To save the Valkyrie who broke his heart, the Fae Sea God makes a deal with the Demon Prince of the Aerial Kingdoms, but Pazuzu has a history of stealing the women Manannan loves.
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When Mist visits her parents' home in California, she assumes th...
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Tremors shook my limbs as I stood at the entrance to the garden. The flowers in my hands shaking, petals falling. Manannan, Mist, and Pazuzu's voices carried clearly through the cool air, despite the distance. I... I... I had living family? Manannan's daughter and some relatives in a country called Vanaheim? Or was that a planet?
I wasn't alone.
A warmth bloomed in my chest, a tiny spark in the pit of emptiness inside that nothing had seemed to fill since my parents' funeral, not even Mist and Pazuzu's arms. I had family. People who shared my blood, had an undeniable genetic connection to me. But would they want to meet me? I was only human, after all. Not an immortal. Not a being with extraordinary powers. Just me.
Manannan strode by, a gust of air following him, but he didn't look my way or seem to notice my presence against the tall purple foliage. Mist's curses followed him, and like Pazuzu, I had to wonder what had passed between the handsome sea god and our Valkyrie. Knowing he'd been in a long-term relationship with my ancestor, had a daughter with her that was now related to me... didn't that kind of make him related to me by... well, marriage sort of?
For the first time, curiosity had me rethinking what I'd seen between him and Mist. She made such an effort to ignore or not see him that it was obvious she still had strong feelings for him. And something about her explanation of him cheating on her didn't fit with his determined attentions, like a misaligned gear on the old ten-speed bike I had in my garage on Earth. There was never any sense of apology or attempt to make amends.
No guilt wreathed his actions.
Was he just so self-absorbed and entitled that he couldn't imagine he'd done anything wrong? Or was there some other explanation... something that would make the pieces fit together into a different picture?
"And Inanna was your mate? You stole her from Manannan?"
Yanked from my mental wanderings, my mouth dropped at Mist's question. My ancestor had been his mate?! But she'd been Manannan's first? And now I was with Pazuzu... It seemed so... wrong, so unsavoury? By the gods, I'd never felt so out of my depths. Was anything as it seemed here?
"You were eavesdropping for quite some time, were you? So you know Lamashtu killed Inanna?"
"Yes."
"What you don't know is that Inanna was pregnant when Lamashtu killed her."
I gasped, stepping forward. Who or what the hell was Lamashtu? How had it reached Inanna? I glanced around me. Pazuzu had so many defences around the palace. I needed to know more... know about this danger than no one had mentioned even though I'd been here months. I peered behind me as I took a few more steps toward joining them.
"So that's why you've been so eager to get me to accept your mating bite. You want offspring with Anna and me, and with Anna being from Inanna's line, the probability of her being compatible as a fertile mate is much higher."
