Page 92 of Blood

My heart batters against my rib cage like a charging ram.

You.

Your mates.

Monsters on the council.

He didn’t mention the Fomorians.

Is it possible that he doesn’t know about them yet? I don’t want to make any assumptions based on one throwaway sentence, yet hope thrums through my veins like a plucked guitar chord. We’ve been trying our hardest to keep the Fomorians’ return a secret from Zeus and his followers. If we proved to be successful...

“So, you want me to come alone?” I reiterate, my fingers continuing to tap, tap, tap against the table.

“Violet!” Vin hisses, his lips molding into a frown. All of my men look ready to protest, but I hold a hand up for them to remain silent. It says a lot about their trust in me that they comply without protest.

Don’t get me wrong—I adore it when they declare their love for me, but this, right here, is a true testament of their feelings. They trust me to do what I believe is best for not only us as a family but also for the world as a whole.

“Meet me at the front of my palace in exactly one hour in exchange for your parents. Arrive even a second late and you’ll be greeted with their bodies. Bring your mates, and I won’t hesitate to kill them all.” With that threat, Zeus hangs up.

Silence once again descends as we all try to wrap our heads around Zeus’s threat. And then—chaos.

“You can’t seriously be considering this.”

“Don’t be fucking dumb, Violet!”

“You can’t go alone!”

“He’ll kill you.”

My mates begin to all talk over one another.

“No, Violet!” Barret growls. His back bows, and his muscles ripple. Green mist begins to crawl across his skin like a translucent snake.

“Enough!” Surprisingly, it’s not me who says the word, though I was certainly about to.

Dimitri stalks forward, the white strands of his hair kissing his face. Despite being gone for weeks torturing and killing Zeus’s followers, he looks as immaculate as always in his three-piece suit. As his icy blue eyes meet mine, love arrows through me, an emotion that seems imprinted on every corner of my soul.

He gives me a nod to take over the conversation, and I have to bite down on my impending smile.

Yup. I definitely don’t need dramatic declarations of love.

I clear my throat and wait until the entire table is focused on me before speaking. “This is it. This is the moment we’ve been waiting for.”

“Violet,” Vin begins somewhat desperately.

“No, Vin.” Pieces of my heart crumble away like it’s made of papier-mâché at the deadened look in his eyes. “You know I’m right. We’re out of time.”

“It’s time to fight,” Athena agrees, her velvet gray eyes appearing almost metallic in the dim lighting.

I nod once. “Zeus is giving us the opening we need. We contemplated for weeks how to attack him, and this is it. This is our way.”

“By using you as bait?” Alex retorts dryly, folding his arms over his chest and scowling. But I detect true fear in his eyes—fear for me. Any anger I may have felt over his cocky attitude dissipates then and there at the sight of it.

“It sounds as if Zeus doesn’t know about the Fomorians. We can use that to our advantage.”

“She’s right,” Balor cuts in, sounding as if it physically pains him to utter those two words. His face actually turns green with disgust. “This may be our only chance to catch Zeus unawares.”

“He’ll be expecting Violet to attack,” Vin points out.

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