A magick he’d felt the second he’d stepped through the heavy steel doorway.
The torch sputtered and then went out, dousing him in darkness. Another shiver racked his body as he lowered his arm to his side, let the torch roll from his fingers across the cold dirt beneath him, and dropped his head back against the wall, fighting to stay conscious. To survive. To win.
This is your reality. The rest... It was never real. Just a dream...
Out of nowhere, words he’d heard ages ago echoed in his mind. Words he’d heard when he’d been trapped with Atalanta. The goddess who’d abducted him as a baby and raised him until he’d finally escaped her daemons at the age of ten.
He’d been a prisoner then, too. Forced to do horrific things. Except then, he’d been a kid. Innocent. Naïve. Blameless in the grand scheme. Now, he wasn’t. Now, his choices—his mistakes—were his own. And, skata, there had been so many fuckups over the years since he’d found his family and gone to live with them in Argolea.
Pain lanced his chest. Mixed with the agony and guilt already swamping him. Every mistake, every epic failure stemmed from one thing: his asinine belief that he was special. That he was a hero like his father and the other Argonauts. When the reality was... He was just one major disappointment.
Spineless...
Atalanta had said that to him. Too many times to count when he’d been young. And she’d been right.
He hadn’t been able to stand up to the evil goddess, to stop her from murdering innocents. He’d failed to rescue Elysia when she’d been abducted by the Sirens. And this time...
This time he’d done nothing when the Prince of Darkness had taken Talisa right in front of him.
He deserved to be in this cell. Deserved to rot here in the dark. Part of him... Part of him hoped no one ever tried to find him and that the Argonauts focused their energies on rescuing Talisa instead.
Talisa...
She was his cousin, his closest friend, the only person who truly understood him. And because of him, she could be suffering indescribable torture right this very moment. Or she could already be dead.
Dead...
A searing pain lit off deep in his chest. He gasped, opened his eyes, and stared into the darkness. Only to realize...
It wasn’t her death he felt.
It was his own.
* * *
Talisa’s eyes widened as Zagreus pushed her up several rock steps edged with moss toward the stone archway.
It was a portal of some kind. She felt the energy radiating from the stones as strongly as she felt Zagreus’s wicked heat seeping into her spine.
He could take her anywhere through a portal—anywhere in the human realm, the cosmos, Olympus, even the Underworld. And several of those were places the Argonauts would never be able to follow.
At her back, he muttered ancient words she didn’t understand. The portal’s energy snapped and grew stronger.
“Wait.” She dug her heels into the stones beneath her feet and tried to push back, but with her gifts bound, it did nothing to slow him down.
He pushed her right up to the edge of the portal. She gasped in a breath...
Only to let it out when he forced her under the archway and no energy rushed through her body, indicating they hadn’t used any kind of portal at all.
Her eyes widened as she took in her surroundings. The dark forest she’d seen through the stone archway was gone. Instead, the trees opened to a giant pool of crystal blue water fed by an enormous waterfall, which roared over a rocky cliff at least a hundred stories high.
At the top, set back from the edge of the falls, a white castle with spires that reached toward the sky gleamed bright in the moonlight. She looked back down, realizing the pool narrowed to her left, transitioning to a fast-moving river where water swirled and gurgled and disappeared into the forest.
Shocked, she turned to look behind her. The archway was still there. Through it she could see the steps and dark forest they’d come through. But this...
Wide-eyed, she looked back at the waterfall and castle high above. This had been camouflaged. By magick, she realized. Zagreus’s magick.
Without a word, he stepped around her, grasped her bound hands, and pulled her with him down a slight hillside. Skirting the pool, he drew her toward a sheer rock wall. Mist from the waterfall sprayed over both of them. He brushed vines and tree limbs aside, moving toward the cliff. When they were five feet from the rocks, he tugged her to a stop and turned to face her.
