Firefox

“Chloe, listen carefully. You don’t know this but you’re the new Gaia, Assiah’s living goddess. As the Gaia, you’re obliged to take consort. Or consorts, if you’re so inclined. The Court held a Selection tournament in order to choose the First Consort. Many of our Great House champions competed against one another through dangerous trials. I won that Selection. I came to find you to enlighten you about your true lineage and to awaken your dormant power.” His eyes were so bright and earnest.

Small chuckles escaped from her before she could hold them in, then it became a full, raucous laughter. Stitches dug her side. Tears in her eyes. “Do you realize how crazy you sound?” Chloe asked when she finally gathered her composure. She crushed the remnant urge to laugh.

If this man was offended, he didn’t show it. His expression was still earnest. “For humans, perhaps.”

“Humans?” She laughed. “Humans? Does it work? You know, your long, crazy pick-up lines?”

“I wouldn’t know. This is the first time for me. Anyway, to sum it up, you’re my goddess and I’m your consort. Once your power is awakened, you’d be expected to start your duties. Our worlds had been without Gaia for too long. The balance of power started shifting to ruin. If this situation isn’t immediately remedied, the consequences would be dire.”

She laughed again. The joke still funny the second time. As if anyone would believe it. He was either a magnificent liar, or completely batshit crazy if he thought he could pull off something like this.

“Okay, pal. I’ve had enough of this. You’re cute but I’m not that desperate. Thanks for the laughs, though. It’s been a while. I gotta bounce.” Chloe dug in her purse for her cellphone to call a cab. She swiped it and noticed she had two missed calls, and one message from a number she didn’t recognize.

She sobered instantly.

It can’t be him, can it?

She’d blocked Norman’s number after the surprise phone call earlier in the day, and the scary thing was it hadn’t been a number from the prison. Surely they weren’t allowed to have cellphones, but maybe prepaid phones were a black-market commodity in prisons just like cigarettes, drugs and alcohol? His father probably had anything Norman wanted smuggled in to him.

Maybe it was something else entirely. Something simple and innocent, maybe even a wrong number. Her hand shook as she touched the screen and lifted the phone to her ear.

Her heart froze.

“I’ll be there in a couple of days, Chloe. You know the things I like. Make a nice roast with potatoes, carrots, and onions, and a cherry pie for my welcome-home dinner. And wear something nice, with something sexy underneath. We have a lot of lost time to make up for, dear.”

The phone clattered to the floor, and the man next to her grabbed her to keep her from tipping off the barstool.

“Chloe?” he called. “Are you alright?”

“He wants a roast,” she heard herself whisper, feeling slightly out of her own body, as if she were overhearing everything from the next room. “He wants me to cook him a roast.”

She blinked back tears, and let the gorgeous man whose name she couldn’t remember wrap his arms around her.

Chapter 2

Gaia was nothing like Sparrow had expected.

She seemed to have no self-awareness, no hint that she was special and nothing like the other people around her in Tilly’s Bar, where they eagerly drank something that tasted like poison and laughed loudly sometimes even though Sparrow could tell they felt none of the mirth they were displaying. Humans are curious creatures.

He held her close while she took heaving breaths, her tears dampening his shirt. She didn’t seem happy to see him at all. Rodil, the one who had knighted him after he won the Selection, had warned him that each Gaia had to learn anew who she was, so he’d known not to be surprised if she seemed skeptical for a moment.

A moment.

Most Gaia, Rodil had explained, recognize the truth when presented with it, as if their whole lives suddenly made se

nse. But this one, this Chloe, had completely dismissed him as if he were mad.

If Sparrow hadn’t known better, he might have second-guessed himself and considered that maybe he had come to the wrong woman. But she glowed unlike the rest, and his heart and body were drawn to her unlike any other. He could see her power, dormant beneath the surface but very much still there.

Chloe was his goddess, Gaia.

He only had to make her see.

Perhaps it was the vile substance she seemed to have swallowed large quantities of that made her resistant to the truth?

“Everything is going to be all right. I’ll protect you.” He stroked her back and long, reddish-brown hair. Even the murky lighting in the room couldn’t hide the richness of her being. Her hair seemed to hold strands of every shade, and hung thickly almost to her waist. A waist that wasn’t tiny or waif-like, but in perfect proportion to her bosom and her hips. Everything about his goddess seemed rich, nurturing, fertile. Just as he’d always been told Gaia was. The mother goddess of the earth and all living things was always gorgeous when made into human flesh. Each rebirth gave her a different form, but all were beautiful in their own way, he’d been told, and each was a rich as the soil and nurturing as spring water.

It broke his heart that she was in such despair, even though it made him happy to provide what little comfort she allowed him by crying in his arms.