Anna sagged back on the bed and hugged her knees to her chest. “Okay,” she said in a small voice. “I just thought… Okay.” His crushed flower, again.
No, not his at all.
Her presence was like a magnetic force, tugging him to her, sucking him in. He shifted off the bed, yanked at his hair, and paced. “Where are we?”
She glanced at him but didn’t make eye contact. “Your grandfather’s. Wherever that is. They made me sleep to come here. And I can see—”
His grand— “Good gods. You didn’t think to mention this sooner?” The storm. They needed to know about Eurus’s storm.
“I—”
“Aeolus!” he shouted. Not because he needed to do so to be heard, but because he required the physical release.
The lights came up as Aeolus and Devlin’s three Anemoi uncles appeared in the room.
Devlin glanced among the gathered men. Family he’d rarely seen and hadn’t spent any real time with in centuries. As the tensions and rivalries between Eurus and the other winds had escalated, Eurus had kept him and his brothers more and more secluded from the rest. The animosity was so virulent that his uncles and grandfather had seemed perfectly content with that arrangement. Thus no one else had been around to help when Eurus’s abuse of his sons worsened to the point that Devlin had rebelled—and Farren had died for it. And not a single Anemoi had said or done a thing.
Anger surged through him as Aeolus spoke. “Devlin. I’m glad you called for me,” he said, not needing to clarify that he meant before, when Devlin had been so dangerously drained he wasn’t sure he’d ever come back from it.
“My lord,” he managed, bowing his head—but not too much. Not with Zephyros throwing off so much hostile energy he could’ve lit a small city with it. Devlin’s muscles braced for attack, but Zephyros only glared. By comparison, Chrysander seemed almost friendly, which surprised him given the fighting between the Southern god and his father for much of the past year.
Devlin’s gaze shifted to Owen, the new Supreme God of the North Wind and Guardian of Winter. Except for his strange mismatched eyes—one brown, one blue—he and Owen could’ve been brothers, they so resembled each other. Though everything he’d ever heard about the quiet god who’d voluntarily allowed himself to be demoted to demigod-dom said that Owen was honorable and true and good-hearted.
So, then, they weren’t so much alike after all.
It wasn’t their physical resemblance Devlin found most striking, anyway. It was the fact that, despite how his fists clenched and unclenched, nothing about Owen’s gaze or expression or posture indicated the kinds of things Devlin expected. There appeared to be no hate, no anger, no vengefulness.
Honestly, it impressed the hell out of Devlin, because he knew what a jagged bitch fresh grief could be, having experienced it himself. He could readily imagine the chaos likely raging behind the calm facade.
Devlin forced himself to meet Owen’s gaze, and the god’s eyes flared as if he were surprised. Then Devlin took a knee and bowed his head. “I am sorry for the loss of your father and the North Wind’s former master. Boreas provided great and honorable service to the North.”
The room went rigidly still, but Devlin held his position despite the escalating tension.
“Thank you,” Owen finally said, voice quiet and strained. Devlin returned to his feet.
“What about leading Eurus to Gibraltar and then just standing back and watching the show while we were attacked? Aren’t you going to apologize for that, too?” Zeph said, his fists clenched.
Devlin shook his head. Of course that’s what they thought. “I did not lead him there—”
Zeph scoffed.
“I did not!” Devlin raked his hands through his hair as electricity sparked in the air around him. Breathing hard, Devlin struggled to rein in the fire wanting to burst free. A burning smell reached his nose from the carpet beneath his feet.
“Jesus. He’s a bomb waiting to go off,” Zeph said, taking a step forward.
“Don’t,” came Anna’s voice. Devlin noted that Zeph halted before all his attention latched onto Anna’s words. “Fight it, Devlin. Just like before.” The sound of her voice, so filled with belief in him, was like a beacon in the darkness. Everything else fell away. Slowly but surely, the heat drew back inside him. She’d focused him, again.
