Page 24 of For the Love of the Gods

Rose

“What are you doing?”

My foot slipped in surprise and I fell to my hands and knees, the rough rock at the top of the border wall cutting into my skin. I might have tipped over the wall and gone crashing into the ground had two broad hands not wrapped around my upper arm and calf.

I turned my head to the left to find Dominic staring at me with a look of confusion. I shrugged his hands off as I turned to sit on my butt and brush off the dust on my clothing.

At this height, my knees were level with his shoulders. He took a step back, but kept his hands planted on either side of my legs, and lifted those soul-stealing eyes to my face.

This close, I could see the detail of his stubble, lighter gold mixed in with the brown. The matching pattern of color in his hair, pushed off his forehead and held in messy strands.

“You scared me,” I said, wiping my hands together and fighting a wince at the sting. I didn’t break my skin, but there were angry red welts popping up on the heel of my hand.

“One: I’m surprised you can get scared. Two: what are you doing?” Dominic asked again, this time with his eyebrows drawn together in anger.

“One: sure can, you ass. Two: walking.” It wasn’t a lie. Iwaswalking along the top of the stone wall covering the southern border of Dominic’s—and mine now, I guessed—home.

The discovery of the wilted flowers this morning sent panic coursing through my veins. I hadn’t sat down since for any reason but to eat, covering as many sections of our territory as I could. The west bank of the Styx, where my home used to sit, now lay empty. The Asphodel Meadows had filled the open space, now home to wandering souls who lived an ultimately neutral life.

With something close to meditation, I could test the health of my power, searching for weak spots. When they were there, it felt like the sensation of a hollow stomach, deprived of food for too many hours. It happened when souls got restless or the magic in the gates on the Upperworld side of Purgatory got overwhelmed by the amount of foot traffic.

But in the blank space where my house used to sit there wasnothingwrong. I wasn’t exactly heartbroken to have lost it. It was my father’s house, my mother’s as well. I’d made it comfortable by sheer survival instinct.

The Fates were kind to me it seemed, as the parts of the house I did like seemed to mesh into Dominic’s. My bedroom, for one, was untouched.

But that was overshadowed by the frustration of knowing something was wrong but not being able to find it. It was why I was here.Walking. At an hour before midnight praying I’d find an explanation.

“Walking to where?” Dominic’s question brought me back to focus.

I opened my mouth to say spew an evasion, but Dominic cut me off.

“And don’t try to make up an excuse. It’s far too late for that.”

I took a steadying breath, lest I knee him in the throat. I was perched at the right height for it. “I was checking the borders.”

Dominic lifted an eyebrow, in a silent command to keep talking. My stubborn streak reared, but this was the one instance where I would set aside my refusal to let him win.

“It would be silly to think merging our houses would go off without a hitch,” I said. And when it was clear that I was going to continue talking, Dominic grabbed my hand and turned it palm up, so he could look at the scrapes on my skin.

I swallowed, trying to focus on the explanation I was giving instead of the way Dominic’s thumb was resting on my wrist. “I found some dead flowers near the gates. Dead, like the life was pulled out of them. The land where my house was is just the Fields now. And there’s nothing wrong as far as I can tell. But I figured it might be worse here, since power was added.”

Dominic fell silent for a moment, his head tilted down towards my hands. His thumb caressed the inside of my wrist once, twice, sending twin tenses through my stomach. He shook his head, as if to physically throw out a thought, and then unceremoniously dropped my hands and plucked me off the wall.

Dominic’s hands rested on my waist, taking up more room on my body than I cared to acknowledge.

“Well, let’s get on with it then,” he said, striding off along the wall. As he moved away from me, his right hand lingered ever so slightly, pulling and dragging across the thin fabric covering my hip.

I started after him, if only saving myself from another…touch from him. I was jumpy and nervous, still wound tight from our argument this morning and my thoughts had been twinged with something dark all afternoon.

His silence as we walked, both obviously doing the internal checks I had been completing all day, only worsened it. Dominic must have been losing a battle with curiosity, because after a minute, he spoke like the words personally offended him. “You know how to check your power.”

It wasn’t a question, it was a statement. One that I immediately took offense to.

Knowing the health of your power was something so basic, so intimate to being a god and for him to think that I would be so ignorant of that…

It reminded me exactly what he thought of me. And brought up the familiar urge to pick through every interaction we had before Pine’s death that led him, and many others, to so easily believe that of me.

“Shocking, I know,” I deadpanned.

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