BOUND

  Isadora had made a deal with Hades to save Casey’s life. One soul for another. But if Isadora died, it wouldn’t just be her life that was forfeit. All three sisters would perish.

  The machine near Isadora’s head slowed its beeping even more.

  “That’s it, little queen,” Hades encouraged. “Come to me. We’re going to have so much fun together.”

  “Kardia…”

  Demetrius tried to push up, but Hades blasted him with another jolt of electricity. Nick’s gaze shot to his brother, then back to their soul mate. And everything inside him—all the hope and disappointment and heartache—coalesced in the space that should hold his heart.

  “If you spare her, I’ll tell you where the therillium stores are hidden.”

  Hades turned, and surprise, followed by confusion, flickered over the god’s face. “You…you’re the leader of the half-breeds.”

  He was negotiating with the god of darkness. This could go downhill fast. Nick spread his stance. He wasn’t about to back down. “Spare her, and the therillium is yours.”

  “Nick,” Zander breathed in warning.

  Nick ignored him. To Hades, he said, “I know you want the invisibility ore. And I know it’s more important to you than her.”

  Hades’s gaze narrowed. And in his soulless eyes, Nick could see the god was contemplating.

  Yes…take the deal…

  “I have such plans for her.” Hades looked over Isadora once again. His gaze lingered. Lust and indecision swirled in his eyes. Abruptly, he turned and fully faced Nick. “Though I am always amenable to a trade.”

  The god was going for the ore. “The therillium is—”

  “Not just the ore.” Hades’s black stare homed in on Nick. “You. I want you. Not when you die, but now. There will be no trading of souls this time. You come to me freely, here and now, and in exchange I will spare the little queen’s life and relinquish my claim to her soul. That is the deal. Take it or leave it.”

  Nick was a pure-blood demigod—the son of Atalanta, a goddess, and a human father he’d never met. As a pure hero, it made sense his soul would be more valuable to Hades than an Argolean, royalty or not, but Nick couldn’t figure out why Hades would want him now. Options, scenarios, possibilities raced through his mind.

  He looked back at Isadora’s pale features. And remembered how happy she’d been at the party in Argolea, how she’d smiled and sparkled under those chandelier lights. How much love had been in her eyes when she’d gazed upon his brother.

  The empty space around his heart twisted hard. She’d never be his. Not the way he wanted. But he could do something for her his brother couldn’t.

  “Fine.” His gaze shot back to Hades. “My life for hers. I agree.”

  “Niko,” Demetrius said in a weak voice, trying to push up.

  A wide smile broke across Hades’s face. Metal shackles connected by a heavy chain appeared from nowhere and snapped over Nick’s wrists. And a dark gloom pressed down hard on Nick’s chest, sucking the air from his lungs.

  A poof of black smoke erupted in the room, and another god appeared. This one Nick knew well.

  “We were winning out there,” Zagreus snapped. “You force me to fucking fight, then you summon me from the battle for—”

  “I summoned you,” Hades said, “to greet your newest prisoner.”

  Zagreus turned to face Nick. Disgust reflected in his eyes. “A demigod? I’m not impressed.”

  Hades placed a hand on Zagreus’s shoulder. “Not just a demigod, son. Forget Prometheus’s daughter. Let Zeus and Poseidon fight over her. You’re going to repay your betrayal to me by joining my army. We now have everything we need to harness Krónos’s powers. My father’s bastard son is going to win this war for us.”

  * * *

  Titus awoke with a shiver. His living blanket wasn’t cuddled up to him like she’d been when they’d drifted to sleep.

  He rolled to his back and pushed up on the soft moss under the tree where they’d fallen asleep after making love. “Tasa?”

  Water gurgled from the nearby stream. The first rays of dawn spread watery light over the forest. Somewhere close, a bird cawed.

  He moved to sitting and looked around the sparse trees. Nothing but stumps and branches and tree trunks as far as he could see. Natasa’s clothes were gone.

  A whisper of unease rushed through him. He dragged on his shirt, then stood and pulled on his pants. “Tasa?”

  Nothing.