She eased back, unsure what he had planned. But she didn’t make it far because the second his dark eyes locked on hers, she felt a tug toward him, right in the center of her chest.
The same tug she’d felt in that club when he’d looked at her, and she’d climbed off her barstool then crossed the dance floor.
His scent surrounded her—spice and citrus and rum—and her head grew light, her limbs heavy. The blood pounded in her veins and warmed in a way she both craved and didn’t understand. And before she realized what he was doing, the long line of his body brushed hers, and his arms closed tight around her back.
“Stay still, princess. I wouldn’t want you to be hurt.”
She had no idea what he meant. No idea why he’d called her princess. Then his knees bent slightly, the muscles in his strong thighs flexed against her own, and he tightened his arms, crushing her to his chest as he pushed off the ground.
Her boots left the dirt. Air streaked past her face. Her brain registered the flash of rock and water and trees rushing by, but it wasn’t until her heels clicked against solid stone that she realized he’d used his god-powers and jumped them to the rocky ledge at the top of the waterfall.
She gasped and pushed back from his chest. He loosened his hold and let her go, but his hand quickly slipped down to wrap around the bindings holding her wrists together so she didn’t fall.
Wide-eyed, she looked from the river of water rushing down the cliff, over the rocks to the right of her feet, then finally to the castle at his back, surrounded by an enormous wall with sentries posted at each tower.
“W-what is all this?” she managed above the roar of water. “Where are we?”
“Home.” He turned and tugged her with him.
He didn’t elaborate, and as they drew closer to the castle, she was too shocked to push for more.
Sentries hustled toward the enormous gate as soon as they were spotted. Guards above on the wall walk hollered down to someone behind the gate. A clank sounded, then the heavy wood doors, both at least three stories high, groaned and pushed inward, revealing a lower bailey lit by torches and an arched bridge over what looked to be another river running in front of an even higher wall and the castle beyond.
“My Prince,” several guards in armor muttered, nodding while Zagreus passed, tugging her behind him. None seemed surprised by her presence. None even bothered to look at the bindings on her wrists.
She wanted to scream at them to help her, but one look at the way they all bowed to Zagreus and backed away told her they were his lackeys and that she’d find no help from them.
Zagreus headed straight for the bridge, hauling her over the stones and past the second gate, then into the main bailey without a word.
She scanned the area, trying to take it all in so she’d know how to escape when the time came, but in the darkness, she couldn’t see anything past the rings of torchlight. She’d been right, though. The bridge spanned another river, this one smaller but flowing fast to join up with the first to spill over the cliff in a wall of water. And it looked deep—not something she could easily cross if the drawbridge’s chains were pulled.
“Master!”
“My Prince!”
Three females appeared through the open castle doors and rushed up to Zagreus, pawing and grabbing at him as he continued to walk. Females, Talisa realized as her attention swung back her captor’s way, who were petite, barefoot, with long curly hair in a variety of colors, and dressed in thin, gauzy gowns tha
t accentuated their curves.
Nymphs.
Talisa’s shock gave way to disgust as Zagreus held up a hand and said, “Yes, my pretties, I’m back.”
“Oh, master,” the one with curly red hair down to her ass cried while she reached for his arm, “we’ve been waiting for you.”
“It’s been so long,” the blonde added, clawing at his chest.
“All for a reason,” he answered, tugging Talisa inside the warm glow of the castle.
Yeah, right. Talisa nearly huffed as she watched the three nymphs all but throwing themselves at Zagreus’s feet. She was in some kind of great hall lit by more torches and a plethora of candles and oil lamps.
Had he put a spell on these brainless bimbos? She’d heard plenty of stories about what Zagreus liked to do with nymphs. They should be running from the monster, not trying to fuck his brains out right in front of her.
Why do you care if he fucks them?
Talisa gave her head a swift shake and reminded herself she didn’t care. All she cared about was getting away from the asshole.
