Page 8 of Until the End of Ever
We’d only walked a little way when Silver said, “Wait.”
I spun to her, still hypervigilant, but to my relief, I could sense no threat. It was just the five of us in this eerie cave.
Between Kleos and Gideon, Silver was staring at the cave floor. At first, I didn’t notice what she was looking at, and given the quizzical expression on both of her friends’ faces, I wasn’t the only one.
She took five steps, and I felt all of us tense, until she bent, reaching toward the ground, where I still saw nothing at all.
The moment her hand came into contact with the cave floor, it was obvious what she’d been looking at. Light shone across the smooth, delicately engraved metallic bow, silver and gold.
3
LUCIAN
“Don’t touch it!” Kleos hissed, trying to get to her friend.
Silver was already back up on her feet, the bow between her hands, admiring the shiny weapon.
How had she even seen it? Moments ago, it just wasn’tthere. I wouldn’t have missed such a beautiful, distinctive weapon, filled with so much power it felt like a vestige of the god who it belonged to.
“Oh, Silver!” Gideon chuckled, shaking his head indulgently. “Act first, think maybe three days later, huh?”
“You’re one to talk,” Kleos retorted. “The two of you are the bloody same. Why do you always have to touch the thing? It could have, like, disintegrated you!”
It occurred to me then that Kleos was cursed withtwoRonans. I was lucky to just deal with one. Though I also had a Lucky, which was potentially just as dangerous.
“I didn’t even see it,” I told her.
“I don’t know. It felt like it was there for me.” She frowned, tilting her head, as though to make sense of her own words. “Almost like it was…whispering my name. Except, not my name, as much as calling to me.”
My neck knotted as I added yet another item to the long, long list of things I needed to research, record, and analyze after this.
Poseidon’s soggy sock, I was going to have to start journaling, wasn’t I?
I recoiled from the idea, but living through this and not leaving a written account of it went against everything I believed in. I wouldn’t have had any book to amass my knowledge if people living in times like these hadn’t bothered to write it down.
“Well, we certainly can’t leave it behind. If it called to you, it’s safe to assume it’s yours,” I told Silver, before turning to Gideon, fixing him with my most severe stare. “No one elsetouches it. I’m not certain it’d be safe.”
“Fine,” he grunted, with a tone that told me he’d intended to ask to touch it immediately. “Now can I have a snack, Daddy?”
“Daddy,” Kleos echoed with a snort.
I couldn’t help it. I looked at her, when I knew she was staring right at me.
Fuck.
Perhaps it was because I’d done my best to avoid studying her too closely all day, but I was struck anew by everything I shouldn’t have noticed.
The shape of her mouth, with a slightly plumper upper lip, and the waves of her wild, fiery curls. The random braids running through it. My runes, red on her skin, pulsing with my magic.
She let me do that. Carve her. Touch her. Pump my cock inside her.
Had she always been this beautiful? No, that wasn’t possible. I would never have been capable of doing anything but look at her.
“He brought sandwiches and water,” Silver said. “And I bet there’s probably Band-Aids in that bag of his. If anything, he’s Mummy.” She winked at Kleos. “You can be Daddy.”
I straightened up. “I beg your pardon. I do not haveBand-Aids.”
“Healing potions and elixirs, instead?” Kleos guessed.
