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“Right,” I replied weakly, my guilt colliding with the vaguely sheepish ambivalence I was getting from Riot through the bond. “He’s fine.”
“Probably best you don’t ask,” Bullet murmured apologetically, linking our fingers. I gripped his hand, grabbing Wild’s with my other. They were daimons, and their moral compass didn’t always align with mine. It was hard to reconcile with the fact that I trusted them implicitly.
Wild cupped my jaw gently, turning my face to his and resting his forehead against mine, a wealth of apology in the gesture.
“It’s okay,” I assured him quietly.M? kheíron béltiston.It was the least bad choice.
Chapter 11
Tothinkwe’dbeenworried about being seen by someone who might report our whereabouts. For one, nobody’s phones appeared to be working, so reporting us wasn’t exactly easy; what had been a three-second task roughly a few hours ago was now impossible as the world turned to shit.
Aside from that, absolutely no one cared who we were as we ditched the car and walked to the waterfront, because everybody was way too busy panicking about the end of the earth to care about what we were up to.
Every shop window we’d passed was broken. The streets in and around the city were packed with angry, terrified people. Riot had done a good job at steering us away from the crowds, but every time we’d gotten close, we’d had to speed up because even the shit box we were driving attracted the wrong kind of attention.
Perhaps I’d been naïve to think the darkness was a temporary blip. Grace and the others hadn’t shared that optimism, and the general population wasdefinitelyacting like it was the end of the world.
It was a disaster. I’d always hated Gaia, but Nyx was making it very fucking difficult to be on her team right now.
“Can you watch over Grace and Bullet?” Riot asked, looking solemnly at me. “Between me and Wild, we should be able to acquire a small boat that we can row out to where Vasileios’ friend is anchored in the harbor.”
“Of course, but how confident are we that he’s still here?” I replied uneasily. It had seemed like a sound plan when we left the villa, but the port was mayhem, violence breaking out in every direction. Wild’s fingers flexed incessantly at his side, his breathing forcibly even. I didn’t feel the call to bloodshed like he did, but I knew what he was going through. When I was surrounded by lust, it seemed to beat like a second pulse inside me, urging me to act, to submerge myself in desire and spread it to everyone. I imagined Wild was experiencing the same thing.
“Vasileios said he’d been in touch with the guy earlier today, so hopefully he’s hasn’t left.” Riot grimaced, glancing out at the water. There were still waves lapping against the shore, and that had to be a good thing, right? Weren’t tides connected to the moon? It felt like Nyx had just drawn a black curtain over the sky, and I hoped everything was still functionalbehindthat curtain, even though the temperature seemed to drop by the minute.
“I don’t know if he cares about us,” Riot continued. “But Vasileios said they were really close—more like an uncle and nephew? So hopefully the guy wouldn’t leave without him. The sooner we go, the better. Wait down on the rocks, we’ll get as close as we can.”
I didn’t like the sound of that at all, but the rocky area of coastline we were standing above was a lot less chaotic than the port proper a little further down. Despite the darkness, the number of fires burning did a good job illuminating the carnage.
“Wait, there’s something in the water,” Bullet said, grabbing Grace’s hand as she moved to climb onto the rocks. We all held still, watching the surface ripple outwards from a spot not too far from the coastline.
“What now?” Riot muttered, sounding surprisingly exasperated rather thanfucking terrified. I guessed that for them, the weirdness was a little more routine than it was for me.
“It’s a boat,” Grace murmured, squinting at the water. “It’stheboat. The one that carried us through the cave when we left the underworld.”
Well, better that than a sea monster.
“Is it watertight?” I asked, trying to sound less nervous than I felt. It looked older than dirt, bobbing in place near the rocks as though it was anchored there even though nothing tethered it.
“It is,” Grace replied with confidence, tugging on my arm slightly. “It’s a gift from the underworld.”
Because they want us to join them there sooner?But everyone else seemed happy enough, so I kept my thoughts about accepting gifts from the gods of the dead to myself.
The five of us carefully picked our way over the boulders down to the sea line. With the sudden disappearance ofthe sun, the breeze coming off the water was freezing. It felt more like we were standing on the coast of Antarctica than Greece.
A crowd of angry humans moved closer, running along the street just above us, and I crouched down, grabbing the most jagged rock I could comfortably hold as a weapon.
“We’re definitely going to have to wade, it’s too rocky,” Bullet whispered as the group passed us. “I think we might need to strip. It’s way too cold to be sitting in wet clothes.”
Wild went first, yanking off his clothes and shoving them into the bag Riot was holding before wading into the water. Of course he didn’t make a sound and made it look easy. Next up was Riot—naked and carrying the bag above his head to keep it dry—who let out a string of curses as soon as he went in, letting us know just how cold it was.
Grace’s nerves were potent and definitely not all nudity-related as we stripped off. She clearly didn’t like the water. The three of us held hands as we climbed down the rocks, clothes shoved safely in the pillowcase of stuff I was balancing on my head, and I sucked in a breath at the frigid temperature.
Fuck me. My balls are going to fall off.
Thank you to all the divinities for watertight tattoo adhesives.
“Cold, cold, cold,” Grace whimpered, gripping my arm tightly with icy fingers.
