Keras was stronger than she remembered, not weaker.
The shadows suddenly broke apart, fragmenting and swirling in the air, drawing back together into a twisting, thrashing mass that hovered a few metres above the rooftop.
Sunlight bathed the daemons.
Agonised bellows rent the air.
She stood immobile in the middle of the rooftop as the shadows rapidly descended, her wide eyes tracking the pointed tips of them as they tore through the daemons, ripping them apart as they fought to escape the light.
And then Keras was there.
In the middle of the fray, his expression twisting into something disturbing as he slashed at them, as he broke bones and split flesh.
Pleasure.
She couldn’t breathe as she watched him fighting.
He was too brutal, too dark.
Too different to the man she had known back in the Underworld.
She couldn’t believe her eyes.
Keras had always been destructive, like his father, and had always enjoyed a fight, much like her, but he had never been like this—cold, vicious.
Terrifying.
His lips twisted in a smirk, his green eyes flooded with warmth as he moved from one daemon to the next, wrapping them in shadows that protected them from the sunlight.
So he could tear them apart with his bare hands.
Cold stole through her as she watched him, a dreadful feeling weighing her insides down.
This wasn’t Keras.
This was something else.
Someone else.
The darkness.
A shiver chased over her skin, turning it to goose flesh. She had to stop him.
She lunged for him when he neared her, grabbed his arm and shouted, “Stop!”
He turned on her with a vicious snarl, crimson shining around his dilated pupils, and she shook as red lightning split the sky in the distance beyond him. He shoved her away and she fell on her backside, too stunned by what she had seen to even brace herself let alone avoid the fall.
Keras paced away from her and Esher, stopping at the edge of the roof.
She stared at him, shell-shocked, her mind whirling.
He did something with his hands, tilted his head back and stood there for seconds that felt like an eternity as she tried to make sense of what she had just witnessed.
Hades was dark, but gods, Keras was something else. She had never seen someone take so much pleasure from bathing their hands in blood—from killing. Not in all her years. Not in the thousands of battles she had played a part in. Even her brother, the god of war, a man who lusted after violence and found bliss in it, didn’t even come close to what she had just witnessed in Keras.
Keras pivoted to face her.
And it was like looking at a completely different person.
He was calm. Placid. Almost too calm.
What had he done while standing with his back to her?
“Return to the mansion,” he said to Esher and she sensed his brother disappear, but couldn’t bring herself to look away from Keras.
He crossed the roof, picking a path through the carnage without taking his eyes off her, and she tensed when he held his hand out to her. Her gaze fell to his hand and she frowned as she spotted the ring on his thumb.
A ring she had given to him.
A token of friendship.
She had called it that when her nerve had failed her, when she hadn’t been able to find her voice to say what she really wanted it to be. She couldn’t believe he still had it. It touched her. Gave her courage.
She nodded to it. “I thought you would have thrown that tatty old thing away a long time ago.”
Keras’s green eyes dropped to it, a warm light entering them as he brushed his thumb over the silver band. “I would never do such a thing. I would not part with this for anything. Why would I want to part with it? You gave it to me.”
His eyes lifted to hers.
Flooded her with warmth.
With hope.
Because a glimmer of his true feelings shone in them, and for the first time, she felt she wasn’t alone in her feelings.
Pain was swift to follow on the heels of that warmth, a cold that curled through her as she thought about all the years they had been apart, all the years she had been avoiding him, hadn’t been able to bring herself to face him because she had been convinced he would have found someone else to love.
Someone that wasn’t her.
She cursed her weakness, all the way back to that moment when she had given him the ring.
When she should have told him that she loved him.
He held his hand out to her again. This time, she slipped hers into it. Closed her eyes and clung to the hope that she could have that forever she wanted with him as he pulled her close.
Wrapped his strong arms around her.
And teleported.
Chapter 5
Keras struggled to believe it was Enyo in his arms. She was real, not a figment of his imagination or an echo of the illusion the daemon Lisabeta had shown him.
He wanted to snarl when he landed with her in the front garden of the mansion, anger burning up his blood, caused by how brief the teleport had been. Not long enough to satisfy his need to feel her close to him, her soft body pressed to his, her warmth and scent seeping into him.
Marking him.
Calming him.
He lingered, deeply aware of every point where they touched—where her arms grazed his ribs, where the plates of her armour pressed to his chest, where her thigh brushed dangerously between his legs.
A myriad of feelings flowed through him, the tangle of them sweet yet bitter, tearing him in more directions than he could count as the pill he had swallowed tried to take hold.
He wanted to roar as she eased back from him, a terrible need to growl and pull her back to him, to pin her against him as he took her mouth flooding him.
Together with a desperate urge to feather his fingers lightly along the graceful line of her jaw and stare into her eyes forever.
And a wild hunger to lash out at her and make her pay for leaving him alone for so many long and torturous years.
Keras checked all those needs, refusing to let any of them win and control his actions.
He released her and turned away, heading inside to speak with his brothers instead. Everyone had already gathered in the main room of the horseshoe-shaped house. Everyone except Ares and Megan.
He felt the absence of Ares keenly, felt the weight of expectation land solely on his shoulders for the first time in a long time, and it was too heavy to bear.
Some of that weight lifted as Enyo joined him, coming to stand close to him.
He struggled to keep his eyes off her and his mind on the meeting, had to use every drop of his iron will to shake the awareness of her that sank soul-deep into him despite the pill he had taken. His unruly emotions remained, refusing to be cowed by the drug. The numbing chill was slow to seep through his veins this time. Because he had already taken a pill and a second one so close to the first meant it wasn’t as effective?
Or because the feelings Enyo stirred in him were too strong for the drug to suppress?
“You think they were trying to draw us away from here?” Daimon looked at Cal and then Esher, dragging Keras’s focus back to the room.
Both men nodded.
“We need to be more careful,” Marek said.
Cal scowled at him.
“It’s not like we can just hole up here.” He looked at Daimon and Esher. “You saw what I did. Meadow can open the gate.”
“I didn’t say we should leave it undefended. I only said we should be more cautious. Three of us were enough. That was the right move… but only if that leaves four of us here to protect Cassandra and Marinda, and deal with any attack that might occur here.” Marek folded his arms across his broad chest. “Who was left here to protect this place?”