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“Well, that would prove rather difficult,” Theron said mildly, stepping into the breeches at last, “given that it cannot be detached, and tends, as a rule, to follow me wherever I go.”

Atlas glared, unamused.

Theron, still the very picture of calm, cast a slow look about the office.

“Is she in this room?”

“Obviously not,” Atlas ground out.

Theron shrugged. “Then I fail to see the issue.”

Judging by the murderous look that crossed my brother’s face, he was about three heartbeats from killing the only creature who could potentially help us.

I shut my eyes and dragged in a breath. “Theron. Please. We have rather more important matters at hand than me trying to keep my brother from strangling you.”

Theron rolled his eyes but pulled the shirt down over his still-damp torso, a smug little smile fixed on his face the whole while. But then I nudged my brother and gave him my silent, ‘go on, tell him’ face.

“We think Alexandra is dying,” Atlas said, “and we need your help to understand why.”

The pain in his voice cut clean through the room.

And Theron’s amusement vanished. For the first time since I’d laid eyes on him, the Gorgon King looked entirely, deadly serious.

“What happened?”

I studied him then, narrow-eyed. I knew he had helped Alex and Aster lay hands on the Weaver’s Torch, but there was something in that look of his. Something in the speed with which all his careful games had fallen clean away told me Alex was a great deal more to him than simply another soul he’d struck a bargain with. And if I had seen it, then so, most certainly, had Atlas.

My gaze moved between the two of them. In that moment, Atlas looked less like a king and more like a desperate man on the very edge of losing the one person he could not live without. And I knew that having to beg help from a creature like Theron would only twist the knife deeper.

Especially now that Theron had glimpsed the cracks in my brother’s armor. He knew now that he could ask for very nearly anything he pleased. And be given it.

“Can you help her?” Atlas asked.

“Take me to her.”

A silence fell over the office, broken only by my brother.

“You may have something in that collection of yours that can help.”

Theron did not hesitate. “I can promise you nothing. Only that I will try.” His voice hardened. “Now I won’t ask again. Take me to her. Now.”

Atlas did not wait for another word. He turned on his heel and strode toward the door.

As for Aster and I, we exchanged an uneasy look. Because somehow, against every conceivable odd, we had successfully kidnapped the Gorgon King.

And somehow, more impossible still…

Atlas and Theron were about to work together.

Atlas

We made our way to my bedchamber, and my mind was a turmoil of emotions. But among the storm, I hadn’t missed the look in Theron’s eyes as I’d told him about Alexandra.

It was the look of someone who cared for her, and deeply. I gritted my teeth at the thought, so hard I was surprised they didn’t shatter.

The look stoked the rage I was working so hard to keep leashed. If I had seen it on any other man’s face, my sword would have removed his eyes from his skull so quickly that he’d have gone on staring out of empty sockets before he understood they were gone.

The heat of the rage crawled up the back of my neck, my aura threatening to engulf the space surrounding me in flames as the monster beneath my skin tested its chains.