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“I’ll remind you that you thanked me for breaking the rules the next time you lecture me about rules.”
Jace hugged me. So did his mother.
“May the gods bless you and your child, Leda,” she said solemnly.
“Ah, shucks, you’re making me blush.”
“If you’re all quite finished hugging…” Stash smirked. “…I need to clear up some security issues with Leda before today’s Angels’ Court.”
“Of course,” Jace said, then he and Alice left the room.
When we were alone, Stash turned to me. “You are risking a lot to help them, Leda. Disrupting the gods’ order isn’t something one should take lightly. Faris does not wish to kill you, but once your child is born, he might decide you’re more trouble than you’re worth to him.”
“Faris will most likely try to kill me anyway once my daughter is born,” I replied. “And he will try to kill Nero too. Not that we’re going to allow that to happen. As long as we’re in the picture, Faris will never truly control our daughter. So I guess we have eight months to figure out a solution to that problem too.”
“I will help you in any way I can.” Stash set his hand over his heart.
And I set my hand over his. “I know you will.”
We started walking to the Court Chamber.
“How are you handling being caught in the middle of the conflict between Zarion and Faris?” I asked him.
“For now, they’re both happy with where I am, and so neither is asking anything from me. Sooner or later, each will try to force my hand against the other. I’ll deal with that problem when I have to. Naturally, I’ve set up contingency plans for that stormy day. But until then, I’m going to live my life day by day. I have to try to live for myself as much as possible, you know?”
“I can help you deal with Faris and Zarion,” I offered.
“That is nice of you, Leda, but don’t you think you have more than enough on your plate already?”
“Truth be told, my plate is overflowing, but I’m not about to let that stand in my way of helping the people I love.”
Stash stared at me for a bit, then pulled me in for a big hug. “Thanks, sweetness. You really are my favorite cousin.”
“Do you even have any other cousins?” I chuckled.
“We do,” Stash told me. “Zarion and Faris have another brother, named Regin, but they don’t ever talk about him. Apparently, the gods all consider him quite mad.”
“He must really be off his rocker if the other gods think him mad.”
Stash nodded. “He really is. And so are all ten of his children.”
“Ten children? Whoa.”
Gods were even less fertile than angels. And even for a human, ten children would have been pushing the boundaries of fertility.
“Rumor has it Regin’s children were the product of some pretty foul magic,” Stash said. “The gods won’t even speak of it.”
I cringed. “Which means it’s really, really bad, or they don’t even know how it happened.”
“Regin and his children live on eleven distant moons that orbit the same world,” Stash told me. “Those moons are barren, desolate places with no portals to anywhere else. They’re much like prisons actually. And Regin and his ten children are all kept separate because the gods can’t trust them when they are together. They would gather too much power—and likely scheme to overthrow the gods’ council.”
“They sound like a lovely bunch of megalomaniacs.”
“Faris once gave my team the job of checking up on Regin and all of his offspring,” said Stash. “All of them are completely bonkers, through and through.”
I smiled at him. “Well, I’m honored you like me more than our other crazy cousins.”
Stash chuckled. When he stepped back, I spotted a tear in his eye.
