Persephone turned tear-filled eyes down at him and that need only grew stronger, but in turn his body seemed to grow weaker, unable to bear the exertion of his desire to move let alone fuel such a thing.
A tear slipped onto her cheek, a pure diamond, and she looked back at his uncle.
“Forgive my son.” She clenched her hands in front of her chest and her fine eyebrows furrowed, her rosy lips trembling as she spoke. “He is angry. He is hurt by the loss of his sister. We all are… but Valen is so passionate… so much like you. He cannot hold back that pain as the others can. It is in his nature to unleash it, and that is all he has done.”
Zeus’s golden eyes turned cold. “What he has done is murder the Moirai.”
“And that is something you can undo,” she said without inflection, without a single shred of anger in her voice, but Valen could see it in his mother. She was seething, burning with pain just as he was. She stepped closer to Zeus, her green eyes darker than Valen had ever seen them, and brambles grew from around her feet, twisted black vines of thorns that spoke of her pain. Her suffering. “But you will not be able to undo the damage you will cause if you take Valen from me too. If you take him from Hades. There will be no coming back from that.”
The darkness in her voice and in her eyes shocked Valen.
What had become of the gentle creature he loved so deeply?
She had transformed into a warrior carved from the same material as he was, hardened by grief and determination.
Zeus stared at her.
Second stretched into minutes, and then into an eternity.
His uncle lowered his hand and the bolt faded from it.
It was over. Valen had failed.
Zeus would restore the Moirai, and everything Valen had done would be for nothing. His sister was still dead and no one had paid for that crime.
His uncle shifted his gaze down to him.
“Love drove you to this, so it is love I will take from you.” Zeus eased down to crouch beside him and Valen flinched as he pushed him onto his back and placed his hand against the left side of his face. “You will never know it again.”
Valen screamed as fire blazed down the left side of his face, unable to move as it seared him and the acrid stench of burning flesh filled his lungs once more. The flames spread, consuming his neck, eating away at him, and darkness threatened to rise and swallow him.
Zeus’s words rang in his ears as he stared up at him and saw only malice and hatred in his uncle’s eyes.
“Not even those who once favoured you will love you now.”
Valen shook his head, silently pleading his uncle not to do it, not to take that from him. He had been wrong.
Someone was paying for what had happened.
He was.
CHAPTER 11
Valen shot up in bed, breathing hard, his hand pressed against the left side of his face and his neck.
Where his favour mark had once been.
His racing heart slowly steadied, panic and pain gradually flowing from him and restoring his balance, and the world came into focus around him.
He frowned at the row of wooden wardrobes that took up the entire wall opposite him, and then across to his left at the windows that punctuated the pale yellow wall and revealed a rainy day in Rome. His bedroom. He was home.
Not on Mount Olympus.
He hunched forwards, pulled his knees up beneath the white sheets and buried his head in them as he breathed, narrowing the world back down so he could settle his tumultuous feelings and calm his body and mind.
The scar on the left side of his face throbbed as if it had just happened and he held it, willed his body to shut down the pain faster because he couldn’t deal with it right now.
He hated the nightmares.
The memories that refused to leave him.
They always made him feel like shit.
A niggling voice at the back of his mind said the nightmare he had just lived through wasn’t the only reason he felt as if someone had just dragged him through the river Acheron by his ankles.
He tried to recall what had happened before the nightmare.
Groaned as it came back to him and held his head, squeezing it hard. If he was lucky, it would burst under the pressure and he wouldn’t have to deal with the inevitable fallout.
Voices travelled into the room from the corridor to his right, ripping another low moan of despair from him. Seemed he didn’t even have time to gather his shit before the storm hit him. His brothers were here, probably waiting for him to wake up so they could tear him a new one or two.
Maybe even disown him entirely this time.
Valen flopped back on the bed. He was damned if he was going out there until he was good and ready, or they came to get him. He didn’t need a confrontation right now, when his head was pounding and his emotions were all over the place, his bastard mind finding it funny to keep hurling snippets of his nightmare at him whenever he started to calm down, throwing him back into turmoil.
He caught a flash of Zeus staring down at him and his scar burned hotter.
He rubbed at it, frowning at the ceiling and cursing his uncle.
The debate grew more heated, and he tuned into it because he figured he might as well hear what they were yelling about him. It was always good to prepare for battle, and what better way to prepare was there than knowing exactly what was going to get thrown at you?
It was certainly a good way to kill the time it would take them to decide to check on him and bring the fight to him.
“It could have been worse. It could have been speed, or coke, or whatever that shit is that mortals love putting in their bodies.” Ares sounded more angry than usual. Megan clearly wasn’t seeing to his needs enough to bring all that testosterone down to a manageable level.
Keras snapped back. “It is bad enough. A city without its guardian is a vulnerable one. We need to know what we are dealing with here.”
Valen cringed. He was in deep shit. Deeper than normal. Keras sounded ready to kick him back to the Underworld for an audience with their father.
Or teleport him to Mount Olympus.
