Was it only a little while ago I felt so alone? I don't anymore.

My two Fated males, my twin Princes, would be enough to keep me from loneliness. But they are not all that I have. Not even close.

In my father's throne room are gathered souls and gods and beasts alike. Many of them I count as my own family.

My father and mother are seated on their thrones. My father looked every inch the Lord of the Underworld, King of Ersetu, God of Death. Expressionless, his dark eyes hold ancient wisdom and secrets. His skin is pale, almost grey, as though he was carved from the plainest of stone for the express purpose of instilling fear and dread into anyone unlucky enough to look at him.

My mother is softer, but those warm light eyes are glaring hard at a spot on the wall. I know, instinctively, that her facade of haughty aloofness is just that; a facade.

My Basru is lined in a spearpoint to my right, behind Thane their Captain. They are arrayed in order to be most effective in an attack. Holsten and Grey are the farthest outside warriors, stone demons, both of them. Protectors, skin harder than granite if need be. Next are Carnak and Rolle, wolven shifters, strong attackers. Just past them are Ililie and Nasir, both fast as can be. The deadly tip of the spear is Lier.

Winding through their legs are my five gargoyles. They look especially ferocious today. Even Harku looks angry.

Rasted and Gired are lurking behind me, my deadly assassins already showing signs of hating being contained in this room. Interestingly enough, no one pays them any attention. They are moving around with nearly frenetic energy, but everyone looks through them as if they are ghosts.

Poppy is behind my mother's throne, Erra standing next to her. His blue eyes never stop moving as he assesses the room for threats. What am I saying? That male sees everyone as a threat. He's probably planning the best way to kill us all.

I hear a purr and turn my head, smiling as my cats appear. "Taffy-kitty! Belen-cat!" I stroke their dark, silky heads.

"Did she just call that cat me?" Belen asks. He stands with my Basru.

I look at him, then at Belen-cat. But... Belen is here. And he doesn't seem to be missing his cat... "Who are you?" I whisper to the male cat.

He purrs and begins to groom himself.

"Why would you name a wild leopard after me?" Belen asks.

I use Belen-cat's strategy and ignore the question.

"At last, the prodigal daughter returns. Though, she should have never been allowed to leave this place." Inanji speaks in a biting tone. She, too, has several souls here... unfortunately. They drip in gold and silver and copper, fine, gilded souls. The throne room is a crowded place today.

"And why not?" my father asks. "She was born in the above."

"She has brought utter devastation to the above!" Inanji cries out. "A plague of the undead, of death-bringing magic!"

"And she destroyed those creatures, Inanji," my father snarls.

"Still, perhaps we would not be remiss to... find a way to control the child," a third voice chimes in. Enlal. I didn't see her at first. She has surrounded herself with houseplants, guards, and servants who blend into the background as much as their goddess does.

I feel as though I have walked into an argument already taking place. I look around surreptitiously. I don't see Pir. Or Mardu, not that I would necessarily recognize either god. Urto is here. He is standing by himself, arms crossed as he leans against a pillar, looking relaxed. He has no servants or guards like the goddesses. I'm struck, once again, by just how lonely the god appears to be. His eyes are red instead of green as he stares intently at me, then my males. I can't tell what he is thinking, but both Thane and Thelios step in front of me, partially, their bodies taut with readiness.

"We will not be punishing my daughter," my father growls out. "She is a goddess."

"She is dangerous!" Inanji snaps.

My attention is caught by the bonds that twine through the air. Will I always be distracted by them?

There is a bond that exists between my father and Inanji. It is flat lavender, but there are holes rent in the glowing strand. It looks almost like a fishing net. My own bond with my father and mother is blue and appears much more whole and strong.

And I will not pity Inanji for damaging the relationship between her and my father. It's her fault.

"You have a complaint about my daughter, Inanji?" my father asks her in a cold voice.

"The Murderess of Tmari, you mean?" Inanji fires back.

