I let out a breath. Immortals were fucking nuts. “Okay, so… it’s been, like, literally millions of years in some cases, right?”
Volodhal nodded.
“Okay. Don’t you think, maybe, it’s possible that Odin,” (I couldn’t believe I was saying it, despite the deities that lived in my own world), “had kind of let go of this grudge after all these years?”
He gave me a look of irritated disbelief, his eyebrows drawn together, his gaze piercing me. “In the last five hundred of your years, four more realms have fallen to Odin’s wrath. He is currently trying to break his way through the barrier Nyx created and do the same to my world. So, no, Mollis Eth-Hades. I do not think he’s ‘let it go.’” He looked out the window again. “Once he destroys my world, he’s coming for yours. We were the realm created to be the last line of defense for your own. She may have loved me, but Nyx had special affection for your realm,” he said quietly. “She gave the beings we created together beauty and intelligence beyond belief, but she gave your people curiosity and freedom. My children here in Volod are all born knowing exactly what they are going to be. Yours have the freedom of making their own lives, for better or for worse. Yours study questions such as what it is to be alive, or how one knows that they actually exist, how one separates their thoughts from their reality… my people never bother to consider these questions. We have no reason to.”
“Where is Nyx?”
He furrowed his brow. “I understand she is sleeping in the Old Nether. Yes?”
“Oh, don’t pull that bullshit with me. And here I was just starting to believe you,” I said, stalking to the other side of the room, needing to be away from him.
“What are you talking about?”
“Your scouts took Persephone from her prison and dropped her on my doorstep. She was imprisoned in the Old Nether. Nyx took her there to keep her away from my world, and then Nyx slept.”
The confusion in his eyes had my stomach twisting. “My scouts did no such thing. We cannot reach the Old Nether.”
“Bullshit,” I shot back. “She described your scouts exactly. She said there was a crash and loud voices and saw a big armored being struggling with Nyx, and then Persephone was knocked out, and the next thing she knew, she was outside the Netherwoods, where my palace is.”
He stared at me. “Not mine,” he repeated. “If I could get there, don’t you think I would have gone to Nyx myself and gotten her to help us with the Asgardian problem?”
“She saw them. She wasn’t lying. I’d know.”
Volodhal was visibly shaken, and that, more than anything, freaked me out. “This Persephone is among your party here?”
I nodded. He made a quick movement with his jaw and then spoke in a low voice. I watched him, and when he noticed my observation, he said, “I was communicating with my guards, asking them to bring Persephone to us.”
“How?”
“We all have a small implant that, when triggered, allows us to speak directly to one another. Not telepathy, not like you, Mollis Eth-Hades, but an advanced version of your human communications systems.”
“Heh. Nifty,” I said, trying to cover up my shakiness with sarcasm. From the way Volodhal was looking at me, it wasn’t working.
“We will get to the bottom of this,” he promised. “I swear to you on my life that those were not my scouts. If we could find Nyx, it would make all of our lives much simpler.”
“She does have a habit of taking herself away at the worst of times,” I admitted, and he nodded.
Something occurred to me, one of the millions of questions I’d wanted to ask him. “How do I understand you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I assume you’re speaking your own language, not mine. Do you have some kind of translator?”
He smiled, and I hated the way my body warmed at the sight of it. It felt far too close to infatuation, and it made me want to puke. “We learned English when we found out it was your chosen language.”
I shook my head. “Just like that?”
“You may have noticed that my people possess above-average intelligence.”
“And yet, it’s not enough,” I said, looking back out the window. His people were starving and dying, despite their advanced technology and ability to think of innovative ideas to feed them.
“No. It is not.”
“What about space travel? Have you tried colonizing other planets in your solar system?”
“There are no other planets. There is the sun, and stars, and us. We started searching the stars millennia ago. There is nothing.”
“I’m sorry.” I thought it over for a moment, trying to focus on all of the questions I had, rather than what I felt between the two of us. “It must be lonely. We spend a lot of time dreaming about what’s out there.”
He smiled. “Well, to be fair, we knew we were not alone. I knew you were there. I knew of the other realms. I think I would prefer loneliness.”
A light bell sound rang, and a moment later, one of the Volod guards arrived with Persephone. Volodhal gave her a nod, and then looked at me.
“Persephone. Tell me again how you found yourself outside the Netherwoods,” I said.
She looked from me to Volodhal. “This seems cozy. Your demon husband will not be happy to learn that you two seem to be getting along so well.”
“Answer the question before I start breaking things. Starting with your face,” I said. To his credit, Volodhal had no reaction at all to me threatening a fellow immortal. He merely stood behind my right shoulder, arms crossed over his chest, waiting for Persephone to start talking.
In that way, he was very much like Nain. He trusted my instincts.
I pushed that thought far, far away. This being was nothing like my husband. I put my focus back on Persephone, all too aware of Volodhal behind me. My awareness of every breath he took, of the warmth of his body, the solid strength of him… all of it made me want to run from the room.
“Tell me,” I said.
