Deidre's Death (#2, Rhyn Eternal Series)

Day Three: Chapter Six

Chapter Six

Past-Death slept fitfully. She’d had what humans called nightmares. They were awful. She was running from someone in the forest and instead of helping her, Gabriel would only watch. Then there were those where Darkyn was stripping off her skin and sucking her blood. She hadn’t been able to wake up, and the sensations felt too real.

When she awoke, she was relieved but tired. She stretched and climbed out of bed. The room was chilly, the marble flooring freezing. Deidre hopped from foot to foot before realizing she could put on socks. She didn’t have a sock warmer in her room – something Cora called a toaster – but the socks were better than the floor.

Only when able to tolerate the floor did she cross to the French doors. She’d left them partially open, and the morning air was cold as it swept through her room. She pushed the door closed and stood, shivering, and gazed at the green glow visible even during daylight.

“This is totally fucked up,” she murmured, shaking her head. Even if she wasn’t Death anymore, she could gauge just how bad things were. She cocked her head to the side and filtered through her memories.

What she recalled was a pittance of what she had known as a goddess. She mourned the loss of all she’d ever learned or known. But she remembered everything from the past twenty-six years. Significant events of the human world, deals with deities, Immortal dealings. Was there anything remaining of her memory that might help Gabriel? Make him want to trust her?

She padded around her room for her morning routine, thoughtful. The crushing emotions from yesterday were more tolerable today. All she had to do was find a way to prevent them from crippling her logic for now. She wished with all her heart she could package them back up and put them back wherever they’d been when she was a deity.

She needed to think. She hadn’t outsmarted generations of deities and Immortals while laden with emotions, but she had still done it. She just had to get control of herself and be proactive, the way she was a mere three days before. She could help Gabriel and the souls, even if her whole world crashed at the end of the week.

When she was dressed and ready, she left her room and walked through the fortress to the bottom floor. Andre took her to the garden the morning before, and that’s where she went this time. Stationed outside her room, Cora trailed her at a distance, silent and darkly dressed, like a shadow.

Deidre paced through the garden, not really interested in the blooming flowers, statuary or neat rows of hedges. Instead, she concentrated on figuring out what knowledge she could about the souls in the lake. How was it possible they were in the mortal realm? Why were they cast out of the underworld?

She stopped in front of a small mural depicting a triangle with a form at each of the points.

Human, Immortal, Deity.

Her eyes rested on the figure of a girl representing the humans. Reluctantly, her thoughts returned to the human she’d left in Hell.

She’d dreamt of human-Deidre, too. Those dreams were the worst. In them, she had been the human trapped in Hell being bled and tortured daily by Darkyn. Even if she managed to save the souls and win Gabriel, the truth was going to ruin everything.

Unless she could make the truth … bearable. Different.

“Cora, can you ask Gabriel if I can go to a …um, mall today?” she asked, turning.

Cora stepped forward. “Mall? You’ve got demons after you.”

“I need more shoes and I can’t call a portal.”