I gasp out loud. All eyes swing my way. I can feel Urto's red gaze burning into me. Enlal's warm regard; that must be some trick of the goddess' power because I'm sure she doesn't truly like me. My father's eyes are unfathomable, but I can feel his concern. I straighten my spine and tilt my head up a bit. I am not a little child to be protected by my father at every crossroad in life.

"You seem upset at the label, love," Urto sounds darkly amused. My males bristle at his term of endearment. "That is what those scant survivors in the above are calling you; Lady Death, Murderess of Tmari."

"I had to burn the city," I say to him, although the label stings. I try my best to sound innocent, just as Thane puts on a show, so can I. "The undead army that Inanji unleashed would have never stopped wreaking destruction otherwise."

"You have no proof it was me," she snaps. "Only the word of one of the males you have manipulated."

I don't even know which of my males she's talking about. Most likely Thelios, he was with her at the time. We were doing other things, not discussing the time apart, bitch, I say silently.

"I thought everyone was gone from the city," I continue as if she never spoke. "I was there when the refugees fled. First to War," I glance at Urto, who just smiles at me condescendingly. "Then abandoning the city entirely when it became unsafe to stay."

"What about the noble districts?" One of Inanji's followers asks. He is a Tasuri. Most likely a purist. My goodness, has their prejudice followed them even in death?

Thane steps forward. "The rot in those Districts ran deep," he says. "They produced their own monsters."

"You are not a god," Urto sneers, "so silence your tongue."

Both my males take a step toward Urto, but stop when Inanji issues her next accusation.

"Rot? Who do you suppose damaged the hearts and minds of that district?" she snaps out.

Ah, you?

She snaps her fingers haughtily, and out of the crowd of her supporters steps Anthea.

I bite my lips to keep my gasp of dismay in. Thane growls, his arm reaching back to shield me protectively. The Basru shimmers with violent energy. Thelios curses under his breath.

Anthea is a sickening sight. Her luxurious brunette locks, so shiny and always carefully curled every time I saw her before, are tangled and filthy. She is thin, as I was when I was starving. Her skin is pale and covered in bruises. Red streaks run down her cheeks and arms. Her eyes look crazed. She is shaking, rattling the chains that hang from the collar on her neck and the manacles on her wrists.

She doesn't look at me. Her focus is on the souls closest to her. I recognize that look on her face. Hunger.

I peek at Erra. He looks on edge, but pays no attention to the broken, twisted shade of his mother. Could he have become this awful creature if I had not given him the blood of a goddess?

"This is what happens when an evil witch plots to steal a male belonging to another," Inanji announces. Her words have an immediate effect on the crowd. Enlal looks about ready to faint. Urto looks pleasantly amused. My father glowers. I see our bond thin, pull tight as he wonders if I did indeed create this foul thing.

"You fed her the hearts, Inanji," Thane spits out. "I saw it with my own two eyes."

Inanji scoffs. "Yet another one of her blinded males speaks in her defense. How was I to get magic like this? This is death-magic, blood-magic, nothing like my own."

She is deviously clever. Using my own magic against me. The Forgotten, the hearts. And only the males who I have 'manipulated' are my witnesses. I glance around the throne room. I don't see Sera's shade. The souls of the undead army are all out there in Ersetu somewhere, living their afterlives. They may not know, anyway, who created them. I'm not even sure how they were created, except from the Forgotten.

"So, the destroyer of souls, the Murderess of Tmari, the bringer of all things foul and terrible, will try to accuse me of her crimes!" Inanji is putting on her show.

"And what do you want to have happen to her, Inanji?" Urto asks.

Dread makes my heart beat rapidly. Are they colluding?

"Imprison her here," Inanji replies swiftly. "Leave her with her little pets and her guards. But, take away the souls she is corrupting."

There is a pause. Then, mayhem. Inanji's guards swarm to take me. My Basru surges forward as one unit to meet the attack. Her soldiers in their shining bronze armor are flung this way and that, no match for the Guardians of the Gates.

Thane and Thelios are also in the melee, leaving me to be protected by Rasted and Gired.

