Private Finished New Chapters in Our Lives

It was a new restaurant, and it served mexican food. Chloe hadn't gotten to eat a plate of proper mexican food in years. Comfort food. They even brought complimentary tortilla chips and salsa for the table.

The walk over had calmed Chloe down enough for small talk. "I actually grew up in New Mexico. That's in the US, but, still. I've been waiting for a place like this to pop up." She wasn't able to have margaritas when she was growing up, though. They were each getting one. When the waiter left them, Chloe let out a long breath. The restaurant was buzzing with enough music and conversation that they couldn't easily be overheard. Nobody else was sitting near their booth.

"He'd kill me." Chloe said. "Literally, if I'm lucky. But..." She shook her head. That margarita couldn't come fast enough. Maybe this was just a phase she would get over. Maybe she could just go back to not giving a shit about people. She wouldn't have to choose between dying and living with the guilt because there wouldn't be any guilt.

"He thinks of me as a part of him. I'm not a person, I'm like, an arm. Or a hand. I don't know if I can have a choice in this anymore. He could probably just... like, force me to want what he wants." That would be a kind of death, too, wouldn't it?

Malara's bravado made Chloe smile. Malara was less afraid of Gabriel ever since banging his daughter. Chloe thought that was funny, like a joke. But she still grasped Malara's hand. Maybe the goddess would be able to pull her into a world where the things she said were true.

"He tolerates it because I spun our relationship to look like a good thing for him. I... have to creatively justify a lot of stuff to him. Like he's opposed to me doing exercise because, if I go along with his plans for me I'll just get a shapeshifting construct-body anyway and it's a waste of time. So I tell him that I'm still running so I can get laid more before then, and because I can get a high from it. It's not just for my healthy, you see." She chuckled. It was such a weird way to earn his approval.

"My excuse for being closer to you was that you could be a useful long-term ally. Since you're immortal and you're becoming a full goddess again. But, while those things are true, I also actually like you. And I was scared that he would force me to stay away from you. He's... done something similar, before."

Her eyes went down. She munched on a chip.

"I guess." That wasn't the way Chloe would have put it, but it was accurate. It sounded a lot slimier that way.

Malara didn't understand the kind of threat she was dealing with.

"He doesn't need his head to get to me," Chloe said. "He doesn't need to touch me. He can just... take control of me. Make his body go away and take mine, if he wants to. And that's probably not the only way he can control me."

Chloe took long sips of her margarita.

"At least Amber doesn't belong to him yet. You could protect her."

"Jenkins' hell-king had to rely on an... Well, I could call it an anchor to this world, but it was more than that, sort of. It's complicated. But either way all you had to do was wreck that and he was cut off. If Gabriel has a weakness like that, it isn't..."

Chloe stared at her margarita. Through her margarita. She began to think about a ritual circle. Candles here, a few extra lines there. A bit of gold would go a long way, but could she get that much gold without telling him why? And it wouldn't even be enough. Was this idea even viable?

"There's not anything that obvious," Chloe decided. She washed the words out of her mouth with a needy gulp of margarita. "It might not be that bad, living forever with him." She didn't sound convinced. With how he treated his other underlings, could she really expect that he would treat her well once she made it official? It would be a life of terrified obedience and servitude.

The menu didn't have fajitas. She asked for enchiladas when the waiter came, and when she was gone she rested her head on the table. It felt like this was a battle she had already lost.

Chloe lay there for a while, letting Malara stroke her hair. Then she thought about how much crap ended up sitting around on restaurant tables, and she didn't want her face in contact with one anymore. So she sat up, and she drank more. An awkward silence fell over them.

"I might be able to do something with a ritual." She looked out the window. "I'd need to do a lot of research to see if it's even possible. And I would need a workaround for the fact that I belong to him," She fiddled with her napkin. "Plus, I would need Amber to move out before I started making my move. But I can't let her know why until it's just about to happen. So... I'd need to come up with a way to justify it to her, why she would live with Pandora and you for that time. If that would be okay, I mean."

She thought it probably would be okay. It would be one of the safest things for Amber to do. Brute force actually could protect Amber.

"Any ideas for what I could tell her?"