Enyo.
He focused on that band, his entire body relaxing into the damp bedding as he felt the power in it, soothing the raging beast of his.
Taming it.
He sighed.
His stomach cramped and he clutched it with his other hand, waiting for the need to vomit to hit him again, sure it was a result of the massive come down he was on. Only it growled again and when he drew a breath in the hope of calming it and stopping himself from retching, he smelled food. Not sickness then. Hunger.
Keras gathered his strength again and grunted as he tried to push himself up, as his arm gave out beneath him and he sank back onto the bedding. He took stock of his condition and his surroundings as he waited for a wave of nausea to pass, as his rebellious body shook again and sweat beaded on his brow.
Not good.
He grimaced at the buckets that were set in a neat line to his left.
Payback.
Enyo had hated him seeing her in the throes of shaking her addiction to ambrosia. Now she had witnessed him going through the same, and he didn’t want to think about how many times he might have vomited in front of her, or the things he might have said in the grip of delirium.
He was soul-deep aware he had said things though.
He managed to lift his arm and draped it across his eyes, shutting the world out and praying that she didn’t think less of him. His stomach cramped again, heat shooting through his veins in response. Not hunger this time. He denied the rampant need that filled him, fighting the urge to reach for his trousers, to seek the box that would erase the feelings that were flooding him.
His other hand dropped to his hip anyway.
Revealing something.
Not only was he lying on his bed in Tokyo, the sheets drenched with sweat and buckets waiting beside him.
He was naked too.
His face twisted as he screwed his eyes shut. Could his life get any worse?
It wasn’t quite the way he had imagined Enyo seeing him naked for the first time, and gods he hoped that he had managed to keep the covers on his lower half at least, had spared them both the embarrassment of him flashing himself.
He pulled down a deep breath.
Stilled as he caught Enyo’s scent of lilac.
It filled his lungs, spread through him like a balm to soothe the raging fire, cooling his blood. He could not only smell her in the room, but he could feel her too. She hadn’t been gone long.
He let his arm fall from his eyes. It landed to rest above his head on the pillow, and he looked around the room again. Where had she gone? He burned for a different reason now, with a need to see her and see that she was all right.
The fight was coming back to him in pieces he stitched together, memories that churned his stomach and strengthened that need to see her as he recalled how he had hurt her.
How close he had come to killing her.
Gods. If she hated him now, he would deserve it, would accept it as punishment for what he had done.
She had goaded him into fighting, and he could see now that she had done it to help him, to force him to feel something even if it was something negative. She had provoked his emotions, and she had looked desperate for it to work.
It had worked, but the cost had been high.
The thought that he might have lost her was a driving force, gave him the strength to push the covers aside and struggle into an upright position, because he needed to see her. He had to see he hadn’t messed everything up just as it had looked as if things between them were going to work out the way he had always wanted.
Keras grimaced as pain shot through his body, fumbled for the bucket as bile blazed up his throat and stilled, waiting to see what path his body was going to choose. Vomit, or not.
When his body mercifully chose the second option, he released the bucket and carefully manoeuvred onto his front. He crawled for a few steps, not trusting his legs, but the progress was slow and infuriating, and he pushed onto his feet.
Regretted it when he ended up stumbling forwards, hitting the wall by the chair near his dresser, and slid down it to land on his backside. He flinched at the roughness of the tatami mats against his bare flesh.
Still, it could have been worse.
When the mansion had been built, the walls between the bedrooms had been constructed of more traditional shoji screens like the ones they still used as the sliding panels for the doors of their rooms. In the last few decades, Esher had decided to upgrade the dividing walls to a more solid construction of immovable wooden panels that had been built in a way that mimicked the paper and wood screens, with white painted wood replacing the thick paper. His brother had done it after he had tired of Valen and Calistos accidentally breaking the more delicate traditional shoji screens.
Something Keras would have done if Esher hadn’t upgraded the one that divided his bedroom from Ares’s. He would have gone straight through the screen to land in his brother’s room, stark naked.
He gritted his teeth as he lifted his trembling arm. He slapped it down on the pile of clothes on the chair and his strength failed him, had his arm falling towards his lap, dragging all his clothes down with it.
He picked his boxers from the pile and wrestled them on.
Grabbed the seat of the chair and used it to haul himself onto his feet.
He leaned against the wall beside it as he fumbled with his black robe, his breath sawing from him as his muscles protested, arms aching and shaking. When he had won his battle against it, he eyed the walkway beyond the open door of his room and the sunlit garden.
Keras sucked down a breath, and then another.
Pushed off.
The first few steps went well, but then the confidence they gave him became his downfall. He tried to move too quickly, ended up almost tripping over his feet as he staggered forwards, fighting for balance and bracing himself for a fall. Rather than hitting the wooden planks of the walkway or falling into the courtyard garden, he hit the post that supported the roof.
Sagged against it as he breathed hard.
He gave himself a moment to recover and then forced himself to move, shuffling from post to post, pausing at each one that brought him closer to the kitchen. The smell of food grew stronger, had his stomach gurgling non-stop. He hoped it was only Esher in the kitchen, or perhaps Cal.
When he reached the wall of panels that blocked his view of the living area and crossed the short span of decking to the one that had been pushed back in front of him to form a doorway, he froze.
Everyone was in the dining side of the long rectangular room.
He grimaced.
Megan rushed over to him despite being heavily pregnant, and his eyes widened to match hers.
Marek stepped to him before Megan could reach him, placed his arm around Keras’s waist to support him and muttered, “You should have called for one of us.”
Keras wasn’t sure what to say to his brother. He wasn’t sure what to say to any of them. The guilt was swift to come though, to close his throat and fill him with an urge to turn away, to leave them to eat in peace and not be a burden on them. He didn’t deserve the concern that showed on all their faces, not after the things he had done or the way he had acted.
Another emotion rose to swamp him as he spotted Ares coming to take hold of Megan’s shoulders.
Relief.
It was good to see his brother on his feet again. So good that Keras’s eyes burned and warmth rushed through him, stirring up feelings that had him labouring for breath as they poured over him, as he struggled against the onslaught of them, fighting to breach the surface so he wouldn’t drown in them.