He nodded, a sense of urgency building inside him, laced with excitement and anticipation that roused his darker side, filling him with a need to get moving. “The Tokyo gate is still active, meaning somewhere in the Underworld, there is a gate still linked to it. What if Nemesis never planned to go through the gate? What if she pulled together a large force of allies not because she intended to fight but because she needed them to find the gate? The gate moves constantly and only my father knows where it will appear next, but when the gate is in a location, it is always visible.”
“If Nemesis has a large enough number of allies helping her, she will find the gate quickly. She might already know where it is.” Enyo glanced at Zeus before settling her gaze back on Keras. “The beast that protects the gate—”
“It would be no match for a large force, especially if they had the furie and a witch, and those daemons we fought in the mortal realm.” Keras worried his lower lip with his thumb, his mind speeding through every scenario. “I have to tell my father. The enemy have a head start on us and might have already found the gate. I would feel it opening, so if they have found it, they must be fighting to reach it. Father might be able to move the gate while they’re occupied or before they find it. It would buy us some time.”
“Enyo, you have my leave to fight on Keras’s side as a representative of Olympus. Relay to your brother that he will be expected to participate in the coming war.” A golden bolt of lightning crackled in Zeus’s clenched fist as his eyes brightened and his features hardened. “I will give my brother no choice in this matter.”
Those were fighting words if ever Keras had heard them.
His father didn’t like being ordered around by his brothers, especially Zeus.
Normally, Keras would have spoken out against such a plan, would have stood on his father’s side and done something to make it clear he wouldn’t allow anyone to interfere in this matter and go against Hades’s wishes.
But Zeus was right about Hades. He was being stubborn. His father needed allies in this war, and Keras would welcome anyone who chose to fight on his side. Protecting his family was more important to him than defending his father’s right to rule as he saw fit in his own realm. His father might be angry with him for siding against him for once, but his mother would back him up.
That would be Hades’s downfall.
He never had been able to withstand the force that was Persephone.
Keras glanced at Enyo, recalling how his shadows had calmed when she had touched him, settling against his will. It seemed he had inherited more of his father’s traits than he had thought.
“I will speak with my father about this.” Keras reached for her hand and stroked his fingers across her palm, gaining her attention, and a look from Zeus.
One that warmed his golden eyes and told Keras his uncle was glad that he and Enyo had finally stopped dancing around their feelings.
“I will speak with my brother.” She shifted her hand in his, curled her fingers around to grip him briefly before she released him.
Her jade eyes softened, made him feel she didn’t want to part from him, and gods that made him want to wrap his arms around her and pull her close, and never let her go. There was fear in the depths of her eyes, nerves he felt in their bond, feelings that flooded him with a need to stay by her side because she was afraid of talking to her brother.
And he knew he was the reason for that fear.
She hadn’t spoken with her brother since returning to the mortal realm to help Keras.
Her brother Ares could be a callous and cold bastard. There was a chance he would attempt to punish her for leaving his side, for not being at his beck and call, if she went to see him alone.
She smiled tightly. “I will join you in the Underworld as soon as I am done.”
Keras stepped up to her, lifted his left hand and slid it along her jaw. He tilted her head up and stared down into her eyes, aware all the fires of the Underworld raged in his as he thought about her brother trying to keep her from him, trying to part them once again.
“I give you an hour. If you are not back with me, I will return with a legion of my father’s forces to take you back.” He lowered his head and kissed her before she could respond, before she could call him on the fact he was being overbearing now.
When he released her, she didn’t berate him.
She just smiled. A soft, warm one that stole his heart.
He stepped back and forced himself to teleport to the gate to the Underworld on the other side of the city. The only way he could enter his father’s realm without being summoned.
He walked onto the raised circular gate as soon as he appeared, crossing the horizontal shimmering rings to the central violet disc. It flashed brightly and he closed his eyes as he was pulled through it, only opening them again once he was on the other side. He had never liked the way he seemed to spin wildly in all directions when travelling through a gate.
The first time he had passed through one, he had almost vomited.
Since then, he had closed his eyes every time.
He teleported again once he hit solid ground, stepping directly to the main drawing room of his parents’ palatial home.
“Keras!” Megan’s bright voice seemed so out of place in the palace, too filled with light and warmth to be a part of the home he had grown up in.
“Megan.” He dipped his head as she walked to him, her hands skimming over her baby bump, shifting the loose amethyst top she wore.
Even the colours she chose to wear were out of place in this realm.
“Is Ares okay?” Her chocolate eyes leaped between his, a flicker of fear in them.
He touched her shoulder. “Ares is fine. You will see him again sooner than we had anticipated. The enemy has entered the Underworld.”
A chilling darkness washed through the room as Hades pushed to his feet, dropping the book he had been reading onto the seat of the gilt-framed crimson armchair in front of the fireplace.
He turned to his father, moving slightly in front of Megan as she stiffened and the fear he could feel in her rose. “The furie captured Marinda and has brought her through the gate in Olympus. I believe—”
“What?” Hades boomed, his blue eyes blazing scarlet as they narrowed on Keras, as the light in the room dimmed further.
Persephone hurried to him and touched his arm. “Calm yourself, my love. Think of the baby.”
War erupted in his father’s eyes, a battle between the urge to lash out and the desperate need to do as Persephone had asked for Megan’s sake. Megan pressed closer to Keras’s back and the urge to protect her rose fiercely within him, had him staring his father down and watching him closely, so he was ready to make a move if his father did.
“What is done is done,” Keras said, somehow managing to keep his voice calm even as irritation flowed through him too, anger that the enemy had slipped past him and entered this realm. “I believe the calamity the Moirai foresaw was not triggered by the enemy breaching a gate in the mortal world, but by them breaching a gate in this one.”
He locked gazes with his father.
“I request permission for the exile to be lifted. I request permission to come home.”
Hades stared down at him, his red eyes filled with rage and battle hunger that echoed inside Keras.
“Granted.”