AllFreeNovel
Share Us
That trips her up. She blinks those big eyes at me. “What do you mean ‘no’?”
“No, you don’t get to go on the offensive, when you’re clearly in the wrong.” Some of my anger seeps into my voice, and I can’tstop myself from continuing. “You know it’s dangerous to be out by yourself, let alone to be on this bridge.Overthis bridge. You, of everyone, know it’s dangerous. Why the fuck are you out here without an escort?”
“Zeus is dead.”
“Zeus is alive and living in Dodona Tower.”
She thins her lips. “He’s not the same and you know it.”
Yeah, I guess I do. I’ll never be a fan of Zeus, regardless of who holds the title, but even I can’t deny that this one is miles better than the last. I won’t allow her to distract me with semantics though. “And you know damn well that he’s not even the biggest threat out there right now.Everyoneis a threat.”
A year ago, she would have burst into tears at my harsh tone. Six months ago, she would have flinched and apologized immediately. Tonight, she doesn’t do either. She steps closer and pokes me in the chest. “I am not a child.”
“You keep saying that, and then you act like a foolish teenager.”
She pokes me again. “No, fuck that. I will suffer the overprotectiveness from my family and Hades. Not from you. You took me to Minos’s party. You trusted me to hold my own there.”
Yeah, I did, and I regret the fuck out of it. I thought it was a safe enough adventure for her to experience, to tag along on my fact-finding mission. Her delight at accepting the invitation was worth the ass reaming I got from Hades and Persephone over it. Or so I thought.
Then people ended up in the hospital, and Hephaestus ended up dead.
“I regret that.”
Her shoulders fall a half inch and then hike back up. “No. You don’t get to do that. You are the only person who’s looked at me and seen someone beyond a victim in waiting. You don’t get to take that back. It’s cruel.”
She’s right, but that doesn’t change the fact that she’s trying to distract me. I hate that it’s working. The last thing I want is to hurt this woman. I’ve been twisting myself up in knots to ensure I don’t make her uncomfortable. So, yeah, I might regret the danger she was in at the house party, but I don’t regret how she came alive there in a way I’d never seen.
None of that matters in this moment though. Not when she’s being reckless and trying to cover it up. “Where were you?”
“Where wereyou?” She’s still in my space, her spiced perfume taunting me as much as the warmth coming off her body. “I texted you earlier and you didn’t answer.”
Guilt flares, threatening to hijack my anger. Going behind her back to talk to her ex without her explicitly asking me to was a shitty move, even if I did it with the best of intentions. Mostly. There may have been part of me that wanted to get a look at the man, to search for a hint of what it is about him that holds Eurydice captive, even a year and a fucked-up betrayal later.
He’s attractive enough, even more attractive than his brother Apollo. Their father is Swedish and their mother is Korean, and while they both have her coloring, Orpheus favors her more clearly than Apollo. He’s almost pretty, but the year of suffering has sharpened that beauty into something else entirely. His black hair was always longish, but now it reaches his shoulders in a careless fall of silk. The biggest change is in his dark eyes. He still has enoughcharisma that I was caught off guard, but the loss there called to something I refuse to look too deeply at.
I know what he lost.
I refuse to make the same mistakes he did.
“I had some things to take care of.”
She searches my face for a long moment. “Uh-huh. Well, I also had some things to take care of.”
“Eurydice,” I bite out.
“Charon.” She mimics my tone. “You don’t get to keep secrets and then expect me to spill all mine.”
My hands move on instinct, catching her hips. She’s wearing a coat, but it’s too thin; I can feel her body clearly beneath the fabric. “It’s not the same.”
“Okay.” She flattens her hand against my chest. We’ve fallen into a bit of a comfortable friendship over time, but there’s a new intention in the way we touch each other after last night. I know I should hold off, should put some distance between us, but with the Cypress Bridge looming over us, I can’t quite make myself release her.
“You’re right. I don’t regret taking you to Minos’s party. Because you held up your end of the promise and listened to me when I gave you an order. You knew it was dangerous, and you trusted me to protect you—just like I trusted you to not do anything reckless that would get you hurt.” I lean down a little without fully meaning to. “Whatever you did tonight? It was reckless. I ought to put you over my knee and paddle your ass.”
She smirks, and it’s a bolt of sheer lust to my system. Eurydice doesn’t fear me in the least, and I want to inhale her fledglingbrattiness straight into my lungs. She shifts her hand, pricking my chest with her long nails. “You’re all bark and no bite.”
I don’t mean to draw her closer, to back us toward the large pillar at the entrance of this side of the bridge. There’s not much light to begin with, but here in its shadow, everything feels softer. Dreamlike. “I am trying to give you what you need.”
“What about whatyouneed?”
