My princess at my side didn’t seem the least bit perturbed by his stare, she didn’t even shift uncomfortably or squeeze my hand. She mostly stood a bit straighter and questioned him further, “and if they don’t go into their place?”
“You kick them, of course.” Soren chuckled at the instant horror on Valentina’s face as he clucked his tongue at her and shook his head, “so beautiful, but so naive.” Her face flushed at the backhanded comment, and I felt myself instinctively step forward to put my body between hers and his. “Don’t worry, Griffin, I won’t touch your doll. She reeks of death anyways, have you been in the Underworld?” He cocked an eyebrow at our quartet and grinned in the wake of the silence we answered him with. “Not a very forthcoming group are you? Never mind, are we going to strike a deal or not, Aidan?”
Somehow, Soren managed to wave his hand and a great oak table appeared between us.
Asher was seated in the middle like a mediator while Aidan and I were across the table. To my horror, Valentina was at Soren’s left.
Immediately, I tried to stand, but Soren clucked his tongue again, waving his arm once more and my back was thrown into the chair and this time I couldn’t move at all.
“We are negotiating. It is rude to interrupt.” He seemed to grin in pleasure at having caught us with our pants down. How hadn’t we known he’d have more power? How had he gotten it, and from who specifically?
If he was turning on his fellow Titans that could’ve worked in our favor, but we didn’t have the answers and Soren suddenly had Valentina as a bargaining chip. This plan was rapidly going southward and I hated it.
We were so ill-equipped to deal with all these problems. Only a month ago—in Godly time—we had been living our mortal lives and now here we were: fighting for our Godly lives and for the way of life we’d known before this. None of us had trained for this moment, and the training we’d received, was shoddy at best.
The worse this situation got, the more I found myself wondering if Atlas had held back a lot of help we could’ve used, because he knew this moment would come eventually. He hadn’t proven himself to be helpful to anyone really; and except for Asher, who seemed to have a lot more answers than Atlas did, no one else knew what they were doing. Most of us didn’t even know how to use our powers properly, and that was half the problem. If Aidan was truly and preparedly the King of the Heavens, he would’ve been the one commanding an oak table and holding Soren down. Instead, we were at the mercy of a guy who had a better grip on our situation than we did.
Plus a month ago, none of us would’ve imagined we would be in this kind of situation.
Everyone had been partying, hooking up, being stupid, carefree, and true to our young-adult nature. We were naive, and this was our punishment. We’d never studied warfare or acquainted ourselves with tactical strategy. As far as I was aware, none of us belonged to a secret agency where we had training in terrorism; so how else were we supposed to deal with all this?
And here was Soren, acting like he had been training for this his entire life. We were playing into every plan he had, and even when we strayed, he seemed to find a way to beat us and make the situation work for him.
“Alright, where do we start?”
Soren tented his fingers together, propping his elbows up on the table as he leaned into his fingertips, pressing his lips against them as he tried to appear thoughtful. A pit in my stomach formed, as my stomach dropped, knowing what he was going to say before he even said it. There had to be a bigger plan, we all knew by now that Soren didn’t do anything that didn’t melt into a larger plan. But it didn’t make the words any easier to swallow when he said them.
“I will give you Valentina for your powers, Aidan.” The minute the words were out of his mouth both I and Val reacted, she tried to stand, turning in horror to look at Soren.
“I’m not yours to begin—” He forced her into her seat again as I shook the arms of my own constraints, groaning in effort. I looked slowly at
Aidan, silently begging him to take the offer. We could figure some way around this after we got Valentina out of here. Any plan would be better than letting that monster keep her.
My mind was already racing with the possibilities of the things he might try with her. My stomach curled like rotten milk and the bile rolled up the back of my throat. I couldn’t just sit there and let him have her.
My eyes silently begged Aidan, telling him to do it— to put her above his own welfare as any good King would. But that begged the question—was Aidan a good King?
“Not going to happen.”
Anger surged inside of me, there was only one possible answer as to why he was this selfish, ”Damn your pride!” I shouted at him, trying to move again to attack him, but I remained steadfast in my chair, the magic squeezing me tighter.
“It’s not my pride, now shut up!” Aidan snapped at me before turning to look back at Soren. He didn’t seem fazed as he spoke again, and I prayed he had an answer, something that would get all of us out of this with relative safety. “I’ll give you Savannah for Valentina, but not my powers.”
“Your own Queen?” This had Soren intrigued.
“Are you out of your bloody mind?” Valentina and I both spoke at the same time, the looks on our faces similar in expression. We were horrified and shocked by the suggestion. I knew in the back of my mind, Aidan had to have a plan, but this was a crazy suggestion. Even crazier, if Soren took it.
I’ll credit Aidan this; he didn’t so much as flinch at the words when he said them. His voice was steel and his exterior completely calm. It was as if he negotiated using the women in our lives every day. I just didn’t fully understand why he was swapping Savannah for Val. I knew Savannah and I had our differences, but even I wasn’t that cold, and he was supposed to be her Godly husband.
“Yes,” Aidan said as calmly as he could, nodding his head to further confirm the suggestion. Valentina and I were both speechless and staring at him. I didn’t know where this was going, but the knot in the pit of my stomach tightened and dropped more. Something really, bad was coming.
