by Billi Jean
“Dare?”
“She likes to call herself Dare now, and, buddy, she’s not going to take you back lightly. She’s safe and at a club. Evie’s.”
It was Aeros’ turn to grin when Ares’ face, covered still with traces of the macabre blood mask, turned pale. His fists clenched, and every muscle in the war god’s body tightened.
“Say that again?”
“You heard me. Whatever the fuck you have for brain cells had better start working. You’re a god, for fuck’s sakes. Act like one. She’s singing at Evie’s, and, if I understand the place correctly, even you, oh mighty war god, can’t enter unless invited.”
“Aeros, how the fuck did you let this happen? My woman is at a sex club! What the fuck were you thinking?”
Ares’ panicked roar was gratifying.
“Look, you wronged her. Tabithia saved her. Just how long were you going to punish her? For what?”
Ares glared, but didn’t speak.
“All right. Well, the woman still loves you, who knows why? Hell, all those women you had at your place and she still wants you? I’d count myself lucky to still have my balls.”
“I never fucked those women, Aeros, and you wouldn’t understand. I found her with my brother—”
“Look, whatever—”
“No! Not whatever. She’s mine. Mine alone. No one else’s.”
Aeros rubbed a wrist under his nose and came away with blood on his hand. Ares looked ready to blow again, and, right now, Aeros hurt enough to want to stall that fight.
“Well, now she’s up on stage singing for a hell of a lot of others. So maybe get a grip on that temper.”
Ares nodded tightly, his bloody mess of a face forbidding. “Fine, how do I get her back, then?”
“She wants her demands met. Tabithia told you those, remember?”
“Fuck that. I want her here. Now!”
The power in that voice nearly broke Aeros’ eardrums. “Why would you want her if she chose your brother over you?”
Ares froze in his pacing. He turned his head and stared at Aeros for several long moments.
“She didn’t choose him. He wanted her. She denies it, but—”
Holy shit. The stupid jealous bastard. Aeros watched Ares break off and turn to continue his pacing of the length of the yacht, clearly agitated.
“I was gone, I came back and she was in her home with my brother. His interest was clear—”
“Ah, shit, I’m not Oprah, man, but did she indicate she wanted him? And which brother are you talking about?”
“Apollo.”
Ah, okay, that sucked for Ares. Apollo had a reputation with the ladies. “And? Did you ask him? If he touched her?”
Ares speared him a dirty look from under the blood. Obviously he had.
“He claimed she turned him away. But he’s a god and—”
“So are you, right? What the fuck? She loves you, is willing to forgive you fucking imprisoning her for centuries—”
“I didn’t make it seem like centuries. More like weeks.”
What?
“Whatever the fuck you did, she is willing to forgive you. Tabithia said you had her shaved? Dressed in slave clothes.”
Ares fiddled with the railing and blew out a breath. The blood began to clear from his profile. After a few moments he turned, clean of the mess Aeros had made.
“Yes, I did. She angered me.” He paused and frowned hard. “I see my mistake. She spoke the truth. Still, I can’t let her make these demands.”
“If you want sex ever again, you will.”
Aeros took the chance on his guess and was rewarded with a glower from Ares. Ah, so the witch was his bonded. Gods had bonded. Who knew? But that meant Ares couldn’t take another woman. Not if he bonded with Dare. She had him by the balls, and heart it would seem—if Ares had a heart.
“So, let’s just cut the macho shit and get down on your fucking knees if she asks, whatever it takes. By what Tabithia says she’s a good, strong woman. You don’t fucking deserve her. But hell, whatever she asks, just do it. Just send me the fuck home.”
“Damn, Aeros, I thought getting laid would ease you, not make you more of a hardass.”
The grumbled words sounded more like a kid getting caught with his hand where it didn’t belong than a full-grown god of war. Aeros broadened his stance on the rocking boat and folded his arms.
“Just grow the fuck up and send me home.”
“I think you’d prefer to go to her.” Ares met his gaze square on, and, in the depth of the god’s eyes, Aeros saw sorrow, regret and compassion.