Zeus’s words rang in his ears, a continuation of the punishment he had thankfully woken up in the middle of only to find himself plunged into another nightmare situation.
I banish you from Mount Olympus.
On penalty of death.
He listened harder, trying to detect just how pissed Keras was with him. He didn’t think his oldest brother would go so far as to dump him on Mount Olympus, a place he wasn’t allowed to go under any circumstances, but he wasn’t one hundred percent certain.
Which sucked.
Love drove you to this, so it is love I will take from you.
A familiar female voice pierced his heart, coming from the other room, rising above his brothers’ argument.
You will never know it again.
Valen snorted at that. As if he needed the reminder. He lived with it every day, every second he was awake and even in his sleep. He was bone-deep aware of the curse his uncle had placed on him.
No one could love him.
Not even her.
“And I’ve told you a thousand times… I will only speak with Valen.”
She would only speak with him.
He wished his stupid chest hadn’t warmed in response to that. What it contained clearly hadn’t received the message she had thrown at it loud and clear the other morning. She wasn’t interested in him.
“She just isn’t going to change her tune.” Ares again. “There’s no point in pressing her.”
Marek’s warm, deep voice joined the din, a touch of amusement in it that had Valen straining to hear what he was saying. “… Clever. I’ll give her that. What better way to ensure her survival than to make us wait until Valen is awake?”
That wasn’t amusement in his voice.
It was admiration.
Valen flew from the bed, tossing the covers across the room, and dragged his black
jeans on. He buttoned them as he stormed into the wood-panelled corridor, darkness swirling through his veins, pouring into his soul.
A snarl curled from his lips.
The room ahead of him fell silent.
His mood plummeted faster when he scanned the room, registering Ares, Marek and Keras all standing on the left side of it near the bookcases that lined the wall between the windows and the fireplace, and then Eva opposite them on the black leather couch in front of him.
Guarded.
Her guard was Megan, but it was still a fucking guard.
He supposed it was better than finding one of his brothers sitting with her on the couch. He would have lost his shit if he had seen that. As it was, he wanted to kill Marek for daring to speak about Eva with admiration in his fucking voice.
He snapped his focus to the brunet bastard.
Marek eased a step back and held his hands up at his sides, causing the rolled up sleeves of his charcoal linen shirt to tug back against his toned, tanned forearms. “Easy.”
“Fuck easy.” He stormed towards him, unable to contain the urge rolling through him, a dark desire to acquaint his brother’s head with the wall.
Keras stepped in front of him. “I should have known you would be the same after you woke up. Always looking for a fight. Do you never consider the consequences of your actions?”
Valen glared at him. He wanted to say fuck the consequences too, but Keras had that look in his green eyes, that one Valen knew meant trouble. They were empty. No trace of feeling in them.
It was like looking into a void.
A carcass without a soul inside it.
It moved, spoke, and acted like Keras, but something was wrong with it.
Something dangerous.
He backed off a step, turned his glare on Marek so his brother got the message, and then scrubbed a hand over his hair, shoving the irritating lengths out of his face.
He glanced over his shoulder at Eva. Her wide blue eyes ran over him, back and forth, up and down, heating him by degrees until he was burning inside. There wasn’t a trace of desire in them though, not as there had been on the dance floor. The only emotion he could read in their incredible tranquil depths was surprise.
He couldn’t blame her.
He remembered enough about what had happened back at the bar to recall that he had been injured, some of those cuts severe in mortal terms, and now those wounds were gone, not even a scar remaining.
Keras sighed.
Valen braced himself.
“Do you have any idea the damage you might have caused?” his brother said, that calm tone setting him even more on edge. Valen looked back at him. A flicker of darkness crossed Keras’s green eyes, a brief shadow, the only hint that he was feeling anything in there—that there was still a soul left in his body. “If we hadn’t arrived when we had… gods, Valen… what in our father’s good and gracious name were you thinking? Were you even thinking?”
Valen waited, could see it coming, brewing on the horizon in his brother’s eyes. Those emotions his brother kept in check so well were boiling now, writhing and seething, slowly breaking free of the hold he had on them.
“No excuses?” Keras bit out and his eyes finally brightened, molten emeralds flecked with gold and silver. “Just like you I suppose. You do something rash… something stupid… and expect us to clean up the mess. We end up being the ones who have to piece everything back together again because you do not give a damn what happens. You do not give a damn about anything.”
Valen held his gaze, refusing to look away, even when he wanted to.
He deserved his brother’s wrath, because he had well and truly fucked up this time. He would take it like a champ, but no amount of harsh words would be punishment enough for his crime.
Part of him wished Keras would lose it too, would turn this battle of words into one involving fists, but his damned brother was in control today.
“I had information and—” Eva cut herself off when Keras turned cold eyes on her.
She had information and she only wanted to give it to Valen.
He found that oddly pleasing, as if she trusted him. Gods only knew why. He was the last person in the world anyone should trust.
He was the last person in the world anyone would trust.
Keras made that clear as he laid the accusations at his feet, and his two other brothers joined in.
