Maelea checked her watch again. One twenty-nine. In another minute, the guards would change shifts. She looked up, watched the tower to the south, and waited until she saw a shadow pass in front of the light.
Go time.
She pushed down her nerves, slipped out into the darkness, and darted into shadows as she made her way around the central courtyard. Water gurgled in the fountain to her right. The air was crisp and cool, and her heart pounded in her chest as she eyed the base of the guard’s tower looming ahead like a sleeping giant.
Halfway there, her spine tingled, and she had the distinct impression she was being watched. Dashing into a patch of darkness, she looked up toward the tower and saw nothing but light, indicating the next guard had yet to take position. Glancing back toward the castle, she scanned the darkened windows, pausing when she reached the one she knew belonged to Gryphon.
He’d watched her from that window before. Several times she’d been out here in the courtyard, had felt her back tingle just like this and looked up to see him standing behind the glass, peering down at her with a haunted expression. The way he watched her was unnerving. But now that she knew what he was capable of…now it sent sickness sliding up her throat.
Tonight his window was empty, though. Swallowing hard, telling herself she was just jumpy, she picked her way toward the tower. The pack bounced against her spine. The black pants and boots were sleek and made it easy to move—way easier than the long, full skirts she was used to wearing. Perspiration dotted her spine. When she reached the ten-foot-long patch of moonlight between her and the tower, she hesitated.
Once she was on the other side of the tower, she could easily disappear in the orchard, and from there make her way to the tunnel entrance she’d found on the backside of the armory. She just had to get there first.
This close, she couldn’t see the guards above anymore. But it was now or never. Holding her breath, she darted from shadow into light, nearly swallowing her tongue as she skidded to a stop at the base of the structure, her back pressing into the cool stone as she tried to catch her breath.
Her chest rose and fell as she worked to slow her pulse. And she almost laughed when she thought of what she must look like, slinking around in the dark. Two months ago, she wouldn’t have been so bold as to try to escape. But she’d changed in the months she’d been at the colony. Maybe more than she’d changed in all the long years she’d spent alone. And she knew the root of that change was spurring her to leave now.
Confident she could breathe again, she pushed away from the stone and took a step toward the orchard to her left, already thinking ahead to what she would do when she was out of the tunnels and on her own in the vast Montana wilderness. She had money. She knew how to blend in with humans. She’d find a place—hundreds, maybe thousands of miles away from here—and start over. And then she’d decide how she was going to make it to Olympus.
Rocks crunched under her boots as she walked. A voice sounded above.
Maelea’s heart lurched into her throat. She slammed back against the base of the tower, looked up. Couldn’t see anything except shadows and darkness. But she could hear them. Several voices now. Shouting words she couldn’t make out. And feet pounding down the stairs inside the tower at her back.
They’d seen her.
Sweat dripped down her back to pool at the base of her spine. If she didn’t make a break for it now, she was screwed. Orpheus would never agree to let her go back to her old life.
The pounding footsteps grew in intensity. Drawing one deep breath, she gripped the straps of her backpack and darted for the orchard. The heavy, metal door on the north side of the tower screeched open. And a voice—a clear voice—yelled, “Stop!”
Maelea pushed her muscles to the max. Just as she stepped past the end of the tower, a hand snaked out and wrapped around her mouth. A muffled yelp slipped from her lips, then the air rushed out of her lungs as she was pulled back against a body that felt like it was made of solid steel.
Chapter Three
“Don’t move. Don’t even make a sound.”
Maelea’s heart raced beneath her breast and her adrenaline jumped into the stratosphere. She didn’t know who held her, but if she didn’t get away from him soon—like now—her one shot at freedom would shrivel and die.
She’d never been good with weapons, but over the last few months she’d participated in self-defense classes taught by the colony’s guards. She still wasn’t any real threat, but she knew enough to defend herself—something she’d never known before.
Her hand slinked down the outside of the black pants, and her fingers found the snap on the holster at her thigh. Even through the pack strapped to her back, she could feel the push and pull of air in his lungs against her spine. The beat of his heart thumped through the canvas, strong, steady, nowhere near as fast as hers. As voices echoed around the front of the tower, her hand trembled, but she flipped the snap anyway and wrapped her fingers around the handle of the blade.
The voices drifted away, and near her ear, the man whispered, “They’re leaving.”
He seemed relieved. Was he not one of the guards? She didn’t care. Whoever he was, he was still an obstacle between her and freedom.
The hand over her mouth dropped, and as soon as he loosed his grip on her waist, she pulled the knife and whipped around, ready to strike out. But there was just enough moonlight to make out his face. Light hair, a long, straight nose, rugged jawline, and piercing blue eyes. Unfriendly, searching eyes she’d seen peering down at her from a high window too many times to count.
Gryphon. Orpheus’s brother. The guardian who’d mutilated those daemons today, who’d nearly killed one of his own in the process. The guardian, rumor ran in the colony, who was psychotic.
