Page 1 of Saving Grace
CW
Violence,DrugReferences,SexualContent, Grief
The story so far…
Ourangelicagathos,Grace,met bad boy daimon, Riot, outside a club in Milton—a daimon town she’d moved to in a bid to escape her overbearing parents and community. At age 25, Grace had expected to feel a pull towards her four agathos soul bonds by now, but it never came. Instead, she felt pulled to Riot, even though a connection between agathos, worshippers of Anesidora and servants of humanity, and daimons, worshippers of La Nuit and designed to lead humans astray, shouldn’t be possible.
Grace’s parents found out about Riot, and had Grace taken from her job at a shelter and dragged to the basement temple in Auburn for a cleansing ritual to break the connection. Riot was given instructions by the psychic daimon, Bullet, on where to find Grace. With assistance from one of her fathers, Riot rescues her from the agathos attempting to do a cleansing ritual and praying to bond her to recently widowed agathos men. They drive to Bullet’s place, where Grace encounters her second soul bond for the first time.
While Riot is stuck working for the daimon, Viper, as part of a deal to keep Grace hidden, Grace gets to know Bullet. Bullet, as an Oneiroi, has known Grace her whole life. He has visited her dreams every night, and had thousands of “first meetings” with her that Grace doesn’t remember. He teaches her about the true origins of the gods La Nuit (Nyx) and Anesidora (Gaia), and their feud. Grace is given a prophecy and tasked with bringing ‘forth the Second Age of Heroes.’
An attempted meeting with Grace’s cousin, Mercy, goes awry, and Bullet is injured. They are rescued by the silent and mysterious Wild, who reluctantly allows them to stay at his nightclub complex, avoiding Grace even though he is her third soul bond.
Grace seals her bonds with Bullet and Riot, and hunts down Wild to find out why he’s avoiding her. It turns out, Wild has encountered the gods before. In a moment of arrogance where he claimed to be stronger than Death himself, the God of Death snatched him up and spirited him away to the underworld, kicking his ass in front of the deities who reside there. Thanatos stole Wild’s voice and has haunted him ever since. Worried that he’ll pass this curse to Grace, Wild runs.
Meanwhile, Bullet is in increasingly bad shape, and is warned by Nyx to make the most of the time he has left. Riot’s deal with Viper is dissolved after Viper discloses information about Grace to Mercy when he helped her escape town, breaking the terms of the original agreement. Riot, Bullet, and Grace drive to a sacred waterfall, hoping to have a productive conversation with Gaia. Gaia learns of the prophecy, and nearly buries them all in a landslide. Wild has followed them from a distance, and is led to them by a divine voice, freeing them all from the dirt and taking an unconscious Grace back to a motel and calling a daimon doctor to attend to her.
Bullet learns the full extent of Wild’s history with the gods in the dreamscape, telling the others when they wake up. Thanatos appears, bedecked in sequins, and takes them to the underworld to meet Hades and Persephone. They wish to see the Olympians restored to power, and offer their support. Grace is introduced to the soul of a daimon who recently passed into the underworld, who she later discovers is Dare’s mom. She was murdered in her home by agathos, and Dare struggles with the aftermath in the upperworld, enraged at Bullet for not telling him, at Riot for abandoning him, and at all agathos for the violence and suffering. He throws himself into the street wars between agathos and daimons back in Milton and eventually picks a fight he can’t win. He’s found by Mercy’s abandoned soul bond, Dice, who takes Dare back to his sister’s house where Dare recuperates, helping Rogue out with baby Quinn until Onyx can convince him to get his act together.
Persephone gives Grace a mysterious pouch as a parting gift, as well as removing the block on her memories of the dreamscape with Bullet. They all come rushing in at once—Grace remembers everything. The four of them make their way out of the underworld through a cave, finding themselves in a remote corner of Greece. They eventually stumble upon a community of agathos and daimons living together, alongside Kakodaimonistai—humans who drink a hallucinogenic and can know about the other kinds of mortals who inhabit their world. Vasileios, the daimon leader of this ragtag group, invites them to stay, and once they hear Grace’s story, they are all eager to help in the hopes of improving the lives of agathos and daimons. They make offerings and prayers to the Olympians to strengthen them through belief, hosting an orgy in Dionysus’ honor.
Wild and Grace seal their bond, while the tentative feelings between Wild and Bullet grow. At the same time, tension comes to a head between Bullet and Riot, when Riot grows frustrated with Bullet’s decision to keep Dare away. A plane crashes off the coast of Greece, which they later find out was carrying Dare, and the relationships grow more fraught, but there’s no time to reflect on it because Gaia has set a plague of giant scorpions on Athens. Gaia possesses a local Basilinna, speaking through her body on live television, telling the humans that they enraged Gaia with their disrespect. Exposing agathos and daimons to the wider world, promising it will be made wonderful again when the daimons and their influence are eliminated.
Their group of allies rallies around Grace, and they all head into Athens together by bus.The scorpions won’t attack the agathos, so Grace and the other agathos run off on their own, heading for the Temple of Zeus. Some enemy agathos have lined up in front of the temple, and Grace’s side livestream what they’re about to do. Grace steps forward alone, pulling out the pouch Persephone gave her and dropping the sharp seeds into the earth, little scratches on her hands mixing her own blood in with them. From the “seeds” grew a hundred Ancient Greek soldiers—the Spartoi—armed with spears and shields, who quickly dispatched the scorpions.
