Page 43 of The Goddess is Awakened
“Don’t you have a god to yell at? You were terrible in class all day because you let them get to you. Go get your feelings on them,”Mags said.
Oh, yeah. I was nice and dickstracted by some amazing men, but the whole reason they did all this was that I was mad at a certain God of Death and I let it get to me.
george
Iwent through this really stupid phase from ages thirteen to fourteen where I was a hormonal mess that let being a god get to my head and I was an asshole to everyone. I still never took my necklace off in public and I never turned into a bully at school, but I wasn’t very pleasant at home.
I was awful to my mom, my dads, and I mouthed off to every god I knew because there wasn’t much they could do to me to hurt me. It was Mags that set me straight. She pointed out I might be invincible, could portal myself anywhere if I got grounded, and conjure anything that got taken away as punishment, but I was going to regret it for my very long life if I was such a dick that I alienated everyone who cared about me. I sulked on that for a while, then realized she was right—like usual—and apologized.
My momma didn’t raise me to abuse my magic, but she also didn’t raise a doormat when the other person could fight back. Except Azren could do more than just brawl with me if it came down to it. They could put my essence in god time out.
I hoped they wouldn’t because I was going to say what I needed to say, anyway.
Azren had gone full God of Death when I entered their office. They were standing in the window illuminated by all their candles holding a giant-ass scythe. They had worn this long black, goth as fuck, dress today and they looked fierce as fuck. I faltered because I definitely didn’t want to get sent to god time out.
“George! I have a theory about your magic. Hold this,” they said, tossing me the scythe.
Instinct took over, and I just caught it. Everything went black and white and I was instantly sucked through some void into a hospital room in another country. Everything was dim and gray. There was a reaper talking to a ghost who appeared to be Filipino. I recognized Tagalog, but I was really bad at it, so I had no idea what she was saying. She saw me standing there and looked shocked for a minute. Then, she got angry.
“Interloper!” she hissed, flinging a knife at my head.
I was so shocked, I just stood there like an idiot. I didn’t know where I was or if I could even be hurt here. The next thing I knew, Azren had ripped the scythe away from me and I was standing back in their office. They were looking at me in awe.
“Fascinating,” they said, disappearing the scythe.
How the fuck did they do that? They handed me a fucking scythe, blew my mind, and now I needed to know what was going on instead of yelling at them for thinking I was a serial killer.
“Whatthe fuckwas that? I’m mad at you by the way.”
“Be mad at me later.”
“No, I want to be mad at you now. Bethany told me you thought it was me who was going to kill people on campus before you landed on the whole death-curse thing.”
“Bethany?” Azren asked as they screwed their beautiful face up in confusion.
“The ghost I asked about the death curse? You could have justaskedme if I was going to explode and murder Kaylee Krauss.”
Azren seemed to find this amusing, and I didn’t know if I wanted to punch them or kiss them. I didn’t even know where the kissing thing even came from because I was definitely mad, but I certainly had a type. Azren probably thought I was an infant, so if it came down to it, I was definitely punching him because I’d have to leave this whole realm if I made an ass of myself kissing him.
“Kaylee Krauss is an infuriating kumquat and I doubt you’d know in advance if you were going to snap and make her head explode. I wanted to watch you and decide for myself. Honestly, I’m more likely to kill that girl than you are, so good job on being better adjusted than I am. I’m not sure how any of the ghosts found that out since I never discussed that with them or anyone else while they were haunting me.”
Azren was a fucking infuriating kumquat. What did that even mean? Every time they got irritated with anyone, they called them some kind of fruit or vegetable. Like, what did eggplants or kumquats ever do to them? Now I was distracted by kumquats instead of what was really bothering me.
“How do you always get me distracted from what is actually bothering me?”
“You can be angry at me for considering an eighteen-year-old god who has been hiding who she is her entire life might eventually explode at her nemesis. Especially since I’ve never met you before and your dad totally would. Or you can think about the fact that you just held Death’s scythe and didn’t end up dead yourself. I was like, ninety-five percent sure you wouldn’t because I’m pretty sure your magic—”
Okay, that was enough. I punched them right in the mouth. And it hurt them because I was also a god. Azren just sat back and smiled at me with blood on their teeth.
“That’s totally fair, but would you have held my scythe if I told you it could kill you?”
“Pause. I thought gods were immortal. How could your scythe kill me?”
“Well, it’s not common knowledge or everyone would be trying to steal it. Loki never told you about his kids and Baldur?”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“Everything dies, George. Gods are just a little more difficult to kill. There is only one thing that can kill a god and it’s specific to each god. There’s an unspoken rule that gods don’t seek out another god’s weakness and we aren’t supposed to kill each other. Some gods broke that out of greed and there was some patricide and matricide that went on because some people shouldn’t be parents. Loki never would have went after Baldur if they hadn’t gone after his kids first.
