I frown. “What do you mean by proceed?”
They all exchange looks before Hestia steps forward. “You summoned us, marked one? Do you not understand what that means?”
“I didn’t summon you. Isolde did.”
“But she is not a marked one. She doesn’t get to summon us. Only one marked by us can,” Nizal says.
“Why did you curse us? How do we undo them?”
Nizal shakes his head, sounding bored. Like I’ve failed an invisible test. “You’re asking the wrong questions.”
“Then tell me what the right questions are! What questions are more important than how to save the people that I love! You are killing us. Pinning us together. Don’t you care?”
Every eye in the room loses focus into a flat, withdrawn state. Their body language is worse as they each relax into chairs they conjured out of thin air.
This is probably my only chance before the gods. My only chance to try to save everyone I care about. I won’t squander it.
I lash out with my magic in a violent burst. I can’t control it. Can’t direct it toward any particular god. Not that I want to pick one over another. They’ve all pissed me off so much that I wish I could destroy them all.
“You missed,” Hestia says.
I frown, letting the charge refill my fingertips. “I won’t again.”
She chuckles. “You don’t have control of your powers. You will miss a hundred times before you learn to harness your magic. You’ll be back on earth long before then.”
I shoot again, but my magic bounces off the gold-plated wall behind them, proving her point.
“You should be bowing before us, marked one,” Luan says.
“Bow? You expect me to bow?” I laugh. “Why would I bow before three gods that have the power to lift the curses that are destroying the very things you created? The very beings you vowed to protect?”
“Ask the right question, snow wolf,” Nizal says, throwing the term that Nyx used at me.
“You don’t get to call me that,” I growl.
“Ask,” he says back.
“Who is my true mate? Is it Ambrose?” I ask, hating that I have to ask. That I have to know for sure. That breaking one curse might be the only thing I get to do.
They all stare back at me. None of them speaks. Their expressions soften, but that’s all. Like, we are finally getting somewhere, but I don’t understand why they are suddenly tongue-tied.
“They can’t speak. They can’t break the curses. That is why they aren’t answering. Aren’t lifting the curses. They don’t have a choice,” a soft, velvety woman’s voice says from behind me.
Suddenly, the gods in front of me are bowing.
My own knees tremble with the uncontrollable need to bow. I turn slowly, trying my best to stay upright, but find myself lowered onto a knee, bending at the waist.
I look up, and suddenly I’m not breathing. The most enchantingly beautiful woman I’ve ever seen stands before me. Blonde curls that cascade all the way to the floor reflect all of the light in the room at me. Shimmering sparkles of every color in the rainbow blind me with their beauty. Eyes an unnatural shade of pink that matches the pink of her cheeks. And the dress—sheer glitters that aren’t so much fabric as a decoration drawn onto her skin.
“I’m Myrria.”
“I’m Lumi. I’m sorry, but you’re the god of…?”
She smiles. “Everything. My father rules the gods.”
Her power dances around me as if taking up all of the oxygen in the room. I’m only breathing because she allows it.
“They can’t answer because of the blood deal they made when they entered my father’s games.”