Keras: Guardians of Hades Series Book 7

by Heaton, Felicity

  Was he furious with her too?

  He leaned to his right and went to turn.

  Her gaze snagged on the bottle on the black counter and the empty glass beside it. “What is that?”

  She jerked her chin towards it.

  Keras didn’t even glance at it. “An experiment.”

  She read the red and white label. Vodka. She knew what that was.

  “Alcohol?” Her gaze leaped back to collide with his as shock rippled through her. “I thought that—”

  Keras cut her off. “Valen tried it and went off the deep end.”

  “Off the deep end?” She couldn’t hide the confusion that swept over her, knew he had heard it when a semblance of a smile touched his lips.

  “A mortal saying. It means to lose control. To be wild.”

  Enyo filed it away as she looked from the bottle to him, concern replacing her confusion. Valen had lost control, and Keras had decided to imbibe the same mortal-made brew that had made him wild.

  Did he want to go off the deep end too?

  “And you?” She frowned at him. “What did you feel?”

  Her eyes strayed to the bottle again.

  “Nothing.” Keras shifted a step to his left, into the path of her gaze.

  “Why?” She lifted her eyes back to his, unsure whether she was asking him why it hadn’t worked or why he had done something as reckless as drinking mortal alcohol when he knew how badly it affected him and his brothers.

  He hiked his shoulders. “I am still trying to figure that one out.”

  Enyo moved around him, deeper into the kitchen, curiosity and concern pulling her forwards, flooding her with a need to see the bottle. “How much did you drink?”

  He took hold of it before she could get a look at it by moving around him and held it up for her to see.

  A third of it was missing.

  Far more than she had expected.

  She hoped to the gods that he had at least started with a sip to gauge his reaction to it rather than diving straight in at a full glass.

  She stared at the bottle, unable to shake the feeling something was wrong. Very wrong. A third of a bottle of alcohol was a lot for him to drink. Was this more than an experiment?

  Had he hoped to awaken the same destructive power that Valen had by drinking alcohol?

  Her gaze drifted back to meet his.

  Why would he want to unleash that sort of power on this world?

  His eyes revealed nothing, not a single trace of what he was feeling. His heart was closed to her, and it chilled her, had the warmth she had felt from being in his presence and in his arms turning to ice in her veins.

  She reminded herself that she deserved his anger and this cold shoulder. She had come here to make amends, to slowly piece their friendship back together and perhaps even build on it in time. Olympus hadn’t been built in a day, and she was going to have to pick up the rubble of their past before she could begin constructing the future she wanted with him.

  Or at least a path that might bring her there if he felt something for her.

  Right now, she wasn’t sure that he did.

  In fact, she felt certain he didn’t, and that he never had.

  She tried to focus on the present, refusing to let the past jade her or read into things too much. She had leaped the first hurdle. She just had to keep on her feet now and keep running forwards. No looking back.

  “Perhaps your inhibitors are too strong?” she said.

  He tensed and his eyes darkened briefly, a shadow passing across them that lifted when he glanced down at his wrists, at the twin bands that encircled them, dampening his powers so he could be in this world without destroying it with the strength of them.

  She’d had thousands of years in this world to learn to control her power, and he had been thrust into it without any training, expected to know how to hold back his strength.

  “A reaction?” Enyo watched him closely, canting her head to her right as she tried to decipher whether the alcohol he had consumed was affecting him.

  He barely shook his head and didn’t look at her.

  She closed the distance between them again and took hold of his hands. An electric thrill bolted up both of her arms, had a shiver tripping down her spine as she felt the coolness of his skin against hers. He had always run a few degrees colder than her, something she blamed on his father’s genes.

  Hades could be as cold as they came.

  Enyo used her thumbs to brush the cuffs of his black dress shirt back and stroked them over the twin braided onyx bands that encircled his wrists, sitting flush against his skin. The power locked within them seeped into her.

  The man she had known in the Underworld.

  Never as strong as she was, but still incredibly powerful.

  She watched her thumbs caressing his wrists, fought another bout of nerves and ridiculous tears that wanted to fill her eyes as she felt a shadow of the connection that had once existed between them.

  Keras’s hands.

  Strong. Capable. Skilled in battle.

  Wrestling her emotions back under control, she lifted her gaze to his face, burning with a need to take it in again.

  His green eyes lingered on her hands where she touched him, something she couldn’t decipher slowly filling them.

  “I really did miss you,” she whispered, and cursed when the tears she thought she had wrangled under control began to fill her eyes. She blinked them away before he could see them. “I haven’t had a good fight in centuries.”

  He smiled, but it lacked the emotion it would have held once.

  He slipped his hands free of hers and turned his back to her, grabbed the glass and carried it to the sink to her left.

  Enyo stared at the bottle on the black counter.

  It worried her to see him doing something so irresponsible.

  It wasn’t like him.

  Sure, she had been hitting the ambrosia again recently, since things had started getting more intense in the mortal world. She had needed the escape it offered as her worry for Keras’s safety had grown.

