Vicious Champion (Games of the Gods Book 2)
Page 17
It feels like hours.
It feels like minutes.
Despite what the Fates told Haven, Ana is still to be stripped of her power and cast out. How can that be when the Fates told him he’d win and he and Ana would still be together?
But that wasn’t exactly what they said, was it? They’d told him he’d win and still have her. What if…gods, what if they meant he’d only have the memory of her? What if she’d already been taken to the God Gate and he was the only one left with her memory, to torment him for the rest of time with what he could never have again?
Haven lurches upright in bed.
The fucking Fates. Never a straight answer with them.
Is he to suffer this torture for the rest of his life? Is he to have the memory of Ana and the insufferable yearning for her at the same time?
This must be some kind of punishment. Punishment for his narcissism.
Did you really think you could win the crown and keep the girl?
If he’s to be stuck with the memory of her, then he’s to be stuck with the memory of how he treated her in the infirmary. How he spent their final moments. Moments he had known she would always remember.
He’d been angry, not thinking clearly. He’d wanted her to fight. Honor should have guided them above all. Had he not honored her in the past? Everything he did, he did to protect her, even if his methods weren’t exactly gentle.
Guilt twists and he runs a hand roughly through his hair. Maybe he should have been kinder. He should have taken her hand in the darkness and held her close. He should have told her all the things he would miss about her. He should have…said goodbye.
He’s impatient for all of it to be gone, for her name to be ripped from his head.
And yet…he’s glad to still have it. Even thinking about her being gone forever, really gone, stripped even from his memory—
It would be like losing part of himself.
If these contradicting feelings in his head aren’t torture, he doesn’t know what is.
With sweat beading on his temple, he throws the sheets back and goes to the doors on his balcony and pulls them open. Cooler night air filters in. He can almost catch a complete breath. Down below in the courtyard, he can hear servants gossiping about him.
“Before he was chosen,” a girl says, “I heard he was having a sordid affair with one of the kitchen girls. I can’t remember her name, but someone said when he broke things off with her, the girl wept so hard she drowned in a pool of her own tears.”
“I would pay my annual wages to have a sordid affair with him,” another girl says.
Haven leans against the stone wall outside his room and sighs.
If Ana could hear this conversation, she would roll her eyes and make fun.
“The masses, how they fawn over you,” she’d say. He hangs onto her voice in his head before catching himself in the torture again. And then he shoves away from the stone wall, furious.
When will this madness end? Will it end? Does he even want it to?
He should have taken Ana up on her offer.
They should have run. Maybe they wouldn’t have made it far before the gods caught up to them, or worse, before his family did. But at least he would have been with her. At least there would have been honor in that death. He’d just been so sure he was right.
But he should have known. Once Ana decided something was right, she didn’t bend. And in the end, he was the one who’d ended up broken. Broken honor. Broken family legacy.
“Fucking hell,” he swears and slams back to his room. He throws on clothes and leaves again, this time through the door to the hallway. There’s a servant girl hovering right outside, her fist raised to knock. When she sees him, she startles and her face goes red.
“Hi,” she says and looks at the floor. “I was just…um…”
“Move,” he says and breezes past her.
He goes down the winding staircase and is stopped in the palace’s grand foyer by Lyantha. Her eyes are heavy like she’s been drinking the night away. Knowing Lyantha, she probably has been. She’d invited him to come out with her earlier, but he’d refused.
“Where are you running off to?” she slurs and chases after him.
“Go to bed, Ly.”
“I’d love to.” She wraps her hand around his arm and pulls him to stop. “Shall we go to yours or mine?”
He huffs. “I’ve no time for games.”
“There’s always time for games.” She grabs his crotch and presses closer. He groans and closes his eyes, seeing Ana beneath him in the twilight glade.
His stomach flips. His cock grows hard.
Ly twitters, thinking his arousal is because of her. She kisses along his jaw. “Let’s go to your room. Your bed is bigger than mine.”
The smell of her disgusts him. He grabs her wrist and twists her away. Pain etches itself between her brows.
“What the fuck, Haven!”
There’s something unfamiliar and vicious bristling in his veins. Rage mixed with longing mixed with regret. But the only emotion he knows what to do with is the viciousness, so he goes to it on instinct.
He is exactly what his family has always wanted him to be.
He has become a monster.
“I’m a champion now, Ly,” he says, his voice low and sinister. “My days of rolling with the dregs are over.” He shoves her away. She’s frozen in shock and doesn’t stop him from leaving this time.
He heads to Hades’s wing.
Now, as a chosen elite, he doesn’t need permission to see the God of the Underworld. He does, however, have to knock.
Haven knocks. And waits. And waits and waits.
Just when he thinks Hades isn’t on the other side, a dark voice calls him to enter.
Haven pushes the door in and shuts it behind him. He’s only been in Hades’s office twice before and both times he was with his brother. Now he’s alone with the God of the Underworld.
The shift in power is unmistakable. The hair on Haven’s arms rises. He imagines the feeling he gets when he approaches a god is the same as sticking his hand inside the mouth of a lion. The line between safety and peril is a thin one. Every muscle in his body tenses. He thinks again of Ana. Of how being near her also felt like walking the line between euphoria and danger.
