Page 79 of Marked

“I will take your payment,” Charon says, gnarled fingers gesturing at my gold coin.

Hesitantly, I start to hold it out to him. I pause, my fingers tighten on the coin as a sense of wrong washes over me. I can’t figure out why I’m here or how I came to be here. What happened before I got here? What was I doing?

“Are you giving up then?” a familiar voice asks from behind me.

The same voice but with a slightly different inflection continues, “Pity. I thought you were stronger than that.”

“What a waste,” another comments.

I turn my head and see the triplets standing near me, hands shoved in their pockets. My brow furrows as I take in their words. “Give up?”

“Life became too hard, did it?” The one on the left says with a sigh.

The one in the middle rolls his blood red eyes. “Pathetic.”

“We just assumed you were stronger, Val,” the right one says with a disappointed frown.

I lick my lips nervously. “I don’t—what do you mean?” I ask.

The three of them scoff at the same time, but one asks, “have you already burned it from your memory? All the things that happened in Seth’s apartment?”

“Or rather, Shezmu’s apartment,” another corrects.

My fingers squeeze the coin tightly as memories rush back to me. I tried so hard to drown them and push them away, but Cerberus resurfaced them with that name. All my hard work gone, like it was nothing. Was it too much to ask for a moment’s peace after what I went through? I just wanted it all to stop. At least for a little bit.

I glance around nervously, looking for the Egyptian god that ruined my life. “I-is he here?”

They all tilt their heads at me. “No,” they begin. “Your lover took him back.”

It feels like they sucker punched me in the heart. “Jack?”

“Anubis,” they correct.

“Right,” I mumble and drop my gaze to the sand again. “You knew who he was the whole time, didn’t you? He’s your counterpart.”

“We did, and he is.”

I rub at my chest, trying to relieve the ache. “Did you also know it was Shezmu who was committing the murders?”

“Not exactly. We didn’t know he was the one who released Ammit into your world, but we knew it had to be one of the underworld gods. That is why we wanted you to mark them so we could delve out our own punishment for them disrupting the balance.”

My brows furrow. “Cerberus, I don’t understand that part. Why was I able to mark Shezmu, but not Jack? They were both in the living realm, like you said, so shouldn’t it have worked on both of them?”

“No, not with Anubis,” one explains. “He is our counterpart, as you said. He is the guardian of Duat, Egypt’s underworld. He is there to judge the souls that enter the Hall of Maat. No soul gets past him, living or dead. We are both built into the structure of our underworlds, not simply a soul residing in it.”

I bite at my bottom lip, picking at the skin there. “Kissing him was a relief.” It was soft and sensual but could also be hard and unyielding in the best way. It was perfect. “It didn’t come with any visions.” Cerberus doesn’t reply so I change the subject. “So, anyways, I take it Jack went back to Egypt’s realm.”

Again, they respond as one. “He did.”

“But he had quite the tongue lashing for us,” a triplet provides. When I snap my head up, I see it’s the one on the left who has spoken. “He believes we took advantage of you at such a young, impressionable age.”

My brows knit together even as a warmth spreads along my chest. “He yelled at you for making me a hellhound?” Why would Jack do that after abandoning me? What would be the point?

“Yes,” the middle one grumbles. “As if we forced you to make the choice.”

I loosen my fingers, letting the coin lay flat against my palm as I stare down at it. “You didn’t force me,” I whisper. “But the alternative wasn’t really a choice, was it? What fourteen-year-old would choose to die, Cerberus?”

There’s a beat of silence before he answers. “One that was weak,” one starts.

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