Chuck was wrapped up in a fur coat I’d stolen from Shu’s office. Shu wouldn’t miss it. She had hundreds. Color touched Chuck’s cheeks where the cold wind bit, but her smile was warm.

She threw her arms around Bast, and they exchanged a few words. I hung back and settled for watching people file into waiting buses. They all had places to be, and Chuck would find hers.

Bast had given Chuck enough cash to get her started somewhere far, far away from New York. She was a good kid. She’d survived a brush with the gods. Few lived to tell those tales. I had faith she’d do just fine.

“Hey.” She stood in front of me, her pale little hands stuffed in her coat pockets. “Thank you.”

I smiled back. “Not necessary.”

She pulled her hand from her pocket and held it out. I closed mine around hers, yanked her into my arms, and hugged her. Bast saw and looked away, but not before I caught her smiling.

“You’re gonna do just fine,” I said into Chuck’s hair, squeezing her a little too tightly, absorbing what I could of the moment before it passed. If everything went as planned, I’d never see her again. That was how it had to be, but it hurt in ways I couldn’t describe and didn’t want to think about.

“Sure I am.” She pulled back and adjusted her backpack. “I wish I could stay. There’s so much I want to know.”

“Bast will follow once she’s certain it’s safe. There’s a lot you need to know.”

She hesitated, looked at Bast, and then back at me. “We’re the same.”

I’d been afraid she’d ask, but there wasn’t a question there. She knew the answer. What I wanted to tell her, the things she needed to know about who and what she was—that was a conversation for another time and place.

“Try and control it. Don’t let it control you.” It was the best piece of advice I had, and advice I’d failed at.

She grinned and shot a finger-gun at me. “Stay awesome.”

“Is there any other way?”

Bast and I watched her climb onto the bus and take a seat near the back. She wiped the condensation off her window and waved at us as the bus pulled out of the depot. Bast waved back while I did my best to smile as doubts poured in. She’d be fine, I knew that, but I would have liked to have time to get to know her and help her.

“She’ll be all right,” Bast said, sounding very much like the voice in my head.

“Yeah, she will.”

“Are we doing the right thing?”

“Hell if I know.” Judging by Bast’s frown, that had been the wrong thing to say. “C’mon.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

We started walking back toward the parking lot. Bast’s gaze was as far away as my thoughts.

“If she’d stayed,” I said, jogging down a few steps to where my bike was parked, “Isis would have found her. If her child is prophesied, she’s a weapon, one any god will try to wield. It’s better she stays away from us.”

Bast sighed, but then she nodded and mustered up a smile. “I wonder if maybe I’d gone to Osiris earlier, he might have stopped Isis.”

Stop Isis? I wasn’t sure anyone could stop her, even Osiris. “Or he would have helped her.”

“Have you heard from him?”

“No.”

And that was playing on my mind. It had only been a day, but the god wouldn’t forgive me for raising Alysdair against his wife and then attempting to lay a curse on them both. He’d make me pay for that. But I’d had to make the act look good enough to convince them the girl’s death mattered, and to end it. Against the odds, it had worked. They didn’t know she was alive, and they didn’t know Chuck was my daughter. I planned to keep it that way indefinitely.

“I need you to do something for me.” I leaned against my bike and fixed all of my attention on Bast.

She eyed me suspiciously.

Outside of Cujo and Shu, nobody knew what I was about to tell her. She’d hate that I’d lied, but lying was what I was good at. It wouldn’t surprise her.

“Osiris did more than curse me to walk this realm and tie Shu to me. The curse…he can compel me to do anything he wants.”

She tensed and tried to hide the shock from her face, but I saw the twitch in her lips as the snarl tried to break through.

“I have no resistance against him.”

She blinked and her chest rose and fell quicker than before.

“Any word, any deed he orders me to do, I will.”

“Since when?” Her two words were both sharp with anger.

I wanted to look away, to bow my head and fix my eyes on the floor, but I didn’t. “It’s always been that way. I don’t like to broadcast it, for obvious reasons.”

“There’s a way out, surely?”

“No, I’ve looked. I can’t get around it. Shu is the best sorceress there is and she can’t unravel it. The things he’s had me do… Bast, I…”

“You don’t need to explain.”

She held herself still as if she were tempering her rage. Her throat moved as she swallowed. She looked at me, and I wasn’t sure I could stand to see the sadness softening her eyes. I didn’t want her pity. It was why I’d never told her.

“I need you to wipe Chuck from my memories.” There, I’d said it.

She frowned, and I knew she’d say no.

“If you won’t, I’ll get Shu to do it, but there’s no knowing what she’ll wipe from my head. I trust you to do it right.”

“There must be another way?”

“There isn’t. If Osiris asks me anything about that girl, I’ll tell him. I’ve done worse. Much worse.”

She closed her eyes. A muscle ticked in her cheek. “If I do this, you’ll forget I was here.”

“I know.” Was that so bad? I wondered.

“I can’t. I...” She pinched her bottom lip between her teeth. “It’s wrong.”

“And how wrong do you think it’ll feel when Osiris learns Chuck is not only alive, but that she’s our daughter and her prophesied son is still out there? You have to do this, for her. You’ve kept her safe for twenty years. This is just another part of that.”

“You won’t know you have a daughter…”

“I didn’t know before, and it didn’t kill me.” But it hurt now, like a vise had hold of my heart and was slowly crushing it. To lose her again after only just finding her…it wasn’t right, and it wasn’t fair. I’d be alone again. But life was like that, and I couldn’t say I didn’t deserve it. “You have to do this.”

“Yes.” The sadness was back, pulling her lips down at the corners. “I’m sorry.”

I tried to smile but didn’t quite manage it. “We do it tonight. Before then, take me out to dinner at that fancy restaurant you took Chuck.”

One last night. That vise around my heart squeezed tighter.

Her smile, small and fragile, was for my benefit. “I’d like that.”