Awakened

body, lapping around her ankles like a sticky pool of tar.
    Rephaim faced his father, the ancient immortal he’d been serving faithfully for centuries. “How can you allow her to speak to you like that? To use you like that? She called my brothers aberrations of nature, but it is she who is the true monster!” Rephaim knew he shouldn’t have spoken to his father like that, but he couldn’t help himself. Seeing the proud and powerful Kalona being ordered around like a servant was unbearable.
    As Kalona approached Rephaim braced himself for what was surely to come. He’d seen his father’s wrath unleashed before—he knew what to expect. Kalona unfurled his great wings and loomed over his son, but the blow Rephaim expected did not come. Instead when he met his father’s gaze he saw despair and not anger.
    Looking like a fallen god, Kalona said, “Not you, too. I expected her disrespect and disloyalty; she betrayed a goddess to free me. You, though, you I never believed would turn on me.”
    “Father! I have not!” Rephaim said, putting from his mind all thoughts of Stevie Rae. “I simply cannot bear the way she treats you.”
    “That is why I must discover a way to break that accursed oath.” Kalona made a wordless sound of frustration and paced over to the balustraded stone railing, staring out into the night. “If only Nyx had stayed out of the battle with Stark. Then he would have remained dead and I know in my soul Zoey would never have found the strength to return to this realm and her body, not with two of her lovers dead.”
    Rephaim followed his father to the railing. “Dead? You killed Stark in the Otherworld?”
    Kalona snorted, “Of course I killed that boy. He and I battled. He could not possibly have defeated me, even if he did manage to become a Guardian and wield the great Guardian claymore.”
    “Nyx resurrected Stark?” Rephaim said, incredulous. “But the Goddess doesn’t interfere with human choice. It was Stark’s choice to defend Zoey against you.”
    “Nyx did not resurrect Stark. I did.”
    Rephaim blinked in shock. “You?”
    Kalona nodded and continued to stare out at the night sky, not meeting his son’s gaze as he spoke in a strained voice as if he had to force each word from his throat. “I killed Stark. I believed Zoey would retreat then and remain in the Otherworld with the souls of her Warrior and mate. Or perhaps her spirit would shatter forever and she would be a wandering Caoinic Shi’.” Kalona paused and then added, “Though I did not wish the latter on her. I do not hate her as does Neferet.”
    To Rephaim it seemed his father was talking aloud to himself more than speaking to him, so when Kalona went silent he was silent and patient, not wanting to interrupt him, waiting for him to continue.
    “Zoey is stronger than I anticipated.” Kalona continued speaking to the night. “Instead of retreating or shattering, she attacked.” The winged immortal chuckled at the memory. “She skewered me with my own spear and then ordered me to return Stark’s life to repay the life debt I owed for killing that boy of hers. I refused, of course.”
    Unable to stay silent, Rephaim blurted, “But life debts are powerful things, Father.”
    “True, but I am a powerful immortal. Consequences that govern mortals do not apply to me.”
    Rephaim’s thoughts, like a cold wind, whispered through his mind: Perhaps he is wrong. Perhaps what is happening to Father is part of the consequences he has considered himself too powerful to pay. But Rephaim knew better than to correct Kalona, so he simply continued, “You refused Zoey, and then what happened?”
    “Nyx happened,” Kalona said bitterly. “I could refuse a childlike High Priestess. I could not refuse the Goddess. I could never refuse the Goddess. I breathed a sliver of my immortality into Stark. He lived. Zoey returned to her body and managed to rescue her Warrior from the Otherworld, too. And I am under the control of a Tsi Sgili who I believe to be utterly mad.” Kalona looked at Rephaim. “If I do not break this bondage she may take me into madness with her. She has a connection with Darkness that I have not so much as sensed in centuries. It is as powerful as it is seductive and dangerous.”
    “You should kill Zoey.” Rephaim spoke the words slowly, haltingly, hating himself for every syllable because he knew the pain Zoey’s death would cause Stevie Rae.
    “I have, of course, already considered