Page 80 of The Blood of Gods and Monsters

“Go.” Theos gestures for the door. “Go check on your friend.”

With a frown, I take a step toward a chair and lift a tunic that’s too big for me before pulling it on over my head. “Theos, I?—”

He stops me with a snarl. “I don’t want to hear it,” he snaps. “You want to be a fucking coward, then do so with someone else, Kiera. I am not the man for you to use and discard as you please.”

“That’s not what?—”

Lightning crackles along his arms, glowing golden in the dim light of dawn pouring in through the window. “Go.”

I swallow roughly, an apology poised on my lips, but I know with a single look it won’t be accepted. So, instead of offering any more justification for my decision, I just do as he asks.

I turn away from the kindest of the Darkhaven brothers and I leave, each step creating a staggering fissure of pain through the shattered part of my soul that I thought died long ago—before I ever met any of them.

Chapter 34

Kalix

Light rain collects and slides in long rivulets over the external side of the glass that makes up the window overlooking the ocean in the near distance out of the North Tower. I stand by it, watching one drop slip away from the others to disappear between the crevices of the stone alongside it.

Vexing.

The low continuous hum of voices echo behind me as people hover over the man still sprawled, unconscious, on one of the lounges in our main room. I turn ever so slightly and peer back, a scowl overtaking my face.

Why did I allow this again?

Almost as soon as the question slips through my mind—along with images of slaughtering both the unconscious, nearly dead man and the red-haired annoyance still working him over with the low thrum of her pathetic excuse for a Divine power—the answer walks out of the bedroom belonging to my brother, Theos.

A room once devoid of anything worthy of being in it becomes a museum of all the things she enjoys and desires. The darker emotions of anger, frustration, and boredom amongst others that have been a battering ram against the closed doors of the inside of my head die down.

It isn’t until she completely ignores my presence in favor of going to the lounge where that man lies that it returns in full force.

“How is he?” Kiera asks.

My eyes narrow on the sallow face of the human that Ruen had pulled from the gloom the night before and brought back on behalf of her. I quickly calculate the chances of killing him so that she may turn her attention back to me. Ultimately, though, it’s the way she places the back of her hand on his forehead, as if looking for a change in the human’s temperature that reminds me that she cares for him. To kill him would upset her.

It’s odd. I’ve never cared before about upsetting anyone other than Theos and Ruen, but my brothers are of my blood. They are part of me. In essence, they are me. To upset them would be to upset myself.

She is different.

She is separate.

She is mine.

“He’s breathing more evenly,” Maeryn murmurs, her tone full of exhaustion. Though she’d slept sometime in the night, she’d been back at checking over her charge by the time I’d woken at dawn. “But he’s still yet to wake.”

“Do you know how long that will take?” Kiera asks, her hand leaving the man’s face as she turns towards Maeryn. Her brows are creased with what I recognize as worry. There are the slightest tracks, too, that rain down from her eyes. She’s scrubbed them away, of course, but I see them—the evidence in the streaks of silver lining her face barely perceptible to most.

A door creaks open and Ruen appears in the doorframe of his bedroom, hair tousled uncharacteristically as he enters the main room.

Sssssssss. I bat away the serpent’s thought that threatens to intrude in a silent request.

“How is he?” Ruen’s question has me turning away from the room once more to stare out the window.

Everything is once again … vexing.

Ssssssss. That request returns. A growl threatens to spill from my throat as my lips curl back in agitation.

What? I snap, demanding an answer from the creature that should know by now when I wish to be interrupted and when I do not.

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