Page 154 of Gods of the Sea

“I will wait for you to return to us when it’s time,” he continued. “But I need you to trust me, Astraea.”

I stopped speaking, realizing that he wasn’t going to tell me anything more. I nodded, understanding it as his command.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” I said, my heart slowly breaking. “I will return to the human world.”

He brought me in for another embrace, his warm arms telling me without words that he didn’t want me to leave either.

“No matter where you go,” he said softly, “I will wait here for you to return to me. You’ll always be mine, Astraea. And I never abandon my own.”

CHAPTER 48—RETURN

“So are you two siblings?”

Adrian looked between Luc and me as he leaned against his crutch. There had been awkward silence between the three of us as we waited for Jacques to come to the docks, and apparently this was the question Adrian decided to use to break the ice.

Luc and I instantly cringed.

“No,” I replied, scrunching my nose.

“That would be like saying a desk and a chair are related because they both came from the same carpenter,” Luc added. “King Melchior created everything, but the spiritual world doesn’t have same family dynamics as the human world.”

“But you can marry, yes?” Adrian asked.

Luc raised an eyebrow at him.

“I heard it somewhere,” Adrian said with a smirk.

I looked down at the ring finger on my left hand, remembering the ring Renaldo gave me so many lifetimes ago. My heart sank a bit, remembering that he was gone, and that I was still betrothed to Jacques’s father as a human.

“We can,” I said, “but we don’t.”

“Our feelings come second to our duties,” Luc added. “It’s in our design.”

“And they can’t go against it, no matter how much they want to,” a third voice cut in.

Jacques approached us.

“Sirens are controlled by duty,” Jacques continued, “in the same ways that demons are controlled by desire and humans are controlled by emotion. That’s why a siren going against their duties is so harshly punished.”

“Seems rather unfair to be at the mercy of responsibility,” Adrian said.

“Is it?” Jacques asked. “Humans have created both passion and crimes of passion. They’re completely chaotic, inside and out, for better or worse. Without the judgment of the sirens, you would devour yourselves.”

“And without the Judges?” Adrian asked, his eyes glossing over as he said it.

Jacques paused before answering.

“The Judges keep the balance,” Jacques said, “so none of the king’s creatures are lost to our own chaos. Your brother will be a strong enough Judge once I can break him of his self-hatred.”

Adrian chuckled bitterly. “I think he’s had that his whole life. Is it possible to cure him of it?”

Jacques looked down at his hand as he stretched it and clenched it slowly.

“It’s normal for all Judges,” he replied, his voice softer than normal. “Because of our demons, we can see the evil in ourselves easily.”

Jacques met my eyes and cleared his throat.

“It’s time to go,” he said flatly. “We need to go now if we want to get there before sunset. Luc, are you ready?”

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