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“Butterfly…” he whispers, curving his claw onto my chest. His expression is unreadable, but he removes his other hand from my throat. And sets me on the ground, narrowing his eyes upon my chest and flexing his hand in preparation.
Taking a deep breath, I close my eyes and tip my head back against the stone, waiting, surrendering, and welcoming my death.
It doesn’t come.
I scrunch my brows. I open my eyes to find Eros gone. Nothing but that thick mist surrounding the ruins.
All night, I search until my bare feet bleed from the frost-etched ground and my skin grows numb and blue, but I cannot find my way back to Purgatory.
Trapped again. Between a rock and a hard place. So, I stay. Waiting for him to come back.
EROS
By the gods, this is impossible!
The explosive tension inside me threatens to unleash. I could destroy the very Gates of Purgatory with this power. Later, maybe. First, I need a bloody drink. A damn strong one.
Once I open the doorway to my room,herscent hits me like a host of dead roses, but it’s not the fragrance that has me stopping in my tracks.
“Cres?” I whisper, gazing at my partner, my confidant, my greatest friend and ally standing in the center of the room.Emotion slams against my chest. His stone is still cracked, and he doesn’t play a single tune.
“Hades brought me back. Not permanent. But he told me everything, Eros. So, I have only one question.” He brandishes his eyes like dark swords. “Where the hell is she?”
I rub my eyes before scraping a hand down my face. “I took her back until I can sort all this out. Hades said it’s only an adhesive, but it will buy me some time.”
I stray toward the corner table, pluck the decanter of wine from the previous night, and tip it back.
A stony hand knocks it from my grip before a drop can make it into my mouth. The decanter shatters on the hardwood. Red-hot anger flares inside me, but I turn to meet my partner, stopping.
Fuck. Fury, rage, wrath—they are all too weak to describe his temperament. It’s unholy, simmering, and blind. Blind as bloody Cupid himself. More cracks and fissures form in his stone skin like veins, like a gods-damned root system.
I narrow my eyes and open my mouth, only for him to bellow, “You’re a clown.”
I lift a brow, aghast at the trite phrase.
He opens his mouth in a snarl, pushing fury through his nostrils. “You’re a bullheaded buffoon. An emotional imbecile. The halfwit of heartache. And the fool of fondness.”
My horns harden, and I screw my brows low. “Are you finished?”
“No.” He balls his stony hands into fists. “I know what’s in your lovebird’s lamebrain, Eros. You know you can’t keep them both. You’re in denial as love always is. And I’d be a heartless and loveless fool of a jester if I didn’t tell you what choice you should make when it’s the most fucking obvious.”
“Well, then, my full-hearted and ever-loving jester,”—I drawl with a mock bow—“do share your infinite wisdom upon the Godof Love who held the Scepter of the Universe before all other gods.”
He narrows his eyes upon mine. “Burn Psyche’s body. And bring Aradia back.”
“The fuck, Cres?”
The punch comes, bewildering me, upending me with my back crushing the shattered decanter. Shaking out my head and whirling vision because Cres does pack a wicked wallop, I don’t get the chance to rise before he’s straddling me.
“Maybe that will get it through your stony thick skull!” he shouts.
Oh, hell no.
We become a mass of thrashing limbs, stone against stone, horns locking horns. It’s not until we’ve damaged every item and piece of furniture that Cres finally locks me in a chokehold, the devil jester.
“Now you listen and you listen good.” He tightens his grip, not caring about the pain I give him when I grind my full weight against him. “I don’t care how long Psyche was your wife or how long you’ve had the candle lit while waiting for her to come back.
“Psyche loved you. I won’t deny that, Eros,” he says. “She fuckingworshipedyou. Because you saved her.
