Jade grabbed the back of my hand, hers trembling horribly. “Please.” She didn’t finish the plea, didn’t look up, just sat there shivering like a terrorized puppy.

I sighed. “All right. Last thing.”

Her shaking didn’t stop, but it did lessen.

“There’s something odd about you.” I kept myself still, neither taking her hand nor pushing it off. “I haven’t been able to put my finger on it. But I think it’s related to that language you know, the one you, Hasda, and that djinn all share.” I shook my head. “It’s not a living language. Nebesa can help us understand, if not entirely, then at least good approximations of all known languages. It’s how we and the other pantheons can interact with any semblance of civility. So where in the world did you find it? And how does the djinn know it?”

She went so unnaturally still, so suddenly, that I thought she’d fainted. But she sat there, erect, slowly forcing air in and out through her nose. As I waited, she withdrew her hand and clasped it in her other hand, resting them in her lap as she drilled holes in the ground with her eyes. Finally, she shivered a sigh and flicked a glance at me through her hair. “You can’t tell anyone about this.”

“What? About your mines?” I gave her a comforting smile, preparing to explain that, yes, the pantheon (or at least the major gods) would need to know about the demon sleeping deep below her territory.

She quickly shook her head. “Not that. About me. Or, what I’m going to say.” Her fingers dug into her robes. “Please.”

I frowned and folded my arms. Shifting my weight above my heels, I said, “It depends on what you have to say. But, depending on what it is, it won’t go any further than me.” I paused. “And Malia, of course.”

Jade paled and shivered. “I guess that’s as good as you can do. Okay.” She clenched her clothes and straightened her spine. “I’m...broken.”

I blinked. “Beg pardon.”

“Broken,” she repeated, jerking her head in awkward nods. “Like, my spirit. My...I don’t know how to describe it.” Tears pooled in the corners of her eyes. “But I’m wrong. Really wrong. Don’t fit, out of place, lost connection, drifting.” She smiled, a sad, broken thing that made her look absolutely pathetic. “Not here. I don’t belong.”

“All right, I’m going to need you to unpack that a little.”

She looked up. “Unpack? Is there a box?” She gasped. “Are you sending me away? Or, wait. Unpack would be stay.”

“Stop.” I held up a hand and massaged the bridge of my nose with the other. “What I mean is, I need you to explain what you mean by all that.”

“In here.” She poked her chest. “It’s broken.”

“Yes, but how?” I did my best to keep the exasperation out of my voice. “Like, are you sick? Poisoned? Did you suffer some sort of trauma that’s caused cognitive dissonance?”

“I…” She tilted her head. “Maybe?”

“Okay.” The breeze floated between us, rustling the grass and rolling the humidity of the surrounding springs around. I wiped my hands on my thighs against the cloying damp. “When did you first start feeling this way?”

“After I got out.”

I frowned. “Got out of what?”

“My...mines.” She rubbed her arm and looked away. “I was never supposed to leave them.”

Oh.

Oh shit.

“Jade, were you sealed in the mines with...him?”

Her shoulders trembled. “What was left of him.”

No wonder she was freaking out about it. Some cultures, like the one that preceded Aenea, had a habit of interring servants when their masters died, to guide and serve them in the afterlife. Usually, the servants were sacrificed before burial, but on rare occasions, they were not. Only the most important, powerful masters merited such honors.

But for the gods, it was generally held that the dead were best to guard the dead. So, for the Paedens to have gone to all the effort to not only expunge “his” name from the earth but also entomb his divine warden, alive, with him as well…

Shit.

I knew I wasn’t keeping all my emotions off my face because Jade shifted even more.

“Please don’t banish me.” Her voice gave out halfway through, and she whispered the last two words in a cracked hush.

“Nobody’s banishing anybody,” I said, hammering the dirt with my fist. Fury roiled in my gut, a slow rage that was swirling upwards. As it lapped against the bottom of my lungs, I pushed to my feet to give myself the space to control it. “Nobody except maybe the gods stupid enough to abandon you like that.” I clenched my fists. “How old are you?”

“I...I really don’t know,” Jade stammered, shrinking back. “Everything was weird in the crypt. Broken.” She ducked her head. “Like me.”