I could feel Valentina’s anger suddenly ripple toward me and I turned to look at her. It was the first time I’d felt something directly from her, something that no one else in the room knew about. Hades told me it was our soul-bond, but the sensation still took me by shock. I could literally feel her horror that Aidan was stuck in this position because of her. She was blaming herself faster than I could process the thoughts and even as I opened my mouth to protest, Soren cut me off.
“What’s the catch?”
“No catch. I’ll summon Savannah from where she is and she’ll happily trade places with Valentina.” Soren stared at Aidan, still trying to make sense of the suggestion.
“But neither woman gives me your power. I suppose if I were to ask to trade your abilities for Savannah you would find another way to skirt around giving me what it is I want.”
“Savannah will also give you, her powers. She’s the Queen of the Heavens and equally as powerful as I am.”
“I don’t want her powers— she’s a Goddess of childbirth and women, what am I supposed to do with that?!”
“Restart the Titan population?” Asher offered with a smirk. I glanced at him, almost having forgotten about him up until now. If he was trying to make a bad situation worse, sarcasm was going to do the trick.
“Funny,” Soren said through gritted teeth, not even looking at our “mediator”. “No deal, Aidan, I want your powers. I want you to submit to me and call me King as I rightfully am.”
I supposed that was probably the wrong thing to say to him, as Aidan suddenly stood up and a lightning bolt was formed in his hand.
“Watch who you call the rightful King.” Soren chuckled teasingly, only further aggravating Aidan. This was going nowhere quickly, our plan had rapidly dissolved. My eyes flicked to Valentina and we both stared at one another, trying to come up with a joint plan. I looked away quickly to Asher, trying to conside
r where he fell in all this, and how he could help—if he were even here to help us.
“Well, if you’re not going to —” Asher stood suddenly, drawing everyone’s attention to him.
“You should duel,” he said with a nod.
“Excuse me?” It was Valentina who spoke.
“Winner gets the loser’s power.”
“That isn’t why we’re here.” Her anger rippled again, she was just as frustrated that we were going in circles with everything. Maybe we should have just gone with Zane’s first suggestion—all-out war. Negotiations and plotting were getting us nowhere.
And Valentina had a point— the reason we were here, was to make Soren follow us into the Underworld, so we could trap him. Having a duel or trading women, whatever we were doing, none of it was going to trap the Titans like we wanted.
“I’ll fight,” Soren said as he sat back down in his chair casually. Aidan stared at him for a moment, eyes flicking to Valentina.
“Okay, I’ll fight and the women stay out of it.”
“Deal.”
“Deal.”
They stared at each other, lost in a silent staring contest.
Each one was trying to assert his power onto the other, while waiting for one of them to back down first. It was the closest thing to a pissing contest I’d seen in my time in Olympus.
Soren grinned finally, and threw off Aidan’s concentration completely. No bothering to wait for the competition to start back up again, he stood stretching himself out like he’d been sitting for hours. Tilting his neck, he cracked the bones in it, before cracking the knuckles of both hands.
“Well, this has been fun.” He turned toward the portal and all eyes turned to it. At some point, while we were all distracted, Asher had put the black portal back in place; but Soren didn’t seem to notice. “But I have humans to enslave, and I should prepare for our battle. Shall we meet...”
“In the Underworld,” Aidan said quickly, getting a suspicious look from Soren, “saves Griffin the trouble when I kill you.” He smirked at the Titan who looked back at me.
“We’ll meet at the Gates of Hell,” Soren said, “but I won’t be stepping foot into it unless it’s to guide you to your afterlife.” I guess that was as close as we were going to get him at this point. We would have to figure something out from there to make sure he went into the Underworld.
If we were lucky too, he would bring some of the other Titans with him. That’s all we needed and then, maybe then, we’d have the upper hand. This plan was better than nothing.
“You’ll bring a second then?” Aidan asked, sounding like he’d stepped out of a Victorian romance.
“Naturally,” Soren said with a grin. “Shall we duel exclusively by magic, or will we also be using fists? I’d like to know in advance, so I can warm up. I wouldn’t want to pull anything.”
Aidan rolled his eyes, “no, we wouldn’t want that at all. Magic, exclusively.”
I glanced at Aidan wonderingly. Besides his lightning bolt, what other magic did he possess that made him think he was stronger than whatever magic Soren had stolen up to now— not even considering the magic he might take before the duel either.
“Good. At sunset?” Soren’s mouth quirked in a grin, he was making fun of all of us. Aidan huffed in annoyance, waving his hand and the table and chairs disappeared. Had he known how to do that this entire time? I walked toward Valentina, ignoring whatever other quips the two leaders were exchanging. I caught her face in my hands and looked down at her, searching her to make sure she was okay. She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes, which remained as wide with anger as they did with fear. She had imagined the same things being done to her as I had.
I kissed the top of her head as I heard Soren agree, “one hour.”
We had one hour until this duel? That was no time at all if Aidan was going to come up with plan to ensure we won and the Titans ended up in the right place.
“Good.”
“Good.”
