Page 52 of Hades

Keras was thankful for that. The darkness was pushing harder now, stealing pieces of him and turning his thoughts towards violence. It would only take a small shove to tip him over the edge, and any one of the men in the room with him looking at his beautiful Enyo would be more like a wrecking ball striking him in the back to propel him over the edge and shatter his hold on the darkness at the same time.

“It was not them.” Enyo’s hand came to rest on his right shoulder and she gently massaged it, working some of the tension from his body.

“If not them, then who?” He swivelled his head to look at her and the cold weight of dread in his stomach became like lead as it hit him. He held back the curse that wanted to explode from him as he realised how blind he had been and instead growled, “Father.”

Chapter 15

Keras looked at his family, at their shocked expressions that swiftly filled with the same harrowing blend of rage and despair and worry that flooded him as he realised the truth of it.

Hades had taken his pills, and that could only mean one thing.

Their father intended to leave the Underworld.

It was the only reason he would take such measures. The pills would suppress his powers, might even successfully bring them down to a point where his being in the mortal realm wouldn’t cause mass destruction.

Something flickered across Ares’s face and he looked down at Keras’s wrists, his gaze searing them as amber sparks ignited in his dark irises. Keras looked there too, at the black braided bands that encircled his wrists, keeping his power in check. He hadn’t quite found the courage to remove his limiters, because he wasn’t sure he could handle the full force of his shadows and the darkness that was part of them if he did.

Ares looked at his own, bare, wrists.

And disappeared, leaving swirling ribbons of black smoke behind and startling Megan. Her gasp was like a knife, cutting through the tense silence to have everyone looking at her. She gasped again when Ares reappeared on a foul curse.

“Fuck,” Ares bit out, his expression stormy now. “He took my limiters.”

“That isn’t good,” Daimon put in and looked at each of them in turn as frost glittered on his black leather gloves and his eyes brightened, turning icy blue. “You aren’t all thinking… I mean… He wouldn’t be stupid enough—”

“He would,” Valen interjected and scrubbed a hand over his violet hair, clawing the long lengths back from his face, and then rubbed the shorter hair at the back of his head. A resigned sigh gusted from him. “Hell… if the enemy had taken Eva and I—I wouldn’t hesitate. Fuck the fate of the world. All that would matter was getting her back.”

He cast an apologetic look at everyone, his fair eyebrows furrowing as he clearly waited for them to call him on what he had said. Only no one jumped on him for once. Not even Keras. Before Valen had met Eva, Keras might have pointed out that it was just like Valen to leap well before looking and not give a damn about the fate of anyone other than himself.

Valen had grown up a hell of a lot since he had fallen for the black-and-blue-haired assassin, who now gazed at him with an adoring look in her sapphire eyes. Valen caught her looking at him and shrugged it off, his air growing awkward.

“Just saying, is all,” he mumbled.

Eva tiptoed and kissed him.

Keras averted his gaze, close to pointing something out after all. It wasn’t the time for kissing. It was the time for action. He focused on that instead, shutting out Valen and Eva.

“I already warned everyone in Tokyo to keep an eye on the gate,” Ares said, thankfully keeping the meeting on topic. “Dad won’t get through it without Esher, Marek and Calistos stopping him. They’ve rallied at the house. Esher called Marek and Calistos back from the field while I was there.”

Valen released Eva, setting her away from him, his expression deadly serious. “You think Dad is going to just see them ready to stop him and go ‘my bad, you’re right, I should totally get my arse back home and forget about saving your mother’ because I don’t. He’ll go straight through them.”

Keras stilled as a thought struck him.

Ares noticed it. “What?”

Keras shook his head and looked at him. “What if they don’t see him?”

“His fucking helmet,” Ares snarled, his eyes bright with fire, and clenched his fists, as if he was trying to stop himself from lashing out to release his pent-up anger.

Keras was close to doing the same. Only Enyo’s constant, soothing touch kept him grounded and focused on finding a way to stop their father before he could cause mayhem in the mortal world.

Keras stormed to the heavy door that protected Hades’s armoury, a room that only his father could teleport into, and couldn’t stop his shadows from tearing into it. He gritted his teeth, his entire body straining as his shadows snaked into the cracks around the thick panel and he willed them to rip it open for him. His shoulders and arms shook with the effort and darkness roared up on him, turning his fangs sharp and his nails into claws.

“Keras,” Enyo whispered as she came up beside him and he turned on her with a snarl he immediately regretted. Anger flashed across her beautiful face and then she exhaled, her features losing their sharp edge. “I only wanted to tell you not to overexert yourself.”

He knew that. He wanted to tell her that too, wanted to apologise, but his head was a riot of thoughts and fears that were spinning out of control, a new one appearing each second he wasn’t sure where his father was.

Rather than trying to get his words straight, he turned his cheek to her and focused on the door. His jaw clenched, his molars clamping together so fiercely his teeth creaked and he feared they would shatter as he commanded his shadows to open the door.

---