Fear burst in the center of her chest. Arm outstretched, she moved backward, her boots echoing off rocks as she stumbled into the moonlight. The blade in her hand shook, and every instinct in her body said run, but she couldn’t turn her back on him. This close, she was afraid that if she did, she’d never even reach the trees. She wasn’t immortal like her parents, only ageless. And because she’d been cursed by Hades at birth, there was no afterlife for her. If she died now—before finding her way to Olympus—she’d simply cease to exist. No one to even remember who or what she’d been.
“Don’t…don’t come near me,” she managed.
He didn’t move a muscle, just stared at her with those haunted eyes, watching her as he’d done for months now from the isolation of his room. Except this time his brow was furrowed as he studied her, and a perplexed expression grew slowly across his features the longer he watched her.
Her heart rate picked up speed. Was he going to kill her? Would she even see him move? Her puny knife was nothing against a warrior as skilled as he was.
Voices grew louder toward the front of the tower again. As he turned to look, she knew it was her only shot. She tore off toward the darkness of the trees and ran with everything she had in her. If she could reach the passageway she’d found before he did, she could bar the door. She could still get away.
Twenty yards into the darkness of the orchard, he slammed into her from behind, knocking her off her feet. The air whooshed out of her lungs. Her backpack went sailing. The knife flew from her fingers. She hit the ground on her side, her shoulder and hip taking the brunt of the impact. A grunt left her mouth. But even before pain registered, she scrambled to her feet, tried to push herself up, the flight instinct roaring in her blood. He flipped her to her back before she could find her footing, though, and pinned her hands easily with one of his. Then he slapped his free hand over her mouth and used his weight to still her struggling.
“Stop moving, dammit,” he whispered. “They’ll hear you.”
He outweighed her by at least a hundred pounds, and this close, she could feel the corded muscles beneath the thin
, long-sleeved shirt he wore. He was warm where she felt cold, hard where she was soft, and his breath, mere millimeters from her ear, heated the skin of her neck and sent shivers of fear racing down her spine.
And yet…the darkness inside her that was a result of her link to the Underworld vibrated with excitement. It pulled on something in her chest, drew her toward him—a pull she’d felt before but resisted because she didn’t understand it.
Now she did. Now, the reasons he watched her made sense. Still to be radiating darkness like this, here in the human realm, he had to have been cursed.
Hades had already tried to kill her numerous times. He could very well have let Gryphon free to finish the job. Her need to get away from him shot into the stratosphere.
Her mind was a blur of frenetic activity. But when she realized he was listening to what was happening around them, she tuned in to her surroundings.
The voices had separated. One seemed to be coming from her left, another from her right. From far off in the distance more shouts echoed, more voices heading this way.
There were more than the two tower guards out here. Earlier, when she was with Skyla, she’d heard Nick say Gryphon was locked in his room, under armed guard. They had to be looking for him, not her.
Hope resurged. If she could get away from him, if she could signal the guards as to his location, they’d forget all about her. He’d be locked up and she could still escape in the resulting chaos.
Dogs barked in the distance, and another voice—a voice Maelea recognized as Nick’s—boomed from the direction of the castle. “Fucking find him. He couldn’t have gotten far.”
Gryphon lurched to his feet and hauled her up next to him. “Run.”
“But my pack,” she started, pulling on the hand wrapped around her bicep, hoping it would be enough to get him to take off without her.
“Forget the damn pack. I said run!”
Maelea gasped as he dragged her forward, a death grip on her arm. Her feet went out from under her, but he yanked her close to his side, kept her from falling. As she found her footing, she tried to pull away, but he wouldn’t let go. His legs were longer than hers, and she struggled to keep up with his pace. Her adrenaline surged. Her muscles screamed in protest. She couldn’t see a damn thing out here in the darkness of the orchard, only the lights of the towering castle fading in the distance.
He jerked them to a stop and finally released his hold. Maelea’s lungs blazed as she bent over, and even though instinct said to keep running, to get as far from him as possible, she couldn’t. She needed a second to suck back air.
Hinges groaned.
“Through here,” Gryphon said. “Quick.”
Hands braced on her knees, Maelea looked up only to realize he’d found her exit, a door hidden behind twisting vines that led into the hillside behind the armory. Hope dropped like a cement block into the bottom of her stomach.
“Go, dammit!” Gryphon pushed her inside the darkened tunnel that led straight down.
“But—”
She stumbled. Her hands slammed into the rock wall of the tunnel. The heavy steel door clanged shut behind them, followed by the groaning of metal against metal and then nothing at all as the tunnel was blanketed in utter darkness.
Fear leaped in Maelea’s throat, followed by a heavy weight pressing in from every direction. She twisted around, could hear the dim voices in the orchard and the barking dogs, searching for their trail. She opened her mouth to cry out, but Gryphon’s big hand covered her lips, and then his enormous body pressed against hers, pushing her spine into the cold rock wall at her back.
“Don’t you dare make a sound,” he whispered near her ear.
She froze, unable to see anything but the whites of his eyes. But she heard everything—the pounding of her heart, the rapid pace of his, the push and draw of air from his lungs so close to her own, and the muffled voices in the orchard, the orders being shouted right and left, the boots clomping over soft spring earth.
Tears burned her eyes. There was an army of men searching just beyond that door. An army ready to bring Gryphon down. An army that didn’t know she was with him.
