The Game of Gods Box Set

by Lana Pecherczyk

  “So, it’s true,” Cash said abruptly and stepped into the room. “You’re back.”

  He let the door close softly behind him and flicked the light switch, illuminating the room further. His hard expression could have been chiseled out of rock, as was the rest of his tense body. He wore the same clothes he’d had on when I’d left him: a black t-shirt, leather jacket, and jeans. His hair was ruffled, his jaw had stubble, and he looked all together scruffy and delicious. When his gaze caught on me, indecipherable emotions ghosted his features. He caught sight of the heap of clothes on the floor and made a choked sound. “Is Marc still here?”

  “No,” I said, recoiling, catching his drift. “God, no. I kicked him out the second I returned.”

  He relaxed and exhaled. “Good.”

  “Did you honestly think”—I glanced at Marc’s clothes and flinched—“that… I don’t know, what did you think? Seriously?”

  “What did I think?” His deep voice rose to fill the room. “You drink the wine for our wedding, you share it with Marc”—he scrunched up his nose—“get drunk on Ambrosia, leave us all wrapped up in vines and then leave without an explanation. You didn’t tell anyone where you were going. We had to find out from the television that you were in Australia.”

  “Don’t you dare lecture me on keeping secrets.”

  “That’s different and you know it.”

  “Look, I am sorry about the wine, truly I am. I can promise you I deeply regret drinking it without you. But I’m not sorry I got drunk. I’m not sorry I took a chance and trusted my instincts. Marc was there when I needed a friend and you were off evading and keeping secrets. I didn’t tell you where I went because you would’ve stopped me. You already demonstrated I wasn’t to be trusted, multiple times. You spoke over my head to the other Watchers. I didn’t want the humans harmed. I said to leave them alone and you ignored me.”

  “You’re right. I did ignore you because you were drunk. Intoxicated.”

  “See, that’s the thing. I wasn’t anymore. As soon as I was attacked, I pushed it all from my system. I can do that, remember? But no one spared a second to listen to me. They all thought I was still the broken little girl who couldn’t think for herself. In come the miraculous all powerful gods to save the day and completely override my decisions. The second I said I was going to leave, your mouth was already open with whatever retort I knew was waiting on your tongue. I could tell from the look on your face that you were going to say something derogative, so I didn’t explain, I just left.”

  “You know what I was going to say?” He made it to my side in two swift strides, gaze burning into me, hands gripping my shoulders. He opened his mouth to speak, searched my face with his eyes, then suddenly let go and stepped back. He picked up my coat from the floor and threw it on the bed then stalked to the closet, speaking over his shoulder as he went. “Get dressed. There’s something I need to show you.”

  I stared at my jacket in disbelief. Just like that, he expected me to drop everything and go with him. Never mind that he interrupted my much needed sleep. Never mind that we’d been having a serious conversation.

  “No,” I said.

  He pivoted from the closet, eyebrows raised in disbelief. “What?”

  “I said, no. I’m not going anywhere.”

  He ignored me and fished out a pair of snow boots and replaced the sneakers he had on. Then he got out a pair for me. I caught his lips lifting on one side in a smirk.

  Mocking me?

  My vision went red as anger consumed me. I had to draw in slow and steady breaths to calm my furious heart. When my words came out, they were through clenched teeth. “I’m not going with you, Cash. Just because you’re good at ordering people around, doesn’t mean I’m going to jump in line like the rest of them. If you want our relationship to survive, then you have to start treating me as an equal.”

  His small smile split to a full faced grin he had to tamper down. He nodded silently as he exposed my feet from the blankets to tug my boots on. He draped the jacket around my shoulders then tugged me in close. The proximity of our faces made his amusement impossible to miss. Then his mood changed. He seemed to look inward and something else flickered in his eyes. Something that made me reach out and rest a palm on his cheek.

  “Why did you smile?” I whispered.

  “Because you’re back. You came back to me.”