“It was stupid, Valen, and you know it. You know the rules.” Ares this time, and Valen wanted to fly at him but he held his ground, clenched his fists at his sides and kept taking it.
“Stupid does seem to be his middle name at times, but I think we should—” A brave attempt by Marek to calm the situation, exactly what Valen expected from him but he could have at least not insulted him at the same time.
“Not stupid,” Keras interjected. “He knows what he is doing when he does it. He knew the reason we are not allowed to drink alcohol. He always knows exactly what he is doing, and what the consequences will be and he does it anyway.”
His oldest brother stared him down.
“You act without thinking.” Keras stepped towards him, black bleeding across his irises. “You always have... and look where it gets you. You break the rules and we all pay for it. You are the same now as you were back then. Gods, some days I am glad Calindria is not in the blessed isle to see what you have become.”
Ares gasped. Marek stared at Keras in disbelief.
Valen staggered back a step, heart racing, blood pounding in his ears, his eyes wide as he took that verbal blow to his chest, a knife that his brother seemed to take pleasure in plunging into his heart.
He flicked a glance down at Eva and caught the fury in her blue eyes as she glared at Keras, but another emotion overshadowed it as she shifted to look at him.
Disappointment.
He took another step back, unable to breathe as she twisted the knife in his heart. It was too much.
She already looked at him the same way as his family did.
His mother was wrong.
He was cursed.
No one could ever love him.
He closed his eyes and stepped.
CHAPTER 12
The fact that Valen had just disappeared in a black swirl of smoke should have freaked Eva out, but she was too angry with his brothers, too riled by the verbal barbs they had thrown at him, and a little mad at Valen too for not defending himself and telling them the truth.
She shot to her feet, her legs shaking as Keras’s impassive green eyes landed on her, awareness that he could easily kill her despite all of her training rushing through every inch of her. Anger pushed all fear to the back of her mind though and gave her the strength to give him a piece of it.
“He drank it because of me!”
Ares’s dark eyebrows shot up. Marek looked equally as surprised.
Keras’s expression didn’t shift to show a single jot of emotion.
She made a low growling noise and paced around the couch, trying to work off some of her energy before she did something stupid like unleash it on him. Valen deserved a good smack around the head too.
Why hadn’t he fought his brothers? Why had he let them say all that shit about him to his face without putting up a fight or setting them straight?
She looked at them where they formed a rough line, their backs to the windows that revealed a rain-swept Rome.
They hadn’t exactly given him a chance to defend himself and they had cut her off when she had tried to help him. Maybe they were always this way with him and it was easier for him to take it.
Or maybe he felt he deserved it.
“If he drank it because of you, why did he not say that?” Keras broke the thick silence and she glared at him, itching to snatch her guns off the side table where he had placed them after taking them away from her and stick one where the sun didn’t shine.
“You didn’t give him a chance!” She almost took a step towards him, reined herself in at the last second and
clenched her fists instead. “You had already made up your mind about him, hadn’t you? Anything he said wouldn’t have made a shit of difference.”
She shook her head as she thought about how he had looked, the pain that had been in his eyes when he had glanced at her. He hid it well, had taken all their abuse without flinching, but Keras had managed to strike something locked deep within Valen and he had struck it hard.
He had hurt him.
His own brother.
Memories flickered in the back of her mind, a dim past she didn’t want to recall, an argument that echoed in her ears and then faded as she mastered her emotions again. Her past was just that. It was over. What had happened then meant nothing now. Her family were gone, left in that dim memory, and she was glad of it.
They had only caused her pain.
Just as Valen’s family only hurt him.
Her fists shook at her sides, the pain of her past mingling with the present, blurring together to stoke her anger to a dangerous new level, ratcheting it up until she was perilously close to losing her temper.
She stared at Marek, and then Ares, and finally Keras, hoping her words hit their mark.
“You act as though he’s fucked up… if he is… then it is all your faults. You don’t know him at all. You don’t see the hurt, do you?” She narrowed her eyes on Keras and bit out, “You don’t see his pain.”
She turned on her heel and stormed away, heading for the exit.
Someone grabbed her and she caught their hand, twisted it off her and shoved, sending him staggering backwards into the side of the couch. Marek. He huffed and tried to grab her again.
“Let her go.”
He froze as Keras’s command rang through the room.
Eva looked back at the bastard. Maybe she had been wrong. Keras took the crown from Benares. He was the king when it came to arseholes.
He sighed, raked long fingers through his wild black hair, and actually dared to look genuinely sorry.
“I will find Valen and bring him back… if you will stay.”
Eva shook her head, almost laughed at that. He only wanted her to stay because she had information. He didn’t really care about her, or Valen.
“Don’t bother. Leave Valen alone… I’ll find him myself.” She snatched her leather jacket from the back of the couch, strode away and paused at the door with the handle in her grasp. She didn’t look back at him. “Some brothers you all are. You make me glad I no longer have a family.”
Valen (Guardians of Hades Romance Series Book 2) Page 14
