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I chatted with my friends in Heaven’s Army for a bit, then joined Nero by the dessert table. His eyes were tracking Sierra’s skipped steps back and forth across the room.
“Hey, you,” I said, wrapping my arm around him. “What’s up?”
“Sierra and the cat attempted to throw cupcakes at Sonja,” he said, his gaze still fixed on our daughter. “I intervened.”
“How did the cat throw a cupcake?”
“She didn’t. But she was encouraging Sierra’s bad behavior.”
“How?” I asked, curious.
“By meowing,” he replied, and he looked totally serious.
“By meowing?” I snickered. “I didn’t know you spoke cat.”
“I don’t. But her intentions were obvious.”
“Well, it’s a good thing you’re here to keep an eye on mischievous felines.”
“Indeed,” he agreed.
Laughter was bubbling up inside of me. I cleared my throat to push it back down. “So, anything else to report, General?”
“Faris and Grace are flirting.”
“Oh, really?” That laughter was rising in me again. “Well, that’s…cute. I guess.”
I was still pretty conflicted about the idea of my parents being in love. They weren’t exactly cuddly people.
“I spoke to Faris earlier,” Nero told me. “He said the gods and demons have started to retake the worlds they lost to Regin’s order.”
“The worlds linked to the Immortal graveyards?”
Nero nodded. “Faris seemed to think I might know something about undiscovered graveyard sites. Specifically, he wanted me to grant him access to the Immortals’ library of knowledge, so he could find those graveyards and tap into their magic.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That I’m not a Keeper. And he could take up his request with Damiel and Cadence.”
“He already tried that, didn’t he?” I guessed.
“Yes,” said Nero. “And apparently Damiel told Faris he’d sooner burn the library to the ground before he allowed a scheming god into it.”
“I guess we all still have trust issues.” I frowned when an idea hit me. “Hey, you don’t think Faris agreed to put me on the gods’ council because he wanted to get to you through me, do you? Maybe this isn’t about my magic. Maybe it’s about your Immortal legacy.”
“Faris is definitely very interested in your magic,” Nero told me. “But that doesn’t mean he isn’t also interested in my legacy.”
Sighing, I dropped my head to his chest. “Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of.” I looked up at him. “Well, whatever Faris’s angle is, someone needs to remind him of the bigger picture. We still have the Guardians to defeat, the Nectar and Venom supply problem to sort out, and then there are all those people on the worlds Regin took. There’s a reason it was so easy for Regin to turn them against their old deities. Their old deities mistreated them. And if we don’t sort out that problem—if we don’t win their faith and trust for real—then we’ll be right back where we started.”
“That sounds like the perfect project for you, Pandora,” Nero said, his eyes twinkling.
“He’s right,” Zane said. “You always look out for the people others have neglected and mistreated, Leda.”
Zane had arrived on the scene with my Purgatory family. Rather than dressing up in fancy gowns and suits for the occasion, they’d opted for casual jeans and t-shirts with silly text. They knew me so well.
“Nice shirts,” I snickered in appreciation.
Calli’s shirt declared: Forty is the new twenty. Zane’s boasted: I’ve already read your mind. Gin’s read: No, I will not fix your motorcycle. Tessa’s shirt was the sparkliest one of them all. It proclaimed: It’s hard to be ordinary when you’re extraordinary.