Swallowing hard, Devlin forced out the rest of what he needed to say to his uncle. “I don’t know how he found me. I’d been holed up in the rock for more than a week by then. And I sure as Hades did not stand idly by. I was chained to that fucking rock by Eurus’s will. He let me go afterward to make you question my loyalty, which he gleefully said you’d all doubt. Guess he was right, huh?”
A long moment of awkward silence, then Chrysander said, “Uh, Devlin. Maybe you should introduce us to your fiancée?”
“My…what?” Devlin followed the gazes of the other gods to where Anna now stood at the foot of the bed.
The pale skin of her face flushed absolutely scarlet. “I didn’t tell them that,” she said, waving at the other men. “I don’t know how they…” She shook her head. “I lied to the hospital staff so I could stay with you.”
“Hospital?” What in the name of Zeus and all the Olympians had been going on? It was as if he’d been absent from his own life. “What hospital?”
“You passed out after the—I don’t even know what to call it…firestorm, maybe? I could barely find your pulse, so I called an ambulance and they took us to the hospital.”
She tried to save my life. Dear gods, despite the fact that I could’ve killed her, she helped me master the powers and then tried to save my life. And now she’s done it again. Awe and confusion filled him until the room spun around him. No one had ever tried to save Devlin before. Not even the gods standing in a group on the other side of the room—males who were supposed to be his family.
And because she’d made him feel so deeply, and that was such a foreign, overwhelming thing, of course he acted like a complete bastard. He stalked right up into her space until he towered over her. “Gods, woman, do you know what you might’ve done? What you might’ve revealed?” he seethed.
The lights flickered in the room as Anna planted her hands on her hips and narrowed her gaze at him. Color returned to her cheeks again, but this time it wasn’t from embarrassment. “Are you done?” she asked, raising her eyebrows in challenge. “Or do you have a little more bullshit you want to dish out at me? Because so far today, you’ve scared the crap out of me by pulling me into the wind when I had no idea what was going on. You’ve appointed yourself my guardian and jailer as long as you think my paintings are useful to you. And you nearly burned my damn house down—with my father in it.” The longer she spoke, the brighter the lights in the room flared, as if they were absorbing the energy she was throwing off—energy Devlin could easily perceive now. Which no doubt meant the others could, too. “So, yeah, I’m the stupid human who didn’t know how else to help what I thought was a dying god. I did the best I could under the circumstances.”
You could’ve heard a pin drop as Anna pushed around Devlin and marched up to Aeolus. Her words were like a bucket of ice water over Devlin’s head, jarring him into awareness and realization. Clearly he was such an emotional fucking misfit that he didn’t even know how to feel and express basic gratitude and respect without losing his shit. He opened his mouth to speak—
“Aeolus, sir? I’m Anna Fallston.” She held out her hand and waited. All three of the Anemoi sucked in a breath. You never spoke to a god of Aeolus’s stature without being spoken to first, let alone touch one. Among the highest gods, such an offense against protocol could warrant death on the spot.
Eyebrow arched, Aeolus slowly slipped his big hand around Anna’s little one and returned the greeting. With a tilt of his head, he said, “Well, Miss Fallston. I’d say you’ve had quite the day.” Aeolus’s graciousness released the tension in the room.
“I have, which is why I’d like to go hom
e. I have a sick father who had a very bad day, too, and I’m his primary caregiver. I assume I’m not very close to home right now and—just guessing here—that I can’t get home by any of the usual ways. So, with all due respect, I’d very much like one of you to help me leave now.” She swallowed hard enough that Devlin heard it. “Sir.”
Gods be damned, but this woman was fearless. Just another reason she deserved his admiration and respect—and more evidence that he’d failed her in the most basic of ways. Again and again.
And maybe that was for the best. He stuffed down the apology that had been on the tip of his tongue. Let Annalise Fallston hate him. It was far better for her that way.
Besides, there was a better-than-average chance that Devlin’s shelf life wasn’t all that long at this point. Not with everything he had to face in the next few days.
