“Eva.” Valen tore at the white and gold material blocking his way, ripping through it to get to her, leaving the layers in tatters and spilling scraps of them across the floor.
He finally broke through.
Stilled.
Relief swept through him, strong and fierce, overwhelming him and stealing his strength.
She was asleep.
That relief gave way to fury again as he spotted the dark mark on her chest between her breasts and realised that she wasn’t merely sleeping.
Zeus had knocked her out.
“Fucking bastard,” he spat and mounted the bed, his blood boiling with the dark need to avenge her.
His uncle’s death would be a good starting point.
After how distressed she had been by the thought of Benares touching her, the idea that Zeus might have been out to do the same thing sickened him.
Gave the darkness that lived within his blood free rein.
It consumed him and he snarled as he gathered her into his arms, rose onto his feet on the bed and turned to step back to his apartment, vowing he would return to end his uncle.
That uncle stood before him in the middle of the bedchamber, the bright light reflecting off the polished gold plates of the armour he wore over his short white robe.
Valen snarled, flashing fangs, and stalked towards Zeus, the fury mounting in him, drawing the darkness to the surface and giving it more control over him.
“You are banished from this realm.” The fact that his uncle sounded so calm grated on his nerves and stoked the fury higher, until it blazed white-hot in his veins and pushed him to react, to lash out at the male who had dared to try to take Eva from him.
There was no fucking curse.
He knew that now.
Zeus had always planned this, had intended to make the curse seem real by taking whoever he fell in love with, or whoever fell for him.
He looked down at Eva in his arms, her face soft with slumber, untroubled now but all that would change if she woke.
Part of him wanted to get her away from this place before that happened, but the rest fixated on needing to know which it was—had he fallen for her, or had she really fallen for him?
Could she love him?
He had imagined that his feelings for her were the reason Zeus had taken her but what if he was wrong? What if she did love him and that was why Zeus had stolen her, aiming to turn her against him or seduce her over to his side?
He snarled through his clenched fangs.
He would never allow that to happen.
Eva was his.
Valen slowly lifted his eyes back to his uncle and held Eva closer to him, so her cheek pressed against his chest and shoulder, and her black hair tickled his neck. She was so warm.
So his.
He narrowed his eyes on Zeus.
“I was happy to obey that banishment too… but this… taking Eva… you crossed the line and you know it. You wanted me to come.” He flashed fangs again as his temper frayed, his fury getting the better of him, and took a hard step towards his uncle, showing him that he wasn’t going to back down like a good little boy and do what was expected of him. “You’re a spiteful old bastard. This is entrapment. You wanted to make the curse look real… but I’m not going to stand for it.”
“So you will fight me?” Zeus countered him, moving a step closer, and Valen wanted to punch that smug look off his perfect face.
But he wouldn’t.
He was done doing everything people expected of him.
“I hate to disappoint, but I didn’t come here for a fight. I came here to take Eva home… and then you can punish me.”
Zeus’s golden eyes widened almost imperceptibly, but Valen noticed it. It wasn’t often someone managed to surprise the god of gods, but he had the feeling he had done just that.
“You knew coming here meant your life was forfeit, yet you came anyway. Why?” Zeus looked down at the precious cargo Valen carried, nestled close to his heart where she belonged.
Valen dropped his gaze to her too, softened to pathetic mush inside as he gazed at her peaceful, beautiful face.
“Because I love her,” he whispered and a chill swept over him, spreading across his back and down his spine, and up over his skull as it sank in that he really did love her, as he had never loved anyone before. “And I swore to keep her safe.”
He lifted his gaze back to Zeus and narrowed it on him.
“If you’ve laid a finger on her, I will not go quietly. I will fight you when I return.”
Zeus’s right eyebrow rose slightly, another reaction Valen hadn’t expected from the bastard. “What makes you think I will just allow you to leave with her?”
Valen looked around him at the white marble bedchamber and pictured the city beyond it, a sprawling metropolis of temples that was densest at the base of the mountain where the minor gods lived and the markets were held, and the servants’ quarters had been established, and rose up the mountain, the number of temples growing fewer and their size growing larger as the importance of the god or goddess escalated.
“You’ll do it, or I might be tempted to unleash a little of my anger on your precious city.” He smiled as Zeus scowled at him, showing him that he intended to do it, he dared to wreak havoc on the city like that, regardless of the consequences to it and to him. “This mountain is a tad steep… makes the positions of the buildings precarious at best. All I really have to do is shake the mountain and many of those temples will fall.”
“You think you have that sort of power?” Zeus sneered at him and golden lightning crackled around his hands.
Valen grinned. “You know I do. I’ll tear this fucking place apart… everything you love in ruins.”
Zeus clenched his right fist and a short jagged bright golden bolt of lightning formed in it like a spear.
“It’s your choice,” Valen said, ignoring the threat. “Let me take Eva to safety and I will come back and you can mete out your punishment for disobeying the ban you shoved on me centuries ago when you let my sister die. Whatever you see fit. I’ll take it without protest.”
