Page 52 of The Blood of Gods and Monsters

I don’t speak. I simply wait and turn, watching him as he passes around the chair and moves toward the wet bar on the other side of the room. He pulls a glass down from a shelf of them, uncaps a decanter, and pours himself a hefty amount. Azai looks down at the glass and then pulls down a second, filling that as well.

It’s barely late morning and yet, already he’s drinking. I narrow my attention on his face, noting the fresh lines bracketing his eyes and lips. He looks older since I last saw him. That’s odd. He’s never seemed anything but young. Now, though, he looks old enough to actually have fathered children of my age. I take note and secret the information away in the back of my mind—it’s surely something I’ll have to ask Caedmon about. He said that the Gods aged, but it seems odd that it would happen in the span of a few years when they live centuries.

“Come.” Azai flicks his fingers at me. “Drink with me, Son.”

With gritted teeth, I take slow measured steps towards him. When he hands me the second glass full of amber liquid, I don’t wait for him to taste it first. I put it to my lips and down it all in one gulp.

Azai pauses, his own glass halfway to his lips.

I slam the glass down. “Thank you,” I bite out the words. “It was most pleasing.”

A smirk passes his lips and he snorts as he takes a sip from his glass. “I doubt you’d know,” he comments. “You drank it so fast, I doubt the rum even touched your tongue.”

He would be correct. I’d assumed the alcohol was brandy, not rum. I hadn’t even tasted the stuff, but I would have known that if I had. I offer him a smile full of teeth, wishing that I had Kalix’s ability to produce fangs.

“It’s not the type that gives the liquor good taste,” I say, “but the company we keep.” And no matter if it were a vintage or not, I’d say that whatever this man gives me will end up as little more than shit on my tongue.

“I see you’ve learned to hold your tongue appropriately,” Azai says, his words half amused and sardonic as he sips lightly at his glass. “But I didn’t bring you here to discuss liquor. Tell me, I hear that your Terra was found to be a Mortal God. What do you know of her?”

A dangerous emotion blooms inside of my chest, spreading a darkness I didn’t even know I possessed outward until it creeps through each of my limbs. My body reacts as though it’s been atrophied. This meeting is about Kiera?

Now, I really wish I still held my glass in my hand. It would at least give me something else to focus on instead of the awareness of how close Azai is to me and how easy it would be to plant my fist in his face.

Do not let your anger control you, my son, for anger will make you weak to poor choices.

I close my eyes as the soft, almost lyrical sound of a memory penetrates the rage pouring through me. The voice is tired, but loving. Feminine.

Your anger changes no one but yourself. You may use it as fuel, but do not let it consume you or you will cease to be everything that you are—the child of my heart.

My skin becomes impossibly tight, stretched over muscle and bone that wishes nothing more than to shatter into a million pieces. When I reopen my eyes, I feel as if years have passed. My whole body is sore with the effort it took to hold myself back and it has aged me—inside, if not externally.

“You wish to know more about the new Mortal God?” I say, lifting my tone at the end to form the question. “Why?”

Azai continues to sip at his drink. Sometimes, I wonder if he’s able to see into my head and know just how many times I have held myself back from attacking him. The last time I’d been a mere child of ten. It was inevitable that I would lose and pay a price for insulting a God, no matter that he was my sire. Things have changed since then. I am older now, wiser.

My anger has not abated though. No, it has festered and grown in the years since he killed my mother and gave me the scar over my eye. As my mother always warned me not to use my anger too quickly, I’ve taken her lessons to heart. She might have meant for me to let it go entirely, but that’s not who I am.

I am a man who feeds on his anger like a dying wolf. I am a man who will show this one—this God—that he made a mistake in letting me live all those years ago. Perhaps not today, and not even tomorrow, but somehow, someway, I will be his death and I will relish in it.

“The girl is staying in the North Tower, is she not?” Azai replies, arching a brow. “Surely you see her around. She was your Terra. What was she like then?”

See her around? I almost want to laugh. Of course Azai wouldn’t even know the details of his sons’ lives. He doesn’t even know that we’re the only First Tiers to inhabit the North Tower—other than Kiera now. He must think she stays within the Tower in different quarters. I have no interest in changing his thinking. The less he knows of us the better—even if this information is something he could easily find out for himself considering how many Terra and other Mortal Gods are aware of our living situation. It says more about him than it does me that he still is blind to the facts.

Pathetic.

He might be the God of Strength, but intelligence will always conquer pure brawn. I’m thankful to my mother for giving me that much even if this bastard’s genetics have given me more of my features.

I choose my words carefully as I reply. “She does live in the North Tower,” I tell him, “and yes, she was our Terra.”

Azai nods. “And?” He gestures for me to continue. “What else?”

I tilt my head to the side and eye him warily. “What else do you wish to know?”

He scowls. His golden eyes—eyes nearly the same shade as Theos’—flash with irritation. He slams his glass down on the wet bar and the delicate material shatters upon impact. I don’t even flinch as the glass fragments ricochet in several different directions—the wood beneath where Azai had landed splintering with a loud crack!

This right here is why my mother warned me against using my anger without thought.

I meet my father’s gaze with barely a glance at the now broken bar and the glass that litters the floor at our feet.

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