“I was in my cell in Nyx’s fortress in the Old Nether. She’s cleaned it up quite a bit, and the area immediately around her fortress and palace are quite nice, actually. Not that I saw them much,” she added.
“Where is your cell?” Volodhal asked.
“On the bottom floor. Dungeon. No windows,” Persephone said angrily, and I understood. As a nature goddess, that sense of being cut off from life outside was an additional, painful, punishment.
“What happened the day you showed up in my world again?” I asked.
“I was in my cell, and I heard loud voices, crashes, and thumps from above. Then, there was silence. A short while later, those things appeared outside my cell. They removed the door as if it was made of paper, then they dragged me to the main floor, where I saw a large armored…being… struggling with Nyx. The being said something to the armored things, and one of them touched me and the next thing I knew, I was waking up in Detroit, outside the barrier of the Netherwoods.”
“Describe the beings who took you,” Volodhal said.
“I don’t have to. You’ve got hundreds of them, apparently,” Persephone said.
“Humor us,” I murmured.
She rolled her eyes. “They were around three feet tall, clad completely in greenish armor. They did not speak.”
“Their armor was the same as what you see on the beings here, the scouts who escorted you all to me?” Volodhal asked.
“Escorted us? That’s an interesting way of saying ‘tried to kill us and then took us captive,’” Persephone sneered.
“Answer the question,” I said. I was looking at her. Really looking at her, and I saw the events play out exactly as she’d said.
Persephone sighed. “Yes, they looked like the scouts who escorted us here.”
“You never saw them without their armor on, though,” I murmured as I sifted through her memories.
“No,” she said.
I remembered another thing I’d wanted to ask Volodhal. “
The metal your scouts’ armor is made of… we found a dagger made of the same metal several years ago. It nearly killed one of us.”
Volodhal blanched. “That is not possible.”
“It was after she,” I gestured to Persephone, “created the breach by being a fucking lunatic and using dark magic and causing death and destruction in our world.”
“How many years ago was this?” Volodhal asked quietly.
“We found the dagger twelve years ago. It was wielded by a rogue vampire.”
Volodhal closed his eyes. Then he looked at Persephone. “And Nyx? When was the last time you saw her?”
“The day she threw me into the dungeon, so, about thirteen years ago, I would guess. And then that brief moment before I was rendered unconscious.”
Volodhal studied her for a moment. “Why is she not dead?” he asked me. “I would have killed her for bringing that kind of destruction to my world.”
“I would have, too, but Nyx took her first. I expected Nyx to destroy her—”
“Nyx doesn’t destroy,” Volodhal said, and I blew out a frustrated breath.
“Yes, I see that now,” I told him. “At the time, I never even considered for a second that Persephone would make her way back to us.”
“Why didn’t you kill her? Surely she deserves it.”
“At first, I needed to know what she knew. And then…. I figured maybe Nyx kept her alive for a reason.”
Volodhal shook his head. “Nyx kept her alive because Nyx doesn’t kill. She wanted her kept fully away from your world, and if she took her rather than having you kill her, it was because she thought it was something you should not have had to deal with.” He paused. “Her actions resulted in that being who looks like your father?”
I nodded. “He is not my father.”
Volodhal glanced at the guards. “Take her back to her room,” he said, and they immediately left with Persephone. He turned back to me when we were alone again. “This dagger. What did it look like?”
I described it for him the best I could. The size, the general shape of it. What it had done to the one who’d been stabbed by it. I didn’t tell him who that had been, not wanting him to have more information than he needed.
“It was your mate who was injured by it, no?” Volodhal asked. By now, we’d seated ourselves in chairs near the window. He was still too close, my body still responding to him in ways I hated, but we needed to work together. I needed to convince him to let me go home.
I didn’t answer, and he shook his head. “I ask, because that particular material would have had the same effect on any of us,” he said quietly. I stared at him, and he met my gaze. “Surely you suspect it already, that he is not what you think he is.”
I felt my heart pounding, my palms growing clammy at what he was suggesting, what he was affirming. I’d suspected, from the way Nain had changed when we’d come into contact with the Volod homeworld.
It was too much to even think about, and this was a conversation I needed to have with Nain, not with Volodhal.
I looked away, and after a moment, he continued. “The metal the dagger is made from, the metal our scouts wear, is only found in the Asgardian realm. Before Nyx trapped us here, we were able to freely mine it. Once, our buildings were made from it, since it is very nearly indestructible. But as we evolved and learned, we tore the old buildings down and used more malleable materials. We developed a method for working with the hata—”
“Hata?” I repeated.
“It is a word the Asgardians use. The metal is hateful to work with. Difficult, but worth it. As I was saying, once we figured out how to work with the hata, we were able to turn it into an armor that was light and nearly indestructible, except, of course, when faced with the weapons of a being of power, like you and your companions. The point of the armor, however, is primarily the weapons it contains.”
“Yes. We have some familiarity with that. It killed one of us after we removed it from one of your scouts.”
