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But she didn’t hate Stark that much.

She didn’t hate him at all, in fact.

Deirdre stepped forward, putting herself between the naiad girls and the beast—the one thing that could kill her. Forever.

If it didn’t, then it was going to kill the girls.

“Tombs!”

Deirdre turned to see Stark in the doorway, struggling to reach her though he was limping, weak with lethe, chest damp with bile. That was no hallucination. She wouldn’t have hallucinated Stark looking so awful. No matter how much they had fought, Stark would always be a strong, handsome, force of nature in her mind. Not this shriveled pathetic thing.

But Gage behind him—Gage and Niamh and Melchior, all watching Deirdre—that was a hallucination.

They wanted her to let go.

“I’ll never love you, Everton Stark,” she said. “But I forgive you.”

She spoke with Niamh’s voice. Rylie’s voice. Gage’s voice.

Deirdre wasn’t Stark anymore. She didn’t ever want to be that man.

With that, Deirdre began to change.

The phoenix form took her. It had felt strange both times that Melchior did it to her, but now it felt as natural as pulling off a bathrobe. Deirdre simply allowed her human form to fall away. She stepped into her feathers and wings.

Fire blossomed over her skin. Her clothes incinerated as she spread her arms, opening herself to embrace the sluagh.

It was frigid death, a devourer of souls, darker than the voids of space.

Deirdre was the fire that birthed new life.

The phoenix.

Day against night, sun against moonlight, the Alpha to an Omega.

For a brilliant, beautiful moment, Deirdre was infinite, filling the entirety of the asylum. She saw Alona and Calla, cowering just outside of the reach of the tentacles, where they would be safe. She saw the rain drizzling off the edge of the roof, and the incinerator where Gage’s body had burned. She saw the OPA’s black trucks pulling up outside to save her just a little bit too late.

It was good they were there. They would be able to arrest Stark, get the girls away from him, send them to Sascha at Everton Estates.

Everything was going to be okay.

She changed. Her wings spread. She flew into the depths of the sluagh, wrapped in its tentacles, her body shredded by the skeletal hands that waited within.

Deirdre burned the sluagh from the inside to keep it from killing Stark and his daughters.

And for the third time in her life, she died.

Deirdre opened her eyes on rolling green fields under a swollen, smoldering sun.

She had died.

Again.

Third time’s the charm, I guess
.

The knowledge arrived along with a surprising calmness. She had died, and she was fine with that. There was nothing to change about it now. Death had come upon her, she was gone, and it was time to move on.

All of the fear that she had felt while plummeting into the depths of the sluagh—that was gone.

Her heartbreak over Stark—that was gone, too.

Everything was okay.

She turned to look around the grassy fields, and thorny brambles scraped her calves. Deirdre smelled blackberries rotting in the heat of summer. The bushes were a wall blocking her from the hills of the afterlife.

This time, Deirdre wasn’t going to let the bushes stop her from moving on.

“Get out of my way,” she said.

The bushes sighed, shivered, drew in on themselves. Their thorns retracted. They left no wounds on her bare skin.

A path opened to the grass.

Deirdre stepped away from the brambles, and her toes sank into the dew-kissed field.

She had arrived.

“Oh, baby,” a man said, and she knew before she saw him that it was her father, Alasdair Tombs.

The sight of him still took her breath away.

Gods, he hadn’t aged at all since she was a little girl. He was still a tall, handsome man with dark skin and an affable smile. And when he held his arms open, there was nothing to stop Deirdre from stepping into them, wrapping her arms around her father’s waist.

He smelled as good as she remembered, like that aftershave he’d always slapped on right before heading out the door to work. “Daddy,” she whispered, resting her cheek over his heart, shutting her eyes to savor the feeling of him.

Alasdair released her first, shifting Deirdre so that she was held tightly against his side. Another person was approaching them across the grass. It was hard to make out her features with the massive sun at her back, though it highlighted her brown curls as though she were a phoenix who had caught fire, just like Deirdre.

