Page 53 of The Demon God's Desire
“I do love a good gamble, you know. Especially when the odds are stacked in my favor,” he adds with a wink. Guilri grins back at him, but his eyes don’t leave mine. I reach up, caressing his face between my hands.
We did it- we found a way. Guilri is free of the Hearthkeeper.
We still have a war with the gods themselves to prepare for, but for the first time in weeks, my hope doesn’t feel useless. It doesn’t feel like some fragile desert shrub that I’m clinging to, nursing back to life. It feels… real. Promised.
Gazing up into Guilri’s dark eyes, I can see it all as clearly as if I were looking into the Deceiver’s portal. We can weather this storm, survive what comes to us. We can meet our daughter.
“I love you,” I breathe up to him, the words like a prayer on my lips. I’ve been waiting so long to say them, but I couldn’t think of a better time than now to finally give myself over to him entirely.
Guilri’s eyes flutter shut at my words, as if they’re water to a dying man, his face leaning forward until our foreheads rest together.
“And I love you, Bridget,” he whispers, the heat of his breath caressing my face, the strength of his arms around me grounding me to this moment. I want nothing more than to stay this way forever, to allow him to hold me tightly to his chest and whisper his love to me morning, noon, and night, but I know we have to go.
I hardly pull away from Guilri at all before an enraged shriek shatters the air, rebounding through the temple louder than any normal voice ever could. I don’t have time to turn toward who I know is the source of the ear-piercing scream before I feel the heat.
Guilri reacts faster than I do, tucking me behind him, but it’s too little too late.
The Heartkeeper explodes, blinding light and heat bursting from her skin in her rage, all of her lethal magic racing directly toward us.
27
GUILRI
Just when I think we’re about to be incinerated, at the last moment, the Hedonist leaps in and shields us from the worst of the blast.
But the Hearthkeeper is still bent on destroying us. And it looks like the goddess is making things dangerous, very quickly. I hold Bridget to me tightly as debris and bits of the stone temple fly past us.
“Duck!” she screams as a heavy, round, metal offering bowl flies straight at me. I duck and it smashes into the wall, embedded into it.
The two gods—the Hedonist and the Hearthkeeper—suddenly expand in size, growing to their true godly height, almost as tall as the ceiling and nearly too big to fit inside. It would be awe-inspiring if it wasn’t terrifying me that Bridget is going to get hurt.
The Deceiver, my strange twin, disappears in a puff of black mist, dark laughter ricocheting off the walls all around us. The battle continues to rage onward, the Hearthkeeper sending shock-waves throughout the entire temple. We’re nearly wretched off our feet as we try to get away.
She sends a powerful fireball at us but the Deceiver makes the ground quake, which sends us tumbling just in time so the fireball shoots directly past us. We don’t have anywhere to go but I’ll be damned before I let Bridget get hurt so I pull her along behind me, trying to find somewhere safe to hide.
“You!” the Hearthkeeper screeches, pointing at Bridget. “You’re the reason my champion has abandoned me!” Her wails surround us, she seems to be everywhere at once. “I will make you suffer! I will destroy you!”
I can feel Bridget trembling against my back. She’s strong, she’s smart and extremely capable but against a literal goddess she’s no match and she knows it. She’s frightened. And it’s all my fault.
“You turned my champion against me!” The Hearthkeeper knocks a large stone pillar into our way as we run from her and I have to dodge the falling object to keep it from rolling onto us.
Bridget’s hand is pulled from mine when another stone pillar is destroyed, nearly taking her out. She has to jump to get away and we’re separated from each other.
“Bridget!” I call, warning her when the goddess sends a blast directly into her path. She avoids it, ducking under a fallen altar and I watch her crawl through the destroyed objects, coughing as dust fills her lungs. She’s still out of sight of the goddess though and I stand in front of the table, trying to protect her with my hand outstretched.
“Stop!” I yell, trying to get her to slow down. “I would have eventually realized who you are with or without her help!” I tell her. “You’re a bully and a selfish creature, a veritable monster! I killedinnocent peoplein your name because I thought it was the right thing to do to follow your will!”
Her glowing silver eyes turn on me. “You would have led my armies into battle against the orc abominations had you not met her,” she says. Her voice is strange, deep and resonating with a double tone to it.
I feel wetness leak from my ears and one hand goes up to rub at it, coming away with blood. Her voice is so overpowering that it’s too much for my ears to handle. At least Bridget is safe under the remains of the altar.
But I’m proven wrong when the Hearthkeeper uses her powers to blast the shattered stone table away, sending it flying into the air and tumbling over broken stone pillars.
Bridget is exposed once again and the Hearthkeeper targets her with her powers, raining bits of ceiling down upon her. I throw myself on Bridget, trying to protect her from the debris, using my powers to blast them away at the last moment before they hit us.
“You won’t win here,” the Hedonist calls. “His devotion to her is stronger than his own will to live. He’d die protecting her.”
“Then perhaps I ought to destroy her once and for all!” the Hearthkeeper screams, stalking forward as her long silver gown trails behind her. She raises a hand and I stand up to protect Bridget but just as I raise my hand to throw my own magic at her, she seems to disappear in one blink and reappears on the other side of the room, laughing with a crazed look in her eyes.