For the damned | ✓

38

TIME CHANGED WHEN NICCOLO'S heart stopped. It felt like both an eternity and a second as she took his face in her hands and tried to pour in all the energy she had, anything to make his soul return to her. When it didn't, she closed her eyes, breathing out her grief shakily, before forcing herself to look up again. She couldn't afford showing her emotions nor feeling them. As a mortal, it had been her strength, but now, when she was going to war, she couldn't allow weakness.

Helio was staring at Niccolo, his expression unchanged, but she knew him too well to not notice the way he had frozen. To him too, Nico had been family.

"I've always wondered what happens when the gods die," Roshan whispered," mortals can't escape the judging scythe of death, but the divine? Do they linger in the darkness?"

Delilah gently closed Niccolo's eyes, placing a soft kiss on his forehead before she got to her feet.

"They disappear," she said, voice cold," I don't know where they go, but I guess my mother will find out soon enough."

"Delilah, I -" Roshan began, swallowing before he shook his head," I don't know where to begin. I guess I should start with saying I'm sorry."

"An apology from a liar doesn't mean anything to me," she said.

"You don't understand," he said softly," I was lost, an anomaly both to the humans as the angels. Where do I belong when I'm part of both and part of neither? It was a good offer I got, to spend some decades with a deity who had lost her memories, simply to protect her, like I should have protected the human I was sworn to, years ago. Only that, she had said, and then she'd turn me completely human forever. I vowed to and she sealed our promise with magic. A hundred more years, I had to go."

"That's what she said a hundred years ago as well, wasn't it?" Delilah said, eyes searing into him," she was never going to keep her promise, you were starting to realize that."

"I was," he said," but more importantly, I was starting to realize that I cared for you. You and that kindness you carry ever so naturally, like nothing the world does will ever make you hate it. It's mesmerizing, to me, to everyone around you. I used to be around you all the time, like I had promised your mother. Someone had to, as she recuperated the strength it ook her to keep up this farce only so she could see you every week. I suppose hiding you took a lot of time as well."

"You used to," she noted.

"Yeah," he said," I grew weary of it, at the end. I was supposed to keep all the supernatural beings away from you, but in these past few lives the magic had grown so weak that you were even able to see them. I wanted to see what you would do if I wasn't there to guide you in the way all your past lives had been. Most of all, I started becoming selfish. I met Devansh and had a taste of what a human life would be like, what human love would feel like. I thought it would be fine if I left you alone more and lied about it, instead of keep reporting to a woman who was only using me. I didn't expect you to die and meet the Grim Reaper."

"You're a guardian angel," she said," but what about the others?"

"Ah, you mean James?" he said, distaste coloring his voice," he's merely a doll made by your mother to further ensure you will keep away from the supernatural, hence the constant speeches about him hating anything regarding it. Why do you think I never liked him? He grows more annoying with each reincarnation in his persistence of how we shouldn't believe in anything."

"Tess -" she began.

"No," Roshan said, speaking before she could finish his sentence," Theresa and the others at the university are simply students. They had nothing to do with this whole game, only the misfortune of being alive during this version of it."