“But there’s one in Hell?”
He didn’t answer. He was holding out on me. No surprise there. Loki was Lucifer’s son, and he’d inherited his father’s suspicious nature. He’d never give up all his cards, even though he wanted to use me, even though he considered me an ally.
“Show me one more memory of my mother,” I said with longing. I didn’t care that she was the Queen of Hell and that none of the tales about her were any good. She was my mother. She’d gotten me out of the Void when no one else could escape it.
“I don’t have many,” he said. “She came to me in the Dreaming a few times. The last time she showed was to arrange the logistics of smuggling you out of the Void, then out of Hell. We’ve been very careful. We can’t leave any trace behind.”
They had to be careful when facing an opponent who was the devil himself. Lucifer found out that Loki had hidden his birth mother instead of killing her. He’d outsmarted my mother and robbed her of her power, even though she’d been more powerful than him. He’d dragged me to Hell right under my demigods’ noses.
“My father has been dying to know how you were made and how you escaped the Void since no one else has ever made it out,” Loki said. “He searched every corner of your mind, but you didn’t have any memories of your mother or me.”
I couldn’t recall anything about myself before the age of seven. All I remembered was living on the streets, fighting and surviving, until Vi took me in. I became her ward and lived with her in the abandoned library, until one day she took off and left me.
“Did you raise me until I was seven?” I asked.
“I wished I could keep you and train you,” he said softly. “But I had to get you out of this realm in three days or risk having him find you. Your Titan father, the once most powerful elder god, helped place a seal on your power to disguise you as a human. The seal also blocked your memories for seven years. Your parents took extra measures to make sure if anyone scanned your mind, they could only see your years living as a human.”
“Why did they send me out of the Void?”
“Would you rather have lived in the Void?”
“They bred me as the ultimate weapon, didn’t they? They had their own agenda for breeding a hybrid child forbidden by all the gods.”
He shrugged, and I shot him an annoyed look.
He smiled then. “Cronus’s eldest children—Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon—can still manage to travel to the Void and get back out once every thousand years when the realm of the Void is in recess for a day. You weren’t safe in the Void either. The only safe place for you was in the human world, in a forgotten corner controlled by the demigods.”
So he’d put me in Crack, where no demons or demigods would visit. Not until my last day in that town.
“So you just dumped me on the street, all alone by myself? What kind of person are you?!”
“You started on your own when you were three years old,” he said. “You had to pass all sorts of tests. You had to survive through your smarts and resources. You weren’t supposed to be surrounded by roses, honey, and lies. Being a pretty, little, silly human was never your path.”
“You should have just left me alone,” I hissed.
I’d never have suffered so much without the dark prince’s meddling.
“I liked being a little, silly human,” I added viciously.
“You were born with a purpose,” he said, “though you might not like it. And you were never alone. I had my most trusted guardian watch over you from the shadows.”
“I never saw your shadow people, though I’ve slain many bad dudes since I was seven, and none of them were demons, until my last day in Crack.” Then it dawned on me that he might be the one who tipped off the Dominions to get me. “On that day, both a demon and a demigod showed up. Did you arrange for me to be dragged away from my good hunter life, too?”
I’d wanted to cling to my old life, to Circe and Jasper.
My tone was bitter, but I also knew that I’d never have met my demigods if I hadn’t been forced to the Half-Blood Academy. I’d only truly lived, no matter how brief the time, because of the demigods. And I made great friends—Nat and Yelena.
“Vi was the guardian I sent to you,” Loki said softly.
I staggered back.
“Vi trained you for three years before she had to leave you,” Loki said.
“Because you summoned her back and took her away from me,” I said, my voice dripping with cold bitterness.
Vi had always been his. She’d never been mine, to begin with, and she’d deceived me. They treated me as a pawn on the chessboard, probably since before I’d been conceived. I sneered. This pawn might just kill the kings, the queens, the devil, and the gods, and be done with it all.
As if hearing the echo of my dark thoughts, Loki turned to me, unfazed. His hand reached out to touch my cheek, but I swatted it away.