explain a great deal of things,” he rasped. He crossed the floor and held it out for me. I tried to take it, but he clung to the tome. “The information in here…”
“I won’t share it with anyone.”
He shook his head, letting go of the book. I brought it to my chest and held it there. “It’s not that. It… Well, just read it. Come to me with any questions you might have.” He held my eyes for a long moment before finally looking away.
I glanced around the room. The desk that was here when I snuck down before was gone. In its place was a lush loveseat, upholstered in sumptuous black fabric. No, not black, I realized as I sat down. Midnight blue. The color of the sky long after sunset, but before the darkest part of the night took hold. Of the dress I chose for prom.
“That used to be my favorite color,” he said.
“What is it now?”
He studied me and I felt a flush rise to my cheeks. “The clear, cool blue of your eyes. Sharper than crystal but transparent, like pure, thick ice.”
I smiled. “I hated the color pink my entire life, until you woke and looked at me.”
He nodded toward the book still clutched against my chest.
“Who wrote this?” It was written in first person, in present tense, and read like a diary.
He took a deep breath and answered, “I did.”
My mouth fell open. He wrote this entire book? It was so thick and heavy, it barely fit in one hand. “Wow.”
“I wrote all of these,” he said softly. “Some are just thoughts. Some are experiences.” He gestured to the book. “You’ll see.”
I had no words.
I turned to the book and began to read, imagining him speaking each word, settled at a desk illuminated by candlelight, dipping a quill into ink and baring his soul. I curled my legs up and read, barely aware when he sat down beside me and started flipping through the pages of another.
I could tell this wasn’t the first journal he’d written, so I was entering his stream of consciousness between his first thoughts and… Was he still writing? Did he have time to? There was so much drama lately, I didn’t think he had any downtime at all. It suddenly hit me.
“It’s been a week, hasn’t it?”
Aries stilled beside me, a page standing straight up between his clawed fingers. “I believe so, yes.”
I turned back to the page.
Aries’s words sparked an image in my mind.
When we were created, there was only one rule that could not be broken, much like when the humans were made and were forbidden from partaking of the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden. The first humans were unable to resist the temptation of tasting the forbidden fruit, and we were not so very different.
We were more powerful, possessing powers they couldn’t begin to fathom when we crashed onto the earth. We had been forbidden from intimately knowing a human. From mothering and fathering generations of what amounted to mutts. While the female Zodia partook in the flesh of humans, they were careful not to bear children.
Some of the males fathered children with human women, mostly the product of a mixture of lust and irresponsibility.
Others procreated on purpose.
Taurus is chief among them.
His eldest born, fully grown and nearly as brawny and ruthless as Taurus himself, challenged him weeks ago. At first, he was stronger than Taurus realized and almost beheaded him. Taurus was shaken and enlisted Sagittarius and Leo to join him in the sport of hunting his offspring.
Some were easy for them to find, sporting his physical attributes. Others were more difficult. They looked more human than Zodia.
But the Creator never blessed what he forbade.
And so he made it so that the only thing that could end us without our people paying the price… was the blood of our blood.
Their own children.
This was disgusting. I could imagine a young boy running toward his father, horns gleaming, so happy to see him… Taurus extending his arms to lure him closer, only to spear the child the way he stabbed me in my dream. I could imagine the boy’s eyes widen in shock and hear him struggle to draw in air he desperately needed. I knew the pain he would feel and the despair of feeling his life slipping away, along with the knowledge there was nothing he could do about it. He would leave the people he loved because of the