Page 67 of Muzzled

Her soft smile hardened, her blue eyes scanning him over as she straightened and placed her hands on her hips. “Well?”

“The Eidolon you sent topside,” Ryan opened, his mental clock ticking louder as the minutes passed. “I—”

“What about it?”

All eyes locked on her, Dio sidling up to Bo’s side as he slyly showed his gloved hands to his favorite pet.

Hades sat up in his throne. “You sent an Eidolon topside,” he reiterated, the disbelief in his voice reflecting the expressions on Alex’s and Bo’s faces. “Untethered and unbound?”

Dio crossed his arms. “This is a big deal, Seph. The Parthenon has rules about sending Eidolons topside. Or using them at all, really. They’re dangerous, unpredictable, and can cause a lot of issues if they go rogue since they can mimic anyone, gods and goddesses included.”

She sighed in exasperation, lifted her skirts, then flitted to her husband’s side and sat on her own ornately carved throne. “I’m not a fool,” she stated, placing her hand on his. “I bound it to me. It heeded my call.” With a withering look at Ryan, she wrinkled her nose in distaste. “Better than the mutt, I dare say.”

Before Ryan could respond, Hades rose to his feet and towered over her. “To what end?”

Oblivious to the rising anger in the room, she tilted her chin defiantly. “Protection of our assets, of course. Someone needed to keep an eye on things, make sure his loyalties never wavered.”

Ryan was on his feet before he could stop himself. “Protection?” he roared, his voice echoing along the stone walls. “Protection against what, Seph? What kind of threat does Micah pose? Because it’s doing everything in its power to break her.”

“Micah?” She feigned contemplation. “Would that be the girl who wears too much makeup? The one with that unnatural red dye in her hair?”

Alex’s hands shot to his shoulders and held him back, kept him grounded against the swirling rage filling his head. “You know damn well who she is,” he hissed, shaking out of Alex’s hold once he felt he had reined in the worst of his impulses. “The shade has taken up residence in her mind. I…why, Seph? She doesn’t deserve it. Any of it.”

Crossing her legs, she sat back. “Collateral damage isn’t always avoidable.”

Hades stepped between them and held a hand toward Ryan to still his advance. “Persephone.”

Meeting the disapproving glares staring at her from across the room, she switched tactics, her blue eyes widening while her bottom lip pushed out in a pout. “I know I should have asked first,” she said, cocking her head and sitting up straighter. “I pulled the shade from the realm shortly after he arrived. I figured it would be best to have one that was still familiar with the topside world instead of an old soul that would be unable to navigate against the speed of life up there.” Twisting her skirt in her fingers, she looked down. “I bound it to me and gave it the Eidolon powers so I could see how our boys were doing in the seer’s bowl.” Her lip pushed out a little more. “I was just worried about our boys.”

“Call it back,” Ryan growled, struggling to remain calm against the fury pressing on his chest and the ticking clock in his head. “Now.”

She shrunk into herself a fraction. “I can’t. It’s grown too strong.”

Hades slammed his hands off the arms of her throne and stormed away from her, pacing the room until Dio grabbed his arm. “Hades. The boys need to get back. The woman has been left defenseless against it until their return. And we both know human minds cannot withstand that level of interference without damage. Lasting damage. The innocent doesn’t deserve it.”

Their master froze on the spot and the room stilled.

“Go,” he finally said quietly. “I’ll find you later.”

*

Mike swiped herbank card, ignoring Logan’s protests as she paid. “Load them into the carts carefully. No stacking the paints on the canvases or you’ll stretch them into uselessness.”

Accepting the receipt, she shoved it into a bag and passed it to him, then followed him to the sidewalk to wait for their taxi.

“I’m not ready.”

She elbowed him in the ribs, grinning when his cart jostled, and he sprawled across it to catch a package of brushes that had shaken loose. “You’re more than ready,” she replied, glancing around the roofs of the box stores and relaxing when the shade was nowhere in sight. “It’s either you, or I shut the site down, cancel the bookings in Vancouver and Seattle, and try to sell eighteen hundred dollars in supplies for fifty bucks online.”

His brows knotted as he examined the stack of pastels in her cart. “You gonna tell me what the hell is going on?”

“I already told you.” She smiled, dropping her head to his shoulder. “I need to take a break. Maybe hit up a new continent and learn a few new mediums.”

“With Ryan?”

She shook her head and straightened up, tracking the approaching cab. “He’s heading home soon.”

They loaded the trunk of the car silently and climbed into the back.

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