  I frowned and for the first time understood what my disappearance would’ve been like for him. We’d been separated too much over our lifetimes. I nearly died a few months ago. And he’d died many times. I sighed. “After everything we’ve been through, did you really think I’d run away? Whatever this is, we can work through it.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” He shook his head and lowered it. When he lifted his gaze, my breath caught. “Roo, when you took control last night, stopped things from getting out of hand, and said the things you did, you were a different person. I saw life in your eyes. You knew exactly what you wanted. You were confident and passionate. For the first time since you converted, I knew in that instant that you were back. Do you understand me? The woman who dreamed big enough to end war in the Empire was alive again.”

  “But, I still don’t remember, Cash.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Do you know what I was going to say before you left yesterday?” Butterflies in my stomach as he leaned closer, intensifying his hold. “I was going to tell you my true name.”

  The world stood still.

  “You were?”

  “So you could call me if you needed me and I would find you, no matter where you were. I should have told you as soon as I remembered after my body converted to Seraphim, but I wanted to save it for a special time.”

  “Oh.” Heat washed my cheeks as the enormity of what he said soaked in. That meant he trusted me, but… “So why did you ignore me in front of the others?”

  He pulled away with a frown. “I shouldn’t have done that. Can you please get dressed so I can show you something? We can talk more there.”

  I opened my mouth to criticize, then stopped short. He asked. He didn’t order. “Okay, but I need to get rid of the vines, and add more layers. A jacket and boots won’t cut it.”

  Chapter 31

  We followed a narrow path out of the property and into the surrounding forest, heading into the snow covered mountain area. Twenty minutes later and we were huffing and puffing steam from our mouths as we trudged up a slope. It hadn’t been a heavy fall, yet drifts of fluffy clouds were plentiful and I had the urge to make snowballs. I was just about to open my mouth to ask how much further, when Cash pulled up short near a frozen river bed.

  “It froze recently which means we can see something normally hidden,” he said and turned to me. Under the light of the moon, the soft shadows of his face and sparkle in his eyes was just visible. When he looked away, I followed his gaze to see little blue lights twinkling along a pathway that led alongside the riverbank to a cliff with a frozen waterfall. The water had formed a long, languid and shiny slope. Blue and white crystallized reflections sparkled like a spilled diamond necklace.

  “Wow,” I said.

  “It’s beautiful, but not what I was going to show you. Now that it’s frozen, it’s safe to pass. Come on.” He took my gloved hand in his and tugged me further up the path, toward the waterfall. The lights guided us around and behind the frozen wall to a passageway that led into a cave opening. The air was warmer inside and I could hear the drip of water echo in the distance.

  I looked at Cash questioningly.

  He shot me a cryptic smirk and kept walking. His smugness infuriated me. We’d hardly said a word the entire journey and I was beginning to lose my patience. We’d been in the middle of a heated and important conversation that I wanted to continue, but I also wanted him to trust me, so I had to trust him. Stifling my irritation, I focused on the changing temperature. The more we walked, the warmer it got. The sweet but slightly moldy smell also got stronger. I peeled off my
gloves and unzipped my jacket. We followed blue fairy lights until we rounded a corner to a large cavern with a natural stalactite ceiling. Carved limestone stairs led down and plateaued to a smooth, polished ledge leading into a turquoise pool brimming with steaming water. A strip of underwater lights was the only source of illumination in the room. I couldn’t tell if the three mini waterfalls dribbling out of rock formations on the far wall were man-made additions or a natural occurrence. Whatever the case, the slow steady sound of water filtering into the pool was incredibly relaxing.

  “Okay, I take back my first wow and up the ante with a whoa. This is incredible.” My voice sounded hollow.

  “It’s a hot spring,” Cash revealed and stepped down to land on the bottom platform. He raised his hand for me to hold and helped me down. His cheeks flushed the same pink as the tip of his nose. It almost looked like a blush. “It’s said to have healing and restorative powers. You exerted yourself in Margaret River. Plus, I know you’re always cold here, and thought you might enjoy it. It’s a bit of a hike, but worth it if we need some privacy.”