He looked down at Eva, swallowed hard as his heart hurt, and then pushed all the sombre and stupidly sentimental thoughts out of his head and faced his uncle.
“Even death.”
Zeus’s eyes did widen now and the golden bolt in his grip stuttered. “You would die to protect her?”
Valen nodded.
Gods, he would. He loved her that much. If it was the price he had to pay for her safety, then he would gladly pay it.
His uncle’s expression darkened, his broad mouth flattening and his dark eyebrows dipping low, forming wrinkles on his sun-kissed skin.
Valen frowned right back at him, trying to make sense of the sudden shift in his mood.
It was what Zeus wanted wasn’t it?
He had taken Eva in order to lure him here and therefore give him a reason to kill him at last.
Hadn’t he?
Maybe the bastard was just disappointed because he wasn’t going to fight him.
Sick fuck.
That had to be it. Zeus had wanted him to come and fight for Eva, and he was pissed that Valen had chosen to calmly surrender himself in exchange for her.
Maybe he was growing up after all.
Before meeting Eva, he would have taken this opportunity to fight Zeus without even blinking, launching himself right into the fray and relishing the chance to land some blows on his smug face, and the shot at taking him down.
Now? He looked down at Eva and sighed. Now all that mattered was Eva, getting her to safety and protecting her as he had promised. She was more important than his need for revenge, more important than a feud that had been raging for centuries.
More important than anything.
He didn’t want to leave her. Gods, he wanted to be with her forever. The thought of going to the blessed isles without her and never seeing her, never looking into those tranquil tropical blue eyes or hearing
that bite in her tone when he had done something wrong, ripped his heart to pieces and made him bleed inside.
But if he had to do it in order for her to live, for her to be free, then he would make that sacrifice and he would wait and pray for a day when they were reunited in the blessed isles.
“You do love her,” Zeus whispered.
Valen wanted to scoff at his uncle and call him a fucking idiot for taking this long to notice. “I value her life more than mine, but if it’s enough for you… then take it and let her live. She deserves it more than me. She deserves to be happy.”
“And you don’t?”
He glared at Zeus. “You don’t give a fuck about me, so drop the act. You took Eva because you wanted me here, you wanted me to break the rules so you could punish me. You wanted to take away the one person in this world who cares about me, all because of some stupid curse.”
Zeus sighed. “I never cursed you, Valen. I only possess the power to say such a thing, not the power to make it real. You do that for yourself by believing in it.”
Valen growled. The bastard would pay for that, for playing with his head and making him suffer all these centuries. He took a step towards his uncle, his boot striking the marble hard, and Zeus held his hand up.
“I did not take the mortal female in order to hurt her, or you, either.”
Valen rocked back on his heel and eyed Zeus, trying to figure out whether he was telling the truth, because Valen sure as hell couldn’t believe him capable of anything altruistic. Not anymore.
“I am doing it to keep a promise to your mother.”
That shook him to his core, to his soul, and he could only stare at Zeus as it pinged around his head and his heart, filling both with conflicting feelings. His mother?
“What promise?” he snapped and Zeus arched an eyebrow at him. Valen didn’t give a flying monkey if his tone was disrespectful. He only gave respect where it was deserved, and Zeus had given him no reason to believe he deserved it from him.
“After you had been returned to the Underworld, Persephone made me swear to keep whoever you loved safe so you would never lose a loved one again… but I could not believe what Helios reported to me.”
Fucking Helios. The boot-licking bastard was always spying for his beloved master, reporting everything to Zeus.
“I was not sure of your feelings for her, but I took her regardless, and now I am glad that I did because I am certain you do love her.”
“You were testing me by taking her? You wanted to see what I would do so you could see that I loved her.” Valen wanted to gouge his uncle’s eyes out with his thumbs so he would be as blind as he clearly already was. He had to be if it had taken him this long to see the depth of Valen’s feelings for Eva, only realising they were true just a few moments ago.
“No.” Zeus shook his head, causing the waves of his dark brown hair to shimmer with gold in the bright light. His expression turned grim. “I took her because daemons were about to take her from you… a ploy to turn you to their side in order to save her… and that I could not accept.”
Because Zeus was the only one who got to fuck with his feelings like that.
He looked down at Eva in his arms, heart clenching tight at the thought he might have been trying to save her from a monster far worse than his uncle right now.
Zeus conjured a marble plinth and on it appeared a shallow golden bowl of water. The water the maiden had been carrying into this room. Valen frowned at it and stepped closer, curious about what his uncle was up to and slowly beginning to believe him.
That belief became solid and unbreakable as Zeus waved his right hand over the surface of the water and it shifted to reveal his apartment.
The succubus bitch was inside it, tearing it apart as she looked for something.
A heavy weight settled on his chest, directly over the centre of it, and he looked down at the amulet that hung there, the dark disc sitting above his heart and the silver piece in it shining brightly in the ethereal light of Mount Olympus.
