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“Both your souls bound to the pits for eternity,” he said blithely.
Wrong answer. Our magic collided, sparks of black and green forming a bubble around Phaidros’s head. Miraculously, the demon kept talking.
“It’s the only way she’ll accept. She could have either of you, but by the time she gets the second in, the first will have found a way out. If you both agree to go, no take-backsies to wriggle out from eternal damnation. And she will play for the same stakes.”
“Why would she agree?” I repeated. “You know as well as I do that her army is nearly as big as ours. Our living allies are evenly matched. We can’t even get to her realm without you taking us there.”
“It is difficult for unwelcome visitors to get there,” Phaidros agreed. “But she will agree. Because as powerful as my mother is, she is ten times as conceited. She will see this as an easy way to prove her superiority over your feeble powers and enjoy a game of strategy rather than inelegant warfare. Most of all, she will agree because she is bored, and I will make the offer sound very attractive. Which I can only do if you get your prickly clawsout of my starsdamned chestand let me speak to her.”
I eased slightly, not fully removing them, while Cole drew closer. He towered over us, staring down at the demon. “Who gets to decide the challenges?”
“The realm’s ruler. For the realm of the living, it will be up to me,as the judge.”
So he’d already picked his role in this. “So you’re saying you’ll rig this in our favor if we agree to get rid of your mother for you?” Or rig it in hers and use this as a ploy to take us down to Tartarus with barely a fight.
The demon shook his head. “No. They will need to be fair contests, and the four of us will swear to that. But if you’re clever, you’ll still find a way to tilt the scale towards yourself in your own realm, which I’ll ensure happens first, and then if you succeed in the realm of the living, you never need know what my mother will concoct.”
I opened my mouth to argue but Phaidros cut me off with a beleaguered sigh.
“I can’t do it all for you. I can bring her to the chessboard, but you still have to know how to play.”
Only Phaidros could manage to be so condescending while I was still bathing my fingers in his blood.
“First, you will vow to do no harm to my wife or me.”
“I vow to the Styx I will not harm either of you,tonight,” Phaidros grumbled.
That began a long series of back-and-forth between the two, where Cole demanded increasingly specific vows to ensure our safety while Phaidros mostly agreed… though he did throw in a few adjustments, usually time limits. Neither of us pressed the issue.
“Then we’re agreed,” I said when Cole had covered every conceivable scenario.
The three of us stood in the hallway, staring. Cole was at my shoulder; Phaidros leaned against a nearby column like he didn’t have a care in the world, least of all his blood-drenched shirt. Of course, he mayhave been leaning because he couldn’t properly stand on his own. I was such a good sport I even stopped half of the internal bleeding I’d caused in Phaidros when I finally let him go.
“We will have a trial for each realm against the Moon Goddess to settle who has claim to what realms.Ifthe Moon Goddess agrees, neither will attack the other for the duration of the trials. Losing rulers go to the pits.”
Phaidros nodded. We made our vows and Phaidros left. I was left wondering if we may have found a way out—or a surefire way to damn ourselves and save our enemies the trouble.
Word came barely aday later. The Moon Goddess had agreed, and the first challenge would be set for just four days later.
The challenge had to be fair, as we designed it, and Phaidros had explained for us that meant we couldn’t both design it and participate. After a long discussion between myself, Cole, and Hecate, we agreed that the two of them should design our realm’s test. I would compete on our behalf.
Cole could tell me nothing, lest he skew the odds in our favor and the challenge be declared null and void. Phaidros was the judge, and though he claimed to be working towards the same goal as us, I had no reason to trust him. In fact, I had a lot of reasons not to.
Starting with the fact I still planned to kill the demon.
Cole, ever pragmatic, assured me we could and would kill the demon once the Moon Goddess was dealt with. We spent those next daysseparated, Cole devising the test with Hecate, while I trained in the arena. I didn’t know what the test would be—it could be anything from a fight to the death or a coin flip. But exercising took my mind off of it. My wolf needed the release as well. She had truly become part of me since I’d gained my memories. We weren’t two people, but two sides of the same coin. Even so, my animalistic side was restless. There was a threat to her mate—and the bite did declare him as her mate—and she would not rest until it was destroyed.
Cole did his best to soothe that rage in the evenings. The fact he was my husband… it shouldn’t have changed things. He had forfeited his life for me; I had gone to the pits to get him back. Something as innocuous as marriage shouldn’t have held a candle to that.
Yet it did. Saving each other was one thing. We did it on instinct. There was no choice when it came to putting our lives on the line for each other. But marriage was a choice. One we chose forus.
I really loved sleeping with my husband.
That said, “marital bliss” and “trying to end decades of torture to souls while you yourself risked eternal torture” were about as far from synonymous as you could get.
The morning of the challenge, Cole teleported me far away from the castle, all the way to the other side of the realm. Hecate remained in the capital.
“You’ll be great.” Cole’s fingers caressed my spine, tracing over bare skin. “Relax, little wolf.”
