Enslaved (33 page)

He stared at her in bewilderment from the couch, where he sat with his elbows braced on his knees.

When he didn’t write down her score, she looked up. “What?”

“Latin? Uh-uh. No way. I’m officially protesting this game. We pick one language and one era. Period. And we stick to it. I’m getting my ass kicked here because I’m nowhere near as worldly as you. And what the hell were you doing, hanging out with delators and emperors in the first place?”

She smiled. Really smiled. And was so damn beautiful, staring at him with that stupid grin, his chest constricted until it was tight as a drum. “Why are you grinning at me like that?”

“Because you’re gorgeous when you look at me like I’m nuts.”

“You’ve handed me my ass on a Scrabble board,
sotiria
. I don’t think you’re nuts. I think you’re smart as shit.”

She laughed but kept right on smiling up at him. A warm, wide grin that made one corner of his lips curl all on its own. “What now?”

“Nothing. It’s just…your face has totally changed in the last week.”

He brushed a hand against his jaw. “It’s too scruffy for you, isn’t it? I’ll shave—”

“Not that, silly,” she said. “I like the scruff. It’s sexy. No, I mean your face. It’s different. A week ago your eyes were still haunted. When I’d look at you, I could see the weight of the Underworld on your soul and everything you’d been through. Now, it’s barely there.”

His smile faded, and he looked away. Memories of his torture in Hades’s realm rushed back through his mind, sent sickness brewing in his stomach. And shame. A truckload of shame over what he’d done. What had been done to him. What Maelea would think if she even had an inkling of what had gone down in Tartarus when he was there.

“Hey. Don’t.” Her soft voice somewhere close brought him around. That and her hand, pressing gently against his shoulder. Soft. Warm. Alive. He eased back while she climbed onto his lap and took his face in her hands, stroking her thumbs over his cheeks, reminding him he was alive too. “Don’t go back there. I didn’t mean to bring it up for you again. I was just pointing out how different you are. How relaxed. That’s a good thing, Gryphon, not a bad one.”

He closed his eyes, forced back the bile threatening its way up. “Maelea—”

She leaned in and brushed her lips against his. Lips that shot sparks of heat and desire straight to his belly, warming him from the outside in. Lips he could lose himself in. Lips that were keeping him here, tucked into this isolated house in this tiny corner of the world where no one could find them. Where daemons and hellhounds and gods and the Underworld didn’t exist. Where he was losing his desire for vengeance with every passing day.

He wrapped his arms around her back, opened when she slid her tongue along his bottom lip, and let her dip inside his mouth to tempt and tease in that way he’d learned she liked to do. She tasted like the wine she’d been sipping as they played Scrabble, like the sin he knew he could coax out of her with just a little push. She was more than his soul mate, he’d realized over the last few days. She was funny and smart and so damn sexy, she took his breath away. Everything he’d been looking for his whole life. Everything he hadn’t realized he was missing. And when he was with her, he barely heard that buzz anymore. Barely heard Atalanta’s voice. Never heard either when he was inside her, which was his very favorite place to be.

She drew back from his mouth, stared into his eyes. And in her dark, onyx irises, he saw all the same emotions he felt reflected back at him. Who would ever have thought it? She, the daughter of the King of the Gods, and he a broken, tortured soul.

He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. Remembered how she’d told him she’d been in love before. How she’d said love wasn’t worth it because it didn’t last. He knew regardless of who he was and what he’d been through, she cared for him. Even if he couldn’t see it, he could feel it. Would she be willing to take another chance if she knew she could be happy for more than fifty or sixty years? Would she put off her dream of Olympus to stay here with him?

His stomach churned, this time with nerves, not sickness, and as she slid down on his lap to rest her head against his chest, he stared into the fire and stroked her hair. She was warm against him. So soft. And they fit together as if they were made for each other. But then that was the point of the whole soul-mate thing, wasn’t it? He didn’t have a lot to offer her, but he knew he could keep her safe. And he had at least another five hundred years in him, assuming he lived through his face-off with Atalanta. If Maelea knew there was a chance they could be together that long, that he could protect her from Hades, would she be willing to try again?

