Page 32 of These Godly Lies
Anna blinks, uncomfortable. A quick glance proves Khiran intends to offer no help in answering. He’s too busy taking a long drink. “No… I—we weren’t…” She flushes, heat prickling her cheeks. Picking up her glass, she takes a quick drink to hide her embarrassment. “It took a while.”
“Oh? He courted you as a human, then?” He tips his drink in the other man’s direction in a casual sign of respect. “Bold choice, Brother. You know how fragile they are. Smart, though, taking your time before committing to eternity. Very thorough of you.”
Khiran refills his glass, pretending not to notice Anna’s pleading looks and ignoring Cassius altogether. “He was a stranger, actually,” she says, irritation smothering whatever embarrassment she felt. “I’d never seen him before.”
“Really?”
“I saved his life. It was all very heroic.”
“Shethoughtshe was saving me,” Khiran amends. Strange how the conversation suddenly interested him enough to contribute to it. “Obviously, I was fine.”
“He made a very convincing damsel in distress.”
“I think love at first sight was an easier explanation to believe,” Cassius murmurs. There’s a frown pulling at the smooth line of his brow. “You truly gave the power of a god to a stranger?”
Khiran looks at her, gaze softening. “She was worthy of it. More so than any of us. She still is.”
A soft laugh, more whisper than sound, escapes him. “My, perhaps you’re a romantic after all, Brother.”
To Cassius’ obvious delight, Khiran only responds with another swift glare.
“What about you and Silas? He never told me,” Anna asks. In truth, she’s a little hurt that he didn’t. She would have thought that having their secret entrusted to him would encourage trust in return.
“Ah,” Cassius murmurs, setting his drink down. “You mustn’t blame him. We made a promise to each other, Silas and I.” He hesitates, as if weighing how much of himself he wishes to show. “Having the rest of our twisted family knowing… well, let’s just say it hasn’t worked well in the past.”
Khiran’s gaze snaps up, interest piqued. “Psyche?” Cassius doesn’t answer, not with words, but the way he flinches is telling. “I thought it was just a story.”
Anna’s gasp is small and silent, a breath of recognition. Psyche, the mortal woman who married a god she was never supposed to see. Who had to earn her husband back, prove her love for him, through trials after she gave into the temptation of gazing upon his face.
Cupid. She was married to Cupid.
She tries to remember the details of how the story ended, but all she can recall is that it was happy in ways few myths are. Psyche was given immortality as a reward for her loyalty, so she could remain at Cupid’s side for all of eternity.
“Everything is a story, you know that. Just as you know they’re usually more fiction than fact,” Cassius says, watching his wine swirl in his cup. “You were right to hide her, Brother. Right to give her immortality without asking for it. The First does not care for any love he cannot claim.”
There is a subtle shift, a softening in the line of Khiran’s shoulders. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
Cassius scoffs, the sound bitter and dark. Jealous. “No, you wouldn’t. You’ve been free to roam the world as you see fit, so long as you follow the simplest of rules. Do you know, I tried for decades to follow in your footsteps? No matter how much I enraged him, he wouldn’t cast me out. Why is it you always seem to get away with what I cannot?”
Leaning back in his chair, Khiran sighs. “My strength, my power, is influence. Even without his shackles, I cannot control others the way you can.” A scoff escapes him, bitter and curling at the edges. “What good is influence to him, when he can utilize force?”
Cassius hums into his cup. “He never has been one for subtlety.”
“No,” Khiran agrees. “He hasn’t.”
When Cassius looks up, there is a sharpness in his gaze that Annarecognizes all too easily. A hunger for a war that has yet to begin. “All the more reason to rid ourselves of him.”
“And I suppose we’ll accomplish world peace while we’re at it? Solve world hunger?” Khiran challenges, the words dripping in sarcasm.
“Be serious, Brother.”
“Stop calling me that!”Khiran snaps, standing. Violently, his fists meeting the table with enough force to make the plates and silverware jump. An apple, polished and red, falls from the fruit bowl and rolls across the table. “We are notbrothers,” he growls. “There are precisely three people in this world I consider family. One has been slain, burned from this world so thoroughly that I don’t even have ashes to remember her by. Now, you sit there, calling for a war we cannot hope to win, and asking me to risk the one person I would die before losing.” He shakes his head, disgust twisting his features. “You are not a brother. You are not even afriend.”
Cassius stands, blue eyes darkening. “You are still that self-centered, selfish little boy I watched grow into a stubborn man who thinks only of the consequences for himself and not others. Do you think I propose a war because I have nothing—no one—to lose?!
“Whether you want to claim me or not,Brother, we have tasted immortality from the branches of the same tree. We are bound by the same poisonous hand. What can we possibly be, if not family?”
“You, all of you, are the cowards who stood andwatched.”