  Skata. Where the hell had she run off to? He hoped she was just hungry, looking for something to eat. Or maybe she was back at the lake, taking a quick dip to cool down. He headed that direction, searching the area around the lake and stream and the small clearing beyond.

  No sign of her.

  “Tasa?” he called again.

  He stood on the edge of a meadow, tall grasses tickling his hands where they perched on his hips. Turning, he scanned the area. It was warm out here in the sunlight—warmer than he expected. Sweat slid down his back, pooling at the base of his spine beneath his thin shirt. His panic jumped another notch. If he was sweating, Natasa had to be on fire.

  “Come on, ligos Vesuvius,” he muttered. “Where in Hades did you go?”

  He moved across the meadow. Halfway to the other side, an eagle swooped down in his path. His feet drew to a stop. He watched the eagle soar through the sky, then dip low and land on the branch of a great oak off to his left.

  The eagle was the emblem of Zeus. And Zeus had imprisoned Natasa’s father. His heart beat faster.

  He turned, some unseen hand drawing him toward the oak instead of the woods on the other side of the meadow he’d plan to search. When he was five feet away, the eagle screeched, its great wings flapped, and it took off into the sky.

  Titus wasn’t sure what to do. He was losing it, thinking he was seeing signs in a bird. Just when he was about to turn around and head back the way he’d come, he caught sight of what looked like a bare foot, lying still against the ground through the tall grass.

  Foreboding slid down his spine. He parted the grass with his hands, then sucked in a shocked and horrified breath.

  “Tasa…?” Oh, shit.

  She lay motionless on the ground, her curly red hair fanned out beneath her, her skin pale and dry. He reached for her arm resting on her stomach and placed the back of his hand against her forehead. Her skin was cool, not hot, and the pulse in her wrist was abnormally slow.

  “Tasa? Baby, open your eyes and look at me.” She didn’t respond. He pried her eyelids open. Her pupils were dilated.

  This wasn’t the element burning her. This was something else. He looked around, trying to figure out what had happened to her. A clump of long-stalked, yellow-and-white flowers rested in her hand.

  Shaking, he reached for the flowers. The roots were missing, the stalks broken and ripped. He looked from the flowers to her face and the trail of drool down the side of her mouth.

  No. No, no, no...

  He dropped the flowers against the ground and reached for her shoulders. “Tasa, dammit!”

  Her leg twitched. Her eyes fluttered open.

  “Tasa…baby…” He cradled her face, then pushed the hair back from her eyes. “Skata, what did you do?” His voice hitched. “Tell me what you did.”

  “For you,” she rasped. “So he can’t…have the element.”

  “He who?”

  Her eyes fell closed again. Her head sagged to the side. Panic, fear and helplessness coalesced inside Titus. He dragged her into his lap. “I don’t care about the damn element. Don’t you know that? I care about you. Open your eyes, Tasa. Come on, baby…”

  Her body fell limp against him.

  “Tasa?” He shook her again, but she didn’t respond. Tears blurred his vision. Never before had he thought he’d miss her fever, but this cold chill was worse than anything he could imagine. Pain ripped through his chest, his heart, his very soul. The one thing in the world he’d never wanted was now the only thing h
e couldn’t live without.

  A scream echoed from the sky. Through watery vision he looked up and saw the eagle again. It dove straight for them, swooping low—so close he could have reached out and touched it. The great bird glided through the meadow and landed in a tree on the far side. Then stared at him, as if to say, Follow me.

  I believe in signs…

  She’d said that to him last night, in the water. When she’d been rambling about the elements and dreaming about him and not waiting. His mind flashed back to the day he’d chased her in Argolea, when he’d climbed the trellis on that castle wall. An eagle had swooped low then too. An eagle he hadn’t remembered until just now.

  He wasn’t sure he believed in signs, but if he hadn’t followed that eagle moments ago, he never would have found her. If she hadn’t seen it dive-bomb him on that wall walk, it was possible she might not have come back and saved him.

  He didn’t have time to second-guess. Moving on autopilot, he pushed to his feet, lifted her in his arms, and turned toward the eagle. It lurched off the branch, flapping its wings, then screeched again. But it didn’t fly off. It hovered over the ground, as if waiting for him to catch up.