  Privacy? Just what kind of thing was he planning to show me?

  I cleared my throat and pretended not to pick up his serious seduction vibes.

  “Is this a discovery from one of your past-life memories?” I asked, gazing in wonder at the long limestone walls that seemed to be made of a similar pattern as the waterfall outside. A natural energy thrummed off the walls. It came at me through a frequency that instantly pierced my tension and soothed, begging me to drop everything and float away.

  “No,” he laughed sheepishly. “This is all Jacine, I’m afraid. There’s hundreds of hot springs in this country and this one is her little secret.”

  I crouched low and dipped my fingers in the warm water. “It’s the perfect temperature.”

  When I stood, Cash’s expression had turned serious. He opened his mouth to say something but I held up my hand, cutting him off. “Look. I have to stop you right there. I know what you’re going to say.”

  His jaw clamped shut. “You do, do you?”

  “Yes I do.”

  “Alright, then.” He positioned himself on the edge of a step and settled in with a smirk. “Let’s hear it.”

  I shot a derisive glance back and gestured to our surrounds. “I think it’s pretty clear. You’ve brought me to a secluded hot spring. You want to get in my pants but, to be honest, I’m still miffed over our lack of synchronicity and your total disregard for my feelings. I got news for you, buddy. We need to talk about our feelings from time to time. We can’t have a lasting relationship without honesty and trust.”

  “You done?”

  I put my hands on my hips and stared down at him, a rebuttal on my tongue. “Yes. Fine. I’m done.”

  “Good. I completely agree.” He peeled off his jacket and shed the boots.

  “You do?”

  “Absolutely. While, I’m all for ‘getting in your pants’, I brought you here because there’s some things I need to say and I’d rather do that without a hundred other people listening in. The castle walls have ears and I’m not sure who I can trust.” The humor hadn’t left his eyes as he studied me until his words sank in.

  “Oh,” I said. So, he didn’t bring me here to get in my pants. Well, that was disappointing. I guessed I secretly wanted him to. I hugged my jacket to myself, and then something he said sparked a memory. The darkling in Margaret River told me Urser had someone working for him. Cash must know. I gave a more meaningful, “Oh. You’re talking about the traitor we have feeding information to Urser. A darkling mentioned something about a spy before I ended his game.”

  Instantly, his humor dropped and the cold, calculated soldier was back. “Come and sit down. I’ll get us a drink.”

  “A drink?” I asked as I lowered myself to his step and perched on an edge. We were still a few feet from the water.

  “Yeah.” He moved to a dark corner of the cave that I hadn’t noticed on entry and disappeared down a tunnel. His voice echoed back. “There’s another room back here that's always stocked with supplies.”

  I discarded my jacket and used its softness to pad the step underneath me so my seat was comfortable. My T-shirt already stuck to my skin from the humidity. My feet were hot in my boots, so I took them off to leave my feet bare. When Cash returned with two ice-cold glass bottles of water, I guzzled mine down greedily.

  He came and sat next to me. “What you did in Margaret River seems to have worked.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Darklings from around the world have withdrawn from their locations to whereabouts unknown.”

  I hadn’t thought about repercussions around the world. “That’s a good thing, right?”

  “Guess we’ll just have to wait and see. They left without word, without preamble and without any indication of their reaction to your purge. It all appeared too convenient for my liking and when you consider the retreating darklings somehow managed to evade our trackers, there’s something fishy going on.”

  “They evaded all of your trackers? How is that possible?”

  “I don’t know. I took all the necessary precautions—I had a different House representative at each location, hoping that if one of them was a spy for Urser, they couldn’t all be, and we would trace at least one group.”

  “But they’re all gone?”

