Page 24 of Lethal Souls

“But Selah…well, she was always a bit of a troublemaker. It wasn’t until we battled with Kronos and the Titans to take down Uranus that she became this way. She’d fallen for Kronos. She wanted to be just like him. She loved that he was the god of war, that he could swindle the humans into battle and watch them mutilate one another. It served as her entertainment.”

“She sounds demented,” I mutter.

“Oh, no. Trust me,” Hassha says, her eyes snapping up to meet mine. “She was perfectly sane. That’s what made her desires so terrifying. She saw the power Kronos had over a vast number of people, and she wanted that power too. She loved him, but when he died she was devastated for years. She went back to Earth for his remains and returned to Vakeeli. She cut her hand to place her blood on his remains before burying it in our soil. She thought by doing this, it would bring back some version of Kronos that she could love. Instead, Decius was born.”

I feel a twinge in my chest at hearing that fucker’s name. “You can’t be serious.”

“The original Tethered had already been created with just her blood and energy, and they were at peace. But by adding Kronos’s remnants to her blood, it made Decius much more powerful than the others when he was created. Korah, Yuri and I were perfectly content with the way Vakeeli was—the animals, the land, the peace. We didn’t feel the Tethered were necessary, but we accepted them because they caused us no issues…at first.

“Then Selah created The Council. Then the commoners. And The Council slept with some of the commoners, thus creating the Mythics and the Gilded. For some time, Selah allowed the people to live in harmony. She took care of them, provided them their territories, gave them and the Tethered the power to bond and mate.

“We thought she’d turned a new leaf—that she wanted peace as much as we did after Kronos’s death. And back then, Decius was no threat. He simply followed Selah around like some lost child. Of course, the Tethered had no idea what she was really up to—not until she grew bored and forced Decius to mate with Oriah.”

Oriah, one of the original Tethered.

“This disrupted the peace we’d worked so hard to build. It caused animosity between Lehvine and Decius. Selah fueled Decius with both her rage and her power. This led the Tethered to stand against him, especially when they realized he was coming for their children and, once again, there was madness. It erupted like lava and spilled over the lands.

“We intervened, of course, but it was over before it’d even started. Decius had harnessed the Tethered’s energy and still sought the Cold Tethered children. Selah refused to stop him. In fact, she found it humorous—these tiny babes being hunted by her evil creation. That was something I simply could not stand for, so we created a place Decius was never meant to escape.”

“The Trench,” I whisper under my breath.

“Yes.”

I look away from her to Korah who has finally faced us but still has her arms folded.

“We knew we could only keep Decius there for so long before Selah found out, so we demanded Selah to get rid of him. He was tormenting the people, trying to kill children. She was tarnishing all we’d built. She didn’t listen. Instead, she retaliated.

“She struck Yuri with her magic first because she knew he was the strongest, but it hardly hurt him so he struck back.” She swallows. “He—he didn’t want to kill her. None of us wanted her dead because if she dies, Korah and I die too. All we wanted was for her to get rid of Decius and restore the order, so while we had her in our grasp, we kept demanding her to make things right, to restore the peace, but she kept refusing. She was vicious, only seeking death and destruction, so we were left with no choice but to place her in an eternal slumber. We stripped her of most of her energy and created an island as far away from the main lands of Vakeeli as we could—one she would never be able to escape. We did what needed to be done.”

I can’t help wondering why they didn’t kill her anyway. Maybe they deserved to die. All of them. They clearly served no purpose anymore.

“She’s our blood.” Korah finally speaks, her eyes flickering to me and flaring. Shit. She heard my thoughts.

She walks my way, the flames from the hearth turning her snowy hair to a vivid orange. “The one rule we agreed upon when we created Vakeeli was to never turn against one another. To never stab the other in the back. We didn’t want to be like the gods on Earth who were slaughtering their own and killing humans for the fun of it. We wanted to be better because Mother wanted us to be. That’s why she let us escape that wretched place. That’s why she sent us here.”