Before he could ask what the hell was going on, he found himself shoved off the boat and falling, only to land in a dark room. He hurt—everywhere. The room was not completely dark, he realised as he braced himself against a wall. Moonlight flowed through the empty windows. No curtains, no blinds, just bare walls, bare floors, bare everything.
He turned in a circle, taking in the dull surroundings, the lack of anything. Tabithia. He smelt her. The scent broke his heart in fucking two because it penetrated the place. This was her home. This was her home?
His eyes caught on a doorway, and he walked quietly through another empty room to face a closed door—a closet door. He knew this place. Tension hardened his body, forcing him to grip his aching side. He walked closer, trying not to make a sound. An inch from the door, he heard something, something very soft, sounding like a whispered prayer. He swallowed and grimaced at the pain obstructing his throat.
If she was cutting herself, he was going to break. She might hate him if he burst in. But how could he not? His hands clenched tight as he resisted the urge to turn the knob. He might lose it, yell at her. She might be crying, ashamed. She might be in pain. She might hate him. She might leave him and go where he couldn’t find her.
The soft, whispered word cut across his senses again, and he recognised her voice, low, intense, the prayer to her three goddesses shaky on her lips. Was she already cutting her beautiful skin?
He stepped back, undecided for the first time in his existence. His instincts were in turmoil, so confusing he couldn’t latch on to what he should do. He stood still when all he wanted was to rush forward. All his life, he’d planned, strategised, and taken his time with decisions. Even that first kill, so long ago, he’d planned. Each strike, duck, retreat, advance had built upon the one plan of killing the other boy. Or dying. But dying hadn’t been an option.
Losing Tabithia wasn’t an option, either. But he had no weapon, no plan to save her. What to save her from…herself. How did a man save the woman he loved from herself?
Why was she cutting herself?
He’d thought her happy, content even, with him. He’d seen the shadows in her eyes when he left, but he’d thought nothing of them.
Indecisions spun in his mind. His fists cracked. Fuck it. He’d have to rush forward, rely on instinct and emotions to guide him.
Fear crawled up his spine, as unfamiliar as entering an unknown battle.
He raised a hand and touched the doorknob, the cool metal knob twisting as he turned his wrist.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Tabithia jerked when her phone rang. Her knife glistened, already wet and bloody on her arm where she’d carved deep enough to feel the pain of metal hitting bone.
She swallowed several times, trying to get her heart rate back to normal, and slowly drew the knife along her pant leg to clean it before setting the blade carefully beside her hip. Her phone stopped ringing then quickly started again.
Trouble.
Her hands shook but she picked up the phone and clenched it until her knuckles turned white. Sure of her steadiness, she clipped it open.
“I need you. Now. My place. Ten minutes.” Trouble sounded breathless. The phone disconnected before Tabithia could say a thing.
What the hell?
Blood, sweat and tears felt like they covered her. The panic she had tried to ease remained, a solid block of fear clogging her throa
t. Her arms ached painfully. Some of the wounds were already healing over, but the burn of the deeper cuts still worked a dull, constant pulse into her body.
Aeros. Would he want her if he knew how screwed up she was? Goddess, why did she still think this way? No. No, Tabithia, he would not want you. Perfect, steady, honourable Aeros would never understand her, the pathetic woman she truly was. Tears flooded her eyes, and she rubbed them with a wrist hard enough to make them stop.
Tears. She’d cried more in the last hour than she ever had in her life. She felt drained. Empty.
The knife beckoned, offering to fill the emptiness with pain. She resisted, placing it carefully on her parents’ chest, and turned from both. The house was quiet around her, still as only an empty house could be, but she paused, unease creeping up her spine.
Aeros. Had his scent lingered on her skin? She could smell him—warm, caring Aeros.
She shoved the thought away and ignored the pain of his memory. She hurried and cleaned up, splashing water on her face and neck before cleaning her arms and changing into a long-sleeved, black T-shirt.
Two minutes later, she was weaving through the busy streets to reach a nearby portal so she could reach Trouble’s home.
