Page 118 of Crown of Olympus
I gripped the leather chest plate he still wore, tugging him closer, and kissed him softly, trying to convey every ounce of gratitude I felt for him.
Perhaps it should have scared me — the way I clung to him, the way he made my soul feel like it was aflame — but I was lost to the moment. Lost in the way my frozen heart cracked, then subsequently shattered its cold encasing.
Caelus pulled back, breathing roughly.
“That’s as far as we can go tonight, Nightshade.” He grinned at my pout. “I’ll just have to wait to find out what you taste like when you’re not swaying on your feet, still bleeding.”
His voice was the striker, and my body, his tinder. One suggestive phrase, and I was putty in his arms all over again.
Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he would actually be the death of me. My ovaries certainly thought they were dying right now.
He pressed one last gentle kiss to my forehead, and my heart tugged traitorously, not an ounce of ice to be found on the organ I wasn’t sure belonged to me anymore.
If I was truly honest, I knew it had stopped being mine a long time ago; had started beating for the god in front of me a long time ago.
It just took almost dying to realise I had a lot to live for.
CHAPTER 35
Caelus
When I strodeinto my bedchamber an hour later, after tucking Nyssa safely into bed, I was met with the view of my mother’s back, framed against the ocean from her vantage point on my balcony.
“Do you understand, my son, exactly how it looks for you to be carrying Hades’ daughter around like that?” she said quietly.
Quiet was bad. Quiet meant she was furious. And furious meant she’d wait for me to step into my own noose before she hanged me with it.
“I merely carried an injured warrior off the battlefield, Mother.”
I met her gaze unflinchingly. She arched a brow in return.
“Did you now?” she hummed. “And tell me, dear son— do you think Olympus saw it that way?”
She prowled closer, pinching the shoulder of my ruined shirt and wrinkling her nose at the bloodstains. Nyssa’s bloodstains.
“Do you think the gods and lessers in those stands looked at you and thought ‘Oh, what a noble hero he is?’ Of course not,”she scoffed. “You carried her not just out of the arena, butto the Underworld, Caelus!”
I clenched my jaw, saying nothing.
“You chose to help the goddess of death, who has no right to compete in these trials. And she is steadily dislodging the crown from your own stupid head, boy.”
“She was dying,” I ground out.
“She was dying,” Hera mocked. “If it had been anyone else, it might have been a show of mercy. But because it washer, all they saw wasyourweakness.”
“And if I’d done it your way? You’d have me leave her out there to drown in her own blood? Maybe get stomped on by the roaring crowd, or drown in Poseidon’s rage?” I clenched my jaw, determined not to let her sharp eyes see the effect she had on me.
“You act as though your hands were tied,” she said, voice tightening. “You had a choice, Caelus. And you made the wrong one — just as your father did,” she seethed. “And where is he now?”
My fingers twitched at my sides, itching to become fists. The storm within me sizzled its way to the surface. The air began to smell like petrichor, and I was about to give myself away.
Do not let her see, Lykos growled.Rein it in, Godling!
How had the best kiss of my life led to this?
“You are still so young, my darling,” my mother said, her voice saccharine sweet. “So allow me to share one of Olympus’ many secrets: they do not care for your noble ideologies. They only care where your loyalties truly lie, and whose bed you lay in at night.” She pinned me with her glare, nostrils flaring.
But I forced my power down and exhaled sharply through my nose.
