Heart on Fire

by Amanda Bouchet

  “Let. Cat. Go.” Griffin’s demand is low and furious. He stalks forward in a rage.

  Horror floods me anew. Why doesn’t anyone listen to me? When I say run, you run!

  Piers continues to drag me back. One step. Two. Crushing my lungs. I struggle to breathe.

  “What are you chanting?” Griffin keeps advancing on us, but he holds out a hand to keep Kaia back. “What’s going on?”

  I try in vain to reach my lightning again. Even though he doesn’t fully understand what’s happening, I know from Griffin’s expression that he’ll fight his own brother down to blood and bone in order to set me free.

  As a last, desperate resort, I twist furiously in Piers’s arms and scream like a lunatic. It stops Griffin in his tracks and seems to startle Piers into loosening his grip. Feeling the change in pressure around my ribs, I stop thrashing and drop. My deadweight breaks his hold. I land in a crouch and then take off at a sprint, yelling for Griffin and Kaia to run!

  Thank the Gods, they spin and run without question, knowing I’m not far behind. I’m fast, but Griffin and Kaia quickly outdistance me. Griffin looks back, hesitating, and I gesture frantically for him to keep going. I don’t look back, and I don’t slow down, even when my lower belly tightens, and the muscles there feel like they’re turning to stone. Piers is chasing me, and I’m guessing he’s as swift as the rest of his family. I run faster than I ever have in my life, my legs flying and my chest burning.

  I’m halfway to the road when Piers hits my back. Everything tilts, I go weightless for a sickening second, and then we both hit the ground with a bone-jarring thud. I just barely keep my head up, and the ground scrapes my bare arms raw from palms to elbows as we skid across the dirt. Piers ends up sprawled flat-out across my back, and I wheeze a frightened sound, terrified of having knocked little Eleni loose, even though I know she’s been through worse.

  Griffin shouts my name again, and every protective instinct in me rebels. Don’t come back!

  Footsteps thunder in my direction. Piers is as heavy and solid as a Centaur. He’s somehow still chanting as he pushes me into the hard-packed earth. Fright chokes off what little air I have left. He’s almost done, and I can’t let this happen. Griffin and Kaia are too close.

  I free an elbow and swing back wildly, hitting somewhere that makes Piers grunt the last word of the final repetition, sealing our fates forever. Ares.

  He just summoned the God of War.

  CHAPTER 3

  Piers springs off me, spitting a curse as he backs away. I flip over and surge to my feet. Air flows more freely into my lungs again, but I still feel like I can’t breathe.

  “What in the name of the Gods is going on?” Griffin bellows, charging the last few feet to me. He came back. He’ll always come for me, and Kaia is right behind.

  I throw out my hands. “No, Griffin! Stop!”

  A deafening roar sets off a series of explosions in my head, painful, like magic punches to the brain. Then the ground shakes as a man—no, Ares—drops from the sky like a meteorite, hitting the ground with a colossal boom.

  The earth cracks all around him. Fissures branch out in an enormous web that tangles beneath our feet. We lurch, trying to steady ourselves as the ground rattles with the force of Olympus itself.

  Griffin grabs my arm, keeping me upright. With his other hand, he latches on to Kaia. I gasp, reeling from the staggering amount of power suddenly saturating the air around us. This is no ethereal, regal entrance like Artemis made on the Ice Plains. The stealthy and light-footed Goddess of the Hunt wove through our senses like moonbeams on a melody. This is the God of War landing like a thunderclap in our midst.

  Griffin’s eyes widen, turning frantic with growing comprehension. He shoves both Kaia and me behind him with such a hard thrust that we bang together like two hands clapping. Then Griffin backpedals, forcing us to move back with him.

  I twist enough to peer around my husband’s arm. Piers is on the far side of Ares, facing him in awe—and apparent satisfaction. The God is looking back at him, at the person who did the summoning, and all we see is the broad and muscled back of the most enormous male I’ve ever laid eyes on. He’s bare from the waist up and wearing a wide, bronze-studded belt that’s fully loaded with weapons of all shapes and sizes. The flat sides of multiple blades, each one more lethal-looking than the previous, brush his thick, leather-clad legs.

