“How does your brother Ares fare?” she said, tickled by the fact he had remembered their old greeting.
He sighed. “He has fallen for a mortal Carrier and they are with child.”
She smiled again, warmth blooming inside her once more. “That’s wonderful. My brother will be pleased to hear it too. He had always foreseen that your brother would father strong males.”
“The child is female.”
For a brief moment, emotions broke to the surface in his eyes, a combination of concern and hurt, but then they were gone, as if he had erased them.
“What brings you here?” He averted his gaze, glancing at the bottle he had left on the island behind him.
All of the warmth she had been feeling rushed out of her, and cold swept in behind it to fill her chest.
He wanted her gone.
He was angry with her.
She might not be able to see it in his eyes for some reason, but she knew him well enough to detect in his body language and his manner of speaking that she truly had upset him all the times she had spoken with his brother instead of him.
A thousand apologies rose to her lips, none of them good enough to make up for what she had done. They all felt shallow, a desperate reach for him to forgive her right here and now, when she knew she had to work for that forgiveness.
“I told you, I came to bring information.” She regretted saying that when it sounded cold to her. It lacked the feelings that were in her heart, emotions she was too afraid to risk putting out there when he was like this—icy and distant. She clenched her fists and straightened her spine, refusing to let him get to her. She had come here to make things between them better again, and she would. “I… War is coming. I want to help you… but I cannot. My hands are bound. Brother will not allow me to fight and neither will your father.”
“Then you should not be here.” He turned his back to her, grabbed the bottle and stared at it. “I am sure you know that.”
She did know that.
She knew it and she didn’t care.
“This is war,” she snapped, frustration mounting to get the better of her. “I am a goddess of war. I should be fighting alongside you.”
“We do not need your help.”
She gritted her teeth and fought to hold back the words she wanted to hurl at him, aware that arguing with him was not only pointless but it wasn’t the reason she had come to him. She had come to make things better, not worse.
“I am part of this war, whether you or Hades or my brother likes it or not. I have been bringing you information.”
Keras turned on her, darkness ringing his green irises, and his power pressed against her as the light in the room dimmed. He growled, “Bringing me information?”
She eased back a step, not wanting to provoke him when he was like this, liable to lose control of his temper and unleash it on her. Darkness reigned in his eyes, swift to devour the emerald, building like a storm.
Fine, so he was angry.
Really angry.
The storm passed swiftly, the black ring his eyes had gained losing ground against the emerald as he stared at her, as his breathing levelled out again.
She waited for a few minutes, until the air in the room grew awkward again, and then said, “How does your father feel about Nemesis being involved?”
Keras’s black eyebrows knitted hard. “Angry. He’s angry about the fact Messengers are involved too. He’s ordered all of them contained and no longer trusts any of them. If he wishes to speak with us now, he summons us.”
That worried her.
Hades relied heavily upon his Messengers since he couldn’t leave the Underworld. He had created them for that reason, and now he couldn’t use any of them without fearing they were working for the enemy.
“Hades shouldn’t have to summon you in order for you to travel to the Underworld. It is time that he allowed you and your brothers to freely travel there. If Nemesis is trapped there, then that is where you should be. You need to petition your father.” She instantly regretted letting that all spill from her lips as his face darkened again.
“You have no right to dictate what I should do, or what my father should do,” he bit out, the black invading his eyes again as his power rose to sweep around her and the room darkened.
She glanced down at the floor and eased another step back as shadows writhed at his feet.
Her gaze darted up to lock with his.
It wasn’t like him to be so changeable.
She tried to blame his ridiculous experiment, but deep in her heart she feared it was something else.
She feared that something dark had been growing inside Keras in their time apart.
Since she had told him she was betrothed to another.
“It was nice to see you again.” His deep voice was cold, lacked emotion as he stared her down.
Enyo looked into his eyes, into what felt like a void, an icy chasm that chilled her to her marrow. There had been warmth in his eyes once, genuine warmth.
Had she been the one to kill it, or had he?
He pivoted away from her.
This time, she took the hint.
She turned away too and focused on Olympus, only to let the connection between her and the realm where he clearly felt she belonged fall away.
What was she doing?
She looked back over her shoulder at Keras.
He leaned forwards and braced his hands against the marble counter, gripping it tightly as he hung his head.
She reached out a little with her senses, sure she would get nothing from him.
Stifled a gasp when she felt the pain, the rage, that coiled inside him.
Pain and rage that were her fault.
She should have waited until he was with his brothers before seeing him for the first time in two hundred years. She had made it weird. She had made him uncomfortable.
And now she was paying for it.
She wanted to say something more to him, but instead let it go.
And teleported.
But she didn’t go home.
She was a goddess of war.
And she intended to wage one that should have happened centuries ago.
She intended to win Keras’s heart.
But even a goddess of war needed an army on her side.
She landed in a street, crisp cool morning air bathing her as she lifted her head.
And stared at the impressive gatehouse of the elegant Edo period Japanese mansion.
Chapter 3
Keras strained, his entire body locking up tight as he gripped the edge of the black counter before him. The marble cracked beneath his hands as he breathed hard, battling the urges that surged through him.
The reason he had forced Enyo to leave.
Enyo.
He lowered his head, didn’t care when it struck the cold marble and pain splintered across his skull.
Sickness brewed inside him, had bile rising up his throat as he thought about her, about the twisted need that had come over him—a vile hunger for her to strike him, to deal pain, to draw blood.
Gods, he was sure he had ruined everything, that he had pushed her away and would never see her again.
But he’d had to do it.
Had to make her leave.
When she had mentioned his inhibitors, his mind had leaped to his pills, fear that she knew of them swift to claim him and leave him shaken. That fear had remained even after he had realised she was speaking of his limiters, the bands he wore to dampen his powers in this world. It had eaten away at him, slowly erasing the numbing hold of the pill he had taken, freeing his emotions.