"Enough!" my father bellows out. The fighters all back away from each other, slowly. Thane and Thelios come back to my side, caging me between them. I reach out, skimming my fingers on their bare skin. I need to reassure myself that they are still here, still mine. I can't be separated from them again.

Five bodies don't move, all of them Inanji's soldiers. She continues her vitriolic attack on me without stopping to check on her fallen guards.

"You, yourself, should know that we can't take away her Fated males," Enlal interjects.

"But they have been spelled-"

"We are not spelled," Thane spits out, interrupting Inanji.

"Death god." A flat voice rings out. All eyes swing to Erra. "I believe I can attest to the truth of her," he indicates Anthea with a wave of his hand. "I was fed a heart by my mother's hand. That creature's hand. I do not know where she got them from, but I was ravenous for the blood of the living. Until the goddess of Grief spared my life. She has asked nothing from me since, except to protect her daughter, which I would have done anyway." Erra steps back to Poppy.

It is quiet in the throne room as everyone examines Erra, then his mother, noting the differences in their appearance. Of course, Erra didn't tell them how I saved his sanity and ended his insatiable hunger for blood.

Inanji looks pale, glaring at Erra in suspicion. I don't think she knew that I had saved him. She probably thought he was still a killer-toddler somewhere in the above wreaking havoc. She didn't recognize the poised, watchful teenager as the toddler she so blatantly created then discarded.

"I am satisfied that my daughter cannot be held responsible for that," my father glares at Anthea. "As for the accusations of raising the undead army, she has corrected her mistake, if it was indeed her mistake."

"You may be satisfied, but I am not," Inanji scorns my father's words.

My father doesn't appreciate that at all. His figure seems to swell, the power of the Underworld boiling just under the surface of the skin he wears.

"Look outside if you need proof of her danger to the world," Inanji snaps out.

In a motion that looks synchronized, her sycophants all move out of the way. Behind them is the balcony. Open doorways stretch from floor to ceiling, affording us all a perfect view of Ersetu.

Beyond the walls of the city to the east are the fields stretching out into the horizon. Milling outside of the gate are thousands of souls.

"The Fields of the Lost Souls," Enlal says in a worried tone. The mother goddess is also looking out at the crowd.

I try to catch my father's eye, but he is busy glaring outside, his hand holding my mother's tightly as if her touch grounds him.

"She has done this," Inanji says spitefully. "All of Tmari is here and cannot enter the city because they died in a fire. A fire that she set." Her perfectly manicured finger dripping in rings points at me.

"Mara?" my father questions me.

Time to twist the truth, myself. Just a bit.

"I had to burn the city, father. I was trapped in a cairn, in the mausoleum of the Recondites. I couldn't leave, but I could feel them. The undead. The undead had trapped the living souls in their own homes, with their own walls. More and more undead were rising. The grief was overwhelming, but not as terrible as the numbers of undead." No sense in letting everyone know that I told the undead to trap everyone. Let them think that the undead did that on their own.

"You set free the undead and created this genocide, Inanji. I merely cleaned up your mess," I add.

She is incandescent with rage. It rolls off of her pretty face and out of her flower-blue eyes.

"Is that where you were imprisoned?" my father is roaring with anger. Every eye turns from the souls at the gate to him. "I believed you in my temple!"

Lier is the one who steps forward now. My heart twists for my big brother. "I was the one who locked her inside the tomb, Lord Nateos. It is true, she was shut inside a stone sarcophagus for days as she starved."

"You see? Her own Basru did it," Inanji spits.

Lier doesn't look at her. "My loyalty at the time was not to Mara. I had turned traitor, for the Love goddess," he says with no emotion.

Bile rises in my throat. I don't want to put Lier through this. I am the only one he has, right now. His family. I don't want to watch him slice open his heart and bleed all over this beautiful marble floor any more than I would want him to bleed in battle.

"Lies," Inanji scoffs. "Can the Murderess offer any witnesses who haven't been entranced by her foul magic?"

