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I touched his back, and his shoulders tensed. “Raiden,” I said tentatively. “Help me help you. I know you’re not a monster.”
“They were the Vordel family,” he said after a minute of painful silence. “They owned black magic clubs.”
I remembered that man talking about invite-only clubs. “What are they?”
“This family worshipped Freya.” His mouth twisted in disgust. “They were in her inner circle. She showed them how to stay young, to get more power, and gain more money through sacrifices using rituals taken from the underworld. Half the bodies you see were already here by the time I arrived. They were having their monthly blood party using people they’d kidnapped from the lower classes, people you wouldn’t miss if they went missing. They thought they could do what they wanted.”
“And the other half?”
He gritted his teeth. “I lost my temper.”
The house was almost falling apart. “If they were sacrificing people, then…” They deserved it, I wanted to say.
“I never wanted this.” He turned and slammed his fist into the same hole he’d made before, cursing loudly. “Freya’s hiding behind people. She knows I’m hunting her and then I found out you are, which was fucking stupid.” He picked a piece of stone from his knuckle. “She had her people watching your coven. She’s got hundreds of people protecting her. Powerful people. She’s got eyes everywhere. Fuck, if I didn’t kill Alexander when they came for you, she’d have killed you all in your beds.”
“Oh.”
“I chased her here. I wrecked your motor, hoping it would prevent you from coming after us, but it didn’t stop you. What are you doing out in the forest anyway? You saw what happened to my sister, and she was a goddess. Lucius will come back. Aziel is convinced he won’t return, that he can’t, but he’s capable. I know it. He’s going to keep coming back, and I can’t protect you from him.”
I lightly touched his arm; he didn’t flinch. “Raiden.” I ran my fingers down to his and pulled him closer. “I’m not going to abandon you. We can fight Lucius. Maddox and Naomi are here.”
“Two keepers and an apprentice aren’t going to help me take down two of the most powerful forces known to this world.”
“You’ll have more of a chance with us than without us.”
“I can handle Freya.”
“You just said she’s too well protected.”
He pulled his hand from mine. “Stop trying to help. You’ve already done enough.”
There it was: the real reason he was angry at me. “You blame me for Thalia.”
“No.” He looked down, shaking his head. “I blame myself. I told her to protect you, and because of me, she was weakened by the bite when helping you, and she couldn’t fight Lucius off when he came for her in the final blow.”
“I’m sorry.” A tear trickled out. I wiped it with the back of my sleeve. “I’m sorry she’s gone, but this is Lucius’s and Freya’s fault, not yours.”
He looked down. “I don’t regret it, Elle. Protecting you. Despite everything. If she didn’t, you’d be dead too.”
My lips parted. I didn’t know what to say. “Why did you?”
He hesitated, then turned, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, and wiped the blood from his hands. “We’re done here. If you have any sense at all, you’ll get out of here and go home.”
“No!” I shouted after him as he crossed the room. “Please don’t run from me.”
“Do yourself a favor and forget you met me. You’ll live longer.”
“I can’t.” I exhaled shakily. “I don’t want to.”
He paused mid-walk and turned to say something but instead turned back and fled the room.
Nothing shook the fragility of mortality like being surrounded by the dead. The absence of beating hearts and chatter in a room filled with people was too eerie. Altars of sacrifice, symbols like those found on Freya’s victims, were indeed stained upon many of the dead. Most had had their throats slit. The ones Raiden had killed were easily identifiable, mostly because there wasn’t much left of them.
He tore people apart as easily as I would paper. I shuddered as a shiver snaked down my spine, a reminder of the sheer damage he could cause in a moment of temper. At his fingertips, he had more power than I could wish for in a lifetime, and now he was gone, out there hunting vengeance. I was afraid of what would happen if he didn’t find it, but I was even more terrified to see what would happen when he did. Without Freya, without a focus, someone to hate, he would fall apart, and I had no idea how to help a broken god.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Birds tweeted as the sun rose over the forest, illuminating the golden-brown trunks that narrowed upward into a scrawl of branches. The slow sunrise, a warm glow of oranges and reds behind rolling clouds, reminded me of the mornings in Salvius before I thought much about witches and gods.