  Calypso was somewhere on this island. She was a nymph, immortal, and she had use of magic and spells. If anyone could save Natasa, it would be her. He just hoped like hell this eagle knew where the nymph was hiding and was taking them to her, instead of leading them both to their deaths.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Hang on, Tasa.”

  Titus shifted Natasa in his arms. His muscles ached, and sweat slicked his skin. She was cool against him, but he knew he hadn’t lost her yet. Her occasional twitch and the soft moan when he shook her encouraged him and kept him going.

  He reached the peak of the ridge they’d been climbing. The eagle screamed, fluttered its wings, then dove down into the small valley. There, nestled between two mountains and built beside a lake, sat a small, well-tended cottage.

  The soft notes of a gentle song drifted to his ears. Calypso. It had to be. His aching muscles pushed forward all on their own.

  Natasa groaned in his arms with every jostling step down the hillside. “Not long now, baby. I’m gonna get you help.”

  Rock and dust gave way to packed, even ground. His boots sloshed through the small stream flowing out of the lake as he crossed to the house. Just as he rounded the far corner, a female carrying a bucket stepped in front of him, drew up short, and gasped.

  Calypso didn’t look like an immortal deity. She wasn’t tall like Persephone, nor dressed in rich gowns. She wore a common cotton dress. Her curly dark hair was pinned up on the top of her head, and her cheeks were pink and sun-kissed. The only hint he had it was her was the music she’d been singing before he’d startled her. Music that had drawn him toward her like a sailor to a siren.

  Her eyes widened, then narrowed. And she uttered one word. “Odysseus.”

  “No,” he said quickly. “Titus. She’s hurt.” He nodded down at Natasa passed out in his arms. “She needs help.”

  He didn’t wait for the nymph to answer. He stepped into the open door of the cottage, looked around, and finally decided the best place for the nymph to work her magic was on the table.

  He laid Natasa on the old scarred surface and moved the few cups sitting close to the sideboard at his back. Calypso stepped into the cottage after him, eyed Natasa warily, then set her bucket on the counter in the adjoining kitchen. “You are not…Odysseus? I sense him in you.”

  “I’m his descendant. And we’ve been looking for you.”

  Her expression was full of speculation, but slowly, it relaxed. “What happened to her?”

  “I’m not sure.” The nymph was blocking him from reading her mind. That or he was too frazzled to make his gift work. He raked a hand through his hair. She had to help him. She had to…

  He took a deep breath to calm the raging panic. “I think she ate something she shouldn’t have. She was holding a clump of flowers in her hand when I found her passed out on the ground.”

  Calypso leaned over Natasa, pried her eyelids apart and looked at her pupils. She ran her fingers over Natasa’s throat and felt for a pulse. Easing back, she looked down Natasa’s body and back up to her face. “What did the flowers look like?”

  “Um…” Titus tried to remember. “Long stalks, yellow-and-white umbrella-shaped flowers.”

  “The roots. Were they tuberous?”

  “There were no roots. They were broken off. Ripped.”

  Calypso was quiet as she held her hands out, hovering them over Natasa’s belly. “She burns hot inside, yet her skin is cold and clammy.”

  Titus didn’t answer. Didn’t know what to say. She had to help. She had to do something…

  The nymph slowly lowered her hands. “Tell me, does she know she carries the fire element inside her?”

  He swallowed hard. There was no sense lying. Not now. “Yeah.”

  Her gaze flicked to his. Soft, light blue, compassionate eyes his forefather had once gazed into. “She ate hemlock. The fact the roots were missing tells me she knew that was the most poisonous part of the plant.”

  “Can you heal her?”

  The nymph’s gaze dropped to Natasa’s face. “No. The damage is already done. Her pulse is slow, but paralysis has yet to set in. She has, maybe, twenty-four hours left. Probably less.”

  Titus’s eyes slid shut, and he braced his hands against the table, letting his head drop between his arms. He’d failed. They’d been so close to finding Calypso and locating her father and she’d gone and done something so stupid, so selfish…

  “You care for her.”

