“The baby?” He looked down at her stomach.
When she shook her head, sending tears tumbling down her cheeks, he looked beyond her, into the room.
Enyo reached him and looked there too.
Heat shimmered over Ares where he lay on top of the bedding spread across the middle of the floor of the square, sparsely furnished room. As she watched, the haze grew thicker, distorting the room around him.
Footsteps sounded to Enyo’s left, luring her gaze there. Cassandra hurried along the wooden walkway, holding the long skirt of her dress away from her ankles. Daimon followed close behind her, and beyond him the rest of Keras’s growing family.
The witch pushed past Keras.
“Baby—” Daimon lunged for her.
She stopped him with a hard look, her ice-blue eyes narrowing on him. “He needs help and I’m giving it to him. Just… maybe cool the air a little for me?”
“Cool it for me,” Esher growled. “I told you all he should have been placed outside.”
Keras shot Esher a black look, one that had him snapping his mouth closed and guilt flickering in his blue eyes.
Cassandra sank to her knees beside Ares, her long black dress pooling around her legs to conceal them. Frost shimmered on Daimon’s black gloves as he moved to kneel on the golden mats by Ares’s head and held his hands over it. The heat haze began to dissipate, the air cooling around Enyo.
Megan rubbed her belly, hands constantly in motion over it as her dark eyes remained locked on Ares. “We have to do something to help him. Please?”
The sorceress bent her head and her hands lightly danced over Ares’s arm, stroking over a band on his wrist, just above his inhibitor. The delicately braided black one was laced with bright silver-blue thread that glowed as she touched it and matched one that Daimon wore.
She looked over her shoulder at Keras and then at Megan. “I am not sure the spell will hold.”
Esher grumbled something, shoved his hands through his wild black hair, pushing the longer lengths back over his head, and started pacing. “If he goes nuclear…”
“He won’t.” Keras’s tone was hard, commanding. Confident. “If he is in any danger of doing so, you have my permission to douse him.”
Behind Enyo, rain suddenly poured down, filling the air with the heavy scent of earth. Esher was gearing up to douse Ares right now, was clearly unwilling to risk his brother damaging the mansion.
“You must be able to do something.” Megan’s brow furrowed as she looked at Cassandra.
The black-haired female shook her head and then paused, her pale eyes shifting to Keras. “What about your pills?”
Calistos was quick to speak. “They inhibit your powers, right? They could help.”
Enyo frowned at Keras. “What pills?”
He refused to look at her, his green eyes narrowing on the witch kneeling on the floor before him, black ringing his irises.
“I swear, I’ve done my best to contain his fire, but my spell is going to break at any second.” Cassandra’s Russian accent grew stronger with each word as she kept her gaze locked with Keras’s, met his frown with one of her own.
“Daimon and Esher can handle it.” Keras’s tone brooked no argument.
The witch wasn’t deterred. “Using ice to cool him and water to put out any flames is not going to stop him.”
“She’s right.” Daimon glanced away from Ares, his gaze briefly landing on Esher and then Keras. “We have to do something more permanent.”
“Another spell then,” Keras bit out.
Cassandra’s frown hardened. “I need time to make another bracelet.”
Calistos took a step towards Keras. “Give him one of your pills. It might inhibit his power enough to stop him from going supernova!”
Keras’s hand flew to his right trouser pocket and he clutched it.
In a way that looked awfully defensive to Enyo.
Roused fear in her veins.
“What pills are they talking about?” A heavy weight pressed down on Enyo’s chest as he tightened his grip on his pocket and glared at her.
“I cannot give them to Ares,” he barked.
Shook his head.
Backed off a step.
“Why not?” Valen asked.
“He cannot have one.” Keras levelled a black look on all his brothers.
“But if it can help—” Megan started.
“He cannot have one.” Keras cut her off.
To Enyo, and some of his brothers judging by their faces, it looked an awful lot like Keras didn’t want to give Ares a pill because he didn’t want to sacrifice one rather than he was worried it would harm his brother or not work.
Megan made a desperate lunge for Keras’s right hand.
Keras raised it and halted with it in the air, and shock rippled through everyone present.
Because Keras had been on the verge of backhanding Megan.
He probably would have killed the mortal Carrier with the blow.
Definitely would have harmed her unborn child.
Disgust rolled through Enyo.
Keras’s brothers’ faces bore the same feeling as they stared at him.
For a moment in the garden, she had felt that Keras was the same person he had always been, that she had been mistaken about the changes in his personality. Now, she felt like a fool for thinking that. Keras had changed, had grown darker just as she had suspected.
And she had a terrible feeling the pills he was so desperate to protect and keep to himself were the source of that change in him.
“Ares isn’t equipped to handle the pills,” Keras snarled, black invading the emerald of his irises as he turned on his brothers. “That was the only reason I stopped her.”
Cass eased onto her feet and gently took hold of Megan’s shoulders, guiding the stunned female away from Keras as she stared him down. “There’s something seriously wrong with you. First, you goad me into striking you several times, and now you almost hit Megan.”
The disgusted looks on his brothers’ faces turned to horror upon hearing that.
The same emotion that rolled through Enyo as she stared at Keras, as he didn’t deny that he had goaded the witch into hitting him. Why?
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Daimon bit out, coming to stand in front of Cassandra and Megan, shielding them from Keras.
Enyo shook her head as she kept her gaze on Keras, seeing a different man from the one she had known in the Underworld, one far darker than she had suspected in Paris and at the gate in Tokyo.
That weight on her chest grew heavier as something dawned on her.
What he had done at that gate.
He had changed in the blink of an eye, going from violent and bloodthirsty, to calm.
Because he had taken a pill.
That was the reason he had stood with his back to her, had done something with his hands and had tipped his head back. He had been taking one of these pills his brothers and their women knew about.
A pill that supposedly suppressed his power.
A pill that she feared did far more than that.
She needed to prove it though, wouldn’t be able to rest until she knew for certain. She needed to see these pills were a source of the change in him, had stolen the man she loved and turned him into something else.
Into a cold, unfeeling monster.
“I know what is wrong with you,” she whispered.