The temple’s magic drives the agathos away, and the mysterious voice of guidance tells Grace to offer her blood and her service, her devotion to a world of gods and mortals, to the ideal. The others follow, lighting the temple up gold as the marble knitted back together. Grace makes a peace offering to Gaia, but promises that she will see the prophecy through. The group, including the confused Spartoi, travel to a nearby villa used for agathos retreats. After some thought, Grace reveals herself to the world with a video explaining who she is and what she has been tasked with. Recovering in a nearby daimon’s home, Dare sees the video and rushes to Grace’s side.
Dare and Grace attempt to seal the bond right away, but Dare is in too much pain from his multitude of injuries and collapses. Hygeia, the original agathos of good health, appears to heal him, having pooled all the power the agathos have to get her there. Hygeia suggests that Grace and her soul bonds travel to the agathos temple in Ephesus. There must be a sacrifice for healing him, so Dare’s injuries transfer to Mercy, who has found sanctuary at a campsite in Maine run by single agathos men who were sent away having never discovered their soul bonds. Here she encounters Harbor, Felix Lyon’s younger brother. He is not her soul bond, but she develops feelings for him anyway.
Grace and Dare get to know one another, and Dare and Bullet resolve the tension between them that Bullet hadn’t called Dare to Grace’s side earlier. They’re interrupted when Grace’s mother appears on TV in an interview with humans, talking openly about the agathos and about how Grace is a traitor. Faith hints that Grace struggles to comprehend reality, undermining Grace’s words. Wild comforts Grace, and Dare uses the portable tattoo kit he was given to tattoo the images the Fates used to represent each of them in Bullet’s visions.
The human authorities declare that Grace must be apprehended because she is inciting violence, but in the process announce that Nyx and Gaia are unequivocally not real. Offended by this, Gaia dissolves all the wires and pipes that run through her earth, and Nyx pulls a veil of darkness over the sky, plunging the word into night.
Grace and her soul bonds decide to take up Hygeia’s offer, traveling to the coast under the cover of darkness where riots are already breaking out, and traveling by boat with Vasileios’ daimon friend to the coast of Turkey. Grace and Dare grow closer, sharing their first kiss. After Grace, Wild, and Bullet fall asleep together in the cabin of the boat, Bullet fails to wake up, giving everyone a scare. At Wild’s suggestion, Grace follows the bond to find Bullet’s soul at the banks of the Styx, and uses her tether to the others to drag them both back to the world of the living, tying her and Bullet even closer together. Bullet tells Wild that next time, he needs to let him go.
Dare and Grace seal the bond, and they all disembark on a beach, traveling by foot on most deserted roads to Ephesus. They meet Sophia, the agathos of wisdom, who invites both Nyx and Gaia to a meeting to try and come to a resolution. While sleeping, Grace is pulled into Nyx’s dreamscape in Bullet’s place, she has accidentally taken on his power in saving him, and tied his life to their bond.
Eirene, the keeper of the temple, appears with her dog, Milos, and invites them back to her home to rest and recuperate after their journey. The five of them have one final moment of passion, before Nyx comes to Grace in the dreamscape and says that it’s time to meet. They all return to the ruins, stepping through the columns and into the Realm of the Gods.
The confrontation between the goddesses is contentious. Nyx agrees to lift the darkness which is steadily killing off the earth if Gaia will provide a path to Tartarus for Grace so she can fulfill the prophecy. Out of spite, Gaia destroys all of the bonds on her way out. The bond that was keeping Bullet alive is broken, and he says his goodbyes to those he loves on the steps of the temple. Thanatos appears to collect them, assuring them that he is not entirely gone yet, but his body will be safest on the Isles of the Blessed while his soul is in the balance. Losing Bullet tips Wild into bloodlust, and Riot volunteers to fight him while encouraging Dare to get Grace away from the ruins as the sun finally rises again. As they leave the ruins, they stumble across an enormous pit—Gaia’s pathway.
A day passes while Grace grieves, and Riot and Wild don’t return. They return to the pit and encounter Vasileios, Foster, Estrella and some of their other friends who decided to follow them to Ephesus. They search the ruins, and only find Riot’s bloodstained sweater. Grace doesn’t know that Thanatos has taken Wild, sick with guilt at hurting Riot, to do a mysterious job. Riot is missing. A giant monster emerges from the depths of Tartarus, spewing a stream of fire into the sky.
And that is where our story picks up…
Chapter 1
“Comeon,Moros.”
No, fuck off,I replied in my head, my thoughts hazy. I’d just had the shit kicked out of me, didn’t I deserve a little lie-down? What did a guy have to do to get thirty seconds to relax after being beaten up by one of his friends?
Speaking of…
“Wild,” I groaned, forcing the words out even though my tongue felt three sizes too big for my mouth. “Next time, punch a wall or something, yeah? Sparring is one thing, but I don’t think I’m up for that kind of fight. You’ve got a mean right hook.”
I was pretty sure said right hook had dislocated my eyeball.
“The Keres isn’t here.”
