Avenging Heart

by Desni Dantone

  Avenging Heart

  The Ignited Series

  Book Four

  Desni Dantone

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 Desni Dantone. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the author is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy.

  Cover design by Najla Qambar

  Edited by Jennifer Leisenheimer at Beyond The Cover Editing

  Smashwords Edition March 2016

  All rights reserved. Copyright © 2016 Desni Dantone

  ISBN: 9781310117213

  This eBook is part of a series. For the best reading experience, it is recommended to read the books in order.

  The Ignited Series:

  Ignited

  Sacrificed

  Salvaged Soul

  Avenging Heart

  Prologue

  “In the modern day of man, one girl will rise above the rest. Her magic will bring an end to the race born in the war between good and evil. She will end it all.”

  This was the prophecy as we knew it. One thing was for certain. I was that girl.

  One question remained. How bad would the fallout be?

  For me? For everyone I loved and cared about? For anyone who crossed paths with me?

  Micah was already gone. Though he had not been killed by my hand, his death certainly fell on my shoulders. He had died because of me.

  I feared that death followed me, sparing me while taking those closest to me. Without Micah to stop me, I was free to cause the destruction I was created for. Those I loved the most would be the first victims.

  Unless I stopped it. Stopped myself.

  Free will had a hell of a way of throwing a kink into evil’s plan. Fortunately, I was a strong-willed girl.

  Chapter 1

  Traveling permitted me too much time to think. I did a lot of thinking. Maybe too much.

  Mostly my thoughts revolved around the prophecy, and my central role in it, what happened a week ago, and the unknown that awaited us.

  I blamed myself for the attack on the Kala base last week, and for Micah’s death. Though everyone tried to make me feel better about it, I couldn’t shake the guilt that wrapped around me like a fat, life-extinguishing python.

  I hadn’t asked for this life, nor had I wanted all the bloodshed on my hands, but those were the cards I had been dealt. I chose to turn them all back over to the dealer in exchange for a new set of cards. A winning hand of freedom, determination, victory . . . and love.

  The love I shared with Nathan was the one thing that brought me solace these days. I often thought about the possibility of returning to a normal life—as normal as I could live given my circumstances. Nathan was the central figure in those thoughts.

  It didn’t matter where we were—a dingy bus traveling across Central America, the dirty floor of a hotel room shared with our four travel companions, crammed into an airplane on a transatlantic flight, or on the pristine beaches of Greece—his mere presence enveloped me like a protective barrier, something I had been accustomed to nearly my entire life. I sought him, and his fiercely protective nature, with every move I made. Especially now, when the horizon of my future was at its bleakest.

  Granted, not every day with him was rainbows and sunshine. Like when he went into that unbearable instructor mode I had once loathed, and I seriously contemplated kicking him between the legs so he would stop ‘strictly coaching me’ on my sparring techniques. That was his choice of words. To me, it strongly resembled ‘being an asshole.’

  Still, even those moments had a silver lining. While kissing Nathan was my absolute favorite extracurricular activity, fighting him came a close second.

  “Good!” He flexed his fingers as he held his hands out to me. “Again.”

  I swung, and connected my fist with his open palm with a crack. God, it felt good.

  “Combo,” he instructed, and I jabbed both of his palms.

  “Left is weak,” he critiqued. “Again.”

  I struck him as he instructed, and winced from the sting to my knuckles.

  “You can do better than that.” I tried again, and he shook his head. “You call that a punch?”

  “You know what?” I dropped my arms to my sides with a groan. “My arms feel like Jell-O. How do you expect me to punch with Jell-O arms?”

  Nathan stared at me over his hands, which were still raised expectantly. “You done?”

  “Yes, I’m done.” I turned away with a sigh of relief. I was eager for a much needed break, and a shower. We had started over an hour ago with a run before the sun rose. After an ungodly number of sit-ups, push-ups, and fighting drills, I was so done.

  “I meant . . . are you done complaining?” Nathan said, stopping me.

  I glared at him over my shoulder, and he raised his eyebrows in challenge. I blew out a puff of air, and shook some life back into my arms as I turned to face him with narrowed eyes.

  He was going to pay for that.

  My right fist cracked his palm hard. As I rotated, I pulled my left arm back with the intention of giving him everything I had. Before I made contact, Nathan’s hand shot out and clamped down on my wrist, stopping my follow through. My eyes lifted to his in time to see the smirk on his face before he twisted my arm behind my back and spun me around.

  “Now what?” he murmured in my ear.

  I ignored the shivers caused by his breath on my neck, and wrapped my right arm around his head as I twisted out of his hold. At the same time, I kicked my leg out. He grabbed it with his free hand before I could connect, and I lost my balance.

  I’m going down . . .

  And he’s coming with me.

  I attempted a twist that would land him beneath me, so that I could claim bragging rights, but it didn’t happen. I ended up with my back on the sand, and Nathan kneeling over me in total control.