As she drew nearer, white skin and blue eyes became clearer. A pair of sword hilts jutted over either shoulder. One of the hilts was black, and the other was glossy white.

Deirdre had held that white sword before.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, but you only have a few minutes,” said Marion Garin. She was dressed in fluttering gauze that swayed in a wind Deirdre couldn’t feel. Marion didn’t seem to be connected to the surrounding world the way that Deirdre was. Marion looked like a ghost.

“Did you die too?” Deirdre asked.

The girl shook her head with a sad half-smile. “I’m visiting.”

“What about Rylie? Stark said that he told her to die.”

“She’s an Alpha,” Marion said. “She may have succumbed to his compulsion to lure you away, but she’s much harder to kill than that. She’ll pull through. It’s lucky for Stark that she will, because Abel would rip him to pieces if she didn’t.”

“She’s harder to kill than I am, apparently,” Deirdre said. “And I’m a phoenix.”

“Phoenixes are easier to kill than other shifters because they’re meant to die. Your strength comes in death. That’s the whole point. Unfortunately, you’ve gone ahead and killed yourself permanently this time.” Marion sighed. “It’s so strange how they always know that they’ve passed on here. They’re always so calm about it. It makes me uncomfortable.”

“Who are they?”

“Those who have died. This is the afterlife.”

“We’re in Heaven,” Deirdre said. “Oh my gods. I knew Daddy would go to Heaven, but I didn’t know—”

Marion interrupted her. “Not Heaven. Just the afterlife. This is the place in between being dead and being born again.” She lifted a finger to point at the overbearing sun. “That’s where everyone goes when they’re ready to start once more—everyone except phoenixes.”

Deirdre tipped her head back to look at Alasdair. “Is that why you’re hanging around here? Because you’re a phoenix, like me?”

“He’s mundane,” Marion said. “He’s just stubborn.”

Alasdair’s arm tightened on Deirdre. “I couldn’t go until I knew you were going to be okay.”

“I died again. I think I’m about as far from okay as I get. But it’s fine—I’m here now with you.” She tried to fold herself against his chest again, but Alasdair didn’t let her.

“We don’t have much time,” he said gently.

The sun was getting brighter, hotter.

It was drawing nearer.

“What are you doing here? Who
are
you?” Deirdre asked Marion. She eyed the hilts of the swords. If one was the Ethereal Blade, then the other could have only been its missing twin: the Infernal Blade, a demon sword hewn from obsidian from the depths of the Nether Worlds.

Marion must have had it all along.

“You’re the Godslayer, aren’t you?” Deirdre asked.

Marion shook her head. “I only speak for her.”

“You’re the Voice.” That was what Rylie had called her.

“The Voice of God, yes,” Marion said. “The Godslayer killed Adam, Eve, and Lilith, the triad of gods who once ruled our world, and she brought about Genesis. By killing them, she assumed their role. The Godslayer became God. And I speak for her.”

“Why?” Deirdre asked.

“Because she asked very politely.”

“That’s not an answer.”

Alasdair rubbed Deirdre’s shoulder. “It’s the only answer we get, precious.”

Anger surged within Deirdre, clawing at her like a desperate animal. “Are you kidding me?” She clung to her daddy. “You’re dead because of this Godslayer. I had to live in the system because Genesis took you from me. It ruined our whole world. And now we’re here in the afterlife, and the Godslayer won’t even talk to us? Tell her to come on out!”

Marion kept smiling that faint, sad smile, grief lingering around her eyes.

“You wouldn’t be here at all if I hadn’t asked permission to bring you back. Anyone who enters the sluagh is meant to be
gone
. They don’t get to return to the cauldron where all death is remixed into life.” She gestured again to the sun. “But I like you, and you’ve been helpful, so I asked for a favor.”

“A favor? What kind of favor? Another chance?”

“Answers.” Marion smiled bashfully. “Ask whatever you want. She’s listening.”

This was Deirdre’s moment, at long last.

