Page 84 of Sequel to the Easter Bunny

“If you just want the Power,” Jack says, his jaw clenching loudly before he finishes translating. “He will protect you from Juun. Ester could do it, but clearly, she’s too soft.”

Jack stops, but I know there’s more, so I look up at him, away from the too-large god in front of me. “He could give you more power. Carry his child into the human world.”

My hand goes to my stomach and I step back into Jack’s arms.

The next thing Jack says is wooden, dull. A repetition of Heim’s words. “Don’t worry. That babe would live. It would stay here where all the lost descendents of the gods reside.”

I clamp my mouth shut instead of saying “fuck no.”

Part of me weeps for Ari.

If Heim thinks for a moment that I would trade one god for another—for them—they clearly never loved her.

“I don’t want more Power. And I don’t want your child. I want to keep what I have and I will not give it up without a fight. There has to be some kind of compromise.”

Heim stands, and I don’t bother trying to look up at him.

“Just as well,” he says, and this time, I understand him. “It probably would have killed you.”

Jack squeezes my shoulders, holding me to him.

“You have nothing I want.”

“How can you be so callous? Of all the gods, you should be on our side. Juun is trying to do to Jack what they all did to you. Surely you can’t want him to suffer the same fate?”

Heim doesn’t look back at us. “Why should he have what I cannot?”

The floor melts beneath us, and we’re swallowed by the icy water….

No Recourse

We’re spat out again in Babel.

The water hits the ground with a hard smack, and I shiver in the middle of the space, all eyes have turned to us, and I know the dress I’m wearing is plastered to me in a way that leaves nothing hidden from them.

Before I can do anything more than shake the water from my hands, Jack draws me against his warmth. It only serves to prove just how deep the cold has seeped.

I can’t stop shaking as he bundles me up and takes me back to his domain.

He walks past the bower, past his throne, to a copse of trees that sits just out of sight of either. And inside… if I trusted myself to talk, I’d ask if it was a shower.

A canopy of water lilies seems to float upside down, and water pours from them down to a floor of smooth, colourful stones.

All I can do is look at them and shiver as Jack pulls the dress from me like it was made of cobwebs.

My teeth still chatter as he pulls me under the water.

It’s warm, like gentle sunlight through a window on a spring day, and Jack holds me close as it drives away that chill.

But as my body heats, my mind clears, and one thought sticks out among the many.

“I’m stuck here.”

He shakes his head against my neck. “We’ll find a way to get you out.”

Slipping my hands to either side of his face, I draw his head down and look him in the eyes. “Being here with you isn’t the problem.”

“I know. I don’t want you to be a prisoner either.”

---