  “No one has summoned me in an age.” Ares’s voice is rich and deep. So is the chuckle that washes over me like a warm wave. It reminds me of a dangerous ocean swell, the kind with an unpredictable undertow. It’ll drag you under and dash you against the rocks if you don’t know how to swim the waters.

  And this right here? I don’t think any of us knows how to navigate this.

  Ares speaks again. “This promises to be interesting.”

  I wince. Or heartbreaking.

  I tap Griffin’s arm, and he angles his head enough that our eyes catch for a split second while I hold a finger to my lips. If we’re silent and still, maybe Ares won’t notice us?

  Before Griffin’s gaze turns back around, I see the same haunted fear I’m feeling building in his eyes. He knows what his brother did.

  Call a God, lose a soul. One of us isn’t leaving here with the others.

  Ares dips his head, and hair the color of polished olive wood glints in the sun. It brushes his massive shoulders, the thick locks a tawny blond liberally streaked with darker tones. “I see. This is about the woman you call a warmonger.”

  An explosive jolt of adrenaline sends my heart slamming against my ribs. My pulse leaps in response to the accelerated beat. The Gods aren’t joking when they say they know everything.

  My lower belly tightens again, suddenly feeling like lead.

  Piers nods and then jerks his head at me. The ratter. So much for staying quiet and hidden. “She’s violent and a brute. She’ll fit right in with you.”

  Violent and a brute? Fit right in with you? Did he just insult an enormous God? He certainly offended me.

  The muscles across Ares’s back stiffen. “That’s your only request? To take her away?”

  Terror beats through me. I can’t leave Griffin. There’s baby Eleni on the way!

  But if it’s not me, then it’s Griffin or Kaia. That simply can’t happen. I won’t let it.

  Griffin’s grip digs into my arm as he goes impossibly rigid. I feel more than hear his breath hitch and know the sickening whoosh of betrayal is sweeping through his body like an ax cleaving him in two.

  “Only request?” The slightly baffled look on Piers’s face makes me think he translated the old parchments wrong. You don’t call a God just to get rid of someone. There are weapons for that, sometimes bare hands, and if you’re a sneak and a cheat, there’s always poison. You don’t call a God to do that kind of dirty work. You call a God to request something epic, something you can’t possibly accomplish on your own. Losing a soul close to you is the consequence, a payment of sorts—one people finally caught on to. That’s why they eventually hid the scrolls, burying them deep in the archives of the knowledge temples.

  Clearly, they should have buried them even deeper.

  “Believe me, she’s enough,” Piers finally says with enough acidity to practically slap me in the face.

  I stare, horrified on so many levels. He’s unbelievable. And criminally shortsighted. Piers has done the unthinkable, so he might as well at least help the brother whose heart he’s tearing out. I can hardly believe it; it’s so unconscionable. He doesn’t even want the God of War’s assistance to help Griffin conquer Fisa?

  Ares folds his arms across his chest, making his monstrous biceps bulge. Something in the Olympian’s expression must make Piers think the God needs some convincing.

  “She’ll fight well for you wherever she goes.” Piers’s eyes connect with mine from across a space of cracked
ground and palpable power. “She’s like a wild animal when she smells blood. Unstoppable.”

  I snort. I can’t help it. That’s probably the most insulting compliment I’ve ever heard.

  “Do you mean to say that you called me from Olympus for no reason?” Ares demands.

  Oh, he has a reason. Piers wants me permanently removed from Thalyria—and from his brother’s life—without having to kill me himself. He’d rather I become a slave to War and battle across the worlds until my inevitable, lonely, and possibly quick demise. Gah! What a prince.

  For the first time, Piers looks uncertain. “I’m giving her a chance to do what she does best—fight. She left me no choice. She’s vicious, power-hungry, and won’t see reason. She’s placing everyone I care about in danger.”

