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Ezra gave me a toothy grin. I had a feeling this was about to get a whole lot worse. Then, with her tongue gilded in splendor, she exclaimed grandly, “Behold, the reincarnation of the Goddess of Life, Lady Light.”
I braced myself, waiting for them all to burst into laughter. I knew how I looked with my clearly mundane appearance—no sunshine-y radiance or shadowy aura here. There was nothing grand about me, nothing that boasted of any type of greatness. Nothing that made me—
People startedto kneel.
One after another.
My face turned ten shades of awkward—Creator above, I was a shit goddess.
“Please don’t do that,” I said to one younger male that stood just off to my left as he bended his knee.
“Lady Light,” a woman cried softly, as she also lowered to the ground.
“Uhh, you don’t have to,” I said to her, my hands held up, gesturing for her to stop, but my plea fell on deaf ears as she lowered to the ground and dipped her head in respect.
Ryker chuckled beside me, the deep, rumbly sound snagging my attention. He winked at me, and then to my complete mortification, he started to bend the knee.
“Oh gods, not you too,” I groaned, my hand shading my eyes, as if shielding my view would make this whole awkward experience more palatable . . .
It didn’t.
“I don’t want to be the only one left out,” he whisper-spoke to me in his swaggering drawl.
The only one left out?
My head swiveled like a top as I took around the rest of the tent. Everyone—including Koa, Harper, and Sedric—was kneeling. Well, everyone but Ezra.
Ezra was sitting on the table, her feet ticking rhythmically underneath her patched, faded skirts, the hem worn and coated in the essence of the earth. Courtesy of a lifetime of wandering.
She looked . . . pleased with herself.
“Two centuries ago, you saved the children of the Old Gods from being Cleansed from both the Immortal and Living Realms. Although that was many generations ago, this has never been forgotten. The people before you—” she gestured to them all with skyward-facing palms, “—may worship the Gods of Old, but they praise your name as well. For if you had not goneagainst the God of Life, not one of these people would be here today . . . Not one of them would have been born into existence.”
I swept my arms around my torso, uncertainty filling my voice, “But I . . . Ezra, I barely know who that person was—that part of me.”
Ezra chuckled. “You took many years to find her in your last life as well. But on your journey to self-discovery, you did not walk alone. There was one who walked that path with you.”
I didn’t need to ask who she meant. I just knew.
Her eyes sparkled with mischief. “Perhaps it is time the two of you be reunited at last.”
Sage
“So you mean to tell me that all of this time, you’ve known where the Blade of Moram is, but you didn’t breathe a word to any of us about it?” Ryker groaned in disbelief. He had one heavily muscled arm tossed over the back of the settee he occupied, which sat directly across from the one I was sitting on. In his free hand, he balanced a glass on his leg, three fingers’ worth of freshly poured spirits inside.
“The timing wasn’t right,” Ezra said as she bumbled around the tiny kitchen, her hands patting the worn, wooden countertop in search of the spoon she’d set down. Harper, who was also standing in the kitchen, supervising whatever concoction Ezra was working on, slid the spoon closer to Ezra’s hand. When shefelt it, she grinned in triumph and snatched it up faster than a poor man finding a coin on the streets.
Ryker’s deep-brown eyes slid to mine. “What does that mean?”
“Spirit Realm if I know.” I shrugged, glancing at Lyra, who had been one busy little bee. She sat cross-legged on the floor, leaning over top of the coffee table as she worked on drawing a picture of the Blade of Moram based on Ezra’s description. Lyra’s fingers were stained black from the stick of charcoal she was using to draw. Somehow, she had managed to get a bit on her cheek. Graiyson sat beside her, his brows raised in wonder as he watched his sister work.
After the meeting ended, the five of us had returned to Ezra’s small but comfortable home, where I had been staying since the day I awoke in the infirmary. Harper, Lyra, and Graiyson lived here as well, but Ryker lived on his own. Judging from the way the girls in this town batted their eyelashes at him, I had a good idea why he preferred his own space.
It was safe to say that some of the blood of the immortals thrummed powerfully in the fire twins’ bodies. Harper’s lithe frame stretched to six feet, while Ryker had a solid six to seven inches on her. Both of them possessed rich, brown eyes and skin—lit from within with an orange-red undertone. And both of them were damned good looking, and well aware of it too.
“It means . . .” Ezra started as she lowered her face over a pot of boiling herbs and used her hand to waft it towards her, taking a deep inhale. When her curved shoulders sagged from her exhale, she continued, “I could have told you, Ryker, but it wouldn’t have done a droplet of good, because the decision to save Von lies solely with Sage.”
“Me?” I blurted out, confusion drawing my brows together. “I thought you said the Blade of Moram was going to save Von? What do you mean byme?”
