Selena smooths her hand down my spine and then back up to my neck, making a shushing sound. “She’ll be fine. If I had to guess, which I don’t, I’d say your little Eleni is protesting her uncle’s idiocy.” She rubs my back again in a slow, even rhythm. As she does, healing magic seeps into me, and the worst of the cramping starts to subside. I breathe more easily with each stroke of her power-charged hand.
“But she’s still tiny.” My voice wavers. I can’t stop the tremor in it. “Like a bean.”
Selena makes a low sound that’s not quite a laugh. “Look at her parents. She may be tiny, but she’s a powerhouse and not to be underestimated, even at this stage.”
Really? Oh my Gods. Am I going to have to figure out disciplining her before she’s even out? I can’t have her making me sick every time someone does something stupid. Okay, incredibly stupid, but still…
“You were just as aware early on as she is. You simply don’t remember it now.”
“But this early?” I shake my head. “That’s not possible.”
Selena sighs, her hand stopping on my nape. “Everything is possible. And I thought you were finally past denial as your knee-jerk reaction.”
I try to straighten, feeling better now. Physically, at least. There’s still a whole lot to worry about—namely, Ares—but Selena keeps my head down.
“Don’t mince your words or anything. And let me up,” I demand.
She gives my neck a quick squeeze before lifting her hand. Under other circumstances, the gesture might have felt reassuring.
“I suppose it’s finally time to have this out.” Selena sounds like she’s grumbling, and I’ve never known her to do something as churlish as grumble before.
I push my hair back from my face as I slowly straighten up. “Have what ou—”
The word dies on my lips, and my insides lurch in a way that has nothing to do with Little Bean’s lingering protests. Ares finally turned around.
“Thanos?” I breathe, not believing my eyes.
The weight inside me lifts, bubbling up like air under water. Elation and bewilderment leave me dizzy, like I’ve been knocked senseless, even though I’m somehow still standing. A giddy spiral of emotion sweeps me backward in time. Memories flit like colorful mosaics through my mind, some good, some bad, some painful, some messy and chaotic. All with a constant—Thanos. The broad cheekbones, strong nose, deep-set eyes, and multiple scars are the same as I remember, but everything else is bigger. More. This incredibly potent male is taller, more muscled, broader—and my childhood protector was already gigantic to begin with.
Ares flashes me the rare grin I saw only occasionally as a girl. “Hello, little monster.” Even his voice is fuller, richer, round with power.
I stop breathing and simply stare, incapable of anything else. When I blink, he’s still there, still Thanos, and yet he’s not. He’s a God.
Swaying on my feet, I stumble forward. Griffin reaches for me, maybe to stop me, maybe to steady me. I don’t know because I brush past his hand and keep going, suddenly running. I don’t stop. I can’t. I crash into the God of War and throw my arms around his Titan-sized waist, burying my face in the center of his bare torso. He smells of iron, fire, and wind, just like he always did. Arms the size of tree trunks close around me, engulfing my entire upper body. My shaky inhale shudders between us. I barely hold back a sob.
The fear and dread crushing my chest disappear, and whatever Selena did with her healing touch seems to have calmed Little Bean. Ares is Thanos. My Thanos. He practically raised me. Everything will be all right. Before I ever knew Selena’s fresh rain and budding leaves perfume or Griffin’s light citrus and sunshine scent, Thanos’s unique blend of warrior male and primal elements was the smell of rescue and refuge, of my invincible house.
I pull back, ball up my fist, and then pound Thanos on his bulging pectoral. “You left me!”
“You walked out of Castle Fisa on your own two feet.” He looks down at me with a warm expression that does little to dispel the hurt I’ve been carrying around inside me for more than eight years.
I thump his chest again as hard as I can. “And you refused to come with me.”
Thanos’s expression sours as he shoots a heated glare at Selena. “It was her turn. It was decided.”
“Decided?” I echo. “By whom?”
He turns back to me, half his face in shadow. The other half is bronzed, battered, and beautiful. “And you were getting far too pretty and grown up to stay in my care.”
