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Chapter 16
Poseidon
I paced the living room as if it were going to make a difference. Ares sat on the couch looking like someone who was about to lose his shit.
And I was right up there with him, fuming, my chest burning up. I clenched and unclenched my fists.
How the fuck had this happened?
But I knew the answer. Elyse had done what Elyse had been born to do. There was no stopping fate, was there? But fate was fucking up if it intended to take her from us. Right now, no matter how much I cared for my brother, I cursed Zeus with the pain and suffering of a thousand worlds for this.
He’d made this happen, had set Elyse on this Earth to do something she hadn’t been able to do.
I also cursed Hades, for that matter. Because he was the son of a bitch who decided he was washing his hands of this whole fucking thing, leaving Elyse to deal with a mess he’d essentially made.
And yeah, so Hades had issues and we couldn’t blame him for X’s escape blah, blah, blah. That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to fuck the guy up five ways to Sunday if Elyse didn’t pull through this. If we lost her…
My throat choked, and I felt physically ill.
Fuck!I didn’t even want to think about what this was going to do to me. To all of us. I’d loved before, but never like this, never so fully I felt I’d lay down my life for someone if I weren’t immortal. But for Elyse, I’d do anything.
“How do you think it’s going in there?” Ares asked, glancing from me to Heracles’s bedroom, shadows darkening his eyes.
He balanced on the edge of the couch, his elbows on his knees, and even though sitting down, he was far from still. He fidgeted, bounced his knee, stood to tug at his clothes, sat down again.
“I don’t know,” I offered. Heracles was in his room with Elyse. Ares brought her here just after she’d been injured, the only place he could think of.
And he’d been right to do so. Heracles was skilled not only in the ways of teaching the Lowe family, but in healing them as well. Zeus had appointed him as their guardian, and that position entailed all that implied.
He was trying to heal her now, and I prayed his power did the trick, or I was going to go ballistic on my brothers’ asses.
I hoped to fucking Zeus he could work some kind of magic and get her through this. Because it wasn’t only that X had attempted to kill her, which meant death was already running rampant through her veins. She’d also been wounded with Ares’s sword, and that was no fucking joke. It was forged with the power of the gods, meant to kill swiftly from one blow.
“She’s not coming back if she dies this time,” I murmured.
“Don’t fucking remind me,” Ares snapped.
“We’ll all lose her.” I hadn’t intended for my words to tremble, but hell, I barely held myself together. I wanted to punch something, call to the oceans to wash away the whole city of Chicago, to put some kind of end to this. Clenching my jaw, I slouched, well aware that wouldn’t help the situation.
“Yeah?” Ares said. “Any other obvious-as-shit statements you want to make?”
Ares stood and marched toward me until we were toe to toe. His rage crackled around him like energy, but it was just a mask. His anger covered up everything else he was feeling. Pain, sorrow. Fear.
The look on his face suggested he wanted to go at it. But that wasn’t going to help any of us. We were just going to fuck each other up until we both bled, until we were drained, and it would change nothing.
“Don’t be a dick,” I barked at him. “I don’t want her to die, either.”
Ares deflated as if something had pricked a hole in the balloon that was his anger. He slumped in front of me, suddenly ten times smaller. I clapped him on the back, the best support I knew how to give.
“This is all wrong,” he said softly, his voice barely a whisper.
“It is.” None of this should have happened. Ares should have stopped her in the first place, and maybe the fault was mine, believing he could be in charge of her.
He shook his head. “No, I don’t mean I don’t like where this is going, or I wish I had more time with her, or any of that. I mean, something isn’t right. She shouldn’t have lost. She has the power, Poseidon. Haven’t you felt it?”
I nodded. I’d felt the energy, all right, and knew what Ares was talking about. But I knew how the divine realm worked, too. Your power was worth nothing if you didn’t realize your own worth. It was why Heracles went through all his trials before being accepted back into the divine realm, although he was only a demigod. It was why we couldn’t walk up to Elyse and tell her what this was.
Fuck Zeus for keeping it all a secret from us for so long. I’d only felt Elyse’s power recently, and so had the others. Zeus had sat on this little bit of info for the longest time, and the dick had decided to be tightlipped about it, too. The only person who’d known had been Heracles. But he saw her every day, sensed her new power. Either he figured it out, or as her appointed guardian, he knew all along. I rolled up the sleeves of my shirt, unable to stand still, and a deep ache settled in my back from my tensing muscles. This was beyond wrong.
