Keras: Guardians of Hades Series Book 7

by Heaton, Felicity

  “I’ll make some food for us.” Esher’s blue gaze landed on Enyo. “Are you staying?”

  She dipped her head.

  Keras’s breath leaked from him, one he hadn’t realised he had been holding, and some of the tension melted from his body, lifting more of the weight off his shoulders.

  “The house is beautiful,” she said with a slight smile at Esher, showing Keras that she was aware this was more his home than it was their home now.

  “I love it.” Esher slipped his hand into Aiko’s and smiled down at her. The first real one Keras had seen since he had returned from the Underworld and his hunt for the wraith. “But the grounds are my favourite part.”

  Cass muttered darkly, “The damned fish are your favourite part.”

  When Enyo looked at Keras, he simply said, “They have a bad history.”

  Daimon mumbled an apology as he gathered the witch into his arms and peppered her cheek and lips with kisses.

  Valen faux retched, went as far as bending over and clutching his stomach this time. Eva sighed at him and rolled her sapphire eyes, the mortal assassin clearly unimpressed with his antics.

  Enyo looked at them all, her jade irises glittering with something.

  Something that stole his heart all over again as her gaze landed on him.

  “Your family seems to have grown a lot stranger since the last time I saw them,” she said, her voice warm and filled with light that banished the shadows in his heart to the deepest recesses.

  “A lot stranger and a lot larger,” he countered and looked at