Aeolus appraised Anna for a long moment. “I will consider your request once I understand more what brought the two of you together in the first place. And what happened that landed you in the hospital.”
And whose divine energy she possesses, Zeph added telepathically. Chrys and Owen offered subtle nods of agreement.
“The first thing you need to know,” Devlin said, stepping closer, “is that Eurus is stirring up a tropical storm in the Caribbean that is headed for the East Coast. It’s going to be bad. And as a little calling card, he’s somehow influenced the humans to actually name the damn thing after him.”
“We know,” Chrysander said. “It hit my radar this afternoon. Which explains why we haven’t been able to find him for the past forty-eight hours. We weren’t looking in the right damn place. We weren’t thinking big enough.”
Aeolus nodded. “Indeed. At least now we know where he is.”
Devlin met each of the gods’ gazes. “There is no doubt in my mind this thing is going to be catastrophic when it makes landfall.”
“Par for the course with your father,” Zephyros said.
Devlin heard the accusation of guilt by association in Zeph’s words, and so be it. He wasn’t wrong. “I agree. Given where all of you have met your mates, it’s almost guaranteed to hit the Chesapeake, just as a way to say, ‘Fuck you.’”
Megan, Ella, and Laney were all from the area surrounding the mid-Atlantic bay, a fluke caused by Owen’s marrying Megan and becoming a demigod so he could live full-time in the human realm with her. As the other Anemoi visited Owen and spent more time in the human realm with the new family, they had occasion to meet mates of their own.
And now weren’t they just one big happy family.
The conversation reminded Devlin of why his frustration had gotten the better of him at Anna’s. “Gods, I’d been sitting on my ass trying to get my shit together when I should’ve been out stopping him from wreaking more devastation and havoc on the human realm. Had I acted, I might’ve been able to prevent him from summoning this storm.” Devlin raked his fingers through his hair. “But, clearly, now that he wears your ring I can no longer sense what he’s doing with the East Wind.”
Aeolus nodded. “That’s because the ring allows him to command all the winds, not just the East.”
“Don’t beat yourself up over it, Devlin,” Chrysander said, stepping closer. “We all missed it. He’s always going to be one step ahead of us until we get that fucking ring back.”
Devlin took the words as an olive branch and nodded, grateful to the Southern god for making the effort.
Chrys held out a shirt and a pair of boots. “Here. Thought you might need these,” he said.
Devlin’s gaze dropped to the clothing and heat flooded into his face. He quickly tucked his chin to his chest, embarrassment at the offer and the need for it swamping him. He reached forward and grasped the items with a tight “Thanks.”
“Don’t sweat it, man. Eurus has done a number on my skin, too. Motherfucker,” he said, dark amusement in his tone.
The words drew Devlin’s gaze back to Chrys’s face. The god was clearly trying to do more than offer an olive branch. He was trying to put Devlin at ease. A strange pressure in his chest, Devlin tugged the shirt over his head and stuffed his feet into the unlaced boots.
“Question is,” Owen said, joining the loose circle, “how are we going to get the ring?”
Out of nowhere, Anna gasped. “Oh, no. No, no, no.” She cupped her palm over her eyes and shook her head. “Not again. No.” She whirled on Devlin and shook her hands out like she was suddenly filled with nervous energy. “It’s happening again.”
Protectiveness surged through Devlin. He hated that these visions distressed Anna, even as he believed in his gut that what they revealed was vitally important.
The other gods all braced. “What’s happening?” Zeph said, suspicion sharpening his words.
“I can’t do this again. Not already,” Anna said as she hugged herself.
The sadness and despair filling her eyes gutted Devlin. But she didn’t have a choice, and they both knew it. “What do you need?” he said.
“I need not to have to do this anymore. Why is this happening to me?” Anna grimaced and grabbed the sides of her head. “I don’t want this,” she rasped.
Zeph stepped closer. “What the hell is happening to her?”