“Why do you want to go to Olympus?” he asked while they sat staring into the fire, the Scrabble game they’d been playing all but forgotten.

“You know why,” she said against his chest.

He ran his hand down her hair, loved how silky soft it was against his fingers. “So you can be safe from Hades.”

“It’s more than that. Olympus is home for me.”

“How do you know it’s home if you’ve never been there before?”

“Because it’s where my father is. Where my mother is half the year. Where the other immortals live and where there’s no death. I’m so tired of death and dying.”

His hope faded. He couldn’t give her eternity. Not like the gods. He couldn’t even give her half that. And with him there would eventually be death. “You said you had to prove your allegiance to get there. How are you planning to do that?”

She pushed against his chest, eased off his lap, and sat on the couch at his side. He tried not to be disappointed she wasn’t touching him anymore. Couldn’t help it. “Well, that’s where the training I asked you to teach me comes in. Which, by the way,” she added with a frown as she glanced over her shoulder, “you haven’t done a very good job with.”

No, he hadn’t. Fighting and defensive techniques were the last things on his mind. Every time Maelea had suggested they go outside to the beach and he show her some moves, he’d distracted her with his hands and mouth and body until they’d both been too worn out to do anything but drop into each other’s arms and sleep.

“I thought you needed to know how to protect yourself from Hades,” he said with narrowed eyes. “How will that help you get to Olympus?”

She wrung her hands together in her lap. Wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Remember I told you Orpheus came looking for me? The truth is, I was looking for him. Or, well, someone like him. See, the only way to prove myself to the gods is to turn my back on my Underworld heritage. By killing someone powerful and important to Hades.”

“Killing someone,” he said, watching her carefully. “You, who doesn’t even like to kill spiders.” While he despised spiders with a passion, thanks to his time in the Underworld, he’d watched her rescue two from the bottom of his boot before he could smash them, and release them outside. She hated death. And even though she hadn’t had much of a choice, he knew she was still wrestling with the fact she’d had to kill those daemons back at that motel. Daemons she’d killed to save him.

“I know, right?” A weak smile ran across her face before she looked back at the fire. “Which is part of the reason I’ve put it off so long.”

She drew in a breath, let it out. “For a while now I’ve been keeping my eye out for the dark one. You know, just waiting to see if I ever even had the opportunity, not that I had to follow through on it or anything. When I first saw Orpheus in that concert crowd, I thought he might be the one. His daemon was very strong then. He radiated darkness. And I thought if I killed him, I might finally prove my worth. But things didn’t turn out like I’d planned, and by the time he came to find me, his daemon had already faded. Then everything happened with Hades’s hellhounds finding me and Orpheus and Skyla taking me to the colony and then you coming back from the Underworld, and…and I realized I’d been thinking too small. I finally figured out who I have to kill to get home.”

His lungs squeezed tight. Before she even said the words, he knew she’d realized the darkness in him was so strong, he was the one she had to kill to prove her allegiance to the gods.

She ran her hands through her hair, pushed off the couch. “The reason I asked you to teach me to fight is because I know I’m not ready yet. I still need time to develop whatever gift is inside me. So before I go and face Hades’s son, I need to make sure I’m not only stronger but way more skilled.”

She picked up their empty wine glasses from the coffee table and turned for the kitchen. “I’m going to open another bottle. Do you want a glass?”

The air whooshed out of his lungs. Was replaced with a fear that shot straight down his spine.
Hades’s son?
That’s who she was planning to try to kill? Zagreus? The prince of the fucking Underworld?

Slowly, because his legs were shaking, he pushed from the couch and turned to look at her standing at the island, pouring more wine into both their glasses. “Um, no.”

