Page 82 of Sequel to the Easter Bunny

I feel the numbness spreading through me. Juun isn’t going to fulfil her end of the bargain.

Drawing me to my feet, Jack moves around me, dressing me, eyes narrowed in concentration.

“Are you in such a hurry to hand me over?”

“I want this over and done with.” He tips my head up, bending down to kiss me. “And I’m not going to lose you.”

“You can’t know that for certain.”

“I’m a god, Lily. If I want something, I will make it happen.”

Swallowing against the ugly feeling in my gut—the odd certainty that he can’t be right, I look over my shoulder to the doorway he’s opened to that blank desert.

“Go.” He nods, looking past me. “I’ll wait with Death and if she calls for him, I won’t let him take you.”

The doorway he’s opened drops me into that hot sand a few feet from Juun, and I don’t dally in the burning brightness.

But the stones of her broken temple are just as hot.

She sits on her throne again, battered and bloodied bodies swaying against the strain.

“You failed.” Juun lifts the cat-ctus from her lap and sets it on the stones at her feet. “You didn’t seduce Cupid back. As you’ve been so adamant about sticking to the specific words I use, it’s only fair that I should do so too.”

She doesn’t care about fairness. “That was an impossible task and you know it. I brought them to you. That should be enough.”

Crossing her legs, Juun lets her foot dangle, bouncing in a way that tells me her smile is one of amusement.

Which makes no sense with her next words.

“Cupid has gone back to the mortal realm and hidden themself even more cleverly than last time. They may now be lost to us forever.”

“That’s not my fault.” The words slip free before I have a chance to catch them, and I wait for Juun to ask me whose fault I think it is.

But silence meets me, and maybe that’s worse.

Juun never cared about getting Cupid back.

She never cared about Ester’s happiness.

This game and the cruel end she’d always planned are all that matter to her.

And I stand no chance against her aims.

A cactus behind Juun bleeds to a vibrant green, a buttery yellow flower sprouting from it, and her shoulders soften…

She softens.

“You can hardly blame the girl for failing at an impossible task.” Ester brushes past me, a transient patch of grass moving wherever she walks.

She grimaces at the tortured men in their various states and then turns her back on them. “Give the girl one more task, something that could be done.”

Juun’s gaze lingers on Ester but it’s still hard when it returns to me. That sinking dread fills my stomach and I close my eyes, waiting for her to call for Death.

“If that is what you think she deserves.” She says, with an irritated sigh. “One more task.”

Ester offers me a smile as though she’s just exonerated herself of any blame in this unending farce.

Slipping her fingers through the god of spring’s, Juun raises her hand to her lips, brushing them across Ester’s dark knuckles.

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