He lunged at her on a snarl, his hand closing around her throat, squeezing hard. “I will not give them up.”
“And I will not stand by and watch you destroy yourself!” She seized his wrist and twisted hard, yanking his hand away from her throat.
She shoved it away from her, knocking him on his backside.
It struck her that he didn’t need her to be soft with him. He needed her to be hard on him, he needed her to goad him and bait him, to make him lash out.
Make him feel something.
Even if it was rage.
His blood was of Hades. Rage would be the conduit, the path to freeing his other emotions, the catalyst that she needed to employ to save him. It was dangerous, and made her feel cruel, but it was necessary. He had coaxed the witch into hurting him, evidently sought pain despite his insistence that he used the pills to take it away. He wanted to feel. He just didn’t want to feel softer things. He wanted to feel pain. Rage. He wanted violence.
So she would push him until he surrendered to his rage.
And then she would find a way to force other emotions from him—all the ones he really wanted to kill with his pills.
She rose to her feet and stared down at him. “You do not need them.”
His face softened again, and he murmured, “I do.”
Looked close to pleading.
She had no pills to give him, so why was he asking for them?
She realised he knew she would go after his other pills. He had to have more of them in his home, in places around the world, hidden places he probably used to conceal a stash in case he needed it.
In case something like this happened.
But if that was the case, why wasn’t he going after them? Why was he still here with her?
Did he truly need her that badly?
More than he needed his pills?
It touched her, but worsened the guilt that weighed her down, had her cursing herself all over again for being weak all those centuries ago, letting her brother dictate her life and ruining what she’d had with Keras.
Ruining him.
Something else dawned on her too.
Keras had been here for two hundred years. He couldn’t have come here with enough pills to last that long.
Which meant he had a dealer.
“Who gave them to you?” She looked at where she had crushed the pills, recalled how they had appeared and how they had felt to her, smelled to her.
They weren’t human drugs, she knew that much.
They had been made by the gods.
Made for him.
Her stomach sank as she realised the answer to her question, just before Keras spoke.
“Father.”
She shook her head, not wanting to believe Hades would do such a thing. “Does he know his son is no better than a gutter-dwelling addict?”
“I am not a junkie,” Keras snarled, his eyes brightening again as shadows whipped around him. They snapped at her on their way past, forcing her to back off to avoid being struck by them. The fire that had lit his eyes rapidly died and he sagged. “I need them.”
Enyo glared down at him. “No. You don’t. You are stronger than this, Keras. You can control your power if you try.”
“I can’t!” He shot to his feet and the sense of power he emitted rose sharply.
It swamped her but she refused to run, wouldn’t even back off a step to spare herself the pressing weight of it that stole her breath. She had to face him, had to bear his fury over what she had done, because it was her fault. She was the reason he was in this state, addicted to these pills. She would do whatever it took to free him of them and set him on the path to recovery.
Because he wouldn’t do it himself.
She could see that now.
He was happy pretending he couldn’t control his power by himself, using it as an excuse to take the pills, giving himself a reason so he didn’t feel terrible about what he was doing to himself.
Justifying it all.
Enyo smiled slowly.
“Want to fight, big boy?” she murmured sweetly, words she had used on him more than once in their years together, ones that had never failed to provoke a response from him. “Bring it on. I can contain your power. Whatever you throw at me won’t touch a living soul. Come on. Give me your best shot. It will be like old times. Who knows, maybe you will even win this time.”
The black clouds gathered overhead spread lower, stretched further across the city to eclipse the horizon. Red sparks chased over them, crackling and making the hairs on her arms stand on end.
She was pushing her luck.
She wasn’t one hundred percent certain she could contain Keras’s power. He was stronger than she remembered.
Far stronger.
And he still had his limiters in place, the twin black bands intact around his wrists.
And the lingering effect of the pill he had taken.
Just how strong was he now?
When he had left the Underworld, he had been weaker than her, and while she had known he would gain strength with age, she hadn’t expected it to happen in such a short span of time. They had only been apart two centuries. The growth of his powers in that time should have been far less than it clearly was, and the age difference between them should have kept her as the stronger of the two of them.
But she feared she wasn’t.
He was more than fifteen hundred years her junior at close to a thousand, but his power had already surpassed hers.
Could she contain it?
Or was her rash decision about to destroy this world?
The shadowy black cloud spiralled down towards him, as if drawn to him, and wind whipped through his onyx hair.
It made strands of her own raven hair dance around her face as she made a decision.
It was too late now to turn back.
She would contain his power somehow. She would bring Keras back to her.
Enyo pulled down a breath and mustered her strength, summoned a power she regularly used on the battlefield. She swept her arms out at her sides and when they formed a line across her shoulders, the power shot from her palms.
The crimson sparks bounced off the invisible barrier she had cast, one that encompassed the entire roof of the building and part of the floors below her, forming a bubble.
“I can take it.” She lowered her hands and readied herself, unsure whether she was talking to him or herself as she gathered her strength and pushed herself to do this, because Keras needed to let loose.
He needed to feel something.
“Whatever you need to do to find control, do it. I will take it all… and if you become too dangerous, I will take you down.”
Ice shot down her spine, fear sweeping through her when he casually reached his right hand across to his left wrist and snapped the black band.
His power slammed into her, still held back by his remaining limiter, but phenomenally strong. She struggled to remain on her feet as she braced against it, as she was pushed backwards, towards the edge of the roof.
Gods, he was far stronger than she remembered.
She feared she had made a terrible mistake, prayed to every god available that she survived this.
That this world survived him.
Keras smiled, a slow one that curled his lips, filled with darkness and confidence.
His eyes met hers.
Vivid red and full of fire and death.
His cold, hollow voice rang in her ears.
A death knell.
“That is never going to happen.”
He launched at her.