Devlin angled himself between his uncle and his…and Anna. He met and held Zeph’s gaze, making it clear that he wouldn’t be cowed by the other god’s hatred. “She has powers, as you’ve already noticed. One of them seems to be receiving visions of the future which she is compelled to paint.” Glancing at Aeolus, he continued. “That is how we met. I took shelter in what I thought was an abandoned building. It turned out to be Anna’s studio. So far she’s painted seven images.”
She sees the future, too? Chrys said.
Too? Devlin wasn’t sure what the god meant but didn’t have time to find out, not with Anna in so much distress.
“One,” Anna said, swallowing hard. “One was of you…unconscious in the burned grass of my backyard after the firestorm.”
Instantly, he knew which painting she meant. “One down, six to go, then. Or seven to go, after whatever this image is.”
“Shit,” she said. “I need to paint this, Devlin. You have to take me back. Resisting the urge is getting harder. It’s all getting worse. My head is pounding with the pressure.” Her eyes went glassy as she peered up at him.
“I think you should all come with us. You’re going to want to see the paintings yourselves,” Devlin said to the men. “Is that all right with you?” he asked Anna, feeling even worse now for the way he’d treated her. And here she was suffering for him—for all of them.
“It’s fine,” she said distantly, as if her mind was somewhere else. “We should go.”
Aeolus turned to the others. “Chrysander, summon the Ordinal Anemoi to guard the compound while we are gone. With Eurus otherwise occupied right now, it should be safe for all of us to leave, but their presence will give the three of you peace of mind for the women’s safety. When they’re here, catch up with us.”
Chrys nodded and disappeared into the elements.
Aeolus turned to Zephyros. “If you’ll take Anna again—”
Possessiveness welled inside Devlin until he was nearly shaking. “I can take her—”
“Not after being so badly drained,” Aeolus said. “Your energy has not recovered enough to safely sustain her in the wind.”
“Let’s just go,” Anna said, walking up to Zephyros. “I don’t really care how I get there. Do you have to make me sleep again?” she asked him.
“No,” he said, drawing Devlin’s complete attention. If Zeph took his dislike of Devlin out on Anna, they were all going to have a problem of the Devlin-as-firebomb variety. “You are throwing off enough divine energy right now that you’ll be fine to leave the Realm of the Gods fully conscious. Ready?”
Anna scoffed. “No, but let’s do it anyway.”
Chapter Ten
Anna had been so right. No way she could ever have been ready for this.
br /> Not just a room, but the world…in full color.
They flew through a magical world that at once looked like Earth, and yet didn’t. Everything here appeared bolder, more vivid, more vibrant. The flora was fuller and more lush. The architecture grander. The sky, so close as they were to the heavens—or perhaps they were in the heavens?—appeared bigger, endless, infinite.
And it wasn’t just that she flew in the air. She was the air itself. It gave her the most intense and overwhelming sense of being connected to something bigger than herself, or belonging to the world and everything in it in a way she never could’ve imagined. If this was what it felt like to be a god, how lucky they were.
Anna struggled against the visions coalescing in her mind’s eye—not just one this time, but two, and the jumble of visual elements was so confusing it almost made her nauseous. Though as long as she didn’t have a body, she supposed she couldn’t actually vomit. And at least she had this wondrous scenery to distract her from the pressure building inside her and demanding its release.
As if the view couldn’t have gotten more amazing, they left the Realm of the Gods and entered the human realm, far, far above the ground. Even if she hadn’t been able to perceive a visible difference between one realm and the next—which she had, she would’ve known the difference by the tingling ripple of electricity that passed over every inch of her body. As if maybe they’d just passed through an invisible force field of some kind. Not unpleasant, really, just noticeable.
And by the fact that everything went black and white once more. Why had she been able to see color while in the Realm of the Gods? Maybe the place itself had magically cured her condition? Sadness at the loss rippled through her being, but she forced it away. She refused to waste a moment of this amazing, once-in-a-lifetime experience wallowing in what she didn’t have.