Atalanta cut her gaze to Stolas, whose eyes flew wide. “Why did you not tell me this?”
“I…I did not know for certain. I—”
“It is your job to know all.” She looked back to Naberus. “Who is she?”
Naberus shot a wicked smile Stolas’s way, then looked toward Atalanta. “Zeus and Persephone’s daughter. She goes by Maelea. The one who led the Argonauts to the Underworld to free your doulas in the first place. Sources confirmed this to me.”
Fire rushed through Atalanta’s veins. “What sources?”
Naberus shrugged. “Hellhounds I tortured.”
Fury raged through Atalanta. She flew down the steps.
Naberus didn’t move, but Stolas lurched backward and held up his hands. “My queen! Hellhounds lie. We’re not sure it’s her.”
She grasped his sword by the hilt, pulled it out of its scabbard, and stabbed him straight through the heart.
His eyes flew wide. He dropped to his knees at her feet. She pulled the blade free, arced back and decapitated the useless beast. His body slumped forward.
Looking toward Naberus, Atalanta barked, “Kneel. Quickly.”
Naberus did so without even an inkling of fear.
Atalanta tapped the sword against his shoulder and uttered the magical words that infused him with her powers as archdaemon. When she was done and he pushed to his feet, he’d grown at least a foot. And something in the way his glowing green eyes sparked hit her square in the center of the chest.
Slowly, still trying to figure out who he was, she handed him the sword. “Find her and you will find my doulas. And do it quickly. Or you will be my next victim.”
Naberus bowed with a sinister grin. “As you wish, my queen.”
***
The door slamming brought Max’s eyes open.
As footsteps echoed down the hall, he lay on his stomach in the dark of his bedroom, listening carefully. He’d been home in Tiyrns for several days. His dad came and went, as always, and his mom…she was freaking out, worried about what was happening in the human realm at the Misos colony. But because of him, she wouldn’t go back. Because his dad had ordered her to take him home.
Anger simmered under his skin. He wasn’t a baby. He didn’t need to be protected like one.
The door to his room creaked open. He slammed his eyes shut and lay still as stone, trying not to move a single muscle so they wouldn’t know he was awake.
“Zander,” his mother whispered from the doorway. “He’s asleep.”
Silence met his ears. He knew his parents were watching him. They were always watching, checking up on him. They didn’t trust him.
“Come on,” Callia whispered. “Let him sleep.”
The door creaked closed, but when he peeked, he saw they hadn’t closed it all the way. Light from the hall spilled into the room from a crack.
“Any luck finding Gryphon?” his mother asked in a low voice.
They’d moved away from his door, but Max could still hear them. And because they were talking about Gryphon, he listened closer.
“No, none,” Zander answered in a frustrated voice. “It’s like they all but disappeared.”
“He’ll turn up,” Callia said softly.
“When?” Zander asked. “He’s not stable, thea. Whatever the hell they did to him in the Underworld changed him. Every time I think about Max being there…”
“Max is fine,” his mother said.
“He’s not fine,” Zander tossed back, louder this time. When Callia shushed him, he lowered his voice. “He’s not fine and we both know it. Every day he grows more defiant. I can’t even talk to him anymore, and he’s angry all the time.”
“He’s struggling, Zander. We knew the transition wouldn’t be easy. We have to give him time.”
“And what if time doesn’t work? What if he gets worse? What if he ends up like Gryphon?”
“He won’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I do,” his mother said firmly. “Don’t even think that, Zander.”
Silence echoed like a hollow vat of nothingness from the hall, and Max’s heart rate shot up as he strained to listen.
“I never wanted this,” his father finally whispered from the hallway. “It’s not supposed to be this way.”
“I know,” his mother whispered back. Cloth rustled, and even without seeing them, Max knew they were hugging. His dad was always touching his mom one way or another. But not him. The only time his dad touched him was when he was mad, the way he’d been when he found Max in the tunnels of the colony. “We’ll make it work, Zander. Believe in that. Believe in us.”
A heavy sigh, followed by footsteps echoing down the hall, told Max his parents had finally moved away.
But in the darkness of his room, his heart rate didn’t slow. I never wanted this. The words echoed in his head. Along with the ones his father hadn’t said: I never wanted him.
He swallowed hard and forced back the tears. His father thought Gryphon had become a monster because of his time in the Underworld. And now he was beginning to question whether Max was one too. He wanted to prove to his parents he wasn’t, but he didn’t know how.
He didn’t know anything except that he suddenly felt more alone than he ever had, even when he was in the Underworld. Because then, at least, he’d had the fantasy of a family who loved him to keep him company. Now he knew he didn’t even have that.
***
“Delator is not a word.” Gryphon stared down at the Scrabble board on the coffee table between him and Maelea, then shot her a look. Seated on the floor with the fireplace roaring at her back, she flicked him a what on earth do you mean? expression that was so damn cute, he itched to wipe it from her mouth with his own.