  Cash nodded, took a deep swig of his drink, then a deep breath. “The Tribunal are constantly bickering and sometimes I’m not sure if they want to stop Urser, or if they want to overrun the planet and rule. Tell me more about the spy.”

  “After I purged the darkling, he remembered being woken in the middle of the night and told to go to the Libertine Ballroom. The entire Ludus population had been woken and herded there. They thought maybe it was a surprise trial, but when they got there, well… you know what happened next.”

  A deep line etched between Cash’s brows. “What Ludus was that?”

  “American, I assume.” I chewed my lip. “He was from Astraia House, so he could access his memories from when he was under the darkling influence. That’s when he remembered someone on the inside feeding Urser information.”

  Cash cursed. “Zebedee. It has to be.”

  “Are you sure? Zebedee seemed pretty cut up about his House being demolished.”

  “No, it makes sense. He’s been the biggest voice against you here. He’s called for you to abdicate and for the Tribunal to takeover, many times. It has to be him.”

  “I don’t know, Cash. Thurstan and Cato don’t like me either. In fact, no one really likes me. It could even be Jesop or Lena. Don’t get me wrong, there’s no love lost between Zebedee and me, but I hate to assume. We should just ask him.”

  “Ask him? Are you joking?”

  “No I’m not. I can monitor his aura, see if he’s lying.”

  “He’ll see us coming a mile away.”

  “Not if I ask him alone.”

  “No. Out of the question.”

  I stood up and put my hands on my hips. “See, this is the kind of thing I was talking about earlier. You don’t give me a chance to do my bit. You don’t listen to my suggestions.”

  He got up and stood in front of me until all I could see was a face full of brooding, male entitlement. “I’m listening. But I don’t hear a good suggestion. Do you know what Zebedee’s ability is?”

  “Nothing I can’t handle, I’m sure.”

  “He’s a pyro.”

  “I can create fire too.”

  “You can’t create fire. You cause flammable objects to burn. He can incinerate the air if he chose to do so. He’s a thousand times more skilled at controlling fire than you. Roo, you’re not invincible.”

  He made a frustrated sound and pivoted away to pace the length of the pool. When he came back, he pointed his finger in my face. “You want to talk about not listening? You keep going off half-cocked before getting the full story. You’re setting yourself up for disaster with Zebedee before d
oing enough reconnaissance.”

  I captured his finger in my hand. “Going off half-cocked? Look who’s pointing the finger. Literally! You’re the one who turned a Player into ash without a second thought.”

  He yanked on his finger, but I didn’t let go and ended up colliding with his solid chest. He caged me in with his other hand and a pained look swam across his eyes. “Can’t you see I’m trying to protect you?”

  His mouth slammed into mine and his emotional floodgates opened. In one split second, I felt everything his ability shielded, and then some. His fear, his love, his desperation… his want. There were so many feelings tearing into my subconscious that I couldn’t tell which were his and which were mine, but I didn’t care. He was never good at explaining his feelings, but this… this I understood. He ferociously poured all of his longing and all of his need into that kiss. I gripped his scruffy hair and tugged him closer, as if that were possible. My response was all the permission he needed to slip his hands under my top, brand my skin with his burning fingers, and blaze a trail upward until he lifted my shirt clear over my head before dropping it to the floor.

  Naked from the waist up, I stood there marveling at how he looked back at me with such hunger and desire that I was left speechless and paralyzed. It was the same way I felt. Then we were back in each other’s arms.

  “I’m sorry.” He kissed my neck.

  “I’m sorry too.”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you too.” My head tilted back as he continued to savor my neck. Pleasure rippled through my body, eliciting a moan from my lips. He responded with a deep masculine sound of approval that rumbled from his throat and tugged my body flush against his. He nipped my ear, breath hot on my neck. “If you want to take the lead, then you take the lead.”

  “Say the what now?” I pushed his chest until he stumbled back, confused.

  “I meant, with this Urser business. You can take the lead, and I’ll do whatever you want. I don’t want to fight.”