His voice gives nothing away. Neither does his expression, but my heart starts galloping like someone just hit it with a whip. When I begged him to run away with me, did he want to?
“From birth, you were spoken for,” he adds quietly, as if reading my thoughts. “As am I.”
I swallow. Ares and Aphrodite. Thanos is Ares. If the legends are true, Aphrodite is the only one of the Gods who can stand him. I don’t know why. He’s powerful, protective, and discriminately violent. In my eyes, perfect.
I glance at Griffin. The man I married. The father of my child. From birth, you were spoken for.
Griffin has always felt so right. I love him. I had no hope of resisting him, even though I tried. He’s always saying I was made for him, meant for him, but from the shocked and almost stricken look on his face, I think he’s more focused on my obvious adoration of the God of War and on my running into another male’s arms than on the fact that he was right about us all along.
I step back from Ares. Whatever romantic feelings I had for him are long gone, leaving only the reality that for the first fifteen years of my life, he saved me every time I truly needed it. He also let me get hurt. A lot.
A sliver of pain pricks my heart. And he let me walk off, alone and utterly devastated by my sister’s death, without seeming to care what happened next.
Ares looks at me sharply, his wide brow furrowing.
My nostrils flare. Is he reading my thoughts?
“How are you feeling now?” Selena’s voice is back to being like a mist-cloaked stream on a spring morning—slightly lilting, cool, mysterious. It soothes me.
I glance at my belly, as if the still-flat surface should reveal something of note. “Fine. I guess she’s over her outburst. Or sleeping.”
“Good.” Selena very pointedly inserts herself between Ares and me.
Does she think Thanos would hurt me?
The God’s tawny eyebrows slam down. The same glinting, bluish-green eyes I remember from my childhood flare with anger, but now, tiny bursts of light skip along their power-bright surfaces. “Lightning bolts on Olympus, woman! What do you think I’m going to do to her?” Ares growls.
Selena shrugs, looking him up and down with visible distaste. “Squash her? You’re not exactly delicate.”
“She used to fit in the palm of my hand. I bounced her on my knee and tickled her. If I didn’t crush her then, there’s no chance of my doing it now.”
So that just exponentially increased the weird factor of my one-time crush. In my defense, it didn’t develop until later, along with breasts and hips.
I glance at Griffin again. His jaw is bulging so much that it looks like he’s trying to break his own teeth, but I appreciate his silence. Maybe he’s still absorbing all this. Maybe he’s overwhelmed. I know I am, and I grew up with these two.
Ares roughly shoves Selena aside to get a clear view of me again. I’ve never seen anyone manhandle Selena, and it startles a gasp out of me. But with the ease of an Amazon warrior, she recovers her lost ground and then retaliates with a hard hit of her own. Ares lowers his head, getting ready to charge. Selena shifts her balance, magic swells in the air, biting at my skin, and I see a clash of epic proportions coming that could knock us all into the next realm.
“Stop!” I cry, jumping between them. These two are the closest I’ve ever had to a real mother and
father, despite both my parents still being alive, and it’s surprisingly painful to see them at odds. It’s probably not a good idea to get between them when they’re angry and primed for a fight, but if there’s one person in this world I don’t think either of them will hurt—at least not on purpose—it’s me.
“What in the name of the Gods is going on?” Piers demands.
I snap my head around to glare at him. In fact, we all do.
“I thought he was the smart one.” Ares gestures impatiently toward Piers. His words probably make Griffin bristle even more. I don’t know. I don’t look.
Okay, I look. Griffin appears to be more intensely worried than angry. He’s frozen in place and keeping Kaia behind him, looking like he’s not sure what to do—something I know must not sit well with him.
“You. Summoned. Me.” Ares’s drawn-out, mocking tone calls into question Piers’s vaunted intelligence. “Now I have to take someone off to endless war. Very. Good. Plan.”
The God coats each word in layers of sarcasm, but I see no humor anywhere. In fact, I feel sick again.
Piers lifts his arm and points at Selena. “Take her!”
