Saving Grace

Saving Grace State of Grace 5 Colette Rhodes Copyright Copyright © 2023 Colette Rhodes All rights reserved The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher. Cover design by: Colette Dedication D EDICATION To my editing team, for putting up with me. Epigraph “Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.” Victor Hugo CW Violence, Drug References, Sexual Content, Grief The story so far… Our angelic agathos, Grace, met bad boy daimon, Riot, outside a club in Milton—a daimon town she’d moved to in a bid to escape her overbearing parents and community. At age 25, Grace had expected to feel a pull towards her four agathos soul bonds by now, but it never came. Instead, she felt pulled to Riot, even though a connection between agathos, worshippers of Anesidora and servants of humanity, and daimons, worshippers of La Nuit and designed to lead humans astray, shouldn’t be possible. Grace’s parents found out about Riot, and had Grace taken from her job at a shelter and dragged to the basement temple in Auburn for a cleansing ritual to break the connection. Riot was given instructions by the psychic daimon, Bullet, on where to find Grace. With assistance from one of her fathers, Riot rescues her from the agathos attempting to do a cleansing ritual and praying to bond her to recently widowed agathos men. They drive to Bullet’s place, where Grace encounters her second soul bond for the first time. While Riot is stuck working for the daimon, Viper, as part of a deal to keep Grace hidden, Grace gets to know Bullet. Bullet, as an Oneiroi, has known Grace her whole life. He has visited her dreams every night, and had thousands of “first meetings” with her that Grace doesn’t remember. He teaches her about the true origins of the gods La Nuit (Nyx) and Anesidora (Gaia), and their feud. Grace is given a prophecy and tasked with bringing ‘forth the Second Age of Heroes.’ An attempted meeting with Grace’s cousin, Mercy, goes awry, and Bullet is injured. They are rescued by the silent and mysterious Wild, who reluctantly allows them to stay at his nightclub complex, avoiding Grace even though he is her third soul bond. Grace seals her bonds with Bullet and Riot, and hunts down Wild to find out why he’s avoiding her. It turns out, Wild has encountered the gods before. In a moment of arrogance where he claimed to be stronger than Death himself, the God of Death snatched him up and spirited him away to the underworld, kicking his ass in front of the deities who reside there. Thanatos stole Wild’s voice and has haunted him ever since. Worried that he’ll pass this curse to Grace, Wild runs. Meanwhile, Bullet is in increasingly bad shape, and is warned by Nyx to make the most of the time he has left. Riot’s deal with Viper is dissolved after Viper discloses information about Grace to Mercy when he helped her escape town, breaking the terms of the original agreement. Riot, Bullet, and Grace drive to a sacred waterfall, hoping to have a productive conversation with Gaia. Gaia learns of the prophecy, and nearly buries them all in a landslide. Wild has followed them from a distance, and is led to them by a divine voice, freeing them all from the dirt and taking an unconscious Grace back to a motel and calling a daimon doctor to attend to her. Bullet learns the full extent of Wild’s history with the gods in the dreamscape, telling the others when they wake up. Thanatos appears, bedecked in sequins, and takes them to the underworld to meet Hades and Persephone. They wish to see the Olympians restored to power, and offer their support. Grace is introduced to the soul of a daimon who recently passed into the underworld, who she later discovers is Dare’s mom. She was murdered in her home by agathos, and Dare struggles with the aftermath in the upperworld, enraged at Bullet for not telling him, at Riot for abandoning him, and at all agathos for the violence and suffering. He throws himself into the street wars between agathos and daimons back in Milton and eventually picks a fight he can’t win. He’s found by Mercy’s abandoned soul bond, Dice, who takes Dare back to his sister’s house where Dare recuperates, helping Rogue out with baby Quinn until Onyx can convince him to get his act together. Persephone gives Grace a mysterious pouch as a parting gift, as well as removing the block on her memories of the dreamscape with Bullet. They all come rushing in at once—Grace remembers everything. The four of them make their way out of the underworld through a cave, finding themselves in a remote corner of Greece. They eventually stumble upon a community of agathos and daimons living together, alongside Kakodaimonistai—humans who drink a hallucinogenic and can know about the other kinds of mortals who inhabit their world. Vasileios, the daimon leader of this ragtag group, invites them to stay, and once they hear Grace’s story, they are all eager to help in the hopes of improving the lives of agathos and daimons. They make offerings and prayers to the Olympians to strengthen them through belief, hosting an orgy in Dionysus’ honor. Wild and Grace seal their bond, while the tentative feelings between Wild and Bullet grow. At the same time, tension comes to a head between Bullet and Riot, when Riot grows frustrated with Bullet’s decision to keep Dare away. A plane crashes off the coast of Greece, which they later find out was carrying Dare, and the relationships grow more fraught, but there’s