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So I let out a slow breath, turned from the bed, and looked my oldest friend in the eye.

“Then so be it.” I nodded toward my brother. “The two of you will go. Now… Tonight… And you will bring the Gorgon King to me.”

“He’s not going to like that,” Aster said.

“I don’t care whether he likes it or not!” The words came out like iron. “I don’t care if you have to drag him here in chains. I don’t care what bargain you have to strike to do it, what you must promise him, what it costs. Get him here, and get him here fucking fast, do you understand me!” I practically bellowed the order.

Something flickered behind Aster’s eyes at that, there and gone in a second, a thing I was too sick with fear to read. He and Lazaros exchanged a look I had no patience to decipher.

“Then we ride for the Badlands,” Lazaros said, his breathing steadier now, his voice firmer. “And we will do whatever it takes, you have my word, brother.” I barely had it in me to nod at them before they left me there in the room with my worst nightmare.

My girl barely clinging onto life.

I sank down onto the edge of the bed beside her, and gathered her cold hand into both of mine, pressing it to my lips. Then I made her a promise in the silence of that room, the way she had once made one to me.

“You saved me, my queen,” I said, my whispered words becoming my vow as I told her,

“Now it is my turn to save you.”

Lazaros

It was no easy thing, leaving Atlas and Alex in that bedchamber with my brother looking as I had never seen him before. Not even when our mother passed did he look so distraught, so pained… so lost.

Even when I knew her death had hit him just as hard as it had me. But this was something entirely different. This was the face my father carried when she was on her deathbed.

For years, I had watched my brother carry the weight of an entire world on his shoulders. Duty. Responsibility. The endless, grinding expectation of a crown he had never asked for. None of it had ever left much room for anything so frivolous as happiness.

Until his mortal had come along.

His fated anchor tethering the God in him to our world.

The only living being strong enough to tame him.

But it wasn’t just that. She had also managed the one thing not a single one of us ever could. She had made him laugh… A genuine laugh. Made him smile… A genuine smile. Made him look toward tomorrow for some reason other than obligation. And now that fragile, hard-won happiness was slipping through his fingers like water.

Because of Demetrios.

It had to be.

The darkness that coiled inside Alex had to have come from him, it was far too familiar. I had lived with it wrapped around my own mind long enough to know its particular coldness the moment I felt it. Even if I still didn’t understand why Demetrios had wanted to tear my family to pieces, or destroy every soul in Theïkós, he had used me to do it and chosen to wear my skin like a stolen coat.

What I couldn’t bring myself to believe was how Alex thought he was linked to us. That he was our brother. If that turned out to be true, I would sit myself down and eat hay with a donkey. That was how certain I was that she had it wrong.

But whatever his reasons, I would not let him win. If fate demanded a sacrifice before this was through, then it would be me.

Not Atlas.

And certainly, never Alex.

“So how, exactly, are we meant to do this impossible thing and kidnap a Gorgon King strong enough to kill the pair of us with barely a look?” Aster asked, and I dragged a hand back through my hair after we had moved farther from my brother’s chamber.

“Well, we’re going to need a good deal more than my bow and your horns. That’s for damn sure.”

“Yeah. That’s what I’m saying.” He spread his arms. “We need a fucking tank.”

“A what?”

“A tank. Kick-arse earth machine. Rolls about on metal tracks, blows holes clean through buildings.” He grinned. “You’d love it.”