“And Selah is smart,” Hassha says. “She’s always been. You’re probably wondering why we didn’t just kill Decius ourselves. It’s because she bonded herself to him so that if we did kill him, we’d be killing her and ourselves. Minus Yuri, we’re all connected—born from the same line of tears from Gaea. If one of us dies, all of us die. She knew we wouldn’t kill ourselves for her mistakes. All we wanted was for her to see the bigger picture.”

“That bigger picture doesn’t matter anymore though,” Korah says with a disgusted scoff. “Vakeeli has turned into the nightmare she’s always dreamed of. Commoners killing one another. Territories fighting over material things.” Korah twists a chair around with a rapid gesture of her hand. She sits on it with a heavy, defeated sigh while Hassha shifts closer to me.

“Somehow, Decius came back though, right after we put Selah to rest. We knew he was coming for the Cold Tethered babies, so Korah, Yuri, and I separated them as best as we could. We gave them the gift of being reborn no matter how many times they died, but despite our efforts, Decius found his way to them. He’d kill them over and over again to harness their energy. We fought him off for as long as we could, but our damage only did so much. He’d disappear for a year or two, only to return again to sniff them out. It was tiresome, and we were sick of spending our lives chasing away a monster for children who had nothing to do with us.

“With Decius still active, we thought we’d chosen the lesser of two evils so Vakeeli would have some sort of peace, but that peace never came. The commoners grew violent. The Cold Tethered kept dying. We felt backed into a corner, and we wanted to erase it all. We realized too, that even though we’d put Selah to rest, she could still move mentally. That’s why Vakeeli has turned into such a violent place. She fills weak people’s minds with wicked thoughts, makes a nobody feel like somebody. She has always been the source of our problems. We’d thought by having her rest, she’d reassess—that she’d realize there is more to life than carrying such hatred. Instead, she’s grown more violent. She’s working through the soil—through Decius—to fuel herself.”

I fold my arms, allowing their words to digest. “Okay, I see your point about her, but I still don’t understand what any of this has to do with me.”

“When we realized Vakeeli could no longer be controlled and that she was sending commoners to hunt us, I created Kessel,” Hassha goes on. “I wanted it to be our refuge and a place no evil could touch unless they went through me. Selah would eventually be able to free herself from the slumber we put her in, but it could only happen under the rarest of circumstances. Since Selah wanted these commoners and Tethered so much, we made them her only way of escape. Monarchs had taken over. Mythics and Gilded were running about, pretending they were as powerful as we were. We made it so that the only thing that could wake her was a combination of the things she’d created. Blood of a monarch, the Tethered, and child of a Mythic. You are all of those things, Caspian. We knew the time would come when someone like you would be born, but you could only be Selah’s escape if you mated because that’s when your energy is at its highest. Why do you think Decius waited so long to have you? He needed you to mate.

“Knowing this, Korah took Willow and Warren away from Vakeeli altogether. She was your mate, and mates are always destined to find one another, but we figured if you were in another realm, perhaps we could postpone when you mated.

“We put the twins on Earth with a family. We stripped them of all their energy and memories of their past lives. We thought it would work. But that’s the thing about this universe—about all the universes, really. No matter how much you try to prevent something, it will happen, and the outcome will be much worse than anticipated. Selah got to The Council, and they brought Willow back right under our noses. Prior to that, they allowed you to form a bond with her without even seeing her. Selah’s using them to fuel the agenda of waking her.”

“But why?” I ask. “I never signed up for this life and neither did Willow.”

“None of us asked for this, yet here we are,” Korah gripes, pushing out of her chair. “Do you think I wanted to return to this place?”

I shake my head, feeling a throb build near my temples. All of this is giving me a damn headache. “So if there were four of you, what happened to the other Regal? Yuri?”

Hassha inhales through her nostrils and exhales the same. Korah simply looks at her sister, waiting for her to speak.

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