Page 36 of Invoking Ruin

“What does it do?” I ask.

“It inspires lust.” She’s already lost interest in me, scanning the hillside, probably to determine where to drop off her very literal aphrodisiac belt.

Inspires lust. What a vague turn of phrase, to conjure so many explicit images. She’s been carrying it around in her trunk all this time?

“You’ve just had that lying around?,” I ask, getting her attention back on me. “Were you planning on using it?”

One of her eyebrows shoots up. “I didn’t have a specific plan for it, if that’s what you’re asking.” She shrugs. “I tried to keep the things I thought were useful close by.”

I wasn’t asking if she had a plan for it, but then, I’m not sure what I’m asking her. I should have done a more thorough job interrogating her last night, instead of getting myself off on her slick, fevered skin. “But now you’re going to just drop it here?”

“Now, it’s more useful to me to leave it than to have it.” She winds the silk around her fingers, coming dangerously close to touching whatever’s inside. Based on the sounds of clinks and coils, I suspect some sort of chain.

“What happens after you leave it here?” I ask.

If my questions had her fidgeting before, it’s nothing to now. She huffs out a breath and shuffles her feet, as though readying to dash away at a second’s notice.

“We run. Aphrodite might be… a bit peeved with me if I'm still here when she comes to collect it.”

An attempt at understatement if ever I heard it. Vita is an accomplished liar, but I’m learning to read her, now that I know I need to keep my senses sharp.

“And why is that?”

“Something about kidnapping her precious son and making him into my personal lackey.” She rambles, her eyes once again on the hill.

My cheeks burn hot, blood rushing beneath them as my heart beats a fierce rhythm in my ears. Kidnapping. She can’t possibly mean…

Vita must realize her mistake, because she turns back to me, her hands raising as though to soothe me, but I move out of reach.

“Which precious son, Vita?”

“I don’t mean you—”

“She means me, uncle.”

I whirl around as a raven flashes in a shower of feathers and re-forms itself into the shape of a god. Tall, with a shock of dark hair that falls over his eyes, the right one blue, the left pure black, Both level on Vita with uncanny focus.

“Deimos.” Vita edges away from him as my stomach tightens, weighing me down with the certainty we are in danger.

What was Deimos the god of? The name is familiar, a moon of Mars, but the specifics aren’t quite there.

“Are you not happy to see me?” Deimos spreads his arms in a gesture of welcome. “I’ve been so eager to run into you again. Things ended so abruptly the last time we saw each other.” These two have history. A very unpleasant history. But it’s not the history that’s blaring like sirens in my head.

“What do you want, Deimos?” Vita snaps, “I’m busy.”

“I can see that. Returning trinkets.” He arches an eyebrow at the wrapped bundle in her hands. “How very altruistic of you. Trying to make amends? You have to know it’s too late for that.”

“Uncle?” I stare at the both of them, feeling like I’m back in the chariot with a head wound. The world spins, and it’s all I can do to not bend over and retch again. It feel like someone is trying to pry me apart, but try as they might, they can’t get the lid off my skull.

Deimos chuckles. “You haven’t told him who he is yet?”

“I haven’t, and you’ll be wise and not tell him—”

She’s cut off by Deimos, whose hand flashes out nearly too fast to see, wrapping around her throat and choking off her words.

The girdle drops to the ground as she tries pull him off her.

“Careful, Ruin. I’m not about to let you get your hooks back into me so easily,” he says in a low, quiet threat.

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