  I’m not any of those things! Well, I can be a little savage. And maybe I don’t always see reason…

  “Piers…” Griffin chokes out his brother’s name. I’ve never heard a sound like that come out of his mouth before, and it breaks my heart. A horrible pressure clamps down on my chest as what’s about to happen really sinks in, but it’s Griffin’s total devastation that nearly brings me to my knees.

  Piers glances over at us. We must look like a trio of ghosts. His chin lifts, and his shoulders go back. From his stiff, self-righteous body language alone, I know he’s utterly convinced he’s doing the right thing. Saving Griffin from me. Saving everyone.

  Does he really think that passing off the responsibility to Ares means passing off the guilt and blame? Griffin will never forgive him for this. And neither will I. When I die, I swear to the Gods I’ll haunt the banks of the Styx until Piers gets there. I’ll make him pay for ripping Griffin and me apart. He’ll pay forever, in this world, and in the next.

  Tucked behind Griffin with me, Kaia takes a shuddering breath. Visibly shaking, she looks at me with tears tracking down her face. “How could he?”

  Sudden heat bursts behind my eyes. “Be brave,” I whisper, for her sake as well as mine.

  Nodding, she presses her lips together and blinks her tears away. I force mine not to come.

  “You’re Hoi Polloi,” Ares states. He still hasn’t turned around. Our insignificance couldn’t be more obvious.

  Piers’s hands clench at his sides. “I may not have magic in my blood, but I knew what that chant did. I understood.”

  “You understood too much. And not enough.” Ares steps toward Piers. “Even Magoi don’t use that incantation anymore. And definitely not below the Ice Plains. Those scrolls were hidden centuries ago. There might have been a good reason for that, don’t you think?”

  Piers’s eyes flick toward us again, over his brother and sister. His throat bobs, and some of the certainty and color drain from his face. Does he finally comprehend the danger he’s put them in? Is he feeling some of our dread?

  Actually, I don’t care how he feels. My sympathy for Piers died a fiery death and became nonexistent the moment he decided to rip me from my husband and toss me from this world.

  “I don’t see a warmonger here.” The pervasive rumble of power in Ares’s almost cavernous voice seems to hold all the knowledge and secrets of shifting time and earth. For some reason, it strikes me as oddly familiar. “If anyone courts war, it’s your brother. Should I take him? Or your young sister? Shall I take her across the worlds and throw her into endless battles? See how long she lasts?”

  “No!” Piers’s denial is immediate and heartfelt. His eyes shoot wide open in alarm.

  Now he gets it. He summoned Ares, and a soul has to go with the God, but Piers doesn’t get to choose which one.

  “You want me to take Catalia Fisa?”

  Piers nods stiffly, and I can only imagine how deeply his actions cut into Griffin’s loyal heart. I can hardly believe Piers’s animosity toward me extends this far. He constantly rubs me the wrong way, but I never once thought about eliminating him. And he thinks I’m vicious and unreasonable?

  “You would deprive your brother of his wife?” Ares asks.

  Griffin’s hold slides to my wrist and then turns painful, as if the strength of his fingers alone could keep me from being torn away from him. I grip his forearm back with my free hand, anchoring myself to him. But if Ares decides to take me, there’ll be no stopping him.

  And it will be me. It has to be. I won’t let him take Griffin or Kaia.

  Trembling violently now, Kaia looks at me again. Her lips are white, her eyes huge. She’s monstrously frightened. I wonder if I look the same.

  Ares takes another step toward Piers, ignoring us completely. “You would deprive him of his unborn child, growing right now inside his wife’s womb?”

  Piers’s gaze snaps back to us. His nostrils flare on a sharp inhale, and his expression changes entirely, turning first blank with shock and then flooding with undisguised horror. He takes a step back, almost stumbling. His body language sends a whole new message now. Family does mean something to him, maybe everything. He can convince himself it’s okay to get rid of me, the Fisan Magoi warmonger, even if it hurts his brother, but he’d never banish someone of his own blood.

  I narrow my eyes, charging my expression with biting accusation. Thanks, Uncle Piers. You’re doing a fabulous job of welcoming little Eleni into the family.

