Chapter 213

Father stared at her.

“I see,” he said. “The goddess of sensuality. Fertility. Sex. Her conduit and champion. What makes you believe this?”

Rosalie’s face reddened. “She has skills related to ... Ephythithys’s aspects.”

Father stared at her.

Rosalie chickened out.

She’d been braced to explain things in direct terms. At least, more direct. To at least hint at the truth. And possibly even explain her relationship to Zoey.

But, unfortunately, Rosalie was more of a coward than she’d thought.

“As in, bonding,” Rosalie said, clearing her throat and glancing away. “As you’ve already noticed, she’s very ... loyal. One of Ephythithys’s aspects is bonds. So that’s the manifestation Zoey’s class took.”

“Intimate bonds, I believe.”

Rosalie shrugged. “Friendship counts, I suppose. Trust and being an ally in general. And it’s whoever she chooses. Doesn’t have to be an established relationship.”

“It?” Father repeated. “What do you mean, it?”

“She can select allies to boost. Enormously. Not just in the manner of a typical support class, but also in progression. She can accelerate experience gain. That’s how I’ve reached fourth advancement in such a short amount of time.” She felt mildly embarrassed to admit that. Because it meant her prodigious pace—or at least her absurdly prodigious pace, since she’d already been doing quite well before Zoey—was thanks more to a powerful ally than by her own merit.

But Father had never been one to care about that. He valued results. Luck and circumstances were irrelevant. Confirming that, he didn’t seem bothered by the reveal. Though that might be more because of his greater interest in the current topic. Of gods and their champions.

“How do you know she’s not misrepresenting her class?” Father asked. “There’s plenty of absurdly powerful individuals—some even granted their strength as if from nowhere. Hm. Perhaps not plenty. But enough.”

Rosalie blinked. For some reason, she hadn’t even considered having to explain that to him. Fortunately, she could. “Besides being on the receiving end of it, I read her tabula anima myself. She’s not misrepresenting anything.”

“You did?”

At the surprise in his voice, Rosalie fought her cheeks from coloring. It was an intimate act, peering into another person’s soul. She wondered if she was giving away her relationship to Zoey without meaning to. “When she first arrived, she didn’t know how to read her skills. So I had to.”

“When she first arrived,” Father repeated. “To where? How did you two meet?”

A brief image of being crammed inside a coffin, every inch of their skin touching, hot, sweaty, Zoey humping awkwardly, sliding that thing across Rosalie’s stomach, between their bodies, faster and faster until—

Rosalie cleared her throat. “She spawned in the same shard as me. Hence why I was forced into reading her tabula anima, else she remain dead weight. Neither of us had a choice in the matter.”

“I see,” Father said. “How do you know Ephythithys specifically is involved?”

“Beyond being a plausible explanation for a mythic rune of bonding?”

“Mythic?” Father asked incredulously.

“Along with three other runes?”

“She has four total?”

“And that I trust her, when she confided that in me?” Rosalie asked. “Among all those things, Zoey also led us to a corrupted shard upon the instruction of her patron.” Rosalie hadn’t doubted her before that, but it was the concrete piece of evidence she could point to. Delta had seen Ephythithys, but Rosalie hadn’t.

“You went into one of those places? Dangerous, Rosalie.”

“There, we found a shard eater,” Rosalie continued, ignoring him. She winced. “And ... I suppose I should mention it might be following us.”

“Following you?”

“Though we’re not entirely certain what’s happening, there. We haven’t caught sight of it since then.”

For a while, Father stared at her.

He pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Elodie gives me enough headaches. You’re supposed to be the measured one.”

Rosalie cleared her throat. “It was dangerous, yes, entering that shard. But it was a task granted by a goddess. I don’t believe those are the sorts of things one should ignore.”

Father eyed her but didn’t disagree. “You sound entirely too unconcerned that something that eats shards is trailing you.”

Rosalie shrugged. “Lucinda couldn’t spot it if it indeed was following us to Mantle, so it’s out of our hands.” She hesitated. “The creature is interested in Zoey, anyway.” Specifically in divinely imbued cum, but that was something she would politely avoid mentioning to her father. “So if it resurfaces, its obsession is with her, not me.”

Father only seemed half assuaged by that explanation. “Where do the other two fit in?”

“The other two?”

“The fox and the Sovereign.”

“Oh.” Rosalie shifted in place. Funny enough, despite both of them being far more competent than Zoey from a wayfaring standpoint, their positions on Rosalie’s squad were much more tenuous. “They aren’t sponsored by goddesses, if that’s what you mean. They’re simply our teammates.”