It went against every bone in his body, but Gabriel nodded once. "I don't like it, but I understand and respect your decision," he said at last.
"Thank you." She drew a dagger. "Let's go save our pet demon, shall we?"
Gabriel snorted and rested his hand on the door. "Ready?"
"Partners?"
He nodded.
"Then, yes."
Wrenching the door open, he saw the demon braced against the door of the bedchamber, which was bucking beneath the weight of death dealers trying to get in.
"C'mon, demon," Gabriel called gruffly. "We'll take the secret passages." He stepped outside the secret room to ensure Jared was able to see the entrance.
The demon bolted towards him. He was halfway across the bedchamber when the door burst open.
Gabriel waited until Jared was in the room before closing the door. Past-Death stood at the back of the closet at the opening of the passageways.
"Thank you, cupcake," Jared said and hurried forward.
"Go, demon."
They plunged into the passage, and Gabriel gave the stone walls silent instructions of where to take them. As he moved, he considered the immensity of what he'd learned in the sacred closet.
He was chosen. The underworld wanted him as Death, and he didn't have to lose the last fragment of his humanity. The streams of knowledge continued to flow into his mind, the pieces of an ancient puzzle falling into place. He began to see the bigger picture, the history of the realms and of humanity, the rise and fall of deities, Immortals and humans.
Acknowledged history, forbidden history, secret history as told by the deities flowed into him, while the souls filled in the details, like sand sliding between boulders. He grappled to understand knowledge far surpassing anything he'd ever uncovered in the Oracle's book at the Caribbean Sanctuary.
While those pieces fell into place, so did a few more, outside the streams he was being force fed.
His mate had given up all this knowledge, all this power to be with him. Hers wasn't just the power of a deity; it was the power of the goddess who ruled over the rest of the deities. The Keeper of Souls was imbued with knowledge and information from across time and realms, from the lowliest human to the loftiest of the gods.
For a woman who craved control and loved power, it was a lot to sacrifice for a shot with a mere human. It soothed the remaining feelings he had about her, the ones based on memories of how cruel she'd often been to him.
Even that part of her was gone, dissipated when she realized what it meant to be human, when she began to comprehend what made him resist her attempts to strip him of his human decency over the years.