made a sound that, from anyone else, I would have called a snort.
“I once laid waste to an entire world for my beloved. That is how deeply our kind feels when we love, yet you are indignant when she merely tries to protect you? If I had that much discipline, I would not have needed to put myself into exile as Warden of the Gateway to the Netherworld. Now, only the dead require my attention, yet even here, I am not safe from my heart. I tried not to love you,” he said, turning that burning silver gaze back to me. “I abandoned your mother when she became pregnant, and I bound my power so that I could not see you the way I can see every other mortal. Even then, I should have sent you away when you came to me after your first death. I knew what would happen if I brought you back to life, but I looked at you . . . and it was already too late for me not to love you.”
A sob choked out of me that I tried to force back. My reaction to hearing the Warden say that he loved me made no sense. Tenoch had been my father in every way that mattered. I’d also lived for almost five thousand years without the Warden’s love, so it was hardly as if I needed it. But oh, someplace deep inside me must have wanted it, to feel what I did now!
“Despite that, I will not let myself become what I was before I consigned myself to this place,” he went on, his gaze turning into that fathomless one where staring into it felt like endlessly falling. “No world deserves that. I will hold to the balance I have maintained these many millennia. You must right the balance as well. Return the two escaped gods to me before they wreak havoc in your world, else I will not be able to hide your complicity in their escape.”
“Done,” Ian said, as if catching two runaway gods being helped by an unkillable asshole was easy.
My father lasered a look at him before his gaze rested on me. “He has agreed, but you have not.”
“You know I will,” I said. “Those gods escaped because I cut the hole in the netherworld. The least I can do is clean up my mess before countless innocents pay for it.”
“And before you are punished by the gods above me for your involvement in their escape,” he pointed out.
That was the least of my motivation. If I let my world get destroyed, I’d deserve whatever punishment came my way.
I met my father’s eyes and said, “I understand.”
He gave the barest nod. “You should make haste, but first . . .”
He moved so fast, I only saw a blur of inky water. Then, the scorpions that had spent this entire time bowed before him were back on their feet, their severed stingers now healed and regrown. They let out happy, chittering sounds and practically danced around my father on their many legs.
“Lucifer’s bouncing balls, now I see them,” Ian said.
“Yes,” my father said, stroking one of the scorpion’s glossy amber heads. “I have given you the ability to discern what is real from what is illusion. You will need that to face Phanes again. Illusion is one of his greatest strengths.”
Late, but better late than never telling us this, I thought. Still, he was letting us go, and he was giving Ian an anti-illusion upgrade. It could have been much worse.
“What about me?” I asked.
“You already have that power,” he replied. “That is why you were not fooled by the false sounds and scents that distracted Ian and Phanes here. Being inside the netherworld enhanced your true nature. Phanes was only able to deceive you with an illusion of me earlier because of your vampire side. I cannot erase that, but I did ensure that when you leave here, your true nature will remain enhanced enough to overcome his illusions.”
I goggled at him. “You heard us as soon as we entered this place, but you let everything go down the way it did anyway?”
“I was hindered by restraints I implemented onto myself after I freed him.” His voice darkened. “I told you, there would be consequences for that. The balance must be maintained. Thus, I shackled my own powers so that I can no longer leave this place, or move about it as freely as I once did. In another