Page 15 of Discord
Reyson just chuckled.
“I can see your souls, young witch, so I’d never confuse the two of you. Ripley is going to be my wife. Even if you tried some sort of twin trickery, I’d know. People have tried that with me before.”
“What does my sister say about being your wife? We have a hard rule about tricking boyfriends. Is someone going to feed me so we can look at those journals?”
Ravyn would have known my opinion about being anyone’s wife, but she didn’t need to have a go at Reyson on my behalf. Reyson was trying, and slowly succeeding at breaking down any objections I had about getting married.
When we sat down to eat, Reyson was doing most of the talking. He was tryinghardto win Ravyn over. It was a little funny, because her bullshit meter was just as strong as mine was. Reyson didn’t kiss anyone’s ass, and he wasn’t about to start with my sister. He still had an ego on him.
“Do you want me to give your familiar his body back?” he asked.
Reyson would flex his god chops before he kissed anyone’s ass. He hadn’t even offered that to Gabriel and Orion. Ravyn would only take him up on his offer if it were something Killian wanted, though I couldn’t imagine why he wouldn’t.
“Killian said he would like that.”
Reyson barely moved, and the bat fell off the back of Ravyn’s chair, where he was perched. A naked man then rose up from the floor. Killian was totally adorable. He was tall and thin, with a mop of brown hair and bright blue eyes. He snapped his fingers and conjured a pair of glasses and some clothes. He pushed his glasses up his nose and looked around.
“Does anyone mind if I eat? I’ve been eating bat food for years, and that smells amazing.”
Ravyn snapped her fingers, and another chair appeared next to her. Killian pulled the chair up and fixed a plate. He had this willowy body, but he must be seriously tired of bat food because he didn’t say another word, he just ate and ate… consuming way more food than I thought he was capable of.
“I’m not a warlock, but even I know who Minerva Krauss is. Do you think she figured out how to pick a blood lock?” Balthazar asked.
“Demons haven’t even figured that one out,” Bram said. “We have to get creative when someone has barricaded themselves inside with one.”
“A blood lock is a curse. I’d be shocked if she hadn't at least experimented with breaking one,” Gabriel said.
“I’d have no problems crushing any type of witch lock,” Reyson said.
“That’s a bad idea. Silvaria seems pretty sure she can control you, and she managed to trap Talvath,” I reminded him again.
“Maybe not,” Ravyn said. “There are a lot more books on trying to control demons than there are gods. I have a few artifacts at the museum that were made with that intent, but if they were actually successful, I’d have many more of them, and they would be documented in history. A lot of the older gods have gone by many names. If Silvaria thinks she has Reyson’s true name, she could use that to write a spell to do it, but the odds of finding that out are slim to none.”
I hadn’t even thought about name spells. I didn’t even know Reyson’s true name, and he wanted to marry me! Silvaria had found his vessel… had she found out his name? Reyson seemed to find this hilarious.
“I was born from nothing. I appeared in the aether one day with a few other gods. We didn’t have parents around to name us. We didn’t worry about such nonsense then. We existed without them until we created the universe, and our creations started developing thoughts. We created more and joined them on Earth. They were primitive beings, and it was them that gave us our first names.
“They thought the sun rose because of us, and if it rained, it was being we were angry with them! You can imagine the names they gave us. If Silvaria found out the first name I was given, I won’t answer to it. I barely remember it. Some of the later gods chose their own names, and they stayed the same over the centuries. None of us had names whispered to us by the aether when we were born. Silvaria is in for a rude awakening.”
Ravyn leaned back in her chair and set her fork down.
“You have a god on your team, Ripley. He knows more about what he’s capable of than you do. Yeah, it’s scary Silvaria figured out how to trap a demon, but we don’t know what’s in her family’s grimoire. They could have been trying to figure that out for a long time, and she cracked it. Silvaria comes from a line of arrogant, snobby witches. They’ve probably gotten up to all kinds of nasty shit that they’ve kept hidden. She’s also dumb enough to think whatever idea she cooked up to control Reyson is going to work.”
“Your twin is right, my witch. Many people were upset with me when they tricked me into that tomb... even the witches were mad. They didn’t think they could control me back then. They used a wench who promised sex to get me in there. If there were ever a mob who would bring out whatever magic they had to seek to control me, it would have been them. They knew better. Silvaria will learn.”
“They have a point, Ripley,” Gabriel said. “Silvaria thinks hedge witches are babysitting Reyson. Balthazar listened to them. They didn’t even know why Hettie was bringing him back. You said she was meek and scared the entire time you were doing the necromancy, well, Silvaria needs Reyson to pull this off. Don’t you think she would have spilled the beans to Hettie on how to control him? Hettie would have told her coven. She sure as shit would have used it before Reyson turned her into a roach!”
That was for damn sure. Dorian would have reported back to her by now, since Hettie wasn’t returning his calls. They had to know she was dead. Silvaria would know I would try to keep him in the library instead of letting him out into the world.
Yeah, she trapped a demon, but a lot of this plan wasn’t thought out well, not at all. Hettie was sweating and nervous the entire time. She could have said anything when Reyson was awake, but she said the wrong thing. Reyson took offense, and that was that.
All this hinged on controlling the God of Chaos. I’m sure Silvaria and Dorian would have much preferred having him with someone they could control. Silvaria knew I didn’t like her. She might be on the board and super rich, but I didn’t try to hide it. She wouldn’t want him anywhere near me if she could avoid it.
If she could control Reyson, she sure as shit would have passed that along to Hettie.
I pushed my chair back.
“Let’s dig into those journals. After that, I think we need to let Reyson have a little fun destroying Silvaria’s plans.”