“Demeter. Yes. I am sorry about that. The armor has defensive mechanisms installed in it for cases just like that, and we received reports from its internal diagnostics just after it went off, alerting us to loss of life. The other scouts brought back word that she’d passed. Again, I apologize.”
I sighed. “Okay.” It was all too much, and being with him was exhausting. “So your people fashioned the dagger, then?”
“That’s what I was trying to say. We were only able to get through the breach a year ago, our time. So a little over a year ago, your time.”
I stared at him. We’d gotten the dagger much longer ago than that. “No.”
“Yes. And we don’t make blades that look like what you’ve described. We don’t bother with blades at all.” I realized I’d not seen any of them with any type of bladed weapon. It was all the little laser gun things, plus whatever weapons the armor had in it. Either way, not blades.
“So, you’re saying that the Asgardians are already through? Or another type of being who has access to Asgardian metal?”
“A race of beings that uses Asgardian metal, but knows our armor designs well enough to replicate it… I am sorry, Mollis Eth-Hades, but if I had to wager, I would bet that the Asgardians have found a way around our world and into yours. I do not known how—”
“Via the Old Nether, maybe,” I murmured. “It’s its own little realm, generally cut off from us, except when Nyx opens it. It’s mostly deserted. It would be easy for something to hide there among the monsters.”
“And does Nyx open it often?”
I shook my head. “No. But the last time she did, it was apparently for quite a while, to let my friend Eunomia through so she could fight Persephone’s Undead, and then so E could bring Persephone to her.”
Volodhal nodded thoughtfully. “They could have snuck through then. If the Nether is mostly overrun, Nyx likely wasn’t overly concerned with its borders, especially since she was the only one who could breach the barrier between it and your Earthly realm.”
“But then how did Persephone get back into our world after those things knocked her out? Only Nyx can open the— oh, shit.”
“You’ve reached the same conclusion I have,” Volodhal said.
“The Asgardians have Nyx,” I whispered.
“In your parlance, Lady Eth-Hades, we are all well and truly fucked.”
Chapter Sixteen
When I got back to our suite, it was to find Nain, Heph, Brennan, and Athena gathered in one corner of the sitting room, huddled around a small table there. E sat on one of the chairs near the fireplace, sharpening one of her daggers.
“Where’s Persephone?” I asked as I sank onto the nearby sofa.
“In her room,” E said. She looked up at me, meeting my eyes. “Demon girl, it is taking every bit of my considerable restraint not to kill her.”
“She tends to have that effect on people,” I agreed. “Hades?”
“In his room. He does his best to ignore all of us.”
I nodded. I watched the group near the windows. More specifically, I watched my mate. His shoulders were bunched with tension. Being here, as stressful as it was for the rest of us, was worse for him, and after my discussion with Volodhal, I had an inkling of why.
With the world on the brink of annihilation, I was more concerned about my husband. I didn’t know if that made me a good leader or a shitty one. Probably the latter.
“They are trying to plan our escape,” E murmured.
“It won’t work.”
“They know. It makes them feel better to feel like they are doing something.”
As if he could feel me watching him, Nain turned around and looked at me, then said a few words to Brennan and stood up. I got up, patted E’s arm, then went to my room, Nain on my heels.
“How did it go?” he asked the second the door was closed.
I pulled him over to the large chair in the corner of our room and pushed him down onto it, then climbed onto his lap, wrapping my arms an
d legs around his body, burying my face in the side of his neck.
“That bad, huh?” he asked as he wrapped his arms around me. I nodded. “Did that Volod fucker do something to you?” he growled.
“No. He was very respectful,” I said, my words muffled, my face still resting against his neck. I quietly relayed everything we’d talked about, and felt Nain get progressively more tense the more I talked. When I’d finished, we sat in silence, and he ran his hands up and down my back.
“I need to convince him to let us go home,” I said. “The Asgardians are already there. They could be destroying it all right now. And Volodhal knows that.”
“He won’t let you go,” Nain said. I sat up and studied him. He met my gaze. “Come on, Molls. We both know he won’t.”
“He’ll have to. We have to fight these things back—”
“Molls. The Volod got through. They’re already in our realm, probably fighting the Asgardians.”
I shook my head. “Not yet, they’re not.”
“What the fuck are they waiting for?” Nain muttered.
The answer hit us both at the same time. “Bonding,” I said. “He wants an alliance that he knows I won’t break. The Volod, advanced as they are, can’t take on the Asgardians alone. But between their tech and our powers, we might have a chance of fighting them back together.”
“Maybe,” Nain said slowly. “If what he says is true, Nyx hid our world from them for a reason, though. She’d know whether we were capable of fighting them back or not. The fact that she tried to hide us from them, that she focused so hard on keeping our world locked down… it doesn’t look good, baby.”
“It doesn’t. Which is probably why Volodhal is pushing for this alliance, this bond.”
“I don’t think that’s the only reason,” Nain growled.
I met his eyes. “Let me see you,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Demon form. I want to see you.”
“No.”
Godkiller (Hidden: Godkiller Saga Book 1) Page 15
