We?
Who the hell is ‘we?’
A shiver of trepidation rushed down Talisa’s spine as he all but dragged her up the staircase. She knew she had to fight back, to resist whatever he planned to do to her. That wherever he was taking her would not end well for her. But her brain suddenly wasn’t working, consumed only by the memory of those words...
Mono mia.
She’d heard those words before. She didn’t know where. She didn’t know when. But they were familiar. Important. And somehow, instinctively, she knew they pertained solely to her.
The curved stairs opened to a hallway flanked by wood columns connected by arched beams high above. An intricate railing looked down toward the stairs they’d just climbed. Zagreus pulled her through the wide corridor and drew to a stop in front of a door.
Blinking the cobwebs from her brain, Talisa focused on that door, tensing as he jerked it open. Instead of revealing some kind of cell as she half-expected, it opened to another set of stone steps, these narrower than the first, with cold rock walls closing in on each side.
She shuffled back, knowing wherever that staircase led was not a place she wanted to see, yanking on Zagreus’s hold. Two steps up, he turned irritated eyes her way and wrenched her hard toward him.
Her body slammed into his. She gasped but shuffled back again. “I am not going up there, you bastard. Let me go.”
She pulled hard, stumbling with the effort, but without her gifts, she was no match for his strength, and he knew it.
Shaking his head, Zagreus stalked toward her, and she tensed again, easing back even farther, afraid of what he would do. Instead of slapping her or throwing her up the steps, though, he bent at the waist, grasped her at the legs, then straightened and lifted her off the ground, tossing her over his shoulder as he turned.
The air whooshed out of her lungs. Her head grew light. He stepped into the staircase and started climbing.
“Put me down, dickhead.” She pounded her joined hands against his back. “Put me down right now.”
“Bloody hell, but you are a loud one,” he muttered, not even flinching at her hits against his spine. “Keep that up and every daemon in the forests around us will know you’re here. And if they show up, I won’t promise to protect you again.”
Protect her? Protect her?
Her vision grew red, but her mouth snapped closed. He was bluffing. He had to be bluffing. He wouldn’t dare let his father’s daemons touch his precious nymphs. Especially not the redhead who’d been in the great hall.
But Talisa was smart enough not to say so. There was no sense wasting her energy when she could use it against him wherever he was taking her.
She wasn’t sure how high they climbed, but she knew it was several stories. At the top, he paused, and she craned her neck to see why.
Another heavy wood door blocked their path. He pushed it open, then stepped under the archway, letting the door slam at his back.
The walls were curved, built from smooth rock, the ceiling high. As he dropped her on her feet and the blood drained from her head, she spotted a cold stone fireplace, chairs on either side. To the right were two giant cathedral windows that looked out and down to the dark lake far below, separated by an ornate bookcase filled with a smattering of books. Behind her and up two steps on a raised platform was a four-poster bed and two nightstands with oil lamps. And beyond that, another door that led to a closet or a bathroom—she wasn’t sure which.
The room wasn’t big, and instinctively she knew she was likely in the highest tower in this hidden castle. Her gaze shot back to the windows made of thick glass that didn’t open. To the fact there was no balcony to scale down. To the view far, far below that would lead to her death if she tried to escape that way.
Temper rising, she looked past Zagreus to the door they’d just come through, realizing it was the only way out of this godsforsaken room.
“You son of a bitch.” She turned her glare on Zagreus and stalked past him. “You’re not keeping me here.”
He grasped her by the waist with one arm, picked her up, and swung her back around, dropping her on her kicking feet where she’d just been. “I am keeping you, princess. And the sooner you accept that, the easier this will be.”
She stumbled in her heeled boots, whipped around and stared at him as he moved for the door.
“Seeing as how you need time to adjust to your new surroundings”—he shot her a scathing look over his shoulder—“I’ll be back when you’ve cooled down.”
The door was big, but he was bigger, and she knew there was no way she could get by him and down those steps without his catching her. Looking for something—anything—she could use as a weapon, she spotted the books.
She rushed toward the bookshelf, grabbed a leather tome with her bound hands, and hurled it across the room at his head. “Fuck you, asshole.”
He didn’t turn. Didn’t look toward her. But his hand shot into the air as if he sensed the book coming at him. His fingers closed around the thick binding with a death grip and slowly lowered it to his side.
Then he did turn. Only this time when his gaze met hers, she realized just how docile he’d been with her before. This time there was no humanity in his obsidian eyes. Only stone cold malice and a promise of retribution she wasn’t sure she wanted to taunt.
The air caught in her lungs. She shuffled back, her boots hitting the bottom step near the bed’s platform, stopping her.
Her pulse raced as he stared at her. And though she told herself not to be afraid, that he fed off fear, she was afraid. Terrified, because he suddenly didn’t look a thing like the hunky sex god she’d almost had a tryst with at that club. He looked like Hades’s son. The personification of evil. As twisted and vile as his father.
In every way, the Prince of Darkness.
He hurled the book at a chair near the fireplace and clenched his jaw. “Listen very carefully because I’m only going to say this once. There are only two ways out of this room, female. The first is by submitting to me. The second is by your death. The choice of how you leave is up to you.”
He jerked the door open and left, letting it slam closed in his wake. A clank echoed, followed by groaning metal that told her he’d locked her in.
Heart racing, she stood still in the middle of the room as his footsteps faded down the stairwell. A heavy silence surrounded her. One that drown out even her rapid pulse. One that threatened to overwhelm her if she let it.
Breathe. Focus. Remember who you are. Think like the Guardians who came before you...
Except...
She wasn’t a guardian. They’d yet to accept her. She might have the markings, but she still wasn’t one of them. Which meant... Any hope she had of escaping was entirely up to her.
She blew out a slow breath and looked up and around her opulent prison cell. This was not how she thought her night would go when she’d headed to that club in the human world. Never in a million years would she have predicted she’d end up trapped. In a castle tower. Like some wimpy fairytale heroine. Like a damsel in distress. By Zagreus of all people.
Submission or death...
He thought he could back her into a corner, scare her? Well, fuck him. Fuck everyone in this miserable place. He didn’t know a thing about her.
A rising, rolling anger built inside her, one that put any she’d had before to shame. Those were not her only choices. She wouldn’t let them be her choices.