  His mouth opens. Closes. His boots scrape backward through the dirt. “Perhaps I was…hasty.”

  You think? I want to scream at him. Words of disgust and blame almost detonate in my mouth, but I don’t want to draw Ares’s attention to us.

  In silence, Griffin and I hold on to each other desperately. I know he must be gripping Kaia just as hard. Despite Piers’s sudden turnaround, no hope lifts my leaden heart. You don’t cast the dice in a gambling game with the Gods and then hope to back out before play is done.

  Kaia must know that as well as anyone. Her erratic breathing turns so loud it snaps my focus back to her. She’s staring at my belly.

  “Too late,” Ares says flatly, confirming my worst fears. “Call a God, lose a soul. But I can’t take Talia.”

  He can’t? But that means… No. No. No! Not Griffin!

  Griffin seems to unbend a fraction. His hold on my wrist changes, but probably only to shift his tighter grip to Kaia. She flinches in reaction, but I don’t know if it’s because her arm hurts under Griffin’s iron hand, or because her chances of being taken away by Ares just went from one in three to a full fifty percent.

  My throat closes up until I can barely swallow. Gods, this can’t be happening.

  Wait? Did Ares just call me Talia? A new ripple of unease tingles the length of my spine. Only people from my past and my blood family—or what’s left of them—call me that.

  “The laws of Olympus forbid me to take two souls at once. She’s with child, and therefore carrying a second soul inside her. But I wouldn’t take her anyway. Not after we spent years putting her in place.”

  He’s talking about my destiny. Destroyer of realms. I thought I was finally coming to terms with my fate, but the churning inside me says otherwise. Or maybe that’s Little Bean. Right now, it’s hard to tell.

  “Years’ worth of people and events carefully watched and nudged in order to urge the Origin toward her throne. All that effort undermined in an instant because you can’t see farther than your own nose? Because you can’t compete in your brother’s eyes with his wife’s power and knowledge? Because they are both so much more than you will ever be?”

  Ares’s anger seems to rip all the air from around us. Suddenly, I can’t breathe, and then there’s a fist-like tightening in my gut.

  I grab my lower belly. “Griffin?”

  He looks down at me just as my womb seizes, contracting painfully. I can deal with the pain. It’s the abrupt terror that’s hard to take. I let out a deep groan that doesn’t help me at all but that makes Griffin go even paler than before. He lets go of Kaia,
instinctively reaching for me.

  At the same time, cool fingers land on the back of my neck, pushing down. Strong currents of magic nip at my hairline and then spread out through the rest of me.

  “Bend over.” Selena’s familiar voice joins her healing touch. “Breathe.”

  The moment she touches me, some of the pain and panic subside. Confusion takes their place. We left her at Castle Tarva hours ago. I have no idea how she got here, but her presence brings instant comfort and soothing relief. Griffin grunts something in surprise, probably at her sudden appearance, but I keep my head down, letting the blood flow back into it.

  “Where did you come from?” I brace my hands on my knees as another wave of tightness grips my belly. Selena is shockingly powerful and probably the best healer of our time—not to mention Hades’s lover—but even after eight years of being more-or-less mothered by her, I had no idea she could appear out of thin air.

  Selena doesn’t answer, which doesn’t surprise me. Her hand tightens on my nape, keeping my head down. “Breathe,” she says again.

  Griffin squats down next to me, peering into my face. A deep groove settles into the space between his eyebrows. His color isn’t good. “Agapi mou?”

  “What’s happening?” I ask him, my voice reedy with fear.

  A shadow flits through Griffin’s eyes. He shakes his head, looking anxious and at a loss. He doesn’t know, either. Or maybe we both do, and neither of us wants to admit it.

  His wide mouth flattens, whitening, and then he touches my face with a light caress that brings an instant sting to my eyes. The rough tips of his fingers slide gently over my cheek to carefully tuck a dangling twist of hair behind my ear. I take a shuddering breath, and his frown deepens. I can tell he wants to reassure me, but Griffin won’t lie to me. Or to himself.

  I blink hard, just barely holding back tears. I think Eleni is in trouble. What if I lose her?