  “Ugh!” I threw my head back with a groan. “How do you always manage to take me down first?”

  Nathan brushed a speck of sand off my forehead with a grin. “You think too much. Just do it.”

  “Me? Think too much?” Had he forgotten who he was talking to? The girl who notoriously acted first, and thought second.

  “You’ve got the potential. You’re definitely a lot stronger than you were,” he praised.

  “Then why can’t I take you down?” I whined. “I’m a demigod! I should be able to take you.”

  “I’m still more practiced than you,” he returned with a small chuckle. “I don’t think about my moves. I just do them. You’re concentrating too much on getting everything perfect. That distracts you.”

  “Hmm.” I bit my lip as I peered into his eyes, a silver-ringed blue that rivaled the most pristine of oceans. “You know what’s distracting me right now?”

  I watched as his eyes shifted from firm instructor mode . . . to sexy. His gaze dropped to my mouth, and the grin on his face grew as his head lowered
.

  I temporarily considered taking advantage of his guard being down. It might have been easy now, to grab him in a head lock and flip him over, but I would never know. While I would have loved to brag about it later, now I preferred for him to kiss me.

  His lips skimmed cautiously over mine, as if he suspected my initial sneak attack plan. My arms wrapped possessively around his shoulders as I deepened the kiss, letting him know that was the last thing from my mind. The gravely noise that sounded from the back of his throat as he surrendered full-heartedly to me unraveled the pent up desire I had been forced to hold back all morning. From the way Nathan’s grip tightened on my hip, I suspected it had been just as torturous for him.

  His lips eased away from mine with a groan. “You really need to start wearing more clothes when we train.”

  I followed his gaze to my exposed hip. I was sporting short running shorts and a thin tank top that had drifted up to my navel. What was wrong with that?

  “It’s like a hundred degrees out here,” I pointed out. Besides, he had no shirt on, so if anyone should be complaining about lack of clothing, it was me.

  But I wasn’t going to complain about that.

  He grunted something unintelligible before claiming my mouth again. With our lips pressed together, he grumbled, “But it’s really distracting.”

  “Didn’t seem to affect you earlier,” I returned between kisses.

  He leaned back to pin me with a look. “Trust me. It does.”

  “Stop talking,” I ordered, grabbing the back of his head as I pulled him to me.

  The deliberate sound of a throat clearing behind us froze his descent. Nathan rolled away from me to peer over his shoulder, revealing Jared where he stood a few yards away with a shit-eating grin on his face.

  “Interrupting something?” he asked.

  “As a matter of fact . . .” I started as Nathan jumped to his feet.

  He offered me a hand as I stood, then turned to Jared. “What’s up?” He was so quick to leap back into mission mode. Much quicker than I was.

  “Everyone’s getting up,” Jared explained as he waved his hand behind him, gesturing to the quaint hotel we had stayed in the night before. “We need to get an early start.”

  “Yeah, definitely,” Nathan agreed.

  Both of them had told us the night before that we would need to head out early this morning. Apparently, the climb to The Hall of the Gods was a brutal one, and required a good night’s rest and an early start. Too bad I was exhausted now after training with Nathan.

  But he had insisted on sticking to our routine, even this morning, because we never knew when we would encounter a demigod. Since I would technically have to be the one to destroy him or her, Nathan wanted me to be prepared.

  Not that it was something easy to prepare for. Since I had fought Temulus, the demigod of manipulation, last week, and won, I realized that I had actually been lucky. Fortunately, I had the ability to use magic, which had given me a huge advantage in the fight. Regardless, I had been lucky to walk away mostly unscathed. I knew luck may not be on my side the next time.

  Which was exactly why we were here, in the Greek tourist hub of Litochoro, and about to pay a visit to the gods. There were two other demigods, Isatan and Permna, who could help us, and we needed to join forces with them before any of the other nine demigods found us.

  Nathan scooped his shirt off the ground and slipped it on. I fell into step alongside him and Jared as we walked back to the hotel.

  “I hope they’ve figured out what that compound was that the Skotadi were using,” Nathan mused along the way.

  That was the other reason for our visit. During their mission to Greece last month, Jared and Nathan helped to rescue Isatan and Permna from a small army of Skotadi that had managed to hold them captive with the aid of a magical compound. It was apparently capable of weakening demigods’ powers, and was something we could get a lot of use out of in our quest to destroy the other nine demigods. Not to mention, we didn’t want it in the wrong hands, where it could be used against Isatan and Permna again . . . or me.

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” Jared said as we walked. “What are the chances that Circe came up with it?”

  “You think Lillian might remember?” Nathan questioned.

  “It sure would be nice if her memory came back a little faster,” I muttered.