Selena makes an incredulous sound. Part laugh. Part snort. I hardly hear it because blood roars in my ears, and something inside of me snaps. My relief was so potent, so profound. But now that reassurance has been ripped away again, and it’s all Piers’s fault.
I lunge at Piers so fast he doesn’t see me coming. My fist hits his nose. While his head is still snapping back and crimson beads are flying through the air in a perfect, gory arc, I get behind him and smash one foot into the back of his knee, ignoring the flare of pain just hitting my knuckles now. The leg buckles, and he drops.
I have no idea how I moved so fast. It’s unnatural, like a blur. I don’t stop there. I slam the flat of my hand down between his shoulder blades and send him sprawling face-first into the dirt. I checked myself at the last second, a tiny shift. If I’d hit him any higher, I might have broken his neck. Part of me wonders why I didn’t.
Power springs from deep within, snapping and rolling through my veins. I feel it connecting every part of me. Blood. Flesh. Bone. My hair vibrates at the roots, rising on a tide of unchecked magic. Lightning webs down my arms. It bursts from my palms and chars the ground at my feet. The earsplitting crack of thunder seems to come straight from the hollow in my chest and shatter outward, annihilating what little restraint I have left.
Piers twists and looks up at me. His eyes widen. His jaw drops. I see him through a haze of magic—his shocked expression, his broken nose, the sudden fear in his eyes.
My ire grows, swelling along with my magic. He chose the wrong Magoi to cross. I am descended from Gods. I have ichor in my veins. Olympian power. He’s a threat to me, to my family, to all the people I love. I’m about to lose control all over him, and frankly, I don’t give a damn.
CHAPTER 4
I pounce on Piers, ready to do some serious damage, but Griffin grabs me around the waist and drags me back. I wrench in his hold. Violence pumps through my veins like liquid fire. Lightning coats my entire body, and the magic storm jumps to Griffin, crackling around us both until we’re lit up like a pair of blazing torches.
I snarl. Stupid, unpredictable magic. Now it works? Earlier would have been better!
“Hold, Cat.” Utterly immune to any magic that could harm him, Griffin is like a grounding rod, and all that deadly, flashing power crashes straight down. The ground under our feet begins to smoke and stink.
“Calm yourself,” he grates in my ear, his implacable grip immobilizing me.
“But he just condemned Selena!” She might frustrate the magic out of me sometimes with her vagueness and secrecy, but I love her. I rely on her. She gave me shelter and a home. And now she’ll be gone!
I buck and growl, twisting furiously in Griffin’s steely arms. Lightning cracks, and thunder echoes back at me.
“Think of little Eleni.” The stubble on Griffin’s jaw scratches my temple as he curls me inward against him, squeezing. “And remember, it’s not Piers who decides. There are no good choices here. And don’t prove him right by turning into exactly what he thinks you are.”
He thinks I’m a vicious killer. Who enjoys it.
Like the quick, startling sting of a whip, shame lashes me. I stop thrashing. Griffin is right. I shouldn’t have attacked Piers. I should have been more mindful of Eleni.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Kaia’s terrified gaze. She’s looking at me like you do when you come across something both so dreadful and so astonishing that you don’t know whether to watch in fascination or to run for your life.
That’s me—dreadful and fascinating. What a mix.
Lightning abruptly stops leaping from my body, settling roughly back into whatever mostly inaccessible well it resides in.
“She wouldn’t be half as belligerent if she’d grown up with me.” Selena crosses her arms, apparently wholly unconcerned by her potential impending doom.
Ares scowls. “She wouldn’t be half as alive if she’d grown up with you.”
“I beg to differ,” Selena responds coolly.
“Beg all you want. I’m still right.”
“I’m very effective.”
“You make rainbows and heal people.”
“You make war and kill people.”
“I taught her well.” Pride gleams in Ares’s eyes. “She just brought down a man a head taller than she is and twice as heavy without even trying.”
Selena scoffs. “Her exceptional reflexes are hardly your doing.”
“Or yours,” Ares says with narrowed eyes.