“Like Pek you are,” I snapped. “Let me guess. You felt some kind of rush when the seal was broken? Like time catching up to you?”

“How did you—” She flinched when she saw my face.

Yeah, I probably looked royally pissed. They’d had an elder god that dangerous, and they locked a gods-damned child in there, alone, and temporally isolated her from the rest of reality in some mistaken bid for time before said ancient one put himself back together. They hadn’t even had the decency to put someone in with her, to help hold back the madness, both from the isolation and from the influence of the sundered god. It was a damn miracle Jade could even string coherent sentences together.

She was practically curled in a ball now. “You’re scaring me.”

Small fissures split the ground beneath my feet as my aura bubbled over, cracking the air like a vase. Oops.

“My apologies.” I reined in the surging power and knelt next to her. “I just can’t believe how stupid and incompetent your former pantheon was. What they did to you was horrible.”

“So you’re not sending me away?”

I barked a laugh. “No, but I might send some limbs away from the gods who did this to you.” I narrowed my eyes. “Was it the Paedens? Are any of the gods from that time still around?”

“Yes.” Jade ducked her head, hiding behind her hair again.

“Good. Last question.”

Her fingers wrapped themselves in her robe again, and she uncurled just a little bit. “What?”

“Who let you out?” I watched as her face worked through several variations of confusion.

She finally settled on the classic pinched eyebrows look and frowned. “I—I’m sorry, but I don’t know.”

I folded my arms, then immediately unfolded them so Jade wouldn’t think I was upset with her. “Then how did you get through the seal? Did it fail? Tear? Did you force your way out?”

“No.” She shook her head, looking apprehensive because she didn’t know the answer to my question. “I just...woke up in the mines one day.”

“Hmm.” I rubbed my chin to keep from scowling. If the seal had decayed to the point that she could escape, we’d have to worry about Tamiyat’s mate breaking free on his own. If someone had let her out, however, then we’d need to contend with whatever eldritch cult was moving to revive their leader. But if the sorcery had merely expelled her, we could be up against any number of things. Soured magic, temporal fracturing, the mate’s influence… It would have been far simpler if there were some known, direct source for Jade’s liberation.

Alas, life was never so accommodating.

“Well, that’s a mystery for another time, then,” I said, holding out my hand. “Up you go. You’re going to need another bath as it is, but enough sitting in the dirt.”

She hesitantly took my hand and let me help her up. “So I’m not in trouble?”

“The only trouble you’re going to be in is if you keep asking if we’re kicking you out.” I gave her a stern look. She shrank a little but nodded. “Good. Let’s head back to Nebesa. There’s a feast coming up you’ll want to be presentable for, and I have a boy to chase down.”

As we walked across the field towards the administrative cabin, Jade shifted back to her lamia form, changing her bathrobes into her day robes in the process. She stayed more silent than I’d ever thought possible before our conversation, making no noise outside the whispering of the grass against her snakeskin.

I coughed to break the silence. “So...you and Hasda, huh?”

Well that opened the floodgates. Interspersed with her rapid apologies were unbounded embarrassment and promises to respect my boundaries established as his guardian and patron. I had to hold up a hand to get a word in edgewise.

“I meant your relationship. It’s going well?”

Eyes on the ground, she colored deep scarlet and picked at her robes. “You could say that.”

I grunted to keep from choking on a laugh. “That’s good to hear. Just keep in mind your station.”

She looked up, concerned. “I’m not trying to overstep—”

“Not like that,” I said, shaking my head. We crested the last hill, nearly at the cabin. “You’re a grafted-in minor goddess. While I don’t hold that against you, it means you can barely shelter any mortals you attach yourself to. Not to mention that Hasda is nearly a demigod with two Seated patrons.” The way it came out sounded like a brag, but I didn’t intend it to. Jade took it well nevertheless. “There’s a distinct possibility that he’ll eventually surpass you. So whatever you do, don’t mix power and status with your relationship.”

She ducked her head. “Thank you for your advice, Aged One.”

I nearly scowled. Despite my rickety body and many centuries, I didn’t feel quite so old as I used to, which was a good development. But Jade had the maturity to listen to advice, at least, which boded well for their future together. I couldn’t help the grin that crept across my face. They were kind of cute together. I wonder what their kids would be like?