White Fire: Timewalker Chronicles, Book 5 by Michele Callahan

like Raiden, and now Aron, who’ve accepted the responsibility of serving the goddess and helping her maintain the Gates between worlds.”
    Emma knew about the Gates. Bran had told her of their existence, of the Thousand Year War that the Immortals had fought with their enemy. When millennia of war brought no solution, both sides agreed to the creation of an energy barrier that would separate this reality from the other. The Itaran Immortals on one side, and their Immortal enemy on the other.
    Who that enemy was, or why they’d battled for so long, no one could remember. And Bran said that the information had been deleted from the Itaran Hall of Records before he’d been born. All that the records held was a statement that said erasing the name of their enemy from history had been part of the agreement, on both sides.
    “How do they do that? Maintain the Gates?” Emma asked, but was afraid she already knew the answer.
    “They devour evil.” Mari tapped her fingers on the table. “Assimilate them. Suck their souls dry and feed the energy into a soul stone. The goddess takes the energy and recycles it. They were never supposed to have to suffer, or carry the evil inside themselves.”
    Holy shit. No one had ever told her about that.
    “Ajax has one, but he told me that it doesn’t work. I think he needs to get a new one from this goddess.”
    Mari shook her head. “Maybe not. Aron didn’t need one, he just needed to reconnect with the goddess and agree to serve. She’s very big on the whole free-will thing.”
    “I don’t know.” Katherine leaned forward, hand out on the table. “Robbie tried to help him while you were passed out. It was one of the first things the boys tried. The goddess refused him, both with the stone, like Raiden and Nicodemus, and directly linked, like Aron.”
    “What? Why?” If anyone needed an activated, evil-killing soul stone, it was Ajax. She had to have burned enough evil from his flesh to keep a transdimensional Gate operational for a century, at least. She still didn’t understand why she hadn’t killed him. But it didn’t matter now. He had no intention of stopping. The impromptu war council taking place outside was proof of that.
    Katherine's voice sounded sad. “She told Ajax that he already had what he needed, but when he asked what that was, she refused to tell him.”
    “So, all of the Triscani just need a soul stone to be normal again?”
    “No, most of them are too far gone. Based on our recent experience with the Darkwalkers, we figure only a quarter of them even want to be saved.” Katherine’s voice was sad.
    “But why? Why would the Queen not tell anyone about this? Why make them suffer?” It made no sense at all.
    Katherine shrugged and tilted her head back over to check on the men before answering. “I don’t know. We can’t figure that one out.”
    Zoey the curious, as Emma was beginning to think of her, was staring at her, her gaze too serious by half.
    “What?”
    “So, did you Mark Ajax, or what?” Zoey leaned forward and pointed down, through the table, to where Emma’s feet were crossed beneath her chair. “Because we all know you’re one of us. We saw the Mark. And Ajax watched over you like a man possessed, but didn’t say a word. So, did you claim him or not?” She wiggled her eyebrows. “We’d be sisters-in-law.”
    “Not.” Emma took a deep breath and shared her nightmare with the only women in the world who could possibly understand the depths of the problem. “He’s already got a Marked Mate. Her name’s Angeline, and he loves her.”
    Katherine gasped.
    “I have heard of her, but every time Bran or Raiden talk about her, it’s to say that she was turned to ash by the Triscani.” Mari dropped that bombshell and Emma had to let it sink in for a minute. Ajax was in love with a woman who was destined to die? But that was in the future, a future that hadn’t happened yet, which meant Ajax’s Queen was still alive,