She glanced around the hall with its columns and iron chandeliers and gabled ceiling only to notice other nymphs reclining on couches, reading books, some to her right wearing aprons who looked to be going in and out of another room that had to be a kitchen. And she saw males. Attractive, muscular males sipping wine, chatting and laughing with the nymphs—flirting, really. Males who were as handsome as the nymphs were pretty, but whose race she couldn’t quite identify.
Nymphs were solely female. They consorted with satyrs and gods, but these males weren’t either. They looked like males of her world. Like humans. Only she instinctively knew they were neither.
Zagreus pulled her past a massive stone hearth crackling with a roaring fire, where a nymph was seated in a high-backed chair on the lap of one of those unidentified males, nibbling on his ear while he stroked the curve at her hip. He groaned at whatever she was doing then dropped his hand from her hip to the hem of her short gauzy dress, slowly pushing it up.
Talisa’s eyes widened when she realized they were about to get it on right here in the middle of the room, in front of everyone. Unable to look away, she kept watching.
And slammed into Zagreus’s back, the side of her face cracking against his spine where he’d stopped.
He turned and glared down at her. She stumbled back and rubbed her sore cheek. Shaking his head, he shot a hard look past her, toward the padded chair where the two—whatever they were—had been making out. But he didn’t acknowledge them. Just turned back to the three nymphs at his front and said, “Where is An—?”
“Theós!”
A small voice from across the room drew Talisa’s attention. Still rubbing her sore cheek, she glanced to her right, where a petite female—a child, she realized—sprinted across the stone floor and threw herself against Zagreus’s legs.
“Theós, Oh, Theós! I missed you!” The girl, no more than eight Talisa guessed, brimmed with excitement as she looked up at Zagreus, her curly blonde hair a wild tangle around her face. “I knew you’d come back.” She turned and glanced toward the redheaded nymph who’d been clawing at Zagreus only moments ago. “Didn’t I tell you, he’d come back, matéras?”
Matéras? Talisa’s eyes widened as she glanced from the nymph to the child and back to Zagreus, the pain in her cheek and the two lovers at her back suddenly forgotten.
Theós was an ancient word that meant “my god”—not a surprise the child was using it, considering he was a god. But matéras meant mother.
Zagreus reached down to pry the child from his legs, a look of irritation on his face.
The redhead frowned. “Yes, you did.” She reached for the child’s arms. “Aia, let go of him.”
Talisa sucked in a breath, expecting Zagreus to backhand the girl across the room. Only he didn’t. He gently untangled her from his legs.
“No. I don’t wanna.” The girl hung on tighter, fighting her mother’s attempts to pull her back. “I want Theós.”
“Aia.” The redhead grasped both of the girl’s arms and pulled, “I said let go.”
“He missed me, though!” Still hanging on for dear life, the girl looked up at Zagreus with hero-worship in her light green eyes. “Did you bring me a present?”
“Not if you’re not going to listen.” Zagreus managed to free the child from his leg, never once loosening his grip on Talisa.
“I listen, I listen!” The girl quickly stepped back. “Can I see now? Can I see?”
Zagreus straightened and shot her a look Talisa couldn’t see.
The redheaded nymph only let go of the girl, rolled her eyes, and muttered, “I warned you about this.”
Talisa blinked, looking from face to face again because she had absolutely no clue what was going on here.
“Please?” The child looked to her mother then back at Zagreus expectantly. “I listen. I promise.”
Zagreus was silent for several seconds then finally said, “Go get Ana and a maid and send them to meet me in the Ivy Spire. Then, when you’ve finished the chores I know your mother gave you, I’ll consider it.”
“Oh, yay!” The little girl jumped up and down and clapped her hands. “I can’t wait!” Like a bolt of lightning, she rushed across the floor and disappeared through an archway on the far side of the room.
The redhead looked after the girl then sighed and glanced back at Zagreus with eyes that screamed of some kind of intimacy. “That was a bad idea. You know you’re creating a monster.”
