Page 33 of Ties of Deception

I swallowed, both wary about pushing him further on what was clearly a sensitive topic and deeply intrigued, especially since he’d shown me quite a bit of interest. But it made no sense for him to have been waiting for me in particular. “Can you tell me who? How do you know her? Are you betrothed already?”

He looked up and met my eyes with a guarded expression. His wide jaw was firm and determined. “You asked me yesterday to tell you everything. Do you still want to hear it? Knowing what I’m about to tell you…well, it's dangerous, and…you won’t be able to return to this moment of innocence. It will change the way you see everything.”

I shifted, my heart stuttering against my rib cage. The way he spoke made me think his story was going to strongly involve me. Maybe his intentions for these nighttime visits would finally be revealed. “Don’t you think that I have a right to know?”

He looked at me with a mournful yet longing expression that a few days ago, I wouldn’t have thought him capable of. It caught me off guard and made my heart stutter. I was frozen as he spoke. “Yes. You more than anyone.”

My stomach dipped at his words. I wasn’t prepared for the intensity of this conversation, and my questions were only growing. And my nerves at what he was about to reveal. “Tell me,” I whispered. “Please. Tell me everything. Hide nothing from me.”

He shifted and forced a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “If you want me to stop at any point, let me know. This…this will be a lot for you to process, and a lot of information, but I will try to be as clear as possible.”

He waited for my nod before continuing. “The woman I had promised to marry was stolen from me.”

I gaped. “What? How?”

He looked down to the floor. “Let me begin with a story. Long ago, there were just two immortal beings, Ismara, the Goddess of Life, and Ienar, the God of Death. Ismara governed over the living world until Ienar claimed each being at their death and took them to the Unseen Lands. Together, they created and destroyed, maintaining the world’s delicate balance.

“After a thousand years, the two of them had a child, the first Aidis. And he took after his father. Ienar’s son grew up to have immortality and powers over death, even if they weren’t as potent as his father’s. The powers of life and death cannot exist in the same person, you see. They are opposite—incompatible—and should never be mixed. So the Aidis had powers of death alone. And with that came a problem: Since he was of death, he couldn’t procreate because no wife suitable for him could be found.” His voice dropped to a sorrowful tone. “Despite this, he fell in love with a mortal woman, but their interactions were limited by his deadly powers, they could barely touch, and she was doomed to die while he would live forever. When she died, he was devastated and withdrew, failing to see any joy left in the world. He lingered in the depths of the underworld, catching glimpses of her ghost, and haunting wherever her spirit tread.

“His mother, Ismara, decided to intervene. She used her powers of life to bring back his love. But to perform such a difficult act, she had to give some of her own essence to the girl. The girl gained immortality and a shadow of Ismara’s powers over life. She was what you call a Grace—the first one—though she had nothing to do with Atos. The Aidis and his bride could now be together forever. After a hundred years, they also had a child, another son who inherited powers of death alone. He in turn became the Aidis when his father started to rule the Unseen Lands, while Ienar distanced himself more and more from our world. When that Aidis also chose a mortal as a wife, she too was raised by Ismara after her death and became a Grace.

“And so, the pattern continued for over a thousand years. Every two or three hundred years, one mortal woman would be reborn for a prince of death, and he would become the new king of the Unseen Lands. The old king would retire from that responsibility to watch over the souls in the Vale.

“Each mortal and Aidis couple would swear vows of eternal commitment before her death, mixing their blood, and they would become each other's Fated. She would be resurrected back into her body in the Unseen Lands. Each couple bore a single son, and so the powers of death continued and grew.” He raised his eyebrows at me. “Are you following me so far?”

I nodded, though the connotations were making my emotions seesaw. “One Grace and one Aidis every few hundred years. One goddess of life and one god of death making a son of death. But…not any more? There are loads of us now, and we have nothing to do with the Unseen Lands. I got the impression there had been Graces in Atos for thousands of years. We also haven’t lived before…have we? I was told I was merely born as an adult. Nobody talks about memories of a past life.”

I thought back to the pomegranate basket and the strange dream where I had been in agony on the floor. But those weren’t enough to mean I’d lived an entire previous life.

His face hardened. “Something happened with no warning, and we don’t understand what. It meant mortals here in the west managed to control some of Ismara’s powers and bring women back to life by stealing their souls from their rightful place in the Vale. But we in the Unseen Lands, who are meant to guide and protect those souls, don’t know how they managed this. Ienar has grown too distant from us lower beings for us to ask his advice. And any record of the origin of Graces in Atos seems to have been destroyed or altered. All we know is that every year souls are still stolen from the Unseen Lands that are not Fated.”

