South of Surrender (Hearts of the Anemoi)

by Laura Kaye

  “About four in the morning, I think.”

  “I…” She swallowed, so many questions competing for air time she wasn’t sure which to give voice to. Why had Chrys left her here? Where was he? When was he coming back? And what was going to happen when Seth discovered her gone in the morning?

  As she calmed, she became aware of the light filling the room. She scanned her vision around for a moment. The details of the room’s décor remained foggy, but at least she could confirm that the woman talking to her was the same one she’d seen when Chrys had pulled her into the elements.

  Megan’s voice interrupted the confusion of her thoughts. “I’m sorry. Will it help at all to know that the next time I see Chrysander, I’m going to kill him?”

  She managed a smile. “Maybe. Yeah.” The humor slid off her face. “I can’t stay here. I have to go home.”

  “Do you know what happened last night?” Megan asked.

  A lot of things happened last night. Holy crap, her head was spinning over it all. She smoothed her hands down her front, over her pajamas. Why had he brought her here in these? She dropped her hands into her lap. “Which part?”

  “After you got home.”

  The memory of that dead, black light passed before her mind’s eye. Her scalp prickled. “We were attacked. In my house. But that’s all I know.”

  “Mind if I sit down?” Laney shook her head, and the mattress shifted as Megan sat on the foot of the bed. “Chrys said it was his brother, Eurus. That Eurus tried to kill him but you got hit instead. The past six months, a feud has erupted and escalated among the Anemoi, the three you’ve met against Eurus. Last spring, he killed Zeph’s wife. From what they say, it’s not the first time he’s killed. Something’s happened that makes him more powerful than he should be. Chrys went with his brothers to figure out what to do. He didn’t want to leave you alone.”

  Laney rubbed her forehead. “I appreciate the explanation, I do. But I…”

  She pressed her fingers to her lips. Chrys should be the one telling her this. They’d made love, or had sex, or whatever he would call it. At the very least, that should’ve earned her a conversation, some basic common courtesy, not being dumped a hundred miles from home in a stranger’s house in the middle of the night. She didn’t know whether to feel humiliation that he’d dumped her off like a child who needed babysitting or be grateful that he was trying to take care of her, even if he’d gone about it all wrong. He should’ve asked her— She gasped and rubbed the back of her right leg.

  “What’s wrong?”

  No bandages. No stitches. No cuts. He’d healed her. “I cut my leg and had stitches. It’s all gone.”

  “He healed you.”

  Pressing her lips together and bottling up her mounting anger, she nodded. She’d told him not to heal her. How the hell was she going to explain her miraculous recuperation to the doctor? To Seth?

  Seth. He was going to be so worried when he realized she wasn’t at the house. What would he think? What would he do? She groaned and dropped her head into her hand, a throb squeezing her skull. Not now. She couldn’t begin to deal with that problem on top of everything else.

  Not safe here.

  The thought crashed into her brain like someone forcefully implanted it. A montage of a thunderous rumble and flames and unapproachable heat ran through her head.

  She wrenched up, her skin erupting in goose bumps. Something bad was going to happen here, she was suddenly sure of it. She forced a deep breath. The weirdness of the night was just getting to her, that was all. And no wonder. In the last twelve hours, she’d traveled through the air, been attacked by a deranged god, been healed by a god she was falling for, had sex for the first time in four years—no, had amazingly mind-blowing sex, and woken up sore, confused, and scared in a stranger’s house. It would be odd if she didn’t feel strange, after all that.

  But one part of that foreboding thought stuck with her. “If I’m not safe, then that means Chrys is worried Eurus will come after me again. And if that’s true, I shouldn’t be here, endangering you and your family as well.”

  “I appreciate the thought, but the guys stationed some of the ordinal Anemoi here while they were doing whatever it is they had to do. And my husband’s here. You shouldn’t be alone, not with all this going on.”