Ten minutes later, she didn’t bother to knock and opened the door to let herself in to her aunt’s flat. Silently, she waded through Trouble’s clutter to the downstairs kitchen-living area.
“So, what’s so important—?”
Words escaped her when she turned the corner and she got her first glimpse of Trouble. Red hair up in a ponytail, face flushed and sweaty, she was on an exercise machine, one of those treadmills, running at a pretty fast freakin’ pace. Both her grey sports bra and black running shorts were drenched with sweat marks. It looked like she’d run a whole day.
Tabithia’s first thought was this was what Trouble had brought her all the way around the world for? To work out?
One look in her aunt’s eyes and Tabithia’s mind went blank. Tears glistened in her eyes, tracks marked her face, unchecked and seemingly unnoticed, while she kept up her fast pace. Trouble grimaced, shaking her head as if in pain, but continued to run.
“I failed you, didn’t I? Here I thought I’d done so well, letting you have your distance, your crutch, when I should have pulled you close, held you tight, and forced you to let the past go.”
Tabithia fell backwards, as though Trouble had slapped her. The air left her lungs, and she reached blindly behind her for the counter, feeling like she’d been turned to stone and might just crash to the floor and shatter into a million pieces.
Trouble grimaced again and increased her pace, running so fast her feet pounded on the rolling mat, the machine whirling to keep up. It didn’t stop her from speaking, barely made her breathe hard as she continued.
“Do you know, Tabithia, you were such a beautiful baby? Such a joy. So small, and vulnerable, but so powerful in your own little childlike ways that we all loved you more than anything else in that god-forsaken world we lived in. You saved me. I thought when you were taken my world would never see the brightness of joy again. But we found you, didn’t we? We saved you from a monster you should have never learnt existed. But we didn’t. The monster is still here. I thought I had saved you, but I didn’t, did I?”
She spoke the last words so softly that Tabithia barely heard her, but they echoed in her mind, each syllable crystal clear.
“I let you go, gave you freedom from that monster, but not from what he did to you.You haven’t let that go. You never have. I know, Tabithia, I know, because I feel it, each time, you see? I feel it, the drive, the need, the call to make the pain go away. Each time. I feel it, and it breaks off another piece of my sanity to know I can’t save you. I can’t.”
Tabithia gripped the cold marble of the counter top, so shocked at her aunt that she could barely comprehend what she was saying. Trouble knew. She knew.
“I couldn’t. But I thought maybe, just maybe, Aeros could pull you back, turn you from the ledge, and show you another way to walk instead of off that ledge, time and time again.”
Tears clogged Tabithia’s throat so badly she couldn’t swallow, couldn’t breathe past the pain. Not just her pain, but Trouble’s.
“I once loved a man. Once, long ago. Your mother, oh, goddess, your mother loved your father. And, oh, how they loved you. They loved you more than anything. We all did. Our shining one. Our little Tabithia, our shining star.” A sob gusted out of Trouble and choked her into slowing down, but she kept running and crying. Running as if she were running away from something. The truth? Even as she poured it out?
“It was me, you see. I am the reason you were taken. I was the one he wanted but couldn’t have. So he took you to punish us all. We tried, tried so hard to find you. We looked everywhere, but your song was gone from our ears. We couldn’t see or hear, or sense you on any plane. And times, times were so different then, you see. So very different. We looked and looked, but the more we looked the farther your spirit hid until—”
Tabithia clutched the counter when Trouble’s crying became too hard, and she jumped down from the treadmill and stumbled towards her. One hand tightened on her forearm and the other pushed the T-shirt up, revealing the still healing cuts.
“I… I… Trouble, I—”
Trouble shook her head violently, stilling Tabithia’s protest.
“I was to blame. It was me he was after. But he took you instead.” She spoke the same words as before, slowly, as if in a dream, or in shock. “You were all your parents ever wanted, and when you father didn’t come back”—she broke off and brushed her hand over the cuts and they blurred, healing before Trouble met her eyes again—“your mother simply couldn’t go on. She walked into the snow, away from us, away with her sorrow and vanished.”
