Page 85 of A Veil of Gods and Kings

“Fair.”

“You’ve done this before?”

“Yes, many times,” he said.

“And you’re still alive.”

“Very much so.”

I jutted my jaw up. “All right.”

“Do you want me to go with you?”

My arms shivered, and I gave them a shake. “No. Yes. Maybe.”

“Which one of those is the answer?”

I sucked in a breath of the mist, a sharp gasp that sounded over the roar of the falls. “Yes. I do.”

Hyacinth walked over and offered his hand. I placed my fingers into his. They trembled, and he tightened his grip. “On the count of three.”

“Right. Okay.”

“One.”

Oh gods. Were we really doing this?

“Two.”

Shit. Maybe we shouldn’t.

“Three.”

Hyacinth ran, dragging me with him. We reached the edge of the rocks, and my heart thumped in my brain so loud my vision blurred for a moment.

And then we jumped, our bare toes trailing the breeze. The lake—or, more likely, the rock-studded water below prepared to dash us to bits—raced towards us.

We hit the pond with a whoosh, the ice of it shocking air out of me that trailed up in a dance of bubbles. Hyacinth’s hand slipped from mine, and I kicked up to the surface, breaking it with a gasp. I blinked, droplets on my eyelashes throwing the world into a hazy blur. Hyacinth grinned. “Here we are. Not dead.”

I rolled my eyes and swam to the shore.

Hyacinth followed, and we both sat on the bank, drip-drying in the remaining sunshine that cast the lake like a sea of gold.

“I’ll be honest,” Hyacinth said. “I’m not sure I believed you were truly afraid of heights.”

A sigh fluttered past my lips. “When will you trust me when I say I tell the truth?”

He dropped back against his hands, the muscular form of his shoulders glistening. “It’s just, you're a god… It’s surprising.”

“I’m not a god yet, actually.”

His expression tightened as he studied me, like I was some sort of mechanical item skipping a beat, as if he could find the issue and repair it. “You don’t like being called a god.”

I snagged a pebble between my fingers and tossed it into the lake where the waters swallowed it with a gulp. “I don’t.”

“Why?”

I turned towards him. “Tell me, Cyn, what do you think about gods?”