The ground was wet beneath me, small stones poking into my back. I stopped squirming and lay still, staring up at the man that I loved. At one point, seemingly forever ago, I had thought he was a boy. His mortal age was 18, his body was 18. But his soul… his soul was a thousand. Ageless. Timeless. Beautiful.
I reached up and stroked his cheek and my eyes instantly teared up, blurring my vision. I brushed the tears away impatiently. Brennan grasped my hand gently.
“It okay to cry,” he told me. “It doesn’t make you weak.”
“Doesn’t it?” I asked with a sigh.
“No,” he answered firmly. “It does not. Em, we’re going to have to talk about this. You know what I have to do.”
“No,” I answered tiredly. “You do not have to do anything. I won’t allow it, Brennan. I mean it. You will not be sacrificed to pacify Zeus for something my mother did. I just need to think on this. I’ll figure something else out. I just need to think.”
I knew I was babbling, I wasn’t making any sense. But Brennan could feel what I was thinking, he could feel the emotions that pulsed through my heart. His face was pained and I realized that for the first time, I couldn’t read his mind. He had accomplished a new skill.
“You’re blocking your thoughts from me,” I pointed out in astonishment. “Of all the times to learn a new trick, you choose that particular trick at this particular moment? Right when I need to know what you’re thinking?”
He smiled, a beautiful grin that took the air right out of my lungs.
“Yes. Aren’t you pleased? You wanted me to master more of my abilities.”
I glared at him.
“No,” I grumbled. “No, I’m not pleased.” He grinned again and jumped to his feet. Reaching down, he offered me his hand. I took it, placing my cool fingers inside his warm, strong grip.
“Brennan, what are we going to do?” I whispered. “For the first time in my life, things aren’t clear to me. I don’t know what to do.”
“And for the first time in mine, things are perfectly clear,” he told me, his amber gaze focused on me.
“No,” I answered firmly.
“Yes,” he replied, just as firm. “It’s not a question, Empusa. If Zeus wants me and it will save you and the entire mortal world, then Zeus can have me. I just need to decide how to go about it.”
“Brennan…”
He held up a hand. “Empusa, please. It will be hard enough just walking away from you. I don’t know if I can do it if you are begging me to stay. Please. I love you. You know that. Don’t make it harder for me.”
I gulped. A hard knot had formed in my throat and I was having a terrible time trying to swallow it, to breathe around it. “Brennan,” I whispered. Just saying his name pained me.
“We have to decide how to stop the game,” Brennan said calmly. I knew he was trying to ignore my distress so that it didn’t do him in.
“The game is going on even as we speak,” I reminded him. “There is a chance that it will finish out- that all of those mortals in Zeus’ gauntlet will die. Just know that right now. You don’t understand. This is entertainment for the gods. They will be ill-inclined to stop it.”
“I understand,” Brennan answered evenly. “Perhaps more than you think. If we provide them even more entertainment, perhaps they will be inclined to cooperate.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Meaning?”
“Meaning, if we drop into the very arena that they are sitting around, if we explain our intentions—my intentions- right there on the playing field, perhaps they will comply. Perhaps they would rather see me die alone than continue with the gauntlet. It’s just shifting their focus, that’s all.”
“Yes. Shifting their focus to watching you die,” I said sadly. I couldn’t even think about it without my heart constricting painfully in my chest. In my head, a vision of Brennan dying in the middle of an arena on Olympus while the Olympians all watched with their strange silver eyes flitted through and I squeezed my own eyes closed. I couldn’t believe we were even talking about this, much less considering it a real option.
“Brennan, there has to be another way. There has to be.”
“I don’t think there is,” he said quietly. “And I can’t take the risk of waiting too long before I act. I need to take a little walk and clear my head. I’ve got to think of how to do this.”
“Do you want me to come?” But even as I asked, I knew the answer. He wanted to be alone. And sure enough, he shook his head.
“Not this time,” he answered, picking up my hand and kissing it with his perfect lips. “I need to focus.”
I nodded silently as he kissed my forehead and then watched quietly as he turned around and walked quietly into the night. I felt like he took my heart with him. I bowed my head and cried.
Chapter Thirteen
I felt his presence a scant moment before his voice, as smooth and soft as silk, drifted toward me from the shadows and enveloped me like a blanket.
“Empusa, no man should ever make you cry.”
Hades.
His very presence was tangible and my head snapped up to look for him. Hades possessed a magnetic pull, an innate ability to draw anyone, men and women alike, to him. The longer I was in his presence, the more the attraction built in my belly and even though I knew it wasn’t real, it was difficult to resist.
As my eyes flitted along the perimeter of shadows, I found him. He was standing just on the edge, half in the moonlight, half in the shadows. As always, his beauty was staggering.
Hades was a dark presence, both physically and emotionally. He carried an air of danger with him, a feeling that lingered in the air around him. His glossy dark hair curled slightly at his shoulders. His eyes, as black as onyx, glistened in the night. He wore a crisp white shirt with flowing French cuffs, open at the wrist and casually unbuttoned at the collar. His black cape fluttered in the wind and his black leather pants fit him perfectly.