A scratching sound echoed against the metal door. Gryphon turned his head, his lips brushing Maelea’s cheek as he twisted. Realizing his face was closer than she’d expected, shards of heat—heat she didn’t want—ricocheted through her body, followed by a resurgence of the darkness inside her, and finally a jolt of fear that paralyzed her limbs.
“Here!” A muffled voice called from beyond the door.
Gryphon pressed harder against her mouth with his hand.
“Open it!” another said.
“I can’t. It’s bolted from the inside.”
“Sonofabitch.” That was Nick’s voice. Maybe there was still a chance… “This entrance leads into the tunnels, right?”
“Yeah,” someone else said. “I don’t know where, though.”
“Well, fucking find out,” Nick hollered. “Get me blueprints of this damn castle. Keep working on that door. And someone wake up Theron and Orpheus. I want this sonofabitch caught before he gets outside the colony’s borders.”
Gryphon’s free hand gripped Maelea’s wrist. Without letting loose of her mouth, he pulled her away from the wall and shifted her around so her back was plastered to his front and his big, hard body was pushing her forward.
“Walk,” he said in her ear. Hot breath ran under the collar of her jacket. “I know you’ve been in here before. I’ve seen you when no one else is watching. You know exactly where this tunnel lets out. We’ve got minutes before they figure it out too. If you want to live, you’ll get me the hell out of here. And you’ll do it fast.”
***
Orpheus jolted from the erotically charged dream involving him, Skyla, and a vat of JELL-O he’d just as soon have continued exploring.
Glancing toward the clock on the nightstand, he caught the time. Just after two a.m. Against his chest, Skyla lay softly snoring, her heat warming him where she’d passed out after they’d made love for the third time.
His chest pinched. Gods, he did not want to leave her in the morning. But there was no way around it. Nick wouldn’t let Gryphon stay—not after what he’d done—and Orpheus wasn’t abandoning his brother to the outside. He ran his fingers through Skyla’s long blond hair and remembered the way she’d stood up for him, even knowing all the dumb shit he’d done in this life and the previous one. If Orpheus could be saved, then there had to be hope for Gryphon.
She wanted to go with them, but no matter what, he wasn’t letting Gryphon anywhere near her. She’d tried to argue about it last night, but he’d successfully distracted her with his mouth and hands and the rest of his body—several times. In the morning she’d likely try again, and she’d be pissed when she found out he wasn’t relenting, but he’d rather have her alive and pissed than dead.
He’d meant it when he said he wasn’t losing her. Not again.
A pounding echoed through the room, and lifting his head from the pillow, he realized that was the sound that had woken him.
As he pushed up on his elbows, Skyla stirred. Grunting once, she lifted sleepy, sexy eyes his way. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know.” He slid out of bed, pulled on the jeans he’d tossed on the floor earlier, and crossed the room toward the glass door. Embers still burned red in the fireplace, and shards of moonlight shone through the windows on four sides of the hexagonal room in one of the highest towers of the castle. Beyond the glass door, a male figure loomed. A figure Orpheus recognized as one of Nick’s men.
Skata. Please tell me Gryphon didn’t attack someone else.
Orpheus pulled the door open. The guard’s face was flushed from running, and he drew a breath before saying, “He’s gone. Tower guards spotted him crossing the courtyard, heading for
the orchard. If he gets to the tunnels—”
“How in the bloody hell did he get out?” Skyla asked from across the room, already standing near the bed, the sheet wrapped around her luscious body, her hair a wild tangle around her worried face.
The guard glanced toward her, then looked quickly away when he realized she was all but naked. “We think he went out the window and scaled the building.”
“Son of a bitch,” Orpheus said. “Where’s Nick?”
“Already searching. He requested you and Theron join him.”
“I’ll be right down.”
The guard nodded. As he left, Orpheus shut the door and searched for his boots. Near the bed, Skyla dropped the sheet and shimmied into her own clothes. “He can’t have gotten far,” she said.
It wasn’t how far Gryphon could get that worried Orpheus. It was what his brother would do to anyone who got in his way that sent fear racing down his spine. And what Nick’s sentries would do if they found him first.
They dressed in record time and made it down to the main hall just as Theron, the leader of the Argonauts, Zander, and Demetrius were stepping off the elevator. With Titus’s injury yesterday, all the Argonauts had gathered in a show of solidarity. All except Gryphon, who’d been locked in his room.
“Where are the others?” Orpheus asked.
“Cerek and Phin already went down to start looking,” Theron said.
“What about the girls?” Skyla asked. She was dressed in black pants, a black long-sleeved top, and her signature goth boots, which Orpheus knew housed her weapon of choice: a bow and arrow that would expand to full size when used, one patterned after the bow she’d carried when she was a Siren. “They might be able to tell us where he’s at.”
“The girls” were the queen of Argolea—Isadora—who was also Demetrius’s new mate, and her two sisters, Callia and Casey. As all three shared the same father, the late king, and were descended from the Horae, the ancient Greek goddesses of balance and order, they had the ability to channel their gifts and see into the present. Maybe even see where Gryphon was right this moment.