"Gabe …"
"I have to." He took a deep breath. "I didn't take a chance on you for the reason you think. It had to do with the tumor. Wynn said your happiness made it grow. You were so close to the end, we couldn't take a chance. It had nothing to do with you or how I felt."
"Instead of making my last days happy, you decided to make me miserable in the hopes you could find a solution," she said.
"Pretty much," he replied. "I was going to Darkyn myself to make a deal to save you."
"Really?"
"You beat me to it."
Deidre was quiet for a moment. "I think we both did things imperfectly."
He chuckled at her polite phrasing.
"Up until today, I wasn't convinced that this might have been destiny from the beginning," she began. "This will sound weird, but bear with me. Hell has a library, and the librarian has been teaching me about the deities through these little video tutorial things."
"You've been sitting in Hell watching movies?" He smiled.
"It's like these books and when you open them, these movies spring up," she said, motioning with her hands. "I don't know how to explain it."
"It's called an Oracle. Hell has one, and Death does as well. The book houses the spirit of a dead Oracle from the time-before-time that records history, among other things."
"You mean it's possessed?"
"Yeah."
Deidre appeared taken aback.
"Voluntarily. The Oracles wanted to be put in books," he explained. "Though saying it that way does sound strange."
"It's totally bizarre."
He laughed.
"Anyway, I saw how Darkyn was created from a lowborn demon scorned by others because he was smaller. He had nothing but ambition. I saw how you were created from a seventeen-year-old boy who wanted nothing more than for your mistress to love you." She paused. "I saw what was between you and the original Deidre. Her plan didn't just happen when I was born. She really did create me. She waited thousands of years and worked with both Dark Ones to make it happen. Fate played a hand, too, as did Wynn. I don't think she knew they were working as much against her as with her. She had one focus: to be with you in a way you couldn't be together when she was Death."
Gabriel listened, jaw clenched.
"I was meant to be …" Deidre cleared her throat.
He glanced at her and saw the tears in her eyes.
"Disposable," she managed. "Basically. Or would've been, if Darkyn hadn't decided to honor the informal deal he made with her."
"Gods," he muttered. "You were never disposable."