All Chapters of Her Exiled Husband Is A Forgotten God : Chapter 11
- Chapter 20
44 chapters
CHAPTER ELEVEN
POV: Kael "Again." Celestine's voice cut through the motel room like a blade. She stood in the center of the cramped space, her white dress somehow still spotless despite hours of training. Her ancient eyes watched Kael with the patience of someone who had all eternity to wait. Kael wiped blood from his nose and pushed himself up from the floor. His whole body ached. His muscles screamed. His bones felt like they were vibrating at frequencies they were never meant to handle. "I can't," he said. "I can't access it anymore. It's gone." "It's not gone. It's hiding." Celestine walked toward him, her movements too graceful for the small room. "You're afraid of it. That's why it won't come." "I'm not afraid." "Liar." She reached out and touched his forehead. The moment her fingers made contact, Kael's vision split. The motel room peeled away like old paint, revealing something else underneath. A memory that wasn't his—or rather, a memory that had been his, before they took it
CHAPTER TWELVE
POV: Kael / Ava"Push harder."Celestine's voice echoed through the empty warehouse they'd moved to—somewhere with more space than the motel room, somewhere they could afford to break things.Kael's hands were glowing. Light gathered in his palms, compressed into shapes that hurt to look at. Sweat poured down his face as he fought to maintain control."I can't hold it," he said through gritted teeth."You have to. Your brother will hit you with ten times this force. If you can't contain this, you'll die in the first exchange."The power slipped from his grasp. Light exploded outward, shattering crates and sending debris flying across the warehouse floor. Kael dropped to his knees, gasping.Something was wrong.Not with his body—with his senses. Colors looked duller now than they had yesterday. The taste of his breakfast that morning had been muted, barely there. It was like someone was slowly turning down the volume on his humanity.He remembered the eggs Ava had made. He'd chewed and
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
POV: KaelThe warehouse smelled like blood and incense.Kael stood in the doorway, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. Twelve bodies lay on the floor in a circle. Their throats were cut. Their blood pooled toward a central altar covered in symbols that made his stomach lurch with recognition.Symbols he knew. Symbols that belonged to him. Ancient writing he couldn't read but somehow understood perfectly."Welcome, Aelindor." A man in golden robes stepped forward from the shadows. His eyes were bright with worship, his hands stained red to the wrists. "We've been waiting so long for your return.""What have you done?" Kael's voice came out strangled. He could barely form the words."Offerings." The man spread his arms wide, encompassing the carnage. "Blood offerings to mark your awakening. Just as the old texts describe. Just as our ancestors commanded.""The old texts never said this. I never asked for this.""You didn't have to ask." Another worshipper emerged from behind a s
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
POV: Ava / KaelThe Morrison mansion looked different now.Ava stood at the gates, seeing the energy that pulsed beneath the familiar stone walls. After her awakening in the warehouse, after touching Kael's power, nothing looked the same anymore. She could see the wards now—barriers of divine energy that protected the property from outside interference.Her family had been prepared for exactly this kind of threat.They'd known. All along, they'd known.The guards at the gate recognized her. They opened the doors without question, though their eyes tracked her with newfound suspicion. Word had spread about her escape with Kael. About what she'd witnessed. About the man—the thing—she'd chosen over her own blood.She walked the familiar path to the main house, her heels clicking on stones she'd walked a thousand times before. But now she noticed things she'd never seen. The subtle glow around certain windows. The way shadows pooled unnaturally in corners. The faint shimmer of protection
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
POV: KaelKael felt his brother before dawn.It started as pressure behind his eyes. A throb in his skull that matched the rhythm of his own heartbeat. Then it spread—into his chest, into his bones, into the spaces between his thoughts.Korvain was close now. Less than a day away. And the closer he got, the more Kael's body remembered.His hands clenched into fists without his permission. His muscles tensed for combat. His instincts screamed warnings that his human mind couldn't process. Every cell in his body knew what was coming, even if his conscious mind couldn't name it.War was coming."You feel it too," Celestine said. She stood at the window of their new safehouse—a farmhouse Maya's network had secured, miles from any civilian population. The early morning light caught the silver in her ancient eyes. "He's announcing his approach. Making sure you know.""Is that supposed to intimidate me?""No. It's supposed to give you time to prepare. To make peace with whatever needs making
