Deidre's Death (#2, Rhyn Eternal Series)

Day One: Chapter One

Chapter One

Wynn paced in the closet –sized portal room. The two demons lurking in the shadows weren’t opening the only way out of Hell for an Immortal. They were waiting for their ill-tempered demon lord, Darkyn.

Which meant Darkyn wasn’t done with Wynn yet.

He had done his part. He didn’t even demand a deal of the demon lord, knowing the terms weren’t likely to be kind. He’d agreed to come down to help Deidre. It was meant to be the final act of their friendship, spurred only by the memory of the look on her face when he was forced to tell her what he did to her.

It didn’t quite work out as he planned. He paused in his pacing, staring into space. He came to help her, to appease his guilt once and for all. It hadn’t worked. He was leaving conflicted after seeing the marking on her back, the one that identified her as Darkyn’s mate.

Sweet Deidre. The woman who brought sunshine into every room, who managed to touch his sick heart. The only innocent soul in Hell, for Wynn’s was as black as the stone blocks of Hell’s fortress. What kind of deal did she make with Darkyn to rewrite the mating laws of the time-before-time?

Gabriel had to fix this. It was beyond Wynn’s control, but maybe, somehow, another deity was able to save Deidre from Darkyn, who was not likely to be merciful, even to his mate. This thought, of what the demon lord might do to the poor girl who had suffered enough, was what made Wynn feel guiltiest.

Had his actions truly set her on this path to end up as the plaything of a creature with no capacity for mercy? Gabriel was struggling with his domain. What if he wasn’t strong enough yet to fix the chain-of-events that Wynn had unknowingly started?

The door to the portal room opened, and he readied himself for an interaction with Darkyn. To his surprise, Deidre strode into the portal room.

“Wynn. Nice to see you again,” she said with a cool smile.

For a long moment, he was too surprised to speak. It wasn’t his Deidre. It was the Deidre, the deity who ruled over Death’s domain before turning it over to Gabriel. She crackled with the power of a goddess, her eyes turning colors and her delicate features cold.

“It was you in her head,” he managed. He knew there was a soul in the tumor in human-Deidre’s head. Suspecting it had belonged to the goddess who was Death, Wynn still wasn’t expecting anyone in their right mind to revive the most dreaded of the deities.

“Back from the dead-dead,” past-Death said. “Raised by the Dark One, the only other deity capable of reviving a dead-dead soul. Heading home to my Gabriel.”

“Home,” he repeated.

She turned to display the marking on her back. The immortal mating script clearly read, Gabriel.

“I don’t want to know what you did to rewrite the mating laws,” Wynn said. “Let’s get the fuck out of here, before Darkyn changes his mind.”

“He’s busy with her right now,” she replied then snapped her fingers at a demon. “Portal!”

“Lord Darkyn says you will await him,” a demon delivered the same message Wynn received a few minutes before.

Wynn’s jaw clenched. Darkyn was ruthless. The demon would leave nothing to chance, especially not the claiming of his mate. In the meantime, Wynn was trapped in a room that felt way too small with the deity he meant to kill instead of the human he almost succeeded in killing.

No matter how he looked at things, he’d fucked up worse than he initially thought.

“You came out better as a human,” he said without heat.