmund? Dora?”
“Not dead.” She cocked her head, then looked at Alexander. “Stop complaining.” She glanced at his pants. “Let’s get her out of here before they realize.”
“What. No—” Something blunt hit the back of my head. Stars filled my vision as everything faded to black.
Chapter Twenty
Ipeeled my eyelids back and saw a star-stricken ceiling, painted to look like the night sky. For a second, I remained still, mesmerized. Silk hugged my curves, and I snuggled deeper into the bed, forgetting where I was until a searing pain in my head shot me upright. Leaning forward, I pressed my hands against the sides of my head and screamed.
“I said heal her,” a voice snapped. “If not just to shut her up.”
I whipped my head to my left, and through blurred vision, I could make out Freya’s tall figure wrapped in a tight blue dress. Her dark hair was a mass against her back. She stared out of a window that ran the length of the side of the room.
Alexander rushed to my side. Focusing on his long, dirty-blond curls, I let his fingers graze my temples. Heat tingled below his fingertips. As quick as the pain had come, it dissolved. Rolling my head back, stretching my neck, I inhaled deeply.
“Who the fuck do you think you are?” I scowled once I reoriented myself.
“A goddess.” She ran her fingers through her silky black strands. “While you are merely a mortal.”
Alexander joined her side, placing his hand around her waist and brushing a kiss against her shoulder.
I cleared my throat. “So is your… boyfriend.” I guessed.
He smiled. “Not for long.”
Freya gave him a look, and he fell silent. “Just stay quiet until I figure this out.”
Puzzle pieces connected in my mind. “You’re planning on turning him immortal, which can only mean…” I shook my head at the thought. “You’re going to kill another of them to turn him into a god.”
“Alexander deserves it.” She ran her hand down his cheek, and his besotted gaze latched onto hers as if no one else in the universe existed but her. I wished someone would look at me like that. “He’s been loyal to me for the last decade.”
He only looked to be in his mid-thirties. She must have met him young—probably manipulated him into feeling bad for her. Why else would someone stick around someone so awful?
“You know, for someone who’s gone through such terrible things, you really don’t mind inflicting the same pain onto others.” I expected her to lunge at me, but she remained quite still.
“I’m doing what I have to, to survive. Raiden, Thalia, and Aziel will never forgive me for what I did. They will forever hunt me, and a life spent hiding is not a life lived at all.”
“People have died for you to live,” I said with a scowl. “Not just Leda. I mean all the witches and warlocks you’ve eaten.”
She turned to look at me. Her left eye twitched slightly. “They were not who you think they were. They had dark thoughts. Dark intentions.”
My eyebrows pinched downward. “What do you mean?”
“I can feel a person’s heart,” she explained, sauntering toward the bed where I lay. “All I need to do is place my hand upon them, like this.” She touched my hand. Her touch was too soft, too gentle for someone with her disposition. “I can sense the essence of a person. It’s a power I did not expect when I became immortal, but one which has allowed me to dispose of only the worst people.”
I thought about Bryan. The quiet, sweet boy I’d hung out with when I first came to Istinia. “No. Bryan, one of your victims, was my friend. A long time ago,” I said, although ten years was nothing to a goddess. “He was a good person.”
One of her dark eyebrows arched. “Ah, yes, the boy close to your coven. He was not an innocent.” She gazed up as if lost in the memory of how he’d tasted.
I shuddered at the thought.
“He wanted to inflict pain. He hurt animals. That’s how I found him. He was torturing a deer in the woods, so I tortured him.”
“Well.” I huffed, my cheeks heating. “You can’t just decide who gets to live and die. You’re not…”
“A goddess?”
I gripped the silk sheets tight. “I mean, you are, but you can’t just kill people.”