  Not only was Lillian my old nemesis and Nathan’s ex-girlfriend from seven years ago, when she was a Kala, but she had also been the Incantator created by Circe to put her curse into motion. Lillian’s conversion back to a Kala had left her with a severe case of amnesia. Though bits and pieces of her memory had returned, it was coming back slowly. Too slowly to be of much help to us yet.

  She had been the one to remember that Circe was behind the curse, and that Circe was counting on me to finish it. Apparently, neither Circe nor Lillian had the power that I had. As the daughter of the true goddess of magic, Hecate, I had the ability to do what they couldn’t.

  Not that I wanted to. Thousands of innocent humans would be sacrificed as a result, and my best friend, Callie, would be one of them. Not only was I on a quest to destroy the demigods who planned to benefit from this curse, but I was determined to stop the curse from being finalized to save Callie.

  As an added benefit, there was a possibility that destroying Hades’ three remaining demigods could sever the links Alec and I had to them, and thus our links to their evil influences. Since Temulus had been destroyed, we both have felt lighter and freer. It had been Alec’s idea to go after the demigods to see if there was something to it, and I knew he couldn’t wait to find out if his theory was right.

  Even if that meant dragging his butt out of bed at the crack of dawn.

  As we approached the hotel patio that overlooked the beach, I saw Alec sitting on one of the steps, leaning his head against the post with a gigantic cup of coffee in his hand, his eyes closed.

  Nathan kicked the bottom of his foot, and one of Alec’s eyes popped open.

  “Watch it,” he warned.

  “Wow,” Nathan chuckled. “You really don’t take jet lag well.”

  “In all fairness, he did warn us,” Jared said to Nathan.

  I recalled a heated conversation between the three of them a few nights ago, with more foul language than I would have expected to hear in a sports bar during Monday Night Raw. And I would have described the conversation as threatening, rather than cautionary. But it was about flight times and wake up calls, nothing really important, so I hadn’t stuck around long to get the details.

  But yeah . . . Alec already wasn’t much of a morning person. With the addition of jet lag, he was a downright grouch.

  “Where are Bruce and Lillian?” Nathan asked him.

  Alec didn’t bother to open his eyes as he answered. “Restaurant. Breakfast.”

  My stomach grumbled, and I realized breakfast sounded like an excellent idea.

  The patio was set off the back of the hotel. On the other side of the wide glass doors was a small restaurant. Already, I could smell the alluring combination of freshly brewed coffee, bacon, and maple syrup wafting outside.

  Nathan turned to me. “What do you want?” I smiled at the thought of the many directions I could take that simple question, and Nathan quickly amended, “To eat.”

  “I desperately want to shower,” I returned as I plucked at my sweat-dampened and sand-covered shirt.

  Nathan’s eyes lowered to the sliver of exposed midriff I had created. “Yeah. You, uh . . . you go do that. I’ll order something . . . for you. I know what you like so . . .”

  Watching Nathan squirm was a secret guilty pleasure of mine. There was something adorable about a normally hard-nosed warrior being reduced to fumbled words just by being around me. It didn’t happen often, but when it did, I loved him a little more.

  I started to lean in to give him a kiss, but thought better of it. Even if his eyes were closed, Alec was right there. Though he had repeat
edly told me he was fine with it, I cared too much about our friendship to throw my relationship with Nathan in his face.

  Instead, I tousled Alec’s hair as I passed him on the steps. He swatted at my legs, but missed, and I laughed as I crossed the patio to the glass door.

  My smile faltered when I spotted our other two travel companions, Lillian and Bruce, sitting at a round table in the corner as they ate their breakfast. Though our travels over the past week had acclimated me somewhat to being around her all the time, I still found myself on edge around Lillian.

  It was only partially because of the history between us. Sure, she had tried to kill Nathan a few times, tortured me, cursed my best friend . . . but I knew she was different now. She wasn’t the same person who had done those horrible things. I knew that, even if the mere sight of her face gave me unwelcome flashbacks from time to time. I was slowly getting over that history we shared. Now, the awkwardness between us mostly stemmed from the very obvious fact that she was still in love with Nathan.

  While Bruce flashed me a friendly smile as I approached, Lillian’s face remained a blank canvas. I often caught her quietly studying me, and I wondered what she saw when she looked at me. The girl who had taken Nathan from her? The girl who stood in the way of her happily ever after? While I understood why she might have thought that, I knew that wasn’t the way it had happened.

  She looked away first and, as I pushed through the door, I turned to follow the direction of her distant gaze. From her seat, she had a clear view of the ocean . . . and the beach. I guessed she had been sitting there for some time, long enough that she had seen something that put that barely detectable frown on her face.

  Chapter 2

  As we climbed the mountain, Nathan reminded me again to steer clear of Zeus and Poseidon—especially Poseidon. Apparently, when he and Jared had talked with him before, Nathan had gotten a not-so-good vibe from him.

  “Hera seems to be on your side,” he said.