Page 13 of The Fake Divination Offense
Seb nods at my hand on my sternum. “Heartburn? Geez, you are getting old.” He turns like he’s going to head into the guestroom. “I have a potion we’ve been developing at work that’s supposed tohelp people with digestive issues. Do you have a diffuser? It does best with—”
“Not heartburn. Just—Seb, wait. I need to tell you something.”
He stops. Eyes Thio, who in turn looks at me, one brow lifted in an unasked question at the heaviness in my tone.Do you need me to leave?
And the fact that Thio and I can have a silent conversation is testament to how thoroughly he’s locked into my life now, too.
I shake my head. “You two did finish your amalgamation into one being, didn’t you? Stay. I—” I roll the mug between my palms, shoulders wilting. “You didn’t have to take care of me last night. But thank you.”
Seb comes around the island and hefts himself onto a barstool next to me. “Of course. You never have to ask. Even though you did.”
“I did what?”
“Asked me to take care of you last night.”
Surprise has me blinking at him. Seb’s been my better half for most of my life, and he’s right; we don’t have to ask each other to step in. We justdo. So for me toask himfor help… especially after I’ve made a resolute effort tonotask him for as much these past few years…
“What exactly did I say?” I try.
He gives a lopsided smile and digs in his pocket to pull out—my phone? “You asked me to keep you fromcalling team management and making big changes. But then you kept saying how you’d make the change anyway because we were free now, and you wanted to betotally free.”
He sets my phone on the island and takes my hand, threads our fingers together.
The contact is grounding, an overlap of dozens of moments like this throughout our lives when I used him as a way to calm down, to center myself.
“What change were you talking about, O?” Seb asks.
I peel my fingers out of his and push off the stool to pace behindmy bright white couch. The shelves framing the fireplace are directly ahead of it, and as I walk, my eyes run over the baubles, statues, iconography, and other odds and ends I started amassing in grad school. My degree was in theological evocation, how magic gifted by gods interacts with wizardry, specifically focused on power drawn from holy items in spell work. It spurred yet another of my obsessions, but this one is more of a quirky collection. I happen to have a lot of paraphernalia from various gods and religions. People collect weirder shit.
Staring at it all now, it settles me. I have trinkets fromdozensof gods.
Thio switches off the griddle and finishes stacking a huge mound of pancakes on a platter next to it. The potion in that coffee seems to have softened my nausea and headache, but I’m not the least bit hungry.
Seb climbs off the barstool. “You’re not quitting rawball, are you?”
I stop pacing, hands beating on my thighs. “No. Not that.”
“But you are quitting something?” He squints. “Or… changing something? You—”
“I’m going to renounce Urzoth as my patron god.”
Seb’s brows vault up. Thio, on the other side of the island, whistles low and mutters, “Well, shit.”
Seb says nothing, his blue eyes huge behind his glasses.
“That makes it sound far more serious than it really is.” I start pacing again. “Renounce. Like it’ll be some grand ceremony. Really, I’ll take his badge off my jersey. It isn’t a big—”
But I can’t even finish the lie.
It’s a huge deal.
In particular because—
Seb closes the space between us and stops a foot away, forcing me to quit pacing. “Does your mom know?”
I bark a laugh that sends a splitting bolt of pain through my tempered headache. “Ha. Have you heard of any small towns in western Pennsylvania spontaneously combusting? No. I have not talked to my mother about it.”
And I don’t know how I will. I’ll need to, after I tell management, butgods, how do I say I’m withdrawing from the thing she’s built her life around? From the thing she ingrained so deeply into our family’s existence that it would never occur to her that I’d want to undo it for myself?