  Was Keras seeking such an escape too?

  Keras casually turned back to face her, the air between them growing awkward again, something she felt sure she was the only one feeling. He stared at her in silence, and again she was hit by the fact that there wasn’t a single trace of emotion in his emerald eyes, none of the anger she deserved for avoiding him for two centuries and for the manner of their parting.

  He was strangely calm.

  There wasn’t even a hint of hurt in him.

  It made her feel as if she was looking at a different man.

  In the centuries she had known him, Keras had always shared his father’s personality, often calm on the surface but seething with powerful emotions beneath, a churning and dangerous mass of them that were liable to erupt to the surface at any moment. He had always been unpredictable. She had never known when his temper would snap, but she had always known when he was angry. His tone had never revealed it, but his eyes had.

  Now those eyes were empty as they gazed at her.

  She thought about the things Marek had said to her and the messages Valen had sent.

  And felt they were both right.

  Something was wrong with Keras.

  Very wrong.

  Keras cleared his throat, seeming to shake himself out of whatever thoughts were keeping him quiet, and approached her again, narrowing the gap between them down to a foot.

  He leaned against the counter again, folded his arms over his chest and said, “How does your brother Ares fare?”

  She couldn’t hold back her smile. “He grows impatient for battle and has been pursuing Aphrodite again.”

  Keras lifted his left hand and touched the small black heart-shaped mark on his cheek where the goddess had kissed him when he was a baby, bestowing her favour upon him. His fingers swept backwards, brushing the pointed tip of his sideburn that accentuated his cheekbone, and then he ran his hand around
the back of his head.

  Let it drop to his neck.

  Drawing her eyes with it.

  Her gaze lingered on his throat, watching the fast tick of his pulse. She wasn’t the only one who was nervous. Perhaps that was why he was being so quiet and distant. He was feeling as unsure about things as she was.

  “How does your brother Ares fare?” she said, tickled by the fact he had remembered their old greeting.

  He sighed. “He has fallen for a mortal Carrier and they are with child.”

  She smiled again, warmth blooming inside her once more. “That’s wonderful. My brother will be pleased to hear it too. He had always foreseen that your brother would father strong males.”

  “The child is female.”

  For a brief moment, emotions broke to the surface in his eyes, a combination of concern and hurt, but then they were gone, as if he had erased them.

  “What brings you here?” He averted his gaze, glancing at the bottle he had left on the island behind him.

  All of the warmth she had been feeling rushed out of her, and cold swept in behind it to fill her chest.

  He wanted her gone.

  He was angry with her.

  She might not be able to see it in his eyes for some reason, but she knew him well enough to detect in his body language and his manner of speaking that she truly had upset him all the times she had spoken with his brother instead of him.

  A thousand apologies rose to her lips, none of them good enough to make up for what she had done. They all felt shallow, a desperate reach for him to forgive her right here and now, when she knew she had to work for that forgiveness.

  “I told you, I came to bring information.” She regretted saying that when it sounded cold to her. It lacked the feelings that were in her heart, emotions she was too afraid to risk putting out there when he was like this—icy and distant. She clenched her fists and straightened her spine, refusing to let him get to her. She had come here to make things between them better again, and she would. “I… War is coming. I want to help you… but I cannot. My hands are bound. Brother will not allow me to fight and neither will your father.”

  “Then you should not be here.” He turned his back to her, grabbed the bottle and stared at it. “I am sure you know that.”

  She did know that.

  She knew it and she didn’t care.

  “This is war,” she snapped, frustration mounting to get the better of her. “I am a goddess of war. I should be fighting alongside you.”

  “We do not need your help.”

  She gritted her teeth and fought to hold back the words she wanted to hurl at him, aware that arguing with him was not only pointless but it wasn’t the reason she had come to him. She had come to make things better, not worse.

  “I am part of this war, whether you or Hades or my brother likes it or not. I have been bringing you information.”

  Keras turned on her, darkness ringing his green irises, and his power pressed against her as the light in the room dimmed. He growled, “Bringing me information?”

  She eased back a step, not wanting to provoke him when he was like this, liable to lose control of his temper and unleash it on her. Darkness reigned in his eyes, swift to devour the emerald, building like a storm.

  Fine, so he was angry.

  Really angry.

  The storm passed swiftly, the black ring his eyes had gained losing ground against the emerald as he stared at her, as his breathing levelled out again.

  She waited for a few minutes, until the air in the room grew awkward again, and then said, “How does your father feel about Nemesis being involved?”

  Keras’s black eyebrows knitted hard. “Angry. He’s angry about the fact Messengers are involved too. He’s ordered all of them contained and no longer trusts any of them. If he wishes to speak with us now, he summons us.”

  That worried her.

  Hades relied heavily upon his Messengers since he couldn’t leave the Underworld. He had created them for that reason, and now he couldn’t use any of them without fearing they were working for the enemy.

