The white marble streets were lined with our people, happy, safe, protected from death, destruction—protected from me as long as they served the Creator.
It always amazed me how easily humans forgot the danger that lurked in that temple, that skulked mere feet from where they stood—from where they refused to worship.
To worship me was forbidden as long as my father sat on the throne. I would forever walk among them, feeding off their fear as much as I would their worship. Then again, I didn’t want it. Part of me knew the Creator was a jealous being. He didn’t want humans worshipping his creation; he wanted them worshipping Him.
And I couldn’t find it within me to argue such a valid point—my brother agreed with me at least on that front. It was like worshipping the meat once it was cooked rather than thanking the cow for existing in the first place and giving up its life.
Ridiculous.
We walked farther into the inner city while people watched in awe, many of them whispering, others hiding.
The main temple was said to be the tallest building on the planet, over seventy stories high with over a thousand rooms in the actual temple itself, not to mention the hordes of animals kept within its walls for food and entertainment.
The temple of Osiris looked like heaven on earth, the opposing temple the darker of the two—Set’s faced the east to honor Ra with the sunrise, and at sunset it looked as though someone had dipped it in orange paint.
The only thing missing was the gate to Heaven, which had long since been destroyed. Once the Creator spread humans throughout the universe, it was dangerous, He had admitted, for them all to understand one another.
Our people had no idea that the gates they often walked by were actually the gates of Tartarus—Hell itself. Because my father was not a good man—well, he wasn’t a man at all but either way goodness was not in his makeup—power hungry, jealous to his core.
His desire was always more.
His curse was to never be satisfied.
And it seemed to be getting worse with age. While his sons thrived, he plotted, and I feared the day he would one day push one or both of us too far.
I felt it in the air around me.
In the way, my skin prickled with awareness.
Rumors spread that he was the god of the demonic race, a way for the Creator to prove to the gods that there was a fate worse than death—being trapped as an immortal, cursed to live in a constant thirst with the need to feed on the very humans you swore to protect.
I gripped my throat. I was a god, but that base
r instinct still ran through me, watching, waiting to attack. I knew the blood that ran through me, that if my soul was one day lost, that part of me would take over. It was the only way the Creator kept balance between the gods and their enormous amounts of freely given power, the very real threat that you could give in to darkness—and come out the loser, or that he could snap his fingers and everything would be lost.
I rebuked the darkness on a daily basis, however, because I was a god.
And not just any god.
I was the god of death.
The taker of souls.
I smirked as we made our way up the sleek marble stairs into the golden throne room.
Let them try to take me. I’d been missing a good fight.
KYRA
I wasn’t hiding my emotions very well, something that the guys commented on for the next hour as we traveled to the land of my apparent father. I wondered what he looked like. I wondered if he would give me the same look of disappointment and sadness my father back in my world did, every time I wasn’t able to find what they were looking for.
Every time I failed.
I pressed a hand to my chest and gasped when I encountered it. “My necklace! I have my necklace!”
“Interesting that it would travel back with you—meaning it has already been given, possibly for protection,” Alex said in a silky voice that immediately calmed my nerves, especially since I started to hear cheers as we moved our horses over the sandy hill.
The minute I reached the top, my jaw dropped.