Keras looked their father over as he tightly gripped the arms of his chair, his teeth gritted as his face twisted in pain.
His green gaze fixed on the slick patch on his father’s right shoulder.
He stepped to the other side and the brambles snapped at him, attempting to drive him back. He refused to go, flinched as they slashed his face.
Persephone jerked to face him, her green eyes enormous as they fixed on the cut darting across his left cheek.
“Let me near him, Mother.” He implored her with his eyes, spoke gently to her in the hope it would reach her and offer her comfort.
She wasn’t alone.
She didn’t have to protect Hades all by herself.
He would destroy anyone who sought to harm his father.
Shadows snaked from beneath his feet and slithered over the brambles, entwining with them. As they made contact, her pain and fear rolled into him, stole his breath and had tears filling his eyes.
She feared the worst.
“He will not die. But we must treat him. If my suspicions are correct, then he must be seen to immediately. Let me near him. Let me see.” Keras lifted his right hand slowly, trying not to spook his mother by moving too fast, rousing her instincts to protect Hades from a possible attack.
Her gaze danced between his hand and his face, indecision crossing her delicate features. He could feel the war in her, tried to be patient but it was hard. He needed to get a look at his father’s wound.
He needed to know if he was right about Eris and this wasn’t just an attack spurred by anger over the conversation that had taken place before Keras had gone out into the garden to be alone with Enyo.
Maybe her anger was in part due to that conversation, but it hadn’t been born tonight. It had been festering inside her for centuries, and she had been plotting his father’s demise from the moment he had given only Thanatos, Nyx and Hypnos realms to rule.
The brambles surrounding his father parted and Keras eased his hands forwards, weathered a vicious snarl from his father as he fingered the cut in his black tunic and carefully parted the material.
Keras loosed a snarl of his own.
Violet tendrils snaked from the two-inch stab wound, spreading across his father’s pale skin.
“Wraith blade,” he growled and the tension in the room increased.
Several of his brothers cursed, and Thanatos detailed the ways he was going to destroy Eris and her cohorts when he found them.
Instinct pushed Keras to shun Thanatos and Nyx’s help, but sense told him to deny it. He was going to need strong allies in this fight, and he believed that both Nyx and Thanatos truly hadn’t known anything about Eris’s plans, and that they too were targets.
Keras looked across his father and mother to Megan where she hovered near the edge of the brambles, Ares still holding her back. “Can you heal this?”
She was quick to nod, but her chocolate eyes revealed doubt.
“Sweetheart,” Ares warned.
She angled her head and looked up at him. “Let me try.”
His brother sighed.
Cassandra glanced at Ares. “She will not be alone. I will help too.”
“As will I,” Persephone murmured, her green gaze fixed on Hades, all the worry Keras could feel in her shining in her eyes.
Hades’s eyes slipped shut and his cheeks paled further.
“Take him to his chambers,” Keras said.
His mother nodded and disappeared.
Ares stepped with Megan, and Daimon took hold of Cassandra’s arm and teleported with her. The rest of Keras’s brothers followed with their women.
Before Keras could step to his parents’ bedroom, Enyo took hold of his wrist. He glanced at her and lingered as she slipped her hand down to his, as her fingertips gently pressed against his palm.
“You don’t have to face this alone either, Keras.” She stroked her fingers across his skin, sending warmth rolling up his arm, and the darkness that had been building inside him gradually abated as he looked into her eyes and saw she meant those words.
Saw that she was there with him.
“This wasn’t your fault,” she whispered.
Words he wished were true.
She stepped up to him and lifted her other hand, brushed her palm across his cheek and kept his eyes on hers.
“This wasn’t your fault,” she said it more firmly this time, her steady jade gaze telling him that she wasn’t going to accept him blaming himself for what had happened to his father—that she was going to do whatever it took to make him see that this had been unavoidable.
Thanatos helped.
“Mother did not even have time to react.” The god of death’s voice held a darkness that revealed the depth of his anger. His flickering blue eyes shifted from the empty throne where Hades had been to Keras. “You could not have stopped her.”
“It happened too quickly. One moment they were conversing, and the next she had stabbed him and they were all gone.” Nyx continued to gaze at the throne, a sombre look on her face. “I failed my god-king.”
Thanatos leaned over and placed his hand on his mother’s slight shoulder. “Do not blame yourself either. None of us could have known what Eris planned. She played us well.”
“Not her. Eris might be leading the enemy, but it was another who put together this plan. Apate. She played us well,” Keras growled and balled his free hand into a fist.
The goddess of deceit had certainly lived up to her name.
Thanatos was right and none of them had seen this coming.
Apate must have planned it all for her sister, right down to sacrificing Nemesis in order to make it look as if Keras and his brothers had won this war. Had Nemesis known she was a pawn, that she would be sacrificed to ensure Eris and her siblings gained an audience with Hades, could get close enough to him to kill him?
Keras doubted that she had.
Nemesis, like the others, had believed she would receive a place to rule at the end of this plot against his father.
Apate had worked her wicked magic well indeed, moving her pawns into place, making them believe they would gain whatever Eris had promised them. She had fooled them all.
She had fooled him and his brothers too.
He gripped Enyo’s hand and stepped with her.
Chapter 31
The second Keras landed in his father’s black-and-gold-walled bedchamber, someone shoved him aside.
“Make way.” Caterina hurried past him with a bowl of water, Aiko following hot on her heels with some towels.
Ares grunted something under his breath as he wetted one of the small towels and squeezed it out. Rather than applying it to their father’s bare chest, he pressed the rolled-up towel against Megan’s forehead.
She huffed and leaned forwards. Her hands shook as they framed the wound on Hades’s chest.
“This is too dangerous,” Ares grumbled.
“You’ve said that a hundred times already,” Megan snapped, and then sagged, her tone softening. “Sorry.”
Cass sat on the enormous bed on the other side of his father, Persephone beside her. His mother had her hand to his father’s head, her eyes closed as she worked to help heal him. The sorceress ghosted her hands over the length of his body, her eyes sparkling with silver as pale light glowed from her palms.
“He’s strong. No need to fret.”