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
POV: Kael / AvaDirector Maria Santos did not look impressed."You're smaller than I expected," she said, studying Kael across the metal table in the underground bunker. "The reports suggested something more... imposing.""I'm working on it."Santos's office was hidden beneath a nondescript government building—gray walls, fluorescent lights, the smell of recycled air. Everything about it screamed bureaucracy. But the files stacked around them told a different story.A century of divine interference. Documented."We've known about them since 1917," Santos said. "A manifestation in the trenches of France. Our predecessors thought it was a miracle. They learned better." She pushed a folder across the table. "The collaborator network spans every continent. Families like the Morrisons, serving the Council in exchange for protection and wealth."Kael opened the folder. Names. Dates. Photographs of atrocities blamed on wars and natural disasters. The cost in human lives was staggering."Why
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
POV: KaelThe night before his brother arrived, Kael received a message.It burned into his consciousness like all divine communications did—cold fire searing patterns behind his eyes. But this one was different. Personal. Signed with a frequency he recognized even though his mind couldn't place it."LORD CASSIUS VEX OF THE RECKONING REQUESTS AUDIENCE WITH THE AWAKENING JUDGE."Kael didn't know the name. But the god inside him did. He felt it stir, felt ancient recognition and older hatred rise from depths he hadn't known existed."Who is he?" Kael asked Celestine.They sat in the farmhouse living room. Maya was coordinating her network from the kitchen, phone pressed to her ear as she managed the growing web of believers and informants. Ava slept in the next room—her first real rest in days, finally taken at Kael's insistence."The Reckoning is a faction of the Council," Celestine said slowly, choosing her words with care. "Divine beings who believe the current structure is too... pe
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
POV: KaelDawn came too quickly.Kael spent the morning in stillness, sitting on the farmhouse porch with his eyes closed and his mind reaching toward the presence that drew ever closer. Korvain's approach felt like thunder gathering on the horizon—inevitable, unstoppable, beautiful in its terrible way.Ava sat beside him without speaking. Her hand rested on his knee, anchoring him to the present, to his humanity, to everything he had to protect."What are you thinking?" she asked finally."I'm trying to remember him. Not the fragments Celestine showed me—something real. Something mine." Kael opened his eyes. The golden glow was constant now, flickering behind his irises like candles that couldn't be extinguished. "He was the other half of my soul. We shared essence. And I can't remember his face.""Maybe that's a mercy.""Or maybe that's what I've lost." He turned to look at her. At this woman who had stayed when everyone else would have run. "If I die today—""You're not going to di
CHAPTER NINETEEN
POV: KaelThe Council's response was immediate.Within hours of Korvain's failure to execute Kael, the sky split open and divine soldiers began pouring through—beings of light and geometry, weapons that existed between dimensions, an army assembled to destroy what one executioner couldn't."They're not messing around this time," Maya said, watching through the farmhouse window as shapes descended from the wounded sky."They can't afford to." Celestine was already gathering power, her human form flickering with something vast beneath. "Korvain's defection changes everything. The two of you together are a threat they can't ignore."Kael stood beside his brother at the edge of the property. The divine army was arranging itself in the fields beyond—hundreds of warriors, maybe thousands, preparing to annihilate everything in their path."Any regrets?" Kael asked.Korvain's jaw tightened. "Ask me after we survive.""That's the spirit."The first wave attacked.They came in formations that d
CHAPTER TWENTY
POV: Kael / KorvainRecovery took three days.Kael's human body had been pushed beyond its limits. Bones had fractured in seventeen places. Internal organs had bled. Neural pathways had burned out trying to channel power they were never designed to handle.But he healed. Faster than any mortal should, slower than any god would. The divine and human parts of him worked together, reconstructing what had been damaged, rebuilding what had been destroyed.Ava never left his side.She held his hand through the pain, through the moments when his body convulsed with healing energies, through the long hours of fitful sleep and fevered dreams. She was there when he opened his eyes, and she was there when he closed them."You scared me," she said on the second day. "When you caught that attack, when you fell...""I'm sorry.""Don't be sorry. Be careful." She traced her fingers across his healing face. "I can't lose you. Not now. Not after everything.""You won't.""Promise me."Kael thought abou