Page 108 of Queen of Tempests and Sin

Rage burned so hot it hurt. ‘I’ll kill you, you arrogant little prick.’

He clicked his heels, gave me a sarcastic salute—slow and mocking, then turned away, his laughter trailing into the corridor, a promise I felt in my bones. The sound grated in my teeth as his footsteps faded. I kept my hand on the bars, fingers trembling, the echo of his laugh burning behind my eyes.

I couldn’t spare Guinn the thought. Not now. Sephy would keep her safe—if I failed… I cut the thought off at its throat. I staggered to the back of the cell, collapsed on the floor, buried my face in my knees, and waited with the small, terrible patience of someone who knows the worst is only a breath away.

The scrape of iron made my head lift again, and when I blinked through the gloom, Ajax was standing there, smug as ever, framed by bars and torchlight, a set of oversized keys hanging at his hip—a twisted parody of a jailer. He jangled them once, slid the door open with a groan of rust, and stepped in, every inch the man who thought he owned the place.

I moved—because of course I did—and instantly found myself staring down the barrel of his pistol.

Fury sucker-punched me. Hot, invasive, crawling under my skin, toxic and relentless. Ajax was a fucking traitor—the kind of betrayal that made my blood roar in my ears. He and Dimitri would burn in the infernos of Tartarus.

I forced a smirk, because fear wasn’t an option, and also, he was such a frowny fucker. ‘You’ll give yourself premature wrinkles frowning so much,’ I muttered. My heart thudded a hungry beat in my chest, but I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of sensing my panic.

His eyes glittered with malice. ‘Don’t. Play. Games.’ Each word was a venom-tipped arrow. ‘Poseidon never gifted me powers. Not like the others. He left me with nothing. And then I hear he’s giving you a blood oath? A paltry assassin who tried to kill him… I changed sides long ago, and I’m glad I did.’

He lifted his hand. A black ring gleamed on his middle finger, dark stone sucking up the light, and he wiggled it as if it were a prize. ‘Ixion gave me purpose. This is the Ring of Víma; it lets me tear the map, fold it, step through. A gift from a god who actually values me.’

My stomach dropped, but I held his stare.

He leaned in, voice dripping with hate. ‘Ixion will rule the earth. And you? You’ll be dead… at last.’

That hot weed of wrath turned feral, filling every inch of me. I pictured a list of people I’d carve into pieces one day, nice and slow, and scrawled his name at the very top in thick, bloody ink.

‘Oh boohoo, poor Ajax,’ I sneered, tilting my head. ‘What do I look like? Your fucking therapist?’

His laugh was short and sharp, and his fist came out of nowhere, crashing against my jaw. White-hot pain flared through my skull, and the stone floor lurched sideways beneath me. I tasted blood, metallic and bitter, pooling on my tongue.

I dragged myself upright, the world still tilting, and spat red onto the floor between us. My voice rasped, low and jagged. ‘You’ve always been a frowny fucker. Hope Ixion enjoys their bargain-basement lackey.’

His grip tightened on the gun, jaw twitching. He wanted me broken. Afraid. Small. Too bad, because I wasn’t dead yet, and when I walked out of this cell, Ajax was going to be number one on my kill-slowly list.

Ajax’s pistol rose, his hand shaking as if he’d swallowed a live thing. His eyes were feral—rage, betrayal, the whole ugly mess—but before he could pull the trigger, a voice cut through the cell like satin over a blade.

‘Now, now, Ajax. The little assassin is yours, but I need a word with her before you start your torture routine. Wouldn’t want her too injured… not yet.’

Fear flooded my bloodstream, cold and merciless.

The voice was velvet and poison. Slow applause echoed off the stone as a shadow peeled away from the doorway. She moved like a predator in couture—heels that clicked too precisely, a gown that ate the torchlight and spat it back as menace. Even hooded, even half-hidden, she reeked of the kind of old money and older cruelty that gods pride themselves on. When she stepped close enough, the air tasted of jasmine and cold iron.

I knew who it was… the god Ajax had muttered—this was her. I was at her mercy… and I knew without doubt she had none.

She smiled at me—a cruel sight. In the guttering torchlight, I could barely make out her face, half-swallowed by the hood: a flash of pale cheek, the arc of a cruel mouth, eyes that glittered like broken glass. The gloom kept most of her features hidden, which made it worse—the not-knowing filling the space with malevolence.

‘No one ever expects a woman,’ she said, as if reading my thoughts. ‘You should know, assassin. Look pretty; play nice. Don’t be too smart and stab them in the back when they least expect it. We make the best villains.’

I answered with the only blade I had left: snark. ‘That’s adorable. Really. Do you practice your evil monologues in the mirror, or just improv them between claw sharpening?’ The quip came out thinner than I liked, but it was better than silence.

Ajax’s face flooded red. He slapped me—hard—so fast the world reeled. Pain bloomed across my cheek, white-hot and stupid and utterly alive. The gun stayed fixed on me, but his hand still trembled from the slap, fury knotted with the sour ache of being dismissed and overlooked.

The woman laughed—low, delighted, the sound of someone watching a very pretty cat toy with a mouse. ‘You’ve certainly entrapped the god of the sea, assassin,’ she purred, eyes glittering beneath the hood. ‘I never thought any woman would bring him to heel. Your death will be the ruination of him. But bright side is… one of the Power Three down.’

She let the last words hang, savouring them like a wine.

Her laugh curdled into something worse. Fear like I’d never known slammed through me and stopped my heart cold. It wasn’t the fear for myself—no, my body was a map of bruises and choices—but the thought of Si, of him learning what they’d done to me, cut deeper than anything Ajax’s hand had so far managed.

The thought of Si hurting tunnelled into my ribs like a rabid rat.

Ajax’s lip curled, his voice dripping with jealousy and spite. ‘Pathetic, really. A god of his power, undone by a mortal. He never looked at the rest of us that way. Never gave me what I deserved. But you? You’d get it all.’ His eyes burned, wild and bitter.