Page 7 of Dark Restraint

Icarus manages to hold his ground for a single heartbeat, and then he turns and rushes from the study. If history is anything to go by, he’ll hide in his room and lick his wounds. The man is not a threat, and he never has been. If he was, Minos wouldn’t have gone searching for two violent, vicious orphans to serve his purposes. Not that it’s worked out well with Theseus. But then Theseus was always fickle. All it took was Theseus’s new wife applying pressure to his beloved Pandora for him to crumble.

My only weakness is trying to run from me and marry another man.

As if sensing my thoughts, Minos turns to me once more. “Don’t get any funny ideas, Minotaur. My daughter is a traitor, and if you fail to fulfill my orders, I have half a dozen people more than capable of taking care of her.”

I could kill him right now. He’s not as strong as he thinks he is, or as capable. He taught me and Theseus everything he knows, but he’d be a fool to think that my education ended there. I’ve always known that when push came to shove, he would stand in the way of my taking what I want. Who I want.

It would be simple enough to remove Ariadne from her new fiancé and dodge Minos’s people. None of them are as good as I am. The problem is that we’re currently trapped in a city filled with enemies. Without safe harbor, it’s a numbers game. Eventually they’d catch us.

But once the barrier protecting Olympus falls?

That’s a different game entirely. I can bide my time until then. I’ve always been a patient hunter. But I’m not about to let Ariadne think she escaped me. I’ll let her new fiancé play the part of keeping her safe from Minos, but that doesn’t mean she’s safe from me.

I let the silence stretch out until a tic starts next to Minos’s right eye. Only then do I respond. “I understand.”

“Get out of my fucking sight.”

I go. As I walk down the hall, I catch sight of Icarus frantically shoving clothing into a backpack. He freezes when he sees me, his dark eyes defiant. Both he and his sister share their father’s coloring, medium-brown skin paired with dark eyes and dark hair. But where she is soft in every way, he’s all sharp edges. He’s looking particularly brittle right now.

Icarus raises his chin. “Don’t try to stop me from leaving.”

He won’t stay gone. He’s surrounded by enemies with no resources of his own. He might as well walk around the block, because he’ll be back here by nightfall. I continue down the hall to the room I keep here. It’s not my only residence in Olympus, but Minos is easier to deal with when he thinks he has perfect control of a situation.

It’s quick work to change into nondescript dark clothing and arm myself with several guns and knives. Tonight, once I get a better read on the situation, I’ll let Ariadne know she hasn’t escaped me. In the meantime, it doesn’t hurt to continue to dance to Minos’s tune. It’s time to track down Aeacus and see what he has to say.

I need the barrier to come down, after all.

5

Ariadne

Like so many others among the Thirteen, Dionysus keeps a residence in the city proper. Unlike the others, his apartment is at approximately an equal distance between the warehouse district and the center of the upper city. He leads me inside, rattling off the security code as if he’s truly unconcerned I might use it against him. I normally don’t have a problem getting a read on people, but he’s always avoided me before. I honestly can’t tell if his carefree personality is a mask or simply him.

He wanders into the kitchen and pulls down a very expensive bottle of vodka. “Drink?”

I normally don’t drink. My father disapproves, and even if he didn’t, I can’t afford the loss of control that comes with being drunk. But there’s no one here except my new fiancé, and I’ve already spilled most of my secrets. At least the ones that Dionysius might be concerned with.

I move closer, watching as he pours clear liquid carelessly into two tumblers, spilling alcohol onto the counter in the process. “Does drinking really make you forget all your problems?”

“Sometimes.” He shrugs. “Sometimes it just makes them all seem so much worse. It’s a gamble.” He nudges one of the glasses toward me. “But you’ve had a rough go of things, especially recently, and I’m a master of escape. If the alcohol doesn’t do it, I have plenty of other party favors up my sleeve.”

It’s entirely possible that he’s getting me drunk to take advantage of me. That the contract we signed was all bullshit designed to put me at ease. But…I don’t think so. He seems just as miserable as I am, and that old saying about misery loving company is far too true. I reach out hesitantly and pick up the glass. I expect the alcohol to burn my throat the same way it has in the past when I let Icarus convince me to indulge, but it goes down so smooth that I actually startle. Warmth starts in my stomach and spreads outward. “Oh wow. This is actually good.”

“Only the best for Dionysus.” He hops onto the counter and drains his glass. “Look, we could dance around this and I could pretend to be mysterious and let you dangle in the wind, but I’m not interested in doing that.”

I still don’t trust this “honesty,” but I’m not about to cut him off and risk alienating him. He might have a contract that says we essentially live our lives separately once we’re married, but we’ll be in close quarters until then. “Okay.”

“So cautious.” He smirks. “Olympus is faltering. You and your family are to blame for that, but you wouldn’t have been able to destabilize us within a matter of months if we weren’t already teetering on the brink. I know Aphrodite wanted to tuck you away safely in the countryside, but Hera’s right—you’re more useful here, front and center, wedding planning for Olympus’s favorite bachelor.”

“Are you Olympus’s favorite bachelor?”

“Darling, you wound me.” He presses a hand dramatically to his chest, but the move is missing the flamboyant energy he normally possesses. “Apollo and Zeus being paired off has ensured the field is wide open. People adore me because I’m nonthreatening.”

I take another drink, the warmth spreading through my chest and chasing away the chill that’s hounded me since I saw the two lines on that pregnancy test, a chill that only got worse when I took the steps to end the pregnancy. At some point, I’m going to have to deal with the emotional fallout waiting in the wings, but I don’t have the luxury of a breakdown right now.

To distract myself, I study Dionysus. He’s attractive in an eccentric kind of way, though his purple suit looks like he slept in it, his bow tie is crooked, and there’s a crack in the right lens of his glasses. Not to mention his mustache is…drooping. “Are you okay?” I don’t mean to ask. The words just sort of pop out.

“Nope.” He pours more alcohol into his glass and toasts me with it. “Not even a little bit.”

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