"I was loyal to you, Inanji. I broke the sacred oath of the Basru for you."

No Lier. Don't. I try to go to him, to stop him, but my own Fated males are crowding me with my assassins. I don't think a bee could sting me with the protection surrounding me.

"After all, we are Fated souls, aren't we, Inanji?" Lier continues. Only at the end of his speech, when he says her name, does the bitter hurt come into his voice.

"Lier," I say his name into the hushed quiet. He offers me a sad smile, his eyes dark with pain.

The silence of the throne room is oppressive. Inanji looks ill, struck by what she most likely thought Lier would never say out loud. Their bond... what a sick thing it is. The thin gold bond of Fate itself is fraying. The gold is tarnished. In places it is so weak and brittle that it looks like it may snap under even the slightest pressure.

In the collective shock of the souls in the room, I am able to sneak to Lier's side and entwine my fingers with his. I ignore the twin growls.

My father is frozen as if he truly turned to stone. Even Urto looks surprised. Enlal doesn't, instead the mother goddess just looks sorrowful.

"You protested Mara's Fated bonds and you spurned your own?" Urto asks her.

"Perhaps for a demi-goddess," Inanji throws me hateful look, "being Fated to some mortal is a fine thing, but I am a true goddess. I deserve better than some common, mortal, Tasuri!" she sneers at Lier.

I open my mouth to throw her own words back in her face, but Lier squeezes my fingers, silencing me.

My father rises from his throne. The temperature drops in the room. "My daughter has been harmed enough by you, Inanji. Once, in this very room, I called you 'daughter.' I would have been happy to continue calling you that. But you have spurned me as your father and broken my trust so often."

"Then what sort of father are you?" she asks. It is the first time since I walked into this room that she has shown true vulnerability. She watches the older god with tears in her eyes.

"You had your happiness, Inanji. You turned your back on me. Mara could have been your sister. I allowed her to be born into your own damn House!" he seethes. "Instead of loving and protecting her you hated her. You allowed jealousy to color your own vision of her."

"Jealousy..." Enlal interrupts in her soft voice, "is a part of Love, no? Perhaps we were wrong, brother," she addresses my father. "We should have kept Inanji closer to us, valued her more."

"She has all but destroyed my beautiful daughter and my- love for her," he says. I may be the only one who notices his pause. I squeeze Lier's hand in comfort.

"At what point, Enlal, do we see that Inanji is spoiled and selfish, not hurt?" he sneers. "Did you see my daughter when she arrived her? Too weak to even walk? Starving? How is that permissible?"

Enlal shrugs, "Mara is a goddess, a blood-drinker, a bond-breaker. She is Grief itself, just as I am the Life-giver and you are Death. She is not at all the helpless creature you believe her to be."

"She is too young-"

"She is old enough," Urto interrupts. "And she is stealing Inanji's Fated away from her as we stand here and argue like fools."

I drop Lier's hand like it burned me. I feel hands on my shoulders, pulling me back into Thane's chest as Thelios steps in between me and Lier.

I grab Thelios' hand with both of mine. "Don't be jealous," I whisper to them. "Lier is not my Fated. You are my males."

Urto laughs, "she has males tripping over themselves for her, Inanji. Aren't you the goddess of love?" he mocks her relentlessly.

Inanji lets out a sob. Her hand waves toward the open balcony. "She has done this, I swear."

"And I swear that I have not," I snap in return.

"Enough of this. Neither will admit the truth and Inanji is correct about one thing; those males will never betray their Lady's trust." Urto points towards us. "Will you," he turns to my father, "allow them to bond to your daughter? A goddess?"

My father is silent. I want him to say something, to protect my males, but apparently Nateos' protection only extends to me.

"I propose a solution. I will bond to the lovely Mara. Then I will be able to see her truth. If she lies, then I will be the one to punish her. If not, then Inanji will pay the price for her lies."

Thane steps forward. "With your permission, Lord Nateos, As Champions of the Arena, my brother and I accept the challenge for your daughter."