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I was no longer willing to let it lie.

“The boy,” I said. “Riley.” His name came out like a stained burden against my soul.

Across from me, Aster’s expression did not change. That, more than anything, told me I was right to ask. Because Aster’s face always moved. It smirked, it goaded, it laughed in the face of things that should have killed him. The only time that man went still was when he was guarding something.

“What of him?” he said.

“She told me he attacked her.” I held his gaze. “She did not tell me how badly. You said you reached her in time.” My jaw tightened. “In time before what, Aster?”

“She survived.” He spread his hands, easy, light, far too light. “She’s strong, Atlas. Stronger than the lot of us. She came through it, and she’s sleeping soundly in your bed as we speak. That’s what matters. Leave the rest of it where it lies.”

“Aster.”

“Truly. There’s no gain in this…”

“Aster.” I didn’t raise my voice. I didn’t need to. I had known this creature for the better part of my life, had bled beside him and trusted him with the only things that had ever mattered to me. And he had never once been able to lie to my face and make it stick. “Look at me. And tell me she wasn’t harmed.”

For what felt like an eternity, he said nothing.

Then he closed his eyes and released a slow, pained breath, the sound of a man laying down a weight he had carried too far and too long.

“She was hurt, Atlas… badly.”

The room tilted, and I grabbed the chair arm to steady myself.

“How.” It wasn’t a question. There was nothing left in my voice soft enough to make it one.

Aster met my eyes, and for once there was no armor left in his.

“The darkness in him wasn’t content to just take her,” he said, his voice quiet and pained. “It wanted what was on her. The marks… The bond between the two of you, the Key to the Rift written into her skin. It thought if it could destroy the scars, it could sever the tether.” His throat worked. “So he… it… took a blowtorch to her back, Atlas. It held her down and it burned one of the marks from her body to try and cut you out of her. There is a scar across her spine now, one that the Asclepius couldn’t erase fully. She will carry it the rest of her life.”

For one heartbeat, the world was perfectly, mercifully silent.

And then it caught fire.

I don’t remember standing but I remember the desk going over, the ancient oak splitting like kindling beneath my hands, papers and ink and three generations of my father’s records hurled across the room. I remember the heat erupting from somewhere beneath my skin. The old, terrible thing in my blood waking with a roar, crimson light bleeding from the markings down my arms as the Rage of Ares surged up to meet a single, perfect, all-consuming need.

To find him.

To find the boy who had held her down and burned her, possessed or not, and to take him apart so slowly that the darkness inside him would beg for the mercy I had no intention of giving.

“Atlas!” Lazaros’s voice, somewhere far away. “Atlas, breathe…”

I couldn’t breathe.

I didn’t want to fucking breathe!

I wanted to burn, the way she had burned. I wanted the whole of the realm to feel a fraction of what had been done to her while I stood here, useless, a world away. A chair shattered against the far wall. The windows rattled in their frames. Heat poured off me in waves, and I felt my skin begin to harden, felt the man in me start to lose its grip on the god, and gods help me… I fucking welcomed it!

Hands on my chest. Aster’s hands planted and unmoving, his own strength bracing against mine as the rage tried to throw him across the room.

“There he is,” Aster gritted out. “There’s the monster. And what then, my friend? You let it take you, you tear this castle down to its bones, and who do you think comes running?” His grip tightened. “There’s only one thing in all the realms that calms this in you… One. And she is asleep down the hall, in your bed… finally, fucking finally my friend, she is at peace, after everything that was done to her. Do you want the monster to drag her out of it?!”

“Do you want us to fetch her?” Lazaros’s voice, sharp and desperate, cut through the red. “Is that what you want, brother? Shall we drag her out of your bed and across this castle and put her in front of this? Let her see what you become? Make her soothe you, after a man already held her down once and forced her to be what he needed?”

The words landed like a blade between my ribs.

And the rage faltered.