Chapter 498: Palintonos, Hypomonē, Polytropos

Derek swallowed, scrubbing at his eyes.

"He doesn't deserve to be alone with whatever he's doing." He bit his lip. "I... should have offered to come with him."

Gavin chuckled. "It's... not too late to make that happen."

Derek lifted his gaze to look at Gavin, the teasing smile on his face, challenging Derek with the radical idea that he could be there, in Houston, with his boyfriend while he dealt with the issues from his past. Derek got to his feet, heart racing, a lurching, teetering wild realization driving him forward. He shouldn't do it. It was insane, yet he couldn't stop himself. How long would it take to get to Houston? To find Nikolias?

A flash of photos hanging crooked and half-scorched on a wall flashed through his mind, and he ripped open his closet, dragging out his carry-on. Was Nikolias going to have to go back to his old house? Alone?

Insane.

It was completely insane, but right because if things were reversed, Nikolias probably wouldn't have even let him board the plane alone.

Gavin stepped into the air, drifting out of the house that was starting to wake up as Kore reclaimed her power. Isla was surveying the property, squinting at every shift in siding and cracking brick that tipped between fixing itself and falling apart.

The Moonshadow Estate would soon no longer be so, and while he should feel a bit of relief, he felt nothing.

The ruination of the monsters who had taken so much from him would not undo what they had done. He'd had seventeen years in the limbo space between death and the afterlife to resign himself to never knowing peace about the monsters he shared blood with, living and dead.

Gavin drifted through the air over Frey Shores towards the Port. To the west, the sea churned with warning. The seal was cracking at a slow pace no matter how many spells the Allus and the muses cast on the ocean floor. Even the stone tree was only helping to slow things down.

The Young Conqueror had done well dealing with the Vancouver leviathan and cleaning up the pools of darkness. Blake's pool had cleansed two others.

He'd bought more time, but not enough. A sacrifice was going to have to be made. He couldn't see the full scope of it, but it would be devastating.

"You really think this is wise?"

Gavin didn't turn back to look at her. Instead, he drifted closer to the ocean just to pretend to feel the damp, cold of the salted wind. How many times had he and his Derek gone to the cliffside for a moment's peace, just to hold hands and pretend that running away was an option?

Was he there below the ocean floor, looking up at him, pressed up against the veil that separated them and pretending to feel the same breeze? Gavin pulled back from that dangerous thought. He'd already tried to confirm that his Derek was still waiting for him on the other side of death rather than choosing to be reincarnated to no end. It hurt more to think he was trapped there rather than being reborn in some happy family far away from Frey Shores. For all the love and care and patience he'd shown, his Derek deserved to rest in peace far away from the chaos and agony Gavin had brought into his life.

"Interesting and clever question," Gavin chuckled. "Shouldn't you be more worried about what will happen to your descendant? I already have one, after all. Another sequestered on an island, watching the shoreline. Another in the liminal space... One living with no knowledge... the other dangling by a thread I could cut at any moment. How disheartening for your great lineage to come to an end like this."

"Our line is unbreakable. I do not fear your thread nor your malice toward the world." Her voice was proud and firm. Had she spoken to her untoward suitors like that? "The convergence has already come to pass. Our line will go on."

Gavin snorted. "You're so sure."

"You forget my daughter and what it means for the halls of the underworld to open."

Gavin hummed, bobbing his head. "Perhaps."

But if he let himself wonder about that, if he let himself hope, the contract he had would fray at the edges, and he had not died and suffered through that fucking ritual to betray his intentions. He cast his gaze south, down the coast toward the silent screams ringing out from beneath miles of sand and cement. Cold, blank eyes stared out of a still-breathing body that saw nothing. The thrumming ache that reached around the world into the heart of the Mediterranean pulsed with agony in the slosh of a potion vial that had long since lost full efficacy.

"Maybe, and your children have excellent taste, but you can't fool me into thinking that in my place you wouldn't do the same to see your clever man," Gavin smirked. "He was a beautiful creature. I hope you thoroughly enjoyed him until his last breath."

She said nothing for a long moment. Maybe he'd gone too far, but it wasn't like she didn't agree.

Her husband had been a man among men, exemplary in his time and beyond. Peerless. He had glimpsed their happy life not just in stories but in the memories buried in the Young Conqueror's blood.

"I could not save my husband," she whispered. "No more than he could save me."

"You can't save him either. No one can."

He and his Wolf Ruler couldn't even save each other, and that was the irony of the universe. For all the power they wielded between them, it would mean nothing. It had to mean nothing for the world to keep turning. That was the deal struck ages ago.

"I know this, but I have to believe... I have to behave as though he will save himself. He has suffered much, yet he takes courage in his heart, his father's courage, and endures through this long hard labor laid at his feet, through waves and wars." She paused, gliding to be closer to him. "I have to believe he will add this to the total and tell destiny to bring more trials, for he will not falter."

She sighed. "He is palintonos, with great hypomonē."

"Polytropos?"

"Mikro polytropos," she chuckled as her hand landed on his shoulder. "Growing more by every trial."

"You believe so?"

"Just as you believe so very desperately that he will be the one to save you and prove the universe capable of standing with them as its balance." Her voice softened. "It is okay to wish for someone's love to succeed even if you felt yours failed."

He blinked, imagining the way his tears would have stung, the way they could still burn in the heart of the tree that had is body and blood, but let his soul roam free. Half dead, half alive, barred from the living and relying on a literal child to finish something that had been in motion for centuries.