Zagreus stepped past her, tugging Talisa with him. “Just make sure she gets me what I need.”
“Of course, Theós. Anything for you.” The nymph shot Talisa a predatory grin as she curtsied then turned to follow the child.
Talisa’s back tightened as Zagreus pulled her in the opposite direction. Oh yeah, the two were definitely intimate. No one else in this place had called him Theós. Was the child his? Was the nymph his current concubine? Considering how many scantily clad nymphs were running around this place, he probably had two or three warming his bed each night. Probably a dozen bastard children running around as well.
Not that she cared...
He continued to drag her across the stone floor like she was a rag doll, and belatedly, she realized the other two nymphs had disappeared as well. In fact, the hall was all but empty now with no sign of the rest of the nymphs or mystery males who’d been there before. Not even the two who’d been about to get it on near the fireplace.
She slammed into Zagreus’s spine, realizing too late—again—that he’d stopped.
Rubbing her other sore cheek, she stumbled back and glared up at him. “What the hell?”
“No, I’ve been to hell, princess, and this is definitely not it.”
She blinked and stared at him, confused by his words, even more frustrated by the way she kept reacting to him. Like he was a person—not a monster.
Hades’s son, she reminded herself. Prince of fucking Darkness. Definitely not a person.
“You seemed to be searching for something,” he said, staring down at her. “Find it yet?”
Talisa still had no idea what he was getting at, but his dark eyes sparked with something mischievous. Something wicked. And she froze when his gaze shifted to the fireplace at her back then returned to her face, knowing he’d caught her gawking at those two almost-lovers.
Her pulse sped up, and heat rolled through her at the way he was watching her. A heat she’d felt in that club when they’d touched. A heat that was arousing and made her hate him even more.
And why did he keep calling her princess? She wasn’t a princess. Her cousin was the princess. Did he think she was Elysia?
That possibility pissed her off even more.
“In this place?” She dropped her hand and glared at her captor, focusing on his words instead of the impish look in his eyes. “Never.”
His gaze skipped over her, slow and assessing and—dammit—seductive. Then he chuckled, a l
ow, sexy sound deep in his throat that made her blood hum. “Lying comes easily to you, female.” He turned and jerked her up several steps she hadn’t realized were behind him. “We’ll break you of that habit soon enough, mono mia.”
We?
Who the hell is ‘we?’
A shiver of trepidation rushed down Talisa’s spine as he all but dragged her up the staircase. She knew she had to fight back, to resist whatever he planned to do to her. That wherever he was taking her would not end well for her. But her brain suddenly wasn’t working, consumed only by the memory of those words...
Mono mia.
She’d heard those words before. She didn’t know where. She didn’t know when. But they were familiar. Important. And somehow, instinctively, she knew they pertained solely to her.
The curved stairs opened to a hallway flanked by wood columns connected by arched beams high above. An intricate railing looked down toward the stairs they’d just climbed. Zagreus pulled her through the wide corridor and drew to a stop in front of a door.
Blinking the cobwebs from her brain, Talisa focused on that door, tensing as he jerked it open. Instead of revealing some kind of cell as she half-expected, it opened to another set of stone steps, these narrower than the first, with cold rock walls closing in on each side.
She shuffled back, knowing wherever that staircase led was not a place she wanted to see, yanking on Zagreus’s hold. Two steps up, he turned irritated eyes her way and wrenched her hard toward him.
Her body slammed into his. She gasped but shuffled back again. “I am not going up there, you bastard. Let me go.”
She pulled hard, stumbling with the effort, but without her gifts, she was no match for his strength, and he knew it.
Shaking his head, Zagreus stalked toward her, and she tensed again, easing back even farther, afraid of what he would do. Instead of slapping her or throwing her up the steps, though, he bent at the waist, grasped her at the legs, then straightened and lifted her off the ground, tossing her over his shoulder as he turned.
Wicked: Eternal Guardians Page 6