  Problem was, she felt horribly alone. Chrys was gone. They hadn’t had a chance to talk after everything that had happened in her living room. Where did they even stand? I get my partners off good, but then I walk out the door. If she believed him, they stood exactly nowhere. Her shoulders slumped. “What’s ‘ordinal?’” she asked, hoping to divert her spiraling thoughts.

  “Oh, I don’t know how much Chrys explained to you about—”

  “Assume it wasn’t much.” Her spirits plummeted at the admission. Aside from that first night he’d lain in her bed and answered her questions about how he ended up on the floor of her barn, he hadn’t really shared much about himself. Rolly’s healing came to mind. Okay, she had learned a lot about him as a person, but not the specifics of his life and his family and his world.

  “Well, there are four cardinal Anemoi, each in charge of a different wind—north, south, east, and west—and season. And there are four ordinal Anemoi, the intermediate winds, like northwest, southwest, southeast, and northeast—three of whom are downstairs right now. And then there are eight inter-ordinal Anemoi, in charge of the half-winds, like north-northwest.”

  “Interesting family tree.”

  Megan chuckled. “Yeah. Takes a bit to wrap your head around, doesn’t it?”

  “I’ll say. Most days, I never leave my farm. I do my freelance writing, ride my horses, and help manage the farm. An exciting day for me involves shopping in Salisbury or a day trip to the beach. Now all of a sudden I might be in love with a—” Her face went hot and she wanted to disappear through the floor. Or into thin air. Since she now knew that was possible. She twisted her hands in her lap. “Please forget I said that.”

  “Said what?” Megan paused. “You know what would make this night better? Coffee. And maybe some cookies. Or some ice cream. My neighbor keeps bringing over new flavors of homemade ice cream. What d’ya say?”

  Laney released a shaky breath. She wanted to hug Megan for the hard right turn in the topic. “I don’t want to keep you up all night.”

  “It’s fine. Teddy sleeps great, but he’s up with the sun. I doubt I’d go back to sleep before he started fussing anyway. Come on, don’t make me snack alone.”

  She gave a small smile. “Okay, then, why not.” Anything was better than sitting here by herself and wondering what the hell had happened to her life. And what would happen next.

  …

  “Where the hell could he be?” Zeph asked.

  Chrys didn’t have an answer. For two days, he and his brothers had searched non-stop for Aeolus. His villa on the Aegean Sea, his citadel in the Realm of the Gods, each of their divine estates. Boreas had gone to the Underworld to make sure their father hadn’t somehow ended up there, while Zeph and Ella confirmed with a very displeased Mars that the Olympians didn’t have him, either. Standing on the bluffs overlooking the deep blue Aegean, they’d come full circle and were no further ahead than when they started.

  How is Laney doing? Chrys bit out a curse. No matter how hard he threw himself into the search, he couldn’t get Laney—or his guilt and regret at dumping her at Owen’s without a word—out of his mind.

  No. The mistake had been putting her in harm’s way. Not leaving sooner. Giving in to his blood-pounding desire for her.

  His body tightened. Damnit all to hell. What more did he want? What more did he truly think he could have? And at what cost?

  Love ‘em and leave ‘em. His specialty.

  Enough. Focus on the damn job at hand. Chrys blew out a hard breath. “What other places hold significance for him?” He traded glances with his brothers. The sun couldn’t set on another day without them finding him.

  “An
d why has he gone so deep underground?” Zeph asked. “We’re wasting time.”

  “Underground,” Boreas murmured, scrubbing his hand over his stubble-lined jaw. “What if…”

  “What?” Zeph stepped closer as Boreas looked to the west, where the evening sun hung low in the sky.

  Underground. Chrys turned the word around in his mind and followed his oldest brother’s gaze. Memories best forgotten sucked him several millennia into the past. To the youth of the Anemoi. To their father’s effort to control the turmoil they unleashed over heavens, land, and sea. To Zeus’s edict to rein in the power of the Anemoi or face the Olympian’s wrath.

  Aeolus had imprisoned them in a cavern far beneath the sea at the edge of the known world. A place the ancients called Calpe. Today, the world referred to the location as the Rock of Gibraltar.