It was hard to believe this was the same female who’d glared and scowled and plotted her escape every moment he wasn’t yelling at her. But things were different now. Ever since they arrived here a week ago, ever since that morning when he awoke and realized she cared for him, there’d been no more fear, no more animosity, no more anger. In its place there was nothing but heat and desire and need. A whole lot of need neither of them seemed to be able to sate.
“Yes, it is,” she said with a sexy little pout. “It’s Latin. A delator is an informant. All the Roman emperors used them.” She reached for letters from the table, flipped them over, and set them on her stand. “I met a few. Commodus had a special fondness for them. Used them to spy on his senators. Not a nice man, that Commodus. But he didn’t even totally trust his delators, and with good reason. They were a slimy, blood-sucking, greedy group of scum. That’s forty-three points for me.”
He stared at her in bewilderment from the couch, where he sat with his elbows braced on his knees.
When he didn’t write down her score, she looked up. “What?”
“Latin? Uh-uh. No way. I’m officially protesting this game. We pick one language and one era. Period. And we stick to it. I’m getting my ass kicked here because I’m nowhere near as worldly as you. And what the hell were you doing, hanging out with delators and emperors in the first place?”
She smiled. Really smiled. And was so damn beautiful, staring at him with that stupid grin, his chest constricted until it was tight as a drum. “Why are you grinning at me like that?”
“Because you’re gorgeous when you look at me like I’m nuts.”
“You’ve handed me my ass on a Scrabble board, sotiria. I don’t think you’re nuts. I think you’re smart as shit.”
She laughed but kept right on smiling up at him. A warm, wide grin that made one corner of his lips curl all on its own. “What now?”
“Nothing. It’s just…your face has totally changed in the last week.”
He brushed a hand against his jaw. “It’s too scru
ffy for you, isn’t it? I’ll shave—”
“Not that, silly,” she said. “I like the scruff. It’s sexy. No, I mean your face. It’s different. A week ago your eyes were still haunted. When I’d look at you, I could see the weight of the Underworld on your soul and everything you’d been through. Now, it’s barely there.”
His smile faded, and he looked away. Memories of his torture in Hades’s realm rushed back through his mind, sent sickness brewing in his stomach. And shame. A truckload of shame over what he’d done. What had been done to him. What Maelea would think if she even had an inkling of what had gone down in Tartarus when he was there.
“Hey. Don’t.” Her soft voice somewhere close brought him around. That and her hand, pressing gently against his shoulder. Soft. Warm. Alive. He eased back while she climbed onto his lap and took his face in her hands, stroking her thumbs over his cheeks, reminding him he was alive too. “Don’t go back there. I didn’t mean to bring it up for you again. I was just pointing out how different you are. How relaxed. That’s a good thing, Gryphon, not a bad one.”
He closed his eyes, forced back the bile threatening its way up. “Maelea—”
She leaned in and brushed her lips against his. Lips that shot sparks of heat and desire straight to his belly, warming him from the outside in. Lips he could lose himself in. Lips that were keeping him here, tucked into this isolated house in this tiny corner of the world where no one could find them. Where daemons and hellhounds and gods and the Underworld didn’t exist. Where he was losing his desire for vengeance with every passing day.
He wrapped his arms around her back, opened when she slid her tongue along his bottom lip, and let her dip inside his mouth to tempt and tease in that way he’d learned she liked to do. She tasted like the wine she’d been sipping as they played Scrabble, like the sin he knew he could coax out of her with just a little push. She was more than his soul mate, he’d realized over the last few days. She was funny and smart and so damn sexy, she took his breath away. Everything he’d been looking for his whole life. Everything he hadn’t realized he was missing. And when he was with her, he barely heard that buzz anymore. Barely heard Atalanta’s voice. Never heard either when he was inside her, which was his very favorite place to be.
She drew back from his mouth, stared into his eyes. And in her dark, onyx irises, he saw all the same emotions he felt reflected back at him. Who would ever have thought it? She, the daughter of the King of the Gods, and he a broken, tortured soul.
He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. Remembered how she’d told him she’d been in love before. How she’d said love wasn’t worth it because it didn’t last. He knew regardless of who he was and what he’d been through, she cared for him. Even if he couldn’t see it, he could feel it. Would she be willing to take another chance if she knew she could be happy for more than fifty or sixty years? Would she put off her dream of Olympus to stay here with him?
His stomach churned, this time with nerves, not sickness, and as she slid down on his lap to rest her head against his chest, he stared into the fire and stroked her hair. She was warm against him. So soft. And they fit together as if they were made for each other. But then that was the point of the whole soul-mate thing, wasn’t it? He didn’t have a lot to offer her, but he knew he could keep her safe. And he had at least another five hundred years in him, assuming he lived through his face-off with Atalanta. If Maelea knew there was a chance they could be together that long, that he could protect her from Hades, would she be willing to try again?
“Why do you want to go to Olympus?” he asked while they sat staring into the fire, the Scrabble game they’d been playing all but forgotten.
“You know why,” she said against his chest.
He ran his hand down her hair, loved how silky soft it was against his fingers. “So you can be safe from Hades.”
“It’s more than that. Olympus is home for me.”
“How do you know it’s home if you’ve never been there before?”