She looked at the label on the bottle. “Did you not like this year?”

He raked a hand through his hair. She was talking about the wine when he felt as if he’d just been sucker punched in the gut. “Um, no, you’re not going after Zagreus.”

Her hand stilled. Her eyes lifted to his. “What?”

“You’re not going after Zagreus,” he said again. “
I
wouldn’t even go after Zagreus, and I think most of the Argonauts would agree I’m a fucking loose cannon right now. None of the Argonauts would dare go after him. We leave him the hell alone.”

She frowned, poured more wine in a dismissive move, as if he were talking out his left earlobe or something.

He took a step closer to the kitchen, his chest vibrating with worry and fear and panic. “Maelea, did you hear me?”

“I’m not going after him
now
, Gryphon. I already told you I’m not ready yet.”

“Not ever,” he said with conviction.

She looked up again. Except this time her eyes weren’t warm and soft, as they’d been on the couch. They were cold and hard. And very, very determined. “What does it matter what I do in the future? By the time I’m ready to confront Zagreus, you won’t be here anymore.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means, this,” she waved her hand around. “Us, here, this is only temporary. I know you’ve been enjoying relaxing and having a little downtime here with me this last week, where no one can find us, and that you needed that, after everything you’ve been through, but as soon as you decide to go after whatever it is you were planning to go after before I brought you here, you’re not going to care where I am or what I’m doing.”

“Maybe I’ve changed my mind.”

“About what?”

“About what I do after I confront Atalanta.”

Her hand shook as she set the bottle of wine on the counter. “Atalanta? That’s who you’re trying to find?”

The darkness inside him vibrated with revenge. “Not find. I could find her anytime I want. All I have to do is get away from you and listen to her fucking voice calling me, and it’ll lead me right to her. No, I intend to kill her, Maelea. It’s why I left the colony. It’s the only way I’m going to be free of her for good.”

“Atalanta received her power from Hades in the Underworld,” she said to herself as she stared at the counter. “That’s why you needed me. Why you kept me with you. Because the light in me…what?” She looked up. “It loosed her hold on you somehow?”

He hadn’t planned to tell her any of this, but now that it was out there, he wasn’t going to lie. He owed her more than that. And he could see her thinking back, remembering what he’d been like when they first met. Twitchy, paranoid, frenetic. All the things he hated being. All the things he’d be again as soon as she left him. “At first? Yeah. When I was near you, I didn’t hear her voice as strongly. I could think. That’s why I didn’t let you go after we came out of the caves.”

Understanding dawned in her eyes, followed by hurt. A hurt that told him she thought that was the only reason he was with her now. He wanted to tell her that wasn’t the case, that things had changed, but before he could, she said, “How? How did that happen? Has she always had a hold on you like that?”

His stomach tightened. “No. She was in the Underworld. With me.”

Horror seeped into her eyes. Horror and revulsion. “What happened?” she whispered.

Sickness rolled through his stomach. He didn’t want to tell her the truth, because he knew as soon as he did, she’d look at him differently. As half a man. As a weakling. And he didn’t want that. What he wanted was to go back to the way things had been moments before he’d started this stupid conversation. When they’d been snuggled together on the couch and he was everything she wanted. But he knew now there was no going back. Their little bubble of happiness had exploded, all thanks to him.

His heart cinched down tight. The heart he’d realized he did still have, all thanks to her. There was no way she’d stay here with him now, no way she’d wait for him to get back from his quest to find Atalanta. Not even if he asked. He could see it in her eyes. She was already looking at him differently. But maybe by telling her just what kind of shit he’d done down there in the Underworld, he could somehow convince her Zagreus—Hades’s son, the prince of darkness who was as horrific as any in hell—wasn’t someone she should even consider tangling with. Maybe, if he shocked her enough, she’d stay away—far away—from the sick son of a bitch. Because he knew if she went ahead with this idiotic plan, she’d lose. She’d lose big.