  “That would be some messed-up shit right there,” Chrys said. Out of nowhere, clouds gathered and the winds kicked up.

  “But hiding there would make a certain twisted sense, wouldn’t it?” Zeph asked. “If he doesn’t want to be found, he knows it’s the last place any of us would ever willingly go.”

  Damn straight. Aeolus had kept them locked up for a year. Something about the below-sea chamber prevented their transforming into their elemental states, and so they’d been trapped and powerless. Their roars for freedom helped establish the ancients’ fear of traveling past the strait into the open ocean, beyond which, they believed, nothing existed. At least, nothing good.

  During their incarceration, Aeolus had forcibly taken blood from each of the Anemoi and syphoned off a small part of their elemental natures. And had laced both into a ring that gave him control over them for all time.

  The firestone.

  After he made the ring, Aeolus released them from their prison at Calpe, but they’d never truly been free again.

  And now Eurus had the ring.

  “Well, I guess we’re going whether we want to or not.” Chrys glared to the west as the sky darkened.

  “Indeed,” Boreas said. “We have to give it a look, so let’s get this over with.”

  They traded glances and nodded, resolve bonding them. One by one, they shifted into their elemental forms and took to the air. Over 1,600 miles separated Aeolus’s Greek citadel and the rock formation that jutted off the southwestern tip of Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. They couldn’t get there soon enough, as far as Chrys was concerned.

  Within an hour, the massive limestone cliffs appeared on the horizon. The closer they got, the more apparent the enormous scale of the rock became, rising over a quarter mile above the churning sea. Hundreds of caves and crags and caverns made up the internal structure of Gibraltar. If their suspicions were on target, within one of the most remote caverns, one not accessible to humans, they would find their father and get their answers.

  And it was about time. Less than a dozen days remained until the equinox. With each passing day, the end of Chrys’s season—and the beginning of Eurus’s—approached.

  When Gibraltar loomed before them, they plummeted toward the Mediterranean. A cave sat almost at sea level on the east-facing side. Their pathway to hell.

  Home, sweet, home, Chrys thought.

  They shot within.

  At the periphery of perception, divine energy beckoned. Triumph roared through Chrys’s psyche. Aeolus was here. Fucking finally something was going their way.

  They twisted and turned, threading an ever-narrowing needle as the caverns and tunnels gave way to steep crags and narrow, eroded passages through which water trickled. The air grew cooler, danker, more stale the further they descended.

  But that was of little consequence. What mattered was the growing strength of their father’s energy signature. They were getting close.

  Do you feel that? Zeph asked.

  Chrys concentrated. And immediately picked up on what had captured his brother’s attention. More than one energy signature radiated among the rock walls.

  Two. No, three, Boreas said. Take care.

  Getting closer did little to clarify what they were flying into. Somehow, the signatures were dulled and warped, perceptible but unreadable.

  They came through a final crevice into a long rectangular space framed by jagged stalactites and stalagmites. Not the same space in which they’d been imprisoned, at least—

  Movement. Shouts. A flash of lightning exploded through the cavern. A figure shifted into the elements, the energy vaguely familiar but not someone Chrys could identify.

  The stranger bolted from the space. Who was it? What did they have to do with his father being here, of all places? Only one way to find out. Chrys turned in pursuit.

  “Chrysander, stay.” His father’s voice echoed off the rock.

  Resentment crawling down his spine, Chrys materialized right in front of his father, Boreas and Zeph right behind him.

  “Who was that?” Chrys growled. He took in his father’s appearance. Tall and broad, the supreme storm god wore his commanding presence as if it were a second skin, which made it especially odd that Aeolus could currently give Chrys a run for his money in the battered-and-bruised department. “And what the hell happened to you?”

  “And when were you planning to tell us about your ring?” Zeph said, pointing at Aeolus’s unadorned hand.

  “Do they ever stop talking?” Someone stepped out of the deep shadows. Tisiphone.

  Damn caves. He hadn’t even sensed her. What in the hell was she doing here?

  She strolled up and took a position to Aeolus’s right. Black snakes writhed upon her head. Two twined around her neck and arms.

