Page 72 of Taken By the Blood God

In that time, I began my ascent to godhood. Not from compassion and selfless deeds, as your niece might. But from greed, selfishness, and a thirst for more and more. Not just power, but wealth. Adoration—and fear. Everything.”

Talant stopped speaking for a moment. Though I couldn’t see his face, I sensed he was lost in his memories, so I remained silent.

“My brother was with me every step of the way. It may be difficult to believe, since you didn’t know him then, but he was once a good man. One of the best I knew while I was human. He was a warrior. A protector. But he had strong magic like I did. It was rare, but we both achieved godhood. That was when we leftthe kingdom in search of, well, even more. We were gluttonous, always starving for more magic, more strength, just…more. That was when we met Cassia.”

His body tensed behind mine, which made me want to tense up as well. I took a deep breath and forced my muscles to relax as I exhaled.

“Cassia was everything Davian and I were not. She was a goddess of light and joy. Though her power was over ice and air, she wasn’t cold. Far from it. She shone like the sun.”

At his words, my heart twisted in my chest, pierced with an unfamiliar sensation. One that seemed a lot like jealousy.

“Davian and I, we both wanted her. Eventually, we realized we loved her. At first, we wanted her to choose one of us, but when we asked her, she said she couldn’t choose. We didn’t like the idea, but we were willing to share her if that was what she wanted.” He paused. “It wasn’t. She finally explained to us that she loved us, but only as a sister might love her brothers. That her heart didn’t yearn for us in that way.

Davian grew darker and more dangerous after her rejection. He left us and made his way through the world alone.

I was far too optimistic. I believed that if I could just be better, she would return my feelings. I looked at my actions through the lens of her compassion and gentleness and found myself wanting. I worked hard to change, to value the lives of those around me the way she did.

At first, my motives were purely selfish, but eventually I began to see humans and other mortals the way she did—with optimism and hope. She had so much hope for mankind and their future.

I came to her again, decades later, and asked her if she could love me now. I still didn’t understand when she told me no, that she could never feel that way about me. She wasn’t my soulmate. The other half of me. And that if she gave me what I wanted, Iwould eventually regret it because I would meet the woman who was meant to be mine someday.”

As he said those words, Talant’s arm tugged me closer to him, erasing what little space remained between us. My heart thrummed at his action, and I wondered if he was trying to tell me that I might be that woman. I wanted to believe it. Not only that. I wanted it to be true.

“After her final rejection, I locked myself away beneath the mountain, putting as much distance between us as I could. I existed in a half-state for centuries, watching the world pass me by. I saw when Cassia met a mortal man and fell in love. She gave up her godhood so that she could bear his children and grow old with him. I watched as she died, surrounded by the people she loved. Her power waited, dormant and restless, for the one who was meant to wield it. I never saw who it was, but I felt when she was born, and Cassia’s power found its new host.

Then, one day, a young woman with bright eyes and red hair appeared before me. She was kind and funny, and she brought me back to the land of the living. Through her eyes, I saw a world that I very much wanted to be a part of again. She was meant to be my Anointed, which meant she needed my guidance and my protection. She was my atonement for all the wrong I’d done in the centuries before.”

My heart raced faster at his words. I knew he was talking about Ally and how she’d brought him back into reality.

“My brother seemed intent on using her for his own purposes. But I knew I would protect her, even from him. The day I awoke in that cave and laid eyes on a witch, I knew I had a new purpose. This witch carried Cassia’s light, the bright magic I knew. Only, within her, this light burned like a fire. She wasn’t sweet or gentle, but strong and unbreakable. She loved fiercely to protect her heart from being shredded. And I knew Cassia was right. That our love was never meant to be more than it was.”

My racing heart all but stopped. Was he saying what I thought he was?

“You mean you don’t love her any longer?” I asked.

Immediately, I wished I could take the words back. The question gave away too much of my feelings for him. Feelings I wasn’t ready to share. Not yet.

He was silent for so long that I worried I’d interpreted his words incorrectly. “I realized a long time ago that I loved the idea of Cassia more than I truly loved her. I loved her, yes, but not as I should love my other half. She was pure goodness, something I’d never had in my life before, and I wanted that to become the center of my world. I didn’t realize that the goodness could come from within me rather than from someone else. It was love, but not the kind I thought.”

I didn’t speak when he finished, just brought his arm from my waist to hug it to my chest. Talant buried his face in my hair and held me tighter, as though he wanted to crawl inside my skin. Neither of us said another word. We held each other as the night deepened, each thinking our own thoughts.

I thought about his story, how he’d gone from a mage, an advisor to kings, to a king himself. I wondered what he’d been like as a human. Had he always been this arrogant? Or was it something that had come with time and power?

Regardless of who he’d once been, he was so much more than I realized in the here and now. He was infuriating, arrogant, and sometimes out of control. But, beneath those irritating qualities, I’d glimpsed compassion and gentleness. Especially with me. He was pushy and stubborn, but he took care of me when I needed him. It had been so long since someone had bothered to take care of me. Not since my mother and older sister were alive had someone anticipated my needs and tried to fulfill them.

At the thought of my mom and my sister, Ally’s mother, my chest ached. I missed them so much. Never more so than timeswhen I desperately needed their advice. I might not have talked to my mother about Talant and what was happening between us, but I would have talked to my sister. And she would have listened to me without judgement. And her advice would have helped me figure all of this out—my emotions, Talant, whether I should give him a chance.

I closed my eyes and tried to think about what she would say. Lydia had such a way of seeing things. Of seeing people. She saw beyond the masks we wear to the vulnerabilities beneath. She would have understood what made Talant tick within days of meeting him. She would have helped me see him the way she did, to see past my own bias.

In a sudden flash, I knew. My sister would have liked Talant. She would have been angry with Davian, but she would have understood him as well. If I let my mind wander, I could almost see Lydia spending time with the two gods, figuring them out and wrapping them around her little finger, almost the way Ally had wrapped Talant around hers before she freed him from his self-imposed imprisonment.

My mind wanted to continue to spiral into thoughts of my sister and mother and what they would have said or done when they met Talant, but my body had other ideas. I couldn’t fight the pull of sleep any longer.

I fell asleep with Talant’s hand clutched to my chest like a teddy bear and the heat of his skin soaking through my thin silk nightgown.

When the dream came, I wasn’t sure if it was a memory or my mind re-creating what Talant had described to me.

I stood in a garden, lush and rich. Tall stone walls surrounded it, but I knew there was nothing but sand outside of them. The air was so dry and hot that my skin ached from it.

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