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It was a good thing Nero had intervened. That was a suicide mission. Harker clearly wasn’t thinking straight.
“How did you convince him to come with you?” I asked Nero.
“I told him we were going to capture a rogue goddess. And that we could trade her to Faris in exchange for Bella’s freedom.”
Smart. But there was just one problem with that plan.
“Bella surrendered herself to Faris,” I reminded them. “She wants to stay locked up in the gods’ dungeon.”
“She’s just scared her curse will make her hurt someone else.” Desperation dominated Harker’s expression. “But Nero said you were getting closer. He said capturing her would help us save Bella.” He pointed at Parisa.
The goddess gave me a haughty look. “Nothing you do will stop us.”
I checked the urge to roll my eyes at her. “What is your father planning?” I asked her instead.
“My father?” She looked surprised. “How did you?—”
“The people on the worlds you’ve taken,” I cut her off, “they kept talking about these new gods who’d come to them, but there aren’t any new gods. Gods don’t just magically pop out of the ground like mushrooms. You guys aren’t new at all. You’re old. Very old. It’s just no one remembers you because your father was erased from history. And as far as the rest of the universe is concerned, you and your siblings never even existed.”
Hissing, Parisa jumped at me like a rapid dog, but Harker yanked on her chain, pulling her back.
“There aren’t all that many gods who were so terrible, so abominable, that the gods’ council totally deleted them. In fact, I can think of only one case.”
“Regin,” Damiel realized.
I nodded. “Bingo.”
Damiel approached the captive goddess. “So this is one of Regin’s progeny.”
Parisa snarled at him.
“I prefer my other cousins,” I declared.
Regin was the brother of Faris and Zarion. He’d manipulated the laws of magic to overcome deities’ natural infertility. He’d fathered ten offspring, and he would have kept going, except the rest of the gods weren’t overly impressed with the mass sacrifices he’d undertaken to create those offspring. They were even less impressed with the end goal of his experiment: to raise an army loyal only to him and powerful enough to overthrow the other gods.
“Regin and his progeny were sent to eleven barren moons,” Cadence said. “They were cut off from the world and from one another, lest they make another go at universal domination.”
“Yeah, well, it looks like this one got out,” I said. “And what do you want to bet that this Solarian fellow we heard about a few weeks ago is her brother?”
Parisa began to whistle a happy tune. Nero exchanged a significant look with his parents, then the three of them disappeared, obviously off to check out those prison moons.
Meanwhile, I had to try to get some answers out of Parisa. “What is your plan? Are you working with Ava? Or the Guardians? What do you want with all that Nectar and Venom? And why curse Bella and Stash?”
Parisa just smiled at me.
“Fine.” I reached into my pocket. “Be that way.” I pulled out my phone and called Faris.
Surprisingly, he actually answered this time. “What is it?” he said gruffly.
“Are you busy?”
“No, as King of the Gods, I have absolutely nothing to do except to wait for your calls.”
Was that sarcasm? From Faris?
“I need you to come to Purgatory. To Calli’s house,” I clarified.
“For what purpose?”