  Zeph glared, the blue light of his gaze shifting from her face to their father’s. “You’re the one who sent her? And you accused me of misusing divine power in the human realm. You sent a fucking Fury among people.”

  Not just any people. Laney. The danger she’d been in was like a chunk of ice in his gut.

  The snakes hissed and the sound reverberated around the room.

  “You will address her with respect,” Aeolus said, controlled anger seeping through the words. “She has offered her help and I have accepted. Seeing how Chrysander has failed to handle Eurus, we should be grateful for the assistance.”

  Heat roared through Chrys’s veins, casting off an electrical charge into the air. Around the perimeter of the cavern, trapped gases sparked. “Yeah, well, maybe if you’d shared the little nugget of joy that Eurus managed to get the goddamned firestone from you, I’d have had a better idea what the hell I was up against.” The sharp bite of his voice echoed off the rock formations.

  Uncertainty flashed through Aeolus’s green eyes. Tension crackled between the father and sons. Finally, Aeolus’s massive shoulders sagged. “Yes.”

  “That is all you have to say?” Boreas asked. “For the love of Zeus. You created this whole situation. You could at least have more to say for yourself.”

  Aeolus gave his eldest son a once-over, his gaze lingering for a moment. If he had an opinion about Boreas’s new appearance, he didn’t voice it. “I am well aware of my shortcomings, Boreas. But I think our focus should remain on how to solve the current problem, rather than assigning blame for how it came to be. There will be plenty of time for that later, if we’re lucky.”

  Boreas stared at him a long moment, the silver in his eyes flaring. He offered a tight nod. “Fair enough.”

  “Does that mean you have a plan?” Chrys asked, the cool dampness of the cave sending a shudder through him. A few degrees colder, and he’d be having a problem in here.

  He gestured to Tisiphone. “We are working on a plan.”

  Chrys frowned. Why the hell had Aeolus allied with a Fury? She and her two sisters might’ve been avenging goddesses, but they were also servants of Hades. And he could be one devious bastard.

  Her lips twisted upward in a wicked smile. “Your trust is so heartwarming, Notos.” She stroked the snake at her neck.

  “Why should I give it?”

  “Be
cause she is on our side,” Aeolus said. “Eurus has committed so many murders—”

  “Homicide. Filicide. Attempted fratricide. Attempted patricide.” She ticked off the clipped words on spindly fingers and shook her head. “It is past time he pays. Justice demands it.” The snakes on her head writhed in a wave.

  Eurus’s crimes were many. About that, Tisiphone was absolutely right. Ella’s horrific murder last spring. The suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of Eurus’s youngest son, Farren, ages ago. The attack that left their father without the firestone ring.

  The image of Eurus wielding the lance of lightning over his own chest flashed through Chrys’s mind. Yes, even the attacks on himself, including the one that could’ve claimed Laney. Chrys ground his teeth together. These were only the tip of the iceberg of Eurus’s transgressions.

  Chrys looked at Tisiphone anew. Fierce outrage sharpened the already stark features of her face. “So you’re here solely to right these wrongs?”

  She nailed him with her black eyes. “Punishing crimes of murder and avenging the dead, these are my purpose.”

  “Why now?” Zeph asked. “Eurus’s crimes are not new.”

  “That is true,” she said. She and Aeolus exchanged a glance. What was their deal? “But they are more egregious. More frequent. And more destructive than ever before.”

  Aeolus raised his right arm, bringing his hand—minus the last two fingers—into view. He fisted and unfisted his remaining digits. Chrys stared, shocked to see his father maimed. One more crime for which Eurus had to pay.

  The silence grew awkward. “So, what’s the plan?” Chrys asked, needing the conversation to move along. The cold was sinking into his muscles and joints. “We were thinking of trying to gain the alliance of Eurus’s son, Alastor. And I have this.” He materialized the dagger in his hand.

  “Leave the sons to me,” Aeolus commanded.

  At the same time, Tisiphone hissed and jerked backward. “Where did you get that?”