Tabithia exhaled sharply, hurting and unsure of what to say. “Trouble, I… This isn’t your fault, what I do.”
Her aunt tightened her hand on Tabithia’s wrist painfully. She stood there, flushed, and as beautiful as ever, a frown marring the perfection of her face, while inside Tabithia felt like dying. Something flashed over Trouble’s face then, and she shook Tabithia’s arm angrily.
“It is. It is my fault, but you need to let it go. Release this pain. Put it in your past and now, now I will tell you what I should have shared with you all those years ago. Now, I will tell you. Then you will put what happened to you—every last horrible thing—in the past and bury it, Tabithia. Do you understand me?”
She shook Tabithia’s arm again, frowning fiercely. “You will bury it, turn your back on it and live your life with a man who loves you so much he stood up to me for a chance at you. Who gets in a fist fight with a god over you, do you hear me, Tabithia Rae? You will go to him and never, ever look back, and if you do, you will see your past as one more thing in your life you were strong enough to survive.”
Tabithia nodded mutely. Aeros had fought a god? When?
Trouble sniffed and stalked to the counter, then back to stand close enough to touch. Then she did touch her. She brushed Tabithia’s hair back with a soft, faraway look in her eyes.
“I fell in love once when I was too young to know better,” Trouble whispered. “It was with a warlord, a Roman, at that. He was very brave, so handsome that I thought him the best of men. He saved me from a wild boar just outside our coven’s circle of protection. His dark hair and dark eyes mesmerised me from that first moment, and I fell in love. Against your mother and Sorcha’s advice, when he came for me, I left with him, glad to leave our people, our small village behind for a castle with my prince. Such are fairy tales, no?”
Trouble’s lips twisted in a grimace, and such pain showed in her emerald eyes that Tabithia gripped her aunt’s freezing hands.
“Trouble—”
“Ah, but fairy tales are for fools. At least I was a fool, and my sisters were right, I shouldn’t have gone with him. When we reached his castle, he raped me, repeatedly, until I was with child. As soon as I
showed the signs, he locked me in a small room until I gave birth. He took my son from my labour bed, and, after three moons of only bringing him to me for feedings, he stopped coming to my room. I never saw my son again. Alive.”
Her voice dropped to a whisper at the last and the faraway look in her eyes turned inward, full of such pain that Tabithia clenched her aunt’s hand hard. Instead of stopping her, the touch seemed to bring her back to the horror of her life.
“He gave me to his men after. I was raped continually until one of the men took pity on me and tried to free me.”
Tabithia flushed with heat and shivered with a chill. She had suffered months in the hands of a monster who had mocked and ridiculed her as he shoved her face into a hard floor. He’d beaten her and called her names, but he’d never raped her.
“When we were discovered trying to escape, I was sentenced to death. His new wife, for she was the one who wanted my son, designed my death. They dragged me to an island off the coast, tied me in a cave and left me there.”
After a long pause, Tabithia cleared her throat.
Trouble exhaled roughly and met her eyes. “The cavern was below the tide line. When the tide came in, I drowned. When the tide went out, my body lived again. Twice a day.”
Appalled, Tabithia sucked in a breath. How could this have happened to Trouble?
“For how long? Where was Sorcha? My mother? The goddesses?”
Trouble snorted and her brow furrowed. “Long enough, I suppose. I was rescued one day by a merman. He’d come in search of me, hearing of a beautiful witch who died and was reborn. He cut me loose and dragged me to shore.”
“Uh, a merman?”
Trouble nodded. “He took a lock of my hair, as payment. Sorcha and your mother found me soon after.” She whispered the last, the memories obviously painful for her.
“It was years later that I learned my son had died. But by then I had already sealed my fate. I sought revenge. It was my revenge that set into motion a chain of events I could never have foreseen.”
Trouble trailed off, her voice barely understandable it was so low. Tabithia almost wished she couldn’t hear her aunt, couldn’t be a part of this painful trip down such agony.