“Reyes, that’s not what I meant.” When he said nothing, I asked, “How much do you remember about being Rey’azikeen?”

His irises glittered under his lashes. “You mean, do I remember you sending me to prison?”

I glued my lids shut.

“Do I remember my own brother creating a hell dimension just for me?”

I said nothing. His pain washed over me. Or perhaps that was mine.

“No. Not really. I remember my brother being so frustrated with me, so worried for his little dolls here on Earth, that he created a world where he’d hoped I would grow and learn something. I remember a god from another dimension, a god so beautiful the stars would sooner burn out than turn away from her, begging my brother to send me to her dimension. To a kind of prison, yes, but to a place where I wouldn’t be left so utterly alone. A place where I would not slowly go insane.”

My lids parted. Just barely.

“I remember her sacrificing her life to my brother. Bartering with him. Offering to be the reaper of his world if he would give me, a selfish piece of shit who wouldn’t give her the time of day, another chance.”

He closed his eyes and tried to wrest control over his emotions.

“I remember being so full of piss and vinegar, I studied and studied until I found a way to escape the dimension the beautiful god locked me in so that I could wreak havoc across the universe and, in turn, allowed Mae’eldeesahn and Eidolon to escape in my wake.”

He was gripping the beer bottle so hard, I thought it would explode.

“To call Uzan a prison was a fallacy of the greatest measure. It was a paradise that your ancestors created for souls that were somehow lost. Somehow disoriented and adrift. But all I could see was the fact that I was locked there against my will.” He laughed under his breath. “I don’t deserve you or Elwyn.”

“You don’t think that perhaps you’ve paid for your sins a thousand times over?”

“How so?”

“Lucifer? The Dendour? Earl Walker?”

He studied the bottle in his hands, scraping at the label absently. “Should I leave you two alone?” he asked, changing the subject.

“He’s taken,” I said, accepting the fact that forgiving himself was something Reyes didn’t do. “Osh. By someone very special.”

“And who might that be?”

This might be a little hard for him to swallow. Tact was definitely in order. Or I could just blurt it out and watch his expression go from content to disbelief to horror to a bristly, murderous kind of fury. I chose door number two. “He’s destined to be with our daughter.”

Reyes’s expression slowly changed from content to disbelief to horror to a bristly, murderous kind of fury. “Oh, hell, no.” He shot to his feet. “A Daeva? Are you fucking kidding me?”

Just like a dad.

“Yes, a Daeva. But I wouldn’t dismiss him so offhandedly.”

He whirled around and scowled. Not really at me. Just in general. “What do you mean?”

I pressed one corner of my mouth together in thought. “Okay, you know how I was the grim reaper all my life, then suddenly I’m also this god from another dimension? And how you’re the son of Satan all your life, then suddenly you’re a god from this dimension? Who does that? Our lives are so weird. I think that maybe Osh is something else, too.” I traced one of the dark lines on his face. “I think there’s more than meets the eye. I see greatness in him, Reyes. I see a power beyond our imaginings. I see him giving his life for our daughter.”

“Oh.” He sat back down, satisfied. “As long as he dies in the end.”

I snorted.

“So, was that another secret?” he asked.

“Yeah, sorry. I forgot about that one. Speaking of which, would you like to talk about the elephant in the room?”

“I guess we could since he’s unconscious.”

“Not that elephant.”

“Well, we already talked about how you sent me to prison, then tried to trap me in a hell dimension.”

“I did no such thing,” I said, then chilled when I realized he was teasing me. “No. The other elephant. I’m pretty much out of secrets.” I crinkled my nose in thought. “Yep. I think that’s the last of them. The big ones, anyway. Just don’t ask me about that time I was in college and there was this thing that I thought was a fake eyeball. You won’t eat for a month.”

“You trapped a god,” he said, unfazed by the eyeball incident. I tried to be glad one of us was.