Don’t think about it.
Screaming as his fellow gods tear him away from everything he’s ever known and let him burn up in the atmosphere of a dimension made of gravity and matter and shadows?—
Don’t think about it.
The tentative, mischievous smile of the teenager who crept to the outskirts of camp to meet him, a newborn strapped to her back and a stolen piece of caribou in her hand?—
Don’t think about it.
His first brush with the true grief of death when Ada passed away, but the overwhelming light of watching Kai and his children and grandchildren carry on her spirit?—
Don’t think about it.
Blood and pain andscreamingas the binding spell burns its way into his skin and the hunters slaughter the only family he’s ever known before turning their weapons on him?—
Don’t think about it.
Sensing the first demon who’s summoned to Earth and finding her, teaching her how to create a human façade for herself, fighting back tears when that form looks a lot like Ada?—
Don’t think about it.
The blur of millennia weaving together as he travels the world, watching the beauty and the hatred humans bring to every continent they touch?—
Don’t think about it.
Cass’s rich laugh and Ez’s gleaming smirk across the table in a bar on the eve of the War of 1812, his first time meeting the demons who’ll become his best friends?—
Don’t think about it.
Seeing Nack Bar George walk into Redwater Bowl with a cane for the first time and vividly remembering when Obie carved a staff for an elderly Kai to lean on as he watched his grandchildren play?—
Don’t think about it.
The hard, furious eyes of the Sanctum interrogator who tried to put another binding spell on Obie and bound them together instead?—
The easy way Chester fit in with Obie’s bowling team, with his best friends, with hisfamily?—
Chester’s laughter ringing through Obie’s head as he pushed jokes through their telepathic link just to see him smile?—
Chester’s fingertips tracing over Obie’s skin and scales in the drowsy silence of early morning, soft and sweet and almost reverent?—
Don’t think about it.
I love you.
I love you.
I—
Don’t think about it.
He didn’t say it back yet.
He needs to survive long enough to say it back.
44
Tell me about your life in Tamaros.
