Page 113 of Immortal Sun

I slap her hands away lightly and do it myself.

“The first name…” Her eyes search mine.

I jerk away from her and stand.

“Tell me!” she yells.

“Never look directly into an immortal’s eyes.” I give her my back not wanting to tell her the rest of what I know. “A waste of a sacrifice, your mother.”

A kindness that she finally died after being used reincarnation after reincarnation by Apep to sire more children. It was a necessary killing, allowing her to finally leave this realm for good, allowing her to find peace. Maybe that’s why Cleo is different, because her mother was reincarnated and used so many times, a favorite of the gods because she never cried—no she worshipped, she felt it was her calling each and every lifetime—to bring about abominations for ultimate power—she thought she was saving the world from Chaos without realizing she was sleeping with it every single fucking time.

“You killed my mother?” Tears stream down Cleo’s pale cheeks. Her jet-black hair is still a mess around her shoulders, in tangles and dirty.

“No.” I shake my head. “She stared into chaos in hopes of seeing your father one last time, I told her not to, I warned her on her very last journey to never search for him.”

“So where is she?”

I wasn’t expecting this. I lift a finger and point at the water. “Lost. She doesn’t want to be found—by anyone.”

“Can you save her?”

“Once you’re in the depths of chaos, you can only save yourself, and many lack not just the ability but the drive to do so.”

“But she died in a crash, there was a storm and rain?—”

I burst out laughing. “Humans are so stupid.”

“What?” She jerks away from me as a tear slides down her cheek. “I was at the funeral, there was?—”

“Pink cake? All her favorite foods? Family mourned. There was even a totaled car, a news story. Beautiful obituary, by the way. We’ll make sure we do the same for you. It’s the least we can do.”

I can see when it hits her the way it does everyone else.

Her face pales even further.

Her eyes squeeze shut then spring open again. “Tell me that was real, the funeral?”

I stand in front of her, chest to chest and exhale the words. “I can make you see anything in this world.”

Her eyes widen as she looks around, lifting her hands like she can touch the skyscrapers. “I’m in New York!”

“You’re in a cave,” I say. “And humans are so very easy to manipulate.” I snap my fingers, bringing her back. Again, what a waste of power. “Like I said before…” I lean down so we’re face to face. “You aren’t special, only a means to an end.”

“But why?” she asks. “Why sacrifice people, why me?”

“Is that your question for the day?” I ask. “Think about it very seriously because we have work to do and the last thing I need is to fail at your lessons when we have limited time left.”

She chews her bottom lip. I wonder what it would feel like to bite it again, to taste her very special blood, to lick it off her and find out where she came from, even though we all know to where she will return.

“Yes.” She crosses her arms, making her breasts look delectable.

I roll my eyes and grab one of the blankets then toss it at her. “Cover yourself.”

I sigh and bend over to the dirt beneath my feet then dig my fingers inside it and speak his name. The sound is like a booming guttural yell, causing her to cover her ears with her hands in horror. Tears stream down her face. I never told her calling an immortal’s name aloud was easy especially one so different from myself. The heavenlies are balanced differently than us. To speak is to have knowledge of them, to have knowledge of them is to wield the very power of the creators themselves. “Cassius. Come.”

Lightning strikes across the sky. Tiny pebbles from the very earth I helped create start to rise and fall near my hands before bursting into dust.

And then one large purple feather falls at my fingertips. I grip its sharp edges, my blood spills onto the shards as I slam it into the ground.

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