Chapter 300

I groan, snorting awake when Jackson lays me down in my own bed.

“What’s happening,” I murmur, looking around, completely confused.

“You fell asleep,” he replies, smirking at me as he climbs in next to me and reaches out to un-hook the curtain, letting it shush shut. “I figured you’d rather continue doing that in bed, rather than half sprawled out on the floor with your head in my lap.”

“Both good,” I sigh, snuggling close as he settles himself next to me, wrapping his arms loose around my shoulders. “You’re the best pillow I’ve ever had.”

He laughs lightly, pleased to be of service.

I blink for a minute, not eager to fall back asleep now that I have this quiet moment with him, not while I have a second to hold him close, to get a deep sniff of his scent. Jackson growls a little, possessive, pulling me tight, feeling precisely the same.

“How are you doing?” I ask, fighting a yawn and failing as I tilt my head up to look into his face. “About the Games? And…everything else?”

“What else?” he asks, frowning down at me.

I laugh a little, shaking my head at him. “I don’t know, Jacks, your life? Which has changed drastically in the past week, let alone the past six months. I’m just checking in on all of it.”

“Checking in on me,” he murmurs, lifting hand to brush over my hair, “when you’re the one who discovered today that she can fall into a new dimension.”

I laugh a bit, somehow…less disturbed about that now than I was earlier. Maybe because I’m too sleepy. Maybe because with Jacks warm in my bed, it all feels very far away.

“Yes,” I whisper, grinning. “I’m sweet like that. So?”

Jackson exhales a long breath and turns his face up to the ceiling, clearly considering it, which fills me with a great deal of pleasure. Because I think that it’s Jackson’s instinct to always ensure that I’m okay and that my emotions are all right, but we need to check in on him too, and I’m glad that he’s letting me do it.

“I’m fine with everything that happened in the Games,” he murmurs, thoughtful. “Glad we won, proud of you, pleased that Tony’s showing that he’s on our side and wants to be part of…whatever it is that we’re doing. I think he’s a good guy – my instincts are saying to trust him, that he’s trying to prove to us that we can.”

I nod warmly to my mate, encouraging, because I feel the same.

“But if I’m being honest,” Jackson continues, raising his eyesbrows at me. “I’ve been spending a lot of time wondering…who gave me my gift. And why.”

“Really?” I whisper, genuinely surprised. “Why have you been wondering about that?”

Jackson, since I’ve met him, has had this rather dismissive turn to these sorts of questions – never really interested in the provenance of his magic and instead just concerned with what he can do with it.

“I don’t know,” he murmurs, frowning a little as he puzzles it out, “not too many others in the Community had gifts so we never really…talked about where they came from. It was just something we could do – like I could run fast, when others couldn’t. I can do magic, others can’t. It was just another skill.”

I nod to him, listening, intrigued.

“But the more I spend time with you and your family,” he says, continuing to pet me absently, “the more I realize that…the Goddess really thought about this stuff. Thought about which gift to give you and to give Jesse and probably Rafe. I mean, she even said that she thought Jesse’s gift matched his personality.”

“She said the same about mine,” I say quietly, remembering back to our private conference. “Something about my slight tendency for recklessness being a good match for my gift.”

“Oh yes,” Jackson says, dry, rolling his eyes, “yes, let’s give the reckless one the power to burn cities to ash.”

I laugh, giving him a little rabbit punch as chastisement, but Jackson laughs too and presses a kiss to my head. “So, you think the same thing happened?” I ask, resting my head back down on his shoulder. “When you got your gift?”

“I mean, it makes sense, doesn’t it? I don’t think the allocation is random. Some…God,” he huffs out a disbelieving sigh here, “gave me this…power. And I don’t know why.”

“And one of the children of the God of Darkness,” I murmur, frowning, likewise staring into space. “Ole Darkie.”

Jackson laughs at the Goddess’s nickname for her ex. “And he’s got enough of those to choose from,” he murmurs. “So we’ll maybe never know.”

“Wait, what?” I say, sitting up a bit to peer down at him. “How many children does he have?”

“Like, a lot, Ariel,” Jackson replies, frowning up at me. “Famously.”

“What!?”

Jackson laughs lightly, pulling me down against him. “You need to study your religious texts, Clark,” he murmurs, brushing his lips again over my hair. “This is your nation’s religion too.”

“I don’t study religion,” I say, shaking my hair haughtily back, making my voice hoity-toity and smug. “I am religion – I am a demigoddess, after all.”

He laughs at me, his eyes crinkling, because even if I am kidding and making bold excuses for my ignorance, it’s…kind of true.

“Come on, Jacks,” I say with a happy sigh, settling back down against him. “Explain. I am ignorant and wanting of knowledge of what is, apparently, my own family tree. Enlighten me.”

“Okay,” my mate says, pulling me tight. “But listen up, because I’m not explaining it twice –“

“You’ll explain it as many times as I demand, supplicant,” I growl, trying to do my best to embody bossy goddess energy. But Jackson’s soft laughter just lets me know how deeply I’ve failed. “Okay, I’ll listen,” I say with a grin, snuggling against him. “But talk fast, because I’m sleepy.”

“Yes, highness,” he murmurs. “So, the God of Darkness, as we all know, is…obsessed with your Grandmother. In some tellings of the mythology they’re mates, in others they’re just like…magnets, both drawn to each other or opposed inevitably according to whichever pole of the magnet they’ve got turned towards each other at the time.”

I nod, weirdly understanding this and considering that for the past few hundred years or so – if not thousands – those poles have been stridently opposed.

“But when the Goddess pulls away, the stories say, he gets incredibly jealous. And he takes out that jealousy by…having a lot of affairs. Trying to make her jealous in turn.”

“Scandalous,” I whisper, a little delighted at the cosmic drama of it all.

“Mmhmm,” Jacks murmurs, continuing. “And a lot of those affairs have resulted in kids. Some of them are just…normal kids – humans, wolves. Some of them are demigods, like you,” I wiggle my shoulders back, preening, pleased to be included, “and some are…very nearly full-on Gods, thought never on his or the Goddess’s level.”

“How does that happen?” I murmur, frowning. “Like…I can see how you’d make a demigod, but who are these near-Gods’ mothers?”

“I don’t really know,” Jackson says with a shrug. “It all gets very…out of our realm of understanding. We exist in a completely different plane than they do.”

I sigh, attempting to make peace with my lack of knowledge and failing a bit.

“Some of the near-Gods are more famous and powerful than others,” Jackson says, a bit absent, getting lost in his thoughts. “Especially the older ones. His two eldest children – and the ones that I think the Goddess your grandmother is most bitter about – are twins. They’re frequently referred to religiously as the God of Death and the Goddess of Life.”

“What?” I breathe, fascinated and confused.

“Yeah,” Jackson says, turning his face to me. “They were born together, meant to be two sides of the same coin. Neither good or bad just…” he shrugs. “Different. And the God of Death resides in the Underworld, which is another realm within the Land of Darkness, where…I think you went today. And the Goddess of Life lives here, amongst us, though she…rarely takes form. They work together, passing souls in and out of our reality as they’re born and die.”

“Ugh, this is all really weird,” I whisper, reaching up and pressing the heels of my palms tight against my eyes, attempting to stop my mind from spinning around all of these strange new facts. “So, do you think that’s who my grandmother was talking about when she said the provenance of your gifts? The God of Darkness’s oldest children?”