“Why make me an Omega?” she asked. “A phoenix? Why change everyone in Genesis in the first place? What was wrong with us the way we were? And why didn’t we get any guidance—why leave us so damn
lost
?”

Marion looked over her shoulder.

There was nobody there that Deirdre could see. But Marion, the Voice, listened quietly for several long moments, nodding along as though someone was speaking to her.

“You’re not going to like the answers to those question,” Marion said.

“Better than nothing.”

“Genesis came,” she said. “The Godslayer killed the gods. Everything ended, and she had a moment—an eternal moment, but only a moment—to start over again. She made choices, and many of those choices were mistakes.” Marion shrugged. “That’s it.”

Deirdre’s eyebrows lifted. “That’s it?”

“I said you wouldn’t like it.”

She stepped away from her father to give herself a little room to think, a little room to breathe. Was she breathing at this point? Did she need oxygen? Was there oxygen in the afterlife?

“How can gods make mistakes?” she asked. “They’re
gods
. They can just fix it!”

“She swore to stay out of it,” Marion said. “The world doesn’t need highly interventional gods taking control to dictate the way of things. Those commands would be as likely to be filled with mistakes as her first choices.”

“So…what? She just
abandoned
us?”

“The world doesn’t need her. It needs people to take charge of their own destinies.”

Deirdre laughed. She laughed, and then the laughter turned to tears, sliding hot down her cheeks. “I tried to take charge of my destiny and help people, and look what I got for it.” She spread her arms wide to encompass the whole of the afterlife, the sun crashing down upon them, the eternity of nothingness that approached. “I’ve lost everything. That’s how I’ve been rewarded for taking charge. Thanks,
Godslayer
.”

“She’s right. Send her back.”

Another person had appeared on the grassy plains. Another three people. No, more than three—the more Deirdre counted, the more appeared.

The man who had spoken had soulful eyes and a sad smile.

Gage.

He stood among the blackberry bushes with Niamh. Beyond them stood dozens of others. Deirdre only recognized a few of them. The unseelie queen, Ofelia, was there. So were many of the seelie sidhe who had been devoured by the sluagh when it attacked the chateau in the Summer Court.

Marion’s face brightened at the sight of Gage, but she didn’t move to embrace him. She probably couldn’t. “Hey there.”

“Hey,” he said. He was looking over Marion’s shoulder, past her to that invisible nothing standing out on the grass. “Send her back. Give her one more chance.”

“Deirdre was taken by the sluagh. She’s dead as dead gets,” Marion said. “We can’t send her back.”

“The gods can do anything. The non-intervention is just some stupid policy, right?”

“The line between ‘can’t’ and ‘won’t’ is narrow.”

Deirdre wasn’t even listening to them.

It was
Gage
.

She was moving, walking across the grass, heading into the brambles again. She would have gone through anything to reach Gage after all this time.

Deirdre held her hands out, and so did he.

Their fingers brushed.

She could feel him. He was really there with her, the both of them together in death.

His lips were warm and dry, stubbled chin scraping against hers as she kissed him. Her arms wrapped around his neck. He tasted salty, like tears. “Gage,” she murmured into his lips. “Gage, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I did so many things—I
shot
you, and I became Stark’s Beta—”

“It’s okay.” He pressed his forehead against hers. “It’s okay, Deirdre.”

He wasn’t the first to tell her that her choices were okay, but his voice was the only one that really got through to her.

“The sluagh was an abomination,” said the unseelie queen, stepping forward, her skirts bitten by the thorns. Ofelia was beautiful in this afterlife, even more beautiful than she had been in the brief moments that Deirdre had seen her in Original Sin. “I spent much of my life trying to destroy it. This phoenix finally did it, and she surrendered her life in the attempt. You should put her back.”

“I agree. Deirdre’s the most loyal and noble person I’ve ever known, and the world needs people like her,” Niamh said. She looked hale and hearty, as strong as she had been before the vampires drained her. She was even wearing one of her David Bowie shirts.