Unable to find and take Eva, Jin wanted to take the next best thing back to her brother—the amulet.
Benares had sent the group of daemons to attempt to take it from him after all.
They had to be working with whoever had arranged the attack on Ares in New York. Had to be. The desire to steal the amulet was all the proof he needed.
The daemons thought the amulets were the keys to the gates, that possessing one would allow them to open them and enter the Underworld, or hold them open so they could destroy the gates and begin to merge the planes of the Underworld and the mortal one.
Keras had revealed he and his brothers had all been duped by their father though, made to believe the amulets were the keys when in reality the key was in their blood.
Hades had created the amulets as a ploy, a method of drawing out the daemons who would be responsible for the calamity the Moirai had witnessed. Everyone but Keras hadn’t been stupid enough to try to open a gate without one.
Mostly because there was a creature who guarded the other side and the amulets were designed to protect them from those gargantuan monsters, the power in them placating the normally violent creatures and rendering them safe and calm.
Valen didn’t fancy being squashed under their feet like a bug.
Or eaten alive.
So he had never tried to open his gate in Rome without his amulet.
The daemons had seen him always wearing it when the gate was open, and had fallen for Hades’s ploy.
He watched Jin turning his apartment upside down and grinned. She was going to have to return to Benares empty handed.
Valen shifted Eva in his arms and looked across the bowl to his uncle.
Soft golden eyes watched him, no trace of anger in them, only something Valen didn’t want to study too closely because he had been fooled into thinking Zeus had feelings before and it hadn’t ended well for him.
Valen stared at him, a strange numbness encroaching to push out the warmth of Eva in his arms and sending him back to centuries ago when he had last stood in this temple.
“Why did you let her die?” Those words slipped from his lips and seemed to shake Zeus, because he recoiled and averted his gaze.
He sighed. “I was not able to save her.”
Valen blinked. “Why?”
Zeus raised his gaze back to meet his, and remorse shone in it, making Valen want to be the one to avert his eyes now. “She died in an area where no Olympian can see.”
Cold stole through Valen as he realised that was true.
Calindria had died in the area their father used for his trials, and all of it was off the grid, so no god could interfere in proceedings.
“You could have brought her back though… you did it for those bastard fates,” Valen barked and his voice echoed around the enormous room, mocking him with his own words, igniting the blood in his veins again and making it burn with a need for vengeance.
For justice.
Zeus calmly shook his head. “You know that was not possible, Valen. The manner of her death—”
Valen looked sharply away from his uncle as he cut himself off, hurt spearing his heart like one of Zeus’s lightning bolts, and his eyes stung.
He did know.
He had known then, and he knew now, but it didn’t stop the pain or soothe his need to make someone pay for what had happened to her.
It only made it infinitely worse.
It was a living thing, gnawing at his soul, constantly torturing him and tormenting him with how he had failed her.
How he continued to fail her even now.
The manner of her death had meant her soul had never been found, had never crossed over into the Underworld.
It was still out there somewhere, lost and waiting, or worse.
Captive.
Tears lined his lashes and he blinked them away, refusing to let them fall, and fought to master his emotions as they threatened to sweep him under and rouse the darker side of his s
oul again with a bloody need for vengeance.
He closed his eyes and reached for the connection they had always shared as siblings, one that had allowed him to communicate with her across vast distances, as he could with his brothers.
That connection that was cold now, nothing but a void left behind inside him.
A void left inside them all.
It had been centuries, but her soul was still missing, held away from the Underworld.
From her home.
He wanted her to find her way back, and he knew his brothers felt the same. They all wanted her to reach Elysium and pass her days there on the island, where they could visit her.
Eva moaned and stirred, and he hushed her, brushing his lips across her brow and willing her to remain asleep a little longer. He didn’t want her waking on Mount Olympus. She had already been through too much, was barely holding on, and he didn’t want waking in the realm of the gods to be the final blow to whatever was happening between them.
Eva knew about him, but he wasn’t sure she had accepted the truth of him yet, or the world he walked in.
Everything between them was so fragile right now.
He breathed her in, that scent of roses and sin he loved so much, and prayed to whatever gods would listen to him that she would stay with him, that she felt something for him that ran as deep as his feelings for her.
“Go,” Zeus said.
Valen looked up at him, cold stealing back into his veins as he remembered where he was and what he had done. He held Eva closer, the cold turning to ice as it froze his heart. Zeus had taken Eva to protect her, to keep a promise to his mother, but that didn’t mean Valen was off the hook.
He had still broken the rules of his banishment.
“Go, and do not come back… unless you have an offering.” Zeus huffed when Valen stared blankly at him, fighting to make himself believe what he was hearing. “Do not look at me that way. Hades would kill me if I laid a finger on you.”
True.
But he still couldn’t believe he was being allowed to enter and leave Mount Olympus without being punished.
And he had been given the green light to come back too.
Valen scoffed. “Getting soft in your golden years, Old Man.”
Valen (Guardians of Hades Romance Series Book 2) Page 29