They were staring each other down again. I rolled my eyes, taking Valentina’s hand into my own and squeezed it gently, as I ran my thumb over the back of her hand gently.
Soren walked fluidly toward the portal and paused, his hand twisted at his side and Valentina was suddenly pulled from my grip and was tossed across the room toward him.
She landed against his arm with a surprised gasp as Aidan started moving toward Soren, already conjuring a lightning bolt in his fist as he moved toward the Titan. But I was moving faster than he could.
“Good thing Valentina doesn’t really count as a woman yet at 17, does she?”
He smirked at us like he’d won, tracing the back of his knuckles down the edge of her face before pulling them both through the portal and I ran for it.
I wasn’t afraid of what was waiting for me on the other side, I had battled those demons before and I could control them myself. I just didn’t want Valentina to get caught suffering again and again at the hand of her uncle.
I didn’t think she was ready to face her demons, and in that moment of confrontation, I worried she might freeze and be trapped forever. If she couldn’t fight them, could I fight them for her? A voice in the back of my mind told me it wasn’t my fight to brave, however much I wanted to.
Even with Aidan shouting for me from behind, I didn’t stop as I launched myself through the portal after her. The magic pulled at my navel as if I was being folded in half, before springing free again and I landed on my feet on the other side.
I braced myself for the onslaught of memories. Steeled my spine against whatever words the memory of my father would conjure this time.
Except it didn’t take me to the Underworld. It didn’t even take me to my manufactured hell.
I was standing in Times Square in New York. I’d never been, but I recognized it from the photos. This place was the shell of those pictures. What might’ve been bright lights before, were just skeletal remains of a place that once bustled with life. The buildings appeared worn and run down as if they had been here for decades, forgotten and ravaged by the seasons of the East Coast. There wasn’t a soul around, it was eerily abandoned for a place that was known to be such a center of life.
My eyes scanned the scene, searching desperately for Val and where Soren could’ve gotten her in such a short time. As I completed a half circle, I twisted around, behind me stood Soren, Oliver, Gage, and Valentina: held helplessly in his hands.
“Well, that was too easy, Griffin.”
Chapter 21
Why did I feel like I had walked into a trap, playing entirely into whatever plot produced by the Titans? I was only further convinced Asher was working with them. He had to be. Why hadn’t the portal taken me back to the Underworld? Why had I been brought here? My thoughts swam as I tried to make sense of what was going on.
“What’s going on?” I hated myself for the insecure tone in my voice. I hated them knowing that I knew I was trapped, that I didn’t know what to do. That I was willing to do anything to get Valentina back. “Why did you take Valentina?”
“You’ve been holding back on me, Griffin. When you told me about your powers, you never mentioned anything about your ability to reign over death—literally.” Asher hadn’t known about my abilities, it had to have been Atlas.
“I didn’t find it relevant at the time.”
“Of course it’s relevant! You hold the key to unlocking death. You command death. I should’ve known, I should’ve guessed… King of the Underworld,” he leered the word like it was dirty, making me frown more. I knew where this was going. “And here, Valentina, your beautiful, little companion. Your princess.” He chuckled, eyes snapping to Val, as she tried to fight Gage’s hold off her. “As your partner and equal, she is the other half to your whole; and what does that mean? Well, of course, she has domain over life.
Imagine a solitary God with the ability to cast both life and death?” He let out a breath, “incredible,” he spoke with a sigh.
“There
already is one!” Valentina said with a grunt, still fighting Gage. “Our Holy Father.”
Soren barked out a laugh, “the Christian God is a fake God, conjured by idealists and sculpted by myths.”
“And what makes you so different?” She spat back, her eyes venomous with hatred. “You’re sculpted by myths, conjured by idealists. You’re no different.”
“Oh, but I am. I am no longer a solitary, powerless God. I am almighty, I have the powers of a handful of Gods; and one day, it will be more than just a handful; dozens, hundreds.”
“So that’s your big plan, then? Enslave the humans, use them as toys, while you kill off the Gods and collect their power. Sounds boring,” I tried to sound flippant, but I doubted I was managing it.
Soren turned to look at me with a glazed, cool look. I was nothing to him. I was barely the scum on the bottom of his shoe I just happened to be a convenient piece to his puzzle—whatever that was.
“My plan is much bigger than that. It isn’t just about enslaving humanity. It’s about creating them in my honor—in my image. I will turn the world into my playground, it will all be a part of the temple erected in my honor. No one will so much as breath, without their very breath being in tribute to me.”
My eyes shifted to the other Titans. They had to be hearing what he was saying, why weren’t they reacting? Didn’t they realize he was talking about their inevitable destruction, and not just the destruction of mortal life as we knew it?
“And so you plan on taking mine and Valentina’s powers to be able to control them.”
“Now you’re getting it,” he said with a happy nod. “It’s really that easy. You can save yourselves by turning over your powers to me and I’ll let you walk away.”
“Not for long, though.” I shook my head, “with both our powers, it won’t be long until you crave something more; and my abilities can destroy a man who isn’t careful with them.”
Grace of Gods Boxset: Reincarnated Greek Gods YA/NA Series Page 66
