Page 13 of Discord
“You’re so strange. I’m not talking about kinky god sex. He could probably just touch your forehead and heal you. I get he wants to help, but couldn’t he be doing more, you know, since he’s a god?”
Bram was clearly working through some shit, but I’d spent more time around Reyson than he had. I knew when he was off in the aether with his god friends, they could make the entire universe.
“I don’t think it works like that. Gods have limits when they are in a vessel. Think of Hell, and the problem with your sun. As for Reyson healing me, he can see all possibilities. He was the one that told Ripley we were a part of things before she figured out the library was also trying to tell her.
“Reyson has always insisted Ripley will be his wife, even when she didn’t know him and was telling him to his face she wasn’t. He’s never had a problem with us in her bed. He’s never been very clear about the possibilities he sees, except for marrying Ripley.
“I think he knows we’reallgoing to end up with Ripley. He’s always done things to push us together as a group. Yeah, he probablycouldtouch me and heal me… and he might still. I think he wants the witches and warlocks in our group to get closer to figuring out how to break it though. He’s playing the long game.”
“That’s fucked up, man…you suffering while he plays Cupid like that!”
“I’ve been dealing with this curse a lot longer. You don’t get it. Not a single witch would help me before I came here. It itches now, but the pain used to bring me to my knees. I think Reyson took the pain away when the curse got worse. That’s the only thing I can attribute to not being in excruciating pain anymore. I’m okay with him playing matchmaker. I feel at home here, and Iwantto get to know everyone better.”
Bram’s shoulders slumped, and all the fight went out of him.
“I get that, but I can’t get attached to anyone here. Hellhounds aren’t allowed to have relationships, and I highly doubt I’ll be allowed to stay here when this is all over.”
That was horse shit. Bram was one of us. He wasn’t just here because it was his master that got kidnapped. We were a family, and if he let us in, Bram should be snuggling with us in bed at night. It was fucking stupid Hellhounds couldn’t have relationships.
I had a new mission. I wasn’t just getting into those text messages. I was going to find some loophole that meant Talvathhadto let him stay with us.
8
Ripley
We were all back at my desk with a little more information than we had before. Gabriel had cast some magic on the painting Dorian left in the vault, which meant we knew where the actual painting was. Unfortunately, it was in the same shipping container we still didn’t know how to get into. Reyson had sweet-talked a book, which then gave us an eyewitness account of one of Silvaria’s meetings.
Reyson was all offended Silvaria thought she could control him. I knew more than anyone how she had an ego the size of Russia, but she seemed pretty damn sure of that to fly all over the world and promise it. It was also extremely reckless to raise the God of Chaos without some sort of insurance policy in place.
Bram had given up looking at the demon books. He must have bonded with Balthazar while we were all busy. The two of them were trying to hack the text message thread between Silvaria and Dorian.
I saw a face walking towards my desk that I didn’t expect to see. Professor Krauss rarely finished books that fast, and the last book I gave her was pretty thick. She had the satchel she used to bring to class slung over her shoulder. She set it down on my desk and smiled.
“Ripley, dear, I’ve been thinking about the questions you’ve asked me lately. I’ve met the lovely young man with the unfortunate curse. I don’t know what your friend Reyson is, but his aura is like nothing I’ve ever seen. You rarely have friends with you at work. I suspect you are mixed up in something that is going to affect us all. I’m not sure how much help I can be with that, but I can help as much as I can with this curse. As you recall, when you were at the academy, curses like that were a favorite of most of your classmates. Some of the more talented witches decided to misuse their gifts and cast curses like the one on Balthazar. They certainly kept me busy trying to break them! I may not have published any books on this particular topic, but I do keep extensive journals on everything. So here, I brought you my journals from when your classmates decided to cast petty curses against their exes.”
“Shut your fucking face! You’re seriously giving me Minerva Krauss journals?” I shrieked.
Oh, Lilith. Did I seriously just say that out loud? Of all the embarrassing things I could say in front of one of my heroes, I tell her to shut her fucking face! This was even more mortifying than when I was in her class and had stayed late one day to ask her to sign a book.
She just laughed and didn’t seem mad at me at all. If we were back at the academy, she would have kicked my ass straight out of her classroom for that.
“I can’t think of a better home for these. I have no intention of publishing the contents. If witches knew the answers to breaking these types of curses were available to everyone, they’d just get more creative, and I’d have to come out of retirement. Ilikemy retirement, Ripley, and you recommend the most marvelous books. You keep these, and put them to good use. I’m afraid it’s not all genital curses in there. You’ll have to wade through some things I wrote down that Iintendedto publish. Some of it made it to the press, and some never did. I trust you won't misuse some of the information I cracked. That information was never published because it would have been devastating to the witching community. I tried to crack things for the beauty of figuring out how they worked, but that information shouldn’t be public knowledge. You were always an outstanding student, and I know for a fact you never misused your magic at the academy. So, you’re the only one I trust with this information.”
Holy shit. I was going to barf everywhere. Minerva Krauss was giving me top-secret magical information, and she’d told me to my face she thought I was a good student… even if she never gave me a single A on any of my papers.
I was literally about to explode and make an ass of myself in the middle of the Library of the Profane. Reyson grabbed me and pulled me onto his lap. I appreciated the divine intervention from being even more stupid than I already was. He kissed the top of my head.
“We appreciate the journals. My witch won’t misuse them. Allow me to introduce myself, I am the God of Chaos.”
That didn’t even faze Professor Krauss. She just cocked an eyebrow at us like,of course,he was the fucking God of Chaos.
“You have a god and a Hellhound here. What have you gotten yourself into, Ripley?”
“Some bad people who made deals with demons are trying to get out of making good on their payment. They tricked me into raising Reyson, and they think they can control him. You don’t happen to have anything in here about controlling gods by any chance, do you?”
“No, because I’ve never been stupid. Plenty of people have tried and died horrible deaths. And if I were foolish enough to think I could, I certainly wouldn’t have brought back the God of Chaos. No offense, Reyson. You’re perfectly lovely, but I’ve read stories about you.”
Reyson puffed up his chest. Yeah, my god could have a bit of a fat head sometimes.
