Partly because he was enjoying reminiscing.
Mostly because it put a light in Enyo’s eyes that brightened her entire face.
He wasn’t the only one who had been looking tired and worn down this last week.
Seeing her looking brighter made him feel better too.
“I still remember everything about that day,” he said and settled on a grey boulder.
She picked the one opposite him on the other side of the path, leaned back and planted her hands against the rock to support her. Cassandra had lent her clothes. Ones that made him want to have a word with the witch whenever he gazed at Enyo. No man should see his beautiful goddess dressed in tight leather trousers and a figure-hugging boned corset.
No one other than him anyway.
He shoved his mind back on track.
“Gods and goddesses from all the realms had come to fawn over me and all I had wanted was to escape.” A smile teased the corners of his mouth as he recalled standing beside his father, casting wishes for everything from the entire room disappearing, to him being rendered invisible. Having to witness the lesser gods and goddesses humbling themselves to Hades had made him feel awkward. Having them turn their shallow praise on him had been nothing short of embarrassing. “And then Ares, the illustrious god of war himself had stormed into the room, and behind him, caught up in his shadow, had been something far more interesting. You… with that nervous edge to your eyes as you glanced around at everyone.”
Suddenly, Keras had wanted to stay.
Had started wishing the night would never end.
Enyo smiled fondly. “I hadn’t wanted to go with him. I had been angry with him about something at the time and I had almost run off and hidden so he couldn’t take me down to the Underworld.”
A soft sigh escaped her.
That light in her eyes grew brighter.
And a little awkward.
“I had thought nothing good could come from a realm of the dead.” She held her hand up when he frowned at her. “But then I had walked into your father’s temple, into that grand soiree, and I had set eyes on you standing there beside your father where he sat on his black throne… and although the resemblance between you had been striking as the rumours had foretold, you evoked two very different feelings in me. I had feared Hades.”
What feeling had he stirred in her? He wanted to ask, stared at her and willed her to tell him, but she remained silent. When she looked as if she might make her excuses and leave, he pushed himself to speak.
“And somehow we ended up gravitating towards each other, bonding in a quiet corner of the room, watching my father and your brother lapping up the praise of everyone present while they both did their damnedest not to end up in a fight.” Keras hadn’t realised before that night that Enyo’s brother had pursued Keras’s mother once, much to the irritation of Hades.
“Gods, remembering the old days feels good.” Enyo sighed and tipped her head back, looked up at the gold-edged clouds that drifted overhead.
“It does.” It was lifting the weight from his shoulders, had things fading to the back of his mind as he enjoyed the quiet garden with Enyo, his mind filling with memories of her rather than the thousand worries that plagued him.
“It is nice to see you smile again,” she said and then sobered. “I am sorry for—”
He held his hand up. “It’s fine, Enyo. Stop apologising. I am… part of me is glad that you did it.”
She picked at her trousers. Glanced at him. “And the other part?”
He turned his cheek to her and focused on the horizon, seeking courage that almost failed him, and let the words slip from his lips. “That part is just glad you came to see me.”
He looked at her out of the corner of his eye when she said nothing, catching the faint blush that coloured her cheeks.
“What did you think about me?” he asked, and when a crinkle formed between her eyebrows, he added. “You said you were afraid of my father. That we stirred two different feelings in you. What did I make you feel?”
Her cheeks darkened and her pale green eyes dropped to her knees as she whispered so low he swore he was mistaken.
“Bewitched.”
His heart beat a little harder at that, nerves rising to swamp him, causing his courage to falter as he stared at her. The last few days rolled up on him, a few things striking him hard, shaking him. They had slept together, and she had held him to her and tended to him, and now he could see in her eyes that she truly cared about him.
And she wasn’t married.
He had known of her engagement from the moment they had become friends, and gods, it had hurt when his father had taken him aside and told him of it, but not as much as it had wounded him when his family had received a Messenger centuries later.
With a formal announcement of her betrothal.
Keras had been so angry, had felt so powerless and crushed because he had convinced himself that she would marry him instead one day, that it had utterly wrecked him.
Had unleashed the darker side of his blood.
When she had come to him to tell him herself, he had been cold to her, and he had spent two hundred years regretting that. He regretted leaving her that day without so much as a real goodbye.
But he had a second chance now.
She was here, and they had both revealed more to each other in only a few days than they had in all the centuries they had been friends.
This time, he wouldn’t let her slip through his grasp.
She would be his.
Chapter 15
On a scale of weird to straight up freaking out there, today was fast becoming the latter.
Not only was Keras sitting on the cream couch facing the large flat screen TV with Enyo beside him, both of them looking as if they had been together for years and there was nothing odd about any of it, not even the fact his older brother was watching the damned television.
But Cal had just popped out of his portal behind Ares and casually tossed something out there that Ares was having a difficult time processing.
He twisted on the couch to face Cal where he stood in the middle of the room, between the TV area and the dining side.
“I’m sorry, what now?” Ares frowned at his little brother, and if this was a joke, he was going to tear the little shit to pieces.
Beside him, Megan broadcasted nerves so strongly that Ares was in danger of losing his temper.
“You getting hard of hearing in your old age?” Cal glared right back at him. “I said, Mum and Dad want to see you, Megan and Keras. Now like. Emphasis on the now. Like… now. Imagine me booming it like only Dad can do.”
“So whispering it,” Valen muttered without taking his eyes off the TV. “You guys do something bad I don’t know about? If the answer is yes, why wasn’t I invited?”
Keras sighed.
Valen got the message and fell silent.
“This isn’t a funny joke, Cal,” Ares growled as Megan’s rubbing grew more frantic.
So frantic that Cassandra’s cat, Milos, thought she was summoning him and went to her, hopping up onto her lap and giving her an expectant look.
Or maybe the guardian deity was just sensing her unease.
Panic.
Ares said it like it was.
It was fucking blind, balls out panic.
He stroked her knee through her jeans. “It’s okay, sweetheart.”