I stared at him, my mouth dry. Surely this couldn’t be true? “That’s what Graces are? Women who have died and been brought back to life? But…but we have no memory of our past lives. That’s whatIam?”

He nodded, his eyes studying me carefully as if waiting for a sign that it was all right for him to continue.

I pressed my fingers to my lips as I sorted through the sudden explosion of questions in my mind. “What of the other goddesses? The Amazones in Hassia?”

He shook his head slowly. “You use the blanket termgoddesseshere, but the Amazone’s powers are not like yours or mine. The first Amazone was Blessed by Ismara with strength and vitality in return for protecting her son, but that’s another story. They don’t have immortality. Their strength and height are passed down through their genetics, so they have strict rules surrounding reproduction. In my opinion, they are far from any definition of goddesses. But the empress likes to make her guards seem as powerful and mysterious as possible. It adds to her own power. She has some Amazone blood herself.”

I supposed that made sense. The Amazones seemed to separate themselves, barely interacting with the rest of us.

We sat in silence, and I resisted the urge to fidget. One question was building inside me with burning intensity; I feared I already knew the answer, and it felt too ridiculous to speak aloud, but I had to. I’d said I wanted to know everything, and this would consume me if I didn’t make him state it plainly. I just…didn’t know what I would do with the answer.

“So…” I swallowed and took a deep breath, though my voice remained quiet. “When we first met, you said we were Fated. Does that mean…” I couldn’t say it. What if I had misunderstood and he laughed at my ridiculous assumption? What if he had said something else entirely? But I needed him to be explicit, if I were to believe any of this was real.

Ethen met my eyes with such an intense, serious expression, all my thoughts stilled. I couldn’t look away. In contrast, his words were achingly tender. “It means in your last life, I loved you fiercely, and I have vowed to love you in this one too. It means you are the person I care about most in the entire world, and I always will, whatever your form or features. When you died, I was devastated, though I knew you were Fated to come back. It was still…a very dark time for me. When I could face it, I came here to wait for Ismara to resurrect you and for you to appear here among all the new Graces in a different body like the last Fated did. And after three agonizing years, you have.” He stopped to swallow, his voice becoming thick with emotion while my heart pounded so hard it felt like it was battering my ribs. “I didn’t recognize you when I first saw you from a distance. Though I knew to expect it, you look so different in your new body. But as soon as you came close, I could feel the bond from our vow. A vow meant to transcend death. And your expressions are all hers.Youare her.”

My mouth was dry, and I realized I was holding my breath. This was too much. I was torn between wanting to step away from the intensity of the moment and so having the space to breathe and the desire to be caught in his stare and his words. Having him look at me this fiercely was intoxicating. “But…I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything before I woke up here.”

The basket of pomegranates. The outstretched hand straining for the closed door.I frowned.

His eyes softened and filled with such sorrow, I bit my lip to halt my own tears. He presented initially as such a cold, strong, hard man, seeing him like this kicked me in the stomach. “I know. I’m so sorry this happened to you. Whatever is going on here in Atos stole you. You lost your body. You lost your memories. And you came back away from your home. But I hope at least some of your memories will return with help. You never came here to Atos in your last life. Maybe back in the Unseen Lands—your home—memories will be triggered. And some of our friends accompanied me here. I can introduce them to you. They might be able to help you remember too.” I stared at him. There was acute pain in the way the corners of his eyes creased. And…was that wariness in the slight upward tilt of his chin? Certainly a gritty determination in his jaw.

I looked away quickly, shocked by how easily I had just read him, as if his expressions were intimately familiar. I closed my eyes, calming myself. I was reading too much into everything.

Ethen continued, slowly and cautiously. “Whatever mortals did to steal souls and create an endless supply of Graces, it corrupted the rebirth of the Fated too. The last Fated was the first one to not appear in the Unseen Lands in the body she died in. She appeared here, in a new body with no memories. It took my father a very long time to find her, over a decade, and…well that’s another different story.” He dragged in a deep breath as if pushing that thread of thought from his mind, and I wondered if something bad had happened to her. Wouldn't she have been his mother? “Whatever secret the mortals perform means your memories are almost erased, and your forms change so you look like a person from Atos. You’re resurrected in the same way as all the other Graces. Yet you’re still my Fated. Because of what my father went through, I knew you would be here. I knew what to look for. And I’ve found you so much quicker.”

I remembered the vague memory of black hair streaming down my back. Was that the woman Ethen had loved? But I wasn’t her. Not in body or mind. I felt no connection to her at all.

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