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Watching her scrub her face with hands still ashen from Olympus hurt. I lumbered to my feet, unsteady even though Harvey had healed the spirits' damage.
Verena's throat bobbed. "This isn’t fucking fair. It’s not right. If you'd stayed with her, if you hadn't wasted time getting me out of Olympus—"
"No," Kai cut in, his voice hard enough to make her flinch. Shit. "That wasn't wasted time. You're family, Verena. Like Em said before, we're keeping you."
He strode across the rug, beating me to her, and yanked her into a rough hug. "Don't do this blame bullshit. None of what happened was your fault.
"I'm so sorry," she breathed, her voice tight with emotion.
A pit opened in my stomach as I stood beside them and realised we didn't just have to keep Verena safe from Cronus or spirits or fuck knows what else. We had to look after her, raise her. She was ours, really ours. But I didn't know how to do this without Haley.
I'd dreamt of children for a hundred years, pictured my life full of their laughter and chaos. Every time we conceived it was the greatest fucking gift. Every time we lost the baby, it felt like I'd been stabbed in my heart. But every time, I imagined children with our mate. Never just us. How could five grief-stricken bastards raise a teenage girl?
We were going to fuck this up.
But she didn't have anyone else. And I meant what I said. We were keeping her.
I didn't know what to say to make her feel better, but I overlapped my arms with Kai's and held them both, feeling like I'd been kicked in the stomach when the brothers did the same, all of us clutching tight, a mess of grief and shock.
"We're getting revenge, right?" Verena asked tentatively. "We're avenging her death. Right?"
"Right," Kai agreed fiercely.
We couldn't. Not when Verena was relying on us. I knew that would be an argument, knew it would split our family, but I didn't have the energy to argue right now.
So I said nothing at all.
CHAPTER 6
HALWEN
Iforced myself to walk, my eyes glancing off closed doors, searching for the open one, the one that led to my mate.
This way, Busty said, giving me an assessing look. He clasped my elbow and guided me into the narrow maw of a pitch-black tunnel, so silent that our breaths and footsteps were the only noise echoing off the curved stone walls.
Where are we going? I whispered, only his hand on my elbow keeping me grounded as fear beat at my chest. All the hairs rose down my arms, and I knew I didn't actually have a body here, I was only a soul, but it certainly felt like I did as a chill sank into my bones.
Cronus's throne room.
I inhaled a sharp breath. He had a throne room? Was that where he—where Wane—
This tunnel goes on for miles, Erebus said, a note of rage entering his cool voice. It's designed for maximum fear, so his victims—or pets as he's so intent on calling them—will lose their courage and morale before they ever reach him.
A question bit at my tongue, and I tried to swallow it back, but it had been screaming at me ever since we stepped into this place.
Why didn't you stop it?
Erebus's shadows seemed to darken until there was an even darker stain of blackness beside me, but I felt the rage pulsing from him, felt it bleed through his hand into my elbow.
Like all of the first beings, I can't influence anything that happens outside my domain. All I can do is observe. If I was able to touch the Earth, Hell, or Heaven, I would have smited that cruel excuse for a titan centuries ago. He might be the most powerful being alive, but if I could reach Olympus, he wouldn't stand a chance.
He paused. Wane might achieve the same.
I swallowed hard, the weight of darkness pressing around me, crushing the air from my chest, crawling up my spine like a fell insect, reminding me over and over that Wane had lived here for a hundred years.
I can't ask that of him.
He might want it, Busty countered. He deserves revenge after all.