“Because it’s where my father is. Where my mother is half the year. Where the other immortals live and where there’s no death. I’m so tired of death and dying.”
His hope faded. He couldn’t give her eternity. Not like the gods. He couldn’t even give her half that. And with him there would eventually be death. “You said you had to prove your allegiance to get there. How are you planning to do that?”
She pushed against his chest, eased off his lap, and sat on the couch at his side. He tried not to be disappointed she wasn’t touching him anymore. Couldn’t help it. “Well, that’s where the training I asked you to teach me comes in. Which, by the way,” she added with a frown as she glanced over her shoulder, “you haven’t done a very good job with.”
No, he hadn’t. Fighting and defensive techniques were the last things on his mind. Every time Maelea had suggested they go outside to the beach and he show her some moves, he’d distracted her with his hands and mouth and body until they’d both been too worn out to do anything but drop into each other’s arms and sleep.
“I thought you needed to know how to protect yourself from Hades,” he said with narrowed eyes. “How will that help you get to Olympus?”
She wrung her hands together in her lap. Wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Remember I told you Orpheus came looking for me? The truth is, I was looking for him. Or, well, someone like him. See, the only way to prove myself to the gods is to turn my back on my Underworld heritage. By killing someone powerful and important to Hades.”
“Killing someone,” he said, watching her carefully. “You, who doesn’t even like to kill spiders.” While he despised spiders with a passion, thanks to his time in the Underworld, he’d watched her rescue two from the bottom of his boot before he could smash them, and release them outside. She hated death. And even though she hadn’t had much of a choice, he knew she was still wrestling with the fact she’d had to kill those daemons back at that motel. Daemons she’d killed to save him.
“I know, right?” A weak smile ran across her face before she looked back at the fire. “Which is part of the reason I’ve put it off so long.”
She drew in a breath, let it out. “For a while now I’ve been keeping my eye out for the dark one. You know, just waiting to see if I ever even had the opportunity, not that I had to follow through on it or anything. When I first saw Orpheus in that concert crowd, I thought he might be the one. His daemon was very strong then. He radiated darkness. And I thought if I killed him, I might finally prove my worth. But things didn’t turn out like I’d planned, and by the time he came to find me, his daemon had already faded. Then everything happened with Hades’s hellhounds finding me and Orpheus and Skyla taking me to the colony and then you coming back from the Underworld, and…and I realized I’d been thinking too small. I finally figured out who I have to kill to get home.”
His lungs squeezed tight. Before she even said the words, he knew she’d realized the darkness in him was so strong, he was the one she had to kill to prove her allegiance to the gods.
She ran her hands through her hair, pushed off the couch. “The reason I asked you to teach me to fight is because I know I’m not ready yet. I still need time to develop whatever gift is inside me. So before I go and face Hades’s son, I need to make sure I’m not only stronger but way more skilled.”
She picked up their empty wine glasses from the coffee table and turned for the kitchen. “I’m going to open another bottle. Do you want a glass?”
The air whooshed out of his lungs. Was replaced with a fear that shot straight down his spine. Hades’s son? That’s who she was planning to try to kill? Zagreus? The prince of the fucking Underworld?
Slowly, because his legs were shaking, he pushed from the couch and turned to look at her standing at the island, pouring more wine into both their glasses. “Um, no.”
She looked at the label on the bottle.
“Did you not like this year?”
He raked a hand through his hair. She was talking about the wine when he felt as if he’d just been sucker punched in the gut. “Um, no, you’re not going after Zagreus.”
Her hand stilled. Her eyes lifted to his. “What?”
“You’re not going after Zagreus,” he said again. “I wouldn’t even go after Zagreus, and I think most of the Argonauts would agree I’m a fucking loose cannon right now. None of the Argonauts would dare go after him. We leave him the hell alone.”
She frowned, poured more wine in a dismissive move, as if he were talking out his left earlobe or something.
He took a step closer to the kitchen, his chest vibrating with worry and fear and panic. “Maelea, did you hear me?”
“I’m not going after him now, Gryphon. I already told you I’m not ready yet.”
“Not ever,” he said with conviction.
She looked up again. Except this time her eyes weren’t warm and soft, as they’d been on the couch. They were cold and hard. And very, very determined. “What does it matter what I do in the future? By the time I’m ready to confront Zagreus, you won’t be here anymore.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means, this,” she waved her hand around. “Us, here, this is only temporary. I know you’ve been enjoying relaxing and having a little downtime here with me this last week, where no one can find us, and that you needed that, after everything you’ve been through, but as soon as you decide to go after whatever it is you were planning to go after before I brought you here, you’re not going to care where I am or what I’m doing.”
“Maybe I’ve changed my mind.”
“About what?”
“About what I do after I confront Atalanta.”
Her hand shook as she set the bottle of wine on the counter. “Atalanta? That’s who you’re trying to find?”
The darkness inside him vibrated with revenge. “Not find. I could find her anytime I want. All I have to do is get away from you and listen to her fucking voice calling me, and it’ll lead me right to her. No, I intend to kill her, Maelea. It’s why I left the colony. It’s the only way I’m going to be free of her for good.”