I faced him, unable to stop myself from saying, “He can have me if he wants me.” I felt like a dork when his grin went up tenfold. “I mean, I get that he thinks he…he doesn’t deserve me.”

His brows rose. “Did he tell you about everything?”

“He told me about what he was doing this past year.” When Deacon’s face fell, I sighed. “There’s more, isn’t there?”

“Uh, yeah.” He stared at me for a long moment, and then he leaned against the arm of the loveseat. “Seth will definitely murder me for this, but there’s a lot you don’t know—that I think you need to know.”

A sudden shiver wrapped its way down my spine.

Scrunching fingers through his hair, he sighed. “I’m only telling you this because I think it will help you understand where Seth is coming from, but you’ve got to be ready to hear this, Josie. The Seth you know now is not the Seth we all knew back then.”

My stomach tumbled. “I’m ready to hear.”

Deacon pursed his lips as he lowered his hand. “I’m going to tell you a story—it’s practically a legend among us now. It’s the story of Seth and Alex.”

Chapter 27

MY CHEST felt like it had a minor seizure. “Alex… That’s a girl, right?”

He nodded. “Alex is short for Alexandria. She’s named after her dad. He’s a Sentinel here. Runs around. Doesn’t speak. Kind of scares the shit out of me because he’s a badass, like his daughter, but anyway, she was also another Apollyon. Awesome chick. We’re good friends. But I’m going to get one part of the story out of the way first.”

“Okay,” I whispered. Out of everything I thought about Seth’s past, I never thought it involved another girl.

“Alex is in love with my brother. He’s in love with her. They have this epic kind of love. Always-have, always-will kind of shit. They shouldn’t have been together, because he’s a pure and she was a half, but they made it work. They did it.”

That made me feel better. A little.

“But Alex was never meant to be with my brother. She was an Apollyon, born in the same generation as another—as Seth. They were meant to be together. It was how they were built, to be each other’s other half.”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Okay. That did not make me feel better.

“They met when Seth was brought to Deity Island to guard Lucian. He was Alex’s stepfather, also ran the Council, and a very big douchebag. Seth didn’t know that Alex existed. She didn’t know about him. You see, when they first met, Alex was seventeen, and the Apollyon doesn’t come into their powers until they turn eighteen. Seth was already the Apollyon, and as far as we knew, he was the only one, but he wasn’t. Alex swears that Seth didn’t know, that he was just as shocked as she was. The two of them didn’t hit it off at first.” He paused. “Well, most people didn’t hit it off with Seth.”

I remembered what it was like when I first met him. Totally understandable.

“He could be a dick. Either you loved him or you hated him, but almost everyone feared him,” he explained. “Anyway, turns out that Lucian knew the whole time that Alex was the Apollyon. That bastard was working with Ares, and Lucian made every attempt to keep Seth and Alex together, because when there are two Apollyons, something crazy can happen. One of them can tap into the other and become the God Killer. And if you happen to control the God Killer, you control everything. Because the God Killer can, obviously, kill gods. That’s a big deal.”

All of this was fascinating, but a bubble of dread began to form in my belly. I tucked my legs to my chest, wrapping my arms around my knees. “When you say ‘together,’ do you mean together together?”

There was a pause and he nodded. “Alex always loved my brother, but like I said, it wasn’t easy for them at times. Aiden pushed her away to keep her safe, and with Seth and Alex both being Apollyons, they were connected in a way that is hard to explain. They knew when the other was in trouble. They could feel things about each other. I know they…they, uh, messed around, but, Josie, what they felt for one another…wasn’t something deep and everlasting. Yeah, they cared for each other. Maybe even loved one another, in a way, but not in the way you’ve got to worry about, okay? What was between them was always a fabrication of fate. Nothing more.”

That…that was hard to fully accept. That another girl out there was connected to Seth, could, like, feel him?

“Seth was never supposed to be the Apollyon,” he continued. “Throughout history, except for one instance, Apollo has always created the Apollyon, but Seth was born a few years before Alex. The gods knew that one of them had done it, and they feared that someone was hoping to create the God Killer. One of them was, and that was Ares. Now remember, Ares was working with Lucian, right? Lucian got to Seth. No one knows how, but it became painfully clear that Lucian had some kind of weird parental control over Seth. He doted on Seth, made him feel like he was a part of a family. He got Seth good.”

Oh no. Maybe that sounded weird to Deacon, to everyone else, but I got how it could happen. Seth had a crap mother. Had a crap childhood. It took no leap of logic to think that Seth secretly, maybe even desperately, wanted to belong—wanted someone who was like a parent to love and care for him. I could understand that. If I hadn’t had my grandparents, I would’ve been lost.