  “Hades shouldn’t have to summon you in order for you to travel to the Underworld. It is time that he allowed you and your brothers to freely travel there. If Nemesis is trapped there, then that is where you should be. You need to petition your father.” She instantly regretted letting that all spill from her lips as his face darkened again.

  “You have no right to dictate what I should do, or what my father should do,” he bit out, the black invading his eyes again as his power rose to sweep around her and the room darkened.

  She glanced down at the floor and eased another step back as shadows writhed at his feet.

  Her gaze darted up to lock with his.

  It wasn’t like him to be so changeable.

  She tried to blame his ridiculous experiment, but deep in her heart she feared it was something else.

  She feared that something dark had been growing inside Keras in their time apart.

  Since she had told him she was betrothed to another.

  “It was nice to see you again.” His deep voice was cold, lacked emotion as he stared her down.

  Enyo looked into his eyes, into what felt like a void, an icy chasm that chilled her to her marrow. There had been warmth in his eyes once, genuine warmth.

  Had she been the one to kill it, or had he?

  He pivoted away from her.

  This time, she took the hint.

  She turned away too and focused on Olympus, only to let the connection between her and the realm where he clearly felt she belonged fall away.

  What was she doing?

  She looked back over her shoulder at Keras.

  He leaned forwards and braced his hands against the marble counter, gripping it tightly as he hung his head.

  She reached out a little with her senses, sure she would get nothing from him.

  Stifled a gasp when she felt the pain, the rage, that coiled inside him.

  Pain and rage that were her fault.

  She should have waited until he was with his brothers before seeing him for the first time in two hundred years. She had made it weird. She had made him uncomfortable.

  And now she was paying for it.

  She wanted to say something more to him, but instead let it go.

  And teleported.

  But she didn’t go home.

  She was a goddess of war.

  And she intended to wage one that should have happened centuries ago.

  She intended to win Keras’s heart.

  But even a goddess of war needed an army on her side.

  She landed in a street, crisp cool morning air bathing her as she lifted her head.

  And stared at the impressive gatehouse of the elegant Edo period Japanese mansion.

  Chapter 3

  Keras strained, his entire body locking up tight as he gripped the edge of the black counter before him. The marble cracked beneath his hands as he breathed hard, battling the urges that surged through him.

  The reason he had forced Enyo to leave.

  Enyo.

  He lowered his head, didn’t care when it struck the cold marble and pain splintered across his skull.

  Sickness brewed inside him, had bile rising up his throat as he thought about her, about the twisted need that had come over him—a vile hunger for her to strike him, to deal pain, to draw blood.

  Gods, he was sure he had ruined everything, that he had pushed her away and would never see her again.

  But he’d had to do it.

  Had to make her leave.

  When she had mentioned his inhibitors, his mind had leaped to his pills, fear that she knew of them swift to claim him and leave him shaken. That fear had remained even after he had realised she was speaking of his limiters, the bands he wore to dampen his powers in this world. It had eaten away at him, slowly erasing the numbing hold of the pill he had taken, freeing his emotions.

  At first, it had only been shame and hatr
ed that had filled him, two feelings directed at himself as he had been struck with an urge to take another pill. He didn’t even want to contemplate what Enyo would think of him if she knew of his pills, couldn’t bear the thought of her knowing.

  When the effect of the drug had faded enough that other emotions had surfaced and he hadn’t been able to hold them back, it had driven him to the verge of doing something terrible.

  Begging her to cut him.

  To wound him.

  To turn fighting into foreplay.

  When he was certain he was alone, he managed to convince himself to release his tight grip on the broken marble and reached a shaky hand into his pocket. He fumbled with his pill box, frantically scrambled for it as it tumbled from his hand and clattered across the counter. He seized it before it fell over the edge and clutched it to his chest, breathing hard as fear collided with the darkness inside him, with the emotions he didn’t want to feel.

  They choked him, filled him to the point where he gasped for air, for relief from their cloying touch.

  His hands shook violently as he struggled to open the black pill box.

  It fell from his grip again, landing on the counter before him.

  Keras stared at it, his ragged breaths coming faster, filling his ears as he battled the urge to take another pill.

  His mind filled with Enyo.

  Gods, she had been as beautiful as he remembered, her jade eyes soft with emotions that she never concealed from him, making him feel humbled that she was so open with him and wretched at the same time because he concealed everything from her.

  He sank against the counter, the marble blessedly cool beneath his overheating cheek and the pill box growing out of focus as he replayed every moment with her, as he drew down deep breaths to catch her lingering scent of lilac.

  Gods, it had felt good to hold her again.

  Too good.

  Holding her had been a mistake, had awoken fierce needs within him. He still battled those needs, his lust for her strong, his body breaking under the strain. A deep ache throbbed within him, hunger for her touch and to have her at last.

  He closed his eyes, squeezed them hard. He was a fool. A fool for her. He always had been and he feared he always would be. She was his weakness.