I’m not sure what they mean by that, but I glance at Piers, not proud of myself. To Griffin, I say, “You can let me go now.”
Griffin’s arms drop away, but he dips his dark head toward mine and rumbles, “I don’t blame you for protecting the people you love.” His words absolve me to a certain extent, and the stony expression he turns on Piers would make any man quake.
Piers pushes himself up from the ground. His nose is out of alignment. There’s blood everywhere and a raw scrape down his jaw. He spits out crimson saliva and then shoves his nose back into place. Mostly. And with barely a wince. He doesn’t look entirely steady, but he doesn’t look like he’s about to fall down, either. Maybe I should have hit him harder.
Training his eyes on Ares, Piers flicks his bloodstained fingers toward Selena. “I called you, and I say she should go.”
I shake my head, my lip curling in disdain at how easily he throws people away. There’s also no doubt in my mind that if it weren’t for the baby, he’d still wish it were me.
Great. Even in a family where I thought I was finally safe and welcome, there’s a brother to stab me in the back. Disappointed as I am, far worse than stabbing me in the back is the fact that Piers has just cut out Griffin’s heart and placed both my husband and Kaia in grave danger.
Ares’s huge hands land hard on his hips. He shakes his head. “He really is an idiot. I can’t take Persephone.”
There’s a single beat of my heart, a breath, before I understand what Ares just said. My eyes widen, and I turn to look at Selena so fast I nearly fall down. I leave my jaw somewhere on the ground behind me. “Persephone?”
“Finally.” With a deep breath, Selena lifts her hands and tilts her head back, as if offering praise to Olympus. “Really, Cat. You should have figured that out.”
“I should… I-I…” I gape at her, my heart pounding like a thousand feet marching into the unknown. The rest of me goes numb with shock. Even Little Bean seems stunned. Well, she doesn’t react, anyway. Maybe she already knew? “But Persephone has to spend six months of the year in the Underworld.”
Selena raises perfect blonde eyebrows, her expression turning incredulous. “But I do.”
“But…but…you…” I
shut up. I’m incoherent at this point.
Selena—Persephone—takes pity on me at last. “It’s a common misconception that they have to be six consecutive months. I have half a dozen worlds in which to start the springtime. I can’t do them all at once. They’re staggered. Besides…” She leans in, adding, “You can’t possibly think I’d share Hades with another female.”
I blink. No. I’ve always had trouble imagining that.
Before our eyes, Selena sheds whatever magic was making her look human all this time. She’s still her, with delicate features; high, arching brows; startling blue eyes; thick, silky hair; and obvious innate power. But now she’s more. Just like Thanos, she’s taller, stronger, and even more awe-inspiring in every way.
She rolls her shoulders and moves her neck from side to side, as if adjusting to her new dimensions. “Ah. Better.” The Goddess spears Piers with an irate look. “Cat has a clear destiny here in Thalyria. Ares can’t take her, and not only because of the two-souls thing. And despite his faults, I doubt Ares is interested in ripping her husband from her. So, not only did you betray your brother in the worst possible way, but you’ve doomed your little sister to a lifetime with him.” She jerks her head toward Ares, her dislike as clear as the crystalline waters off the Fisan coast.
Kaia’s sharp, frightened inhale yanks out my heart and sends it spiraling into the pit of my stomach. I should have been nicer to Piers, or at least tried to get along. If I had, Kaia wouldn’t be paying the price right now.
“No.” My palm up, I reach out to Ares, beseeching. “Please.”
The God of War looks Kaia over, assessing her. Kaia pales even more under his scrutiny and inches closer to Griffin.
Griffin’s eyes flare with panic, and he angles his body to better shield his sister. Piers’s face mirrors Griffin’s horrified expression. Stepping toward her, Piers reaches for Kaia, his hand still covered in his own blood.
“No!” Kaia avoids him with a slippery twist, sliding between Griffin and me. In her colorless face, her own eyes blaze with fear and hurt. Still a pace away, Piers pulls up short, looking like he’s been kicked in the heart.
Heart on Fire Page 4