Page 110 of For the Love of the Gods

“For fuck’s sake!” he cursed. Then he dropped his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. He turned his head to look at me, then shook it. “I need a second.”

“Dominic,” I said, reaching for him. This didn’t feel okay. We didn’t feel okay. We’d had fights more explosive than this, deadlier, but never one that threw me off kilter like this.

“I need a second, Rose,” Dominic repeated, backing away from me. I wondered if he felt this punch in the gut when I’d done it to him. “I’m fucking pissed and this conversation isn't helping.”

I couldn’t argue with that. At least not right now. “We are not done talking about this.”

“Oh, trust me,” Dominic said through a bitter, disbelieving laugh. “I know I can’t escape you.”

I watched him walk out the door, his heavy steps echoing through the hallway and up the stairs, leaving Marcus and I sitting in tense silence.

“He’s gonna go after Lucan, isn’t he?” I asked Marcus.

“I suspect so,” Marcus said. He looked at me, taking in my hunched posture and worried eyes.

Marcus scrunched his nose a little and I knew he was about to say something uncharacteristically emotional. He always did that when he had to stick his nose into other people’s personal lives.

“You know,” he began slowly. “Raiden once told me that Dominic only ever gets truly angry over one thing: when the people he loves get hurt.”

I smiled sadly at Marcus to thank him for saying it. Even though I wasn’t sure it was true. Was terrified of letting myself hope that it could be.

“I don’t believe Lucan and Odell are totally separate,” I said, changing the subject.

“Not for a second,” Marcus agreed.

I grumbled, knowing what I had to do next. The family of the Orpheus kid might not be behind us yet. “I’m gonna have to look into that family, aren’t I?”

“Grandfather is a priest at your Temple in Corinth,” Marcus said.

“How convenient for me,” I said, rising from my chair. “I’ll pay him a visit. But first, I need to piss some people off.”

With that sorted, maybe, maybe I would finally feel like things were improving. Be able to write off the market and dress as isolated incidents. Quell my fear of something organized.

†

“Long time no see,” Clotho said from her floating throne when I walked through the flimsy little gate at the entrance of their lair.

“Apologies, Clotho,” I said, mentally steeling my nerves. “You know how much I love our visits.”

Lachesis’s withered voice piped up next. “Does that mean we are to see you regularly again?”

“No,” I said, then took a deep breath. It was time. This had gone on for too long. “You’re never going to say yes, are you?”

“No,” Atropos said, not even needing to clarify what I was asking. Reincarnation was not the type of evil they messed with, even if it meant returning a good, kind, amazing soul to the world of the living.

Pine should have been the first one they’d consider, so much more worthy of the throne than I was. But I was finally starting to realize that this had been a patchwork attempt at dealing with my grief and my guilt.

“Then I’m done,” I said, nodding my head to reassure myself. “This whole thing has only hurt me. I used to tell myself that Pine would see how hard I was working for him, but now I just think I’ve been making him angry all these years.”

My words pinged against the stone walls of the dome, rattling through my bones and deep into my gut. Forcing me to listen to what I was saying and believe it.

“And someone recently informed me that I need to get over my fear of pissing people off. So, I don’t care how mad you are to lose me. I’m done.”

There. There it was. Done.

I felt lighter but guilt clawed at the perimeter of my mind, begging me to let it in and convince myself that this was selfish and wrong.

I slammed the door shut on it.

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