Page 33 of Mischief Maker
She has a haughty look on her face. “It was past time.”
“But he had tasks left to complete. He wasn’t finished here!”
Lucia lets out a bored sigh. “He was finished. He had been, for a long time.” She peers down at me, and she’s tall, too tall. Unnaturally tall.
My stomach lurches. I knew he had stopped telling me when I used up one of my tasks. Despite that, were they still ticking away?
“And so this was his punishment?” I reach into the vines, searching for him, ripping off leaves and small branches trying to get him back out. The thorns bite into my flesh, but still I yank and pull.
“Stop, mortal.” Lucia’s voice is commanding, final. “He is not there. Not anymore.”
I get up and stagger over to her. I don’t care how tall she is, because I am angry.
“Then where is he?” I ask, my voice growing higher and louder. “Where is Kireth?”
“What do you care?” Lucia scoffs. “You were finished with him anyway.”
Was I? Oh, he had hurt me. He had cut me as deep as one possibly could with his foolishness, his mischievous mistakes. But I don’t know if I can ever truly be finished with the creature who hopped away like a puppy to do his chores, who took me so sweetly every night, and loved me so thoroughly. His devious little nature had carried a heavy price, but was it his fault that he had fallen in love with me, and I with him—and that’s what made me the perfect target? He couldn’t have known, it’s true. He said it, but I didn’t want to believe it, because I needed someone to blame for Mother’s death.
“No. I wasn’t finished. I’ll never be finished.” I grab a fistful of the goddess’s dress in my hands, gripping it tightly, and she blinks down at me in surprise. “Where did you take him?”
“So rude when faced with a god,” she says, shoving me away. “Perhaps the two of you are more alike than I thought.”
I can’t lose Kireth. Not now, after losing Mother. I need him here.
“Take me to him!” I demand.
The goddess tilts her head. “So angry. If you wanted him that much, you should have just said so.” She wags a finger in my face. “But it’s not so easy as just going to him. He is in the realm of forgotten gods now. Oblivion.”
“Then bring him back!” I brush away stinging, angry tears. “I know you can!”
“I cannot. That place is beyond even my reach, unless I want to find myself banished there, too.” But then Lucia pauses and taps her chin. “Perhaps you could retrieve him, though. Mortals are not so afflicted.”
A spark of hope bursts in me. “How?”
I will do it. I need him here, with me, because I love him. Faced with his absence in my life forever, I know the truth. Whatever sins he’s committed in the past, I’ll do anything to bring him back.
“You will have to die.” The goddess smiles sweetly. “Then you could pass through the barrier to the world beyond.”
That spark of hope sizzles into nothing. Dying? That’s the only way to see him again? But I cannot fathom it, not after watching Mother fade away. I can’t go to that dark place and leave the farm behind. And what would be the point if we can never live our lives together?
“It’s not permanent,” Lucia says, watching my face with a smug smile.
Could I possibly trust another god? It might be a trap, and I’d simply die and remain that way.
“How do I know?” I ask, my eyebrows knitting in suspicion. “How do I know I’ll come back to life?”
She shrugs. “I suppose that you don’t. But I promise that if you succeed, if you can surmount the obstacles you’ll face in reaching him, you will return to the world of the living.”
Obstacles? I wonder what trials Lucia has planned for me on the other side.
“Time is ticking,” she says, tapping the air. “Will you take my offer or not?”
Do I have a choice? Kireth saved my farm—he saved me. Now I have to save him.
“Fine,” I say, holding out my hand. “Show me how to get there.”
My last thought as I take the goddess’s hand is that I hope Petal and Rye will be all right if I don’t come back.