“Knightfall,” Hades says.
“My lord,” Haven says when he approaches the giant desk Hades sits behind.
“What brings you here?” the god asks and sets his fiery eyes on Haven. Swaths of darkness float from the god’s shoulders like mist.
Now that Haven’s here, he’s not sure how to frame what’s bothering him. He’s worried the Fates have tricked him with their wording. He’s worried he’ll be stuck with Ana forever and he wants to be rid of her, he wants to be rid of this pain—but admitting that will show his weakness for her.
And Haven already looks weak. Because he won by forfeit. Because Ana wouldn’t fight back. He’s still so furious at her. He wants a rematch so he can throttle her. Or so he can beg her for a second chance to run away with her.
Fuck. He doesn’t know what he wants, but he knows he doesn’t want this. Anything other than this living hell.
“I know,” Hades says without Haven having said anything.
Haven frowns. What does he know? Does he know what Haven and Ana did on Mount Ida? Does he know that Haven might actually love her even though every bone in his body says not to?
Does he know that Haven’s heart is breaking and he doesn’t know what the fuck to do about it?
“Your brother returned to the palace several hours ago,” Hades says. “Which means she was to be wiped from our memories by now.”
What the f—? Wait, so it’s not just Haven who still remembers her? He breathes a sigh of relief. Thank the gods it’s not some curse specific to him alone.
Then his eyes narrow. But what the hell does it mean? No one’s been banished after a trial and continued to be remembered. No one.
All he
knows is that he’s sure as hell glad reading thoughts isn’t one of Hades’s gifts. Haven tries to keep his face neutral as he asks, “What went wrong? Did Nereus not perform the banishment correctly? How long before she’s gone?”
Hades stands and comes around the desk. His cape trails behind him. His balcony doors are thrown open, but whereas Haven’s balcony overlooks the palace courtyard, Hades’s overlooks the slope of Mount Olympus and the night sky.
Crickets chirp in the darkness. A sliver moon glows faintly in the distance.
“Did Ana tell you what the Fates told her?” Hades asks.
Haven frowns again. “No. She didn’t tell you?”
When Haven saw Hades after the journey to the Well, the god asked him what the Fates had said and Haven had told only half of it. “They told me I’d win,” he’d said.
In truth, the Fates had given him more than that. Or he thought they had.
“You will have both what you want and what you desire,” the crone had said.
“Victory,” the young one had added.
“And the girl,” the last had said.
At the time, he didn’t care how the impossible would be possible, only that it was.
Hades bows his head as if lost in thought.
“My lord,” Haven says and edges closer. He’s desperate for answers. There’s a new kernel of hope growing in his chest. “Ana…she’s your daughter, right? Maybe she’s still in memory because she’s your direct descendant and—”
Hades shakes his head. “She isn’t my daughter.”
“What?” Haven blurts forgetting the proper etiquette. For a long time, Haven has wondered if the reason he was so enthralled by Ana was because she was a demi-goddess. The excuse made him feel not so weak whenever he wanted to give in to her, when he wanted to grab her around the hips and throw her on a bed.
Hades goes out to the balcony and rests his hands on the stone railing. The darkness swirls around him, seeming to fill the world.
Haven follows, trying to wrestle with this new information. “If she isn’t your daughter, then why did you put her name in the Moirai Box?”
The darkness grows thicker around the god, as though the deepest parts of the night are being pulled to him. Shadows coming home. “That’s where the trouble began. That’s why I sent you to the Fates.” He straightens. “I didn’t put Ana’s name in the Box.”
Haven staggers back like he’s been punched. What the fuck? The Choosing Ceremony is supposed to be the most sacred ritual in all of Olympian history. In all the eons of the gods’ existence no one had ever been chosen without their name being placed there by one of the gods of the pantheon. The Moirai Box doesn’t make mistakes. It is incorruptible, foolproof.
“If you didn’t put her name in, then who did?”
The God of the Underworld looks at Haven over his shoulder, his eyes two glowing embers in the darkness. “I don’t know.”
Find out what happens when Ana breaks her banishment and returns to Olympus…and runs right into Haven.
Don’t miss the thrilling conclusion to the Games of the Gods Trilogy…
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Also by Nikki Kardnov
Blackwell Djinn Series
Midlife Wish
That Psychic Life
That Divine Life
That Forbidden Life
Last Wish
Games of the Gods Series
Hades Descendants
Vicious Champion
Fated Goddess
About Nikki Kardnov
Nikki Kardnov grew up reading vampire fiction and took her first stab at writing her own vampire novel at the age of sixteen. Now, many, many years later, Nikki enjoys writing steamy paranormal romance featuring powerful, hot-as-hell immortal heroes and smart, strong, capable heroines. She can often be found knee-deep in a mug of coffee, curled up with a book and a cat.
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About Cadence Price
Cadence Price is a writer, reader, and unapologetic hyper-fangirl of all things swoony romance. She lives outside of Washington, DC with her husband, two children, and enough books to fill the massive library she hopes to eventually have. She is obsessed with love stories, terrible reality television, all forms of tea, and no matter what she's doing would always rather be doing it at the beach.