  It wasn’t a question but a statement. And why it unleashed a rush of fury inside him, he’d never know. He pushed away from the table and threw his arm out. Felt like slamming his fist through a wall. “I don’t just care about her. I love her, dammit. And she went and threw it away like it didn’t even matter.”

  Calypso looked back at Natasa, lying still against the table. “Sometimes we have to let go of those we love in order to save them. I did that for Odysseus. He would have died here, trapped forever. He was meant to be free. She did this for you, so that you could live.”

  For you…so he couldn’t have it.

  He didn’t want to understand, but he did. She’d done this to kill the fire element within her. Too keep Prometheus’s wrath against the Olympians from being unleashed. To save him. Again.

  Titus closed his eyes and sank against the back of a chair, nearly swept under by a tidal wave of misery so high it was all he could see.

  “You came this far, Guardian,” Calypso said softly. “Use your gift.”

  “The only way for the element to be free is at her rebirth.”

  Calypso’s thought penetrated the despair. And in a rush, all the knowledge he’d received from the Orb came flooding back. Calypso was Atlas’s daughter, and Prometheus was her uncle. Zeus forbade the gods from uttering words about the Titan, but he didn’t prohibit thinking.

  Death. Rebirth. The name Natasa was Old Greek, and it meant, literally, resurrection.

  He pushed away from the chair, a renewed sense of urgency coursing through him. “Can he save her? Prometheus?”

  “He can free her,” Calypso thought. “But he has to do it before the poison claims her and destroys the element.”

  Titus didn’t care about the damn element anymore. All he cared about was the woman lying still against the table.

  He reached for the nymph’s hand. “Touch me.”

  Calypso’s brow wrinkled, but she lifted her hand and slowly lowered her palm against his.

  Electricity flowed from her into him, a million thoughts and memories and emotions. A wave of nausea rushed through Titus’s body, and his knees buckled, but he gripped the table with his free hand, ground his teeth against the pain, and fought to stay in control.

  When the transfer finished, he let go of her and sagged to his knees.

  Calypso reach
ed out to help him up.

  He blocked her with his arm. Once was all he needed. “I’m”—he hissed out a breath—“fine.”

  His strength returned quicker than in the past. A sign he was mastering control? He didn’t know, nor did he care. He pushed to his feet and reached out to pick up Natasa. “Thank you.”

  The nymph closed a hand over Natasa’s arm. “Leave her. Where you’re going it’s not safe for her to travel. Find him, bring him here. I will watch over her. You have my vow.”

  Titus didn’t want to leave Natasa, but the nymph was right. Thanks to the memory transfer, he knew exactly where Prometheus was chained, and he knew there was no way he could keep Natasa safe where he was going.

  Swallowing the lump in his throat, he nodded, leaned down toward Natasa, and brushed the hair back from her brow. “I’ll be back soon, ligos Vesuvius. I promise.”

  She groaned and tipped her head his way as if she’d heard his words. Tears pricked his eyes, and his heart felt like it cracked open wide in his chest. He pressed his lips gently against her cheek, then whispered in her ear, “I love you, fire-girl. I’m not letting go of you. Don’t you dare let go of me.”

  * * *

  “Hades’s and Zagreus’s armies have withdrawn. Phin’s with Cerek, Orpheus and Skyla, burning the bodies and cleaning up the mess.”

  Isadora sat perched against a pile of pillows in a bed in one of the suites of the colony, cuddling Elysia in her arms, listening to updates from Theron. Seated on the bed beside her, Demetrius leaned close and brushed his fingers over their daughter’s hand. Elysia yawned, then grabbed on to him, her tiny little hand barely wrapping around his masculine index finger.

  Demetrius hadn’t left Isadora’s side, not since she’d gone into labor, and after everything that had happened in the delivery room, and everything he and Callia and Casey had told her had happened with Hades and Nick, she could see the guilt and fear eating away at him. She knew he was desperate to go after the brother he’d never seen eye to eye with but now felt he owed. But she also knew he was torn. He was already head over heels in love with their daughter—a fact that warmed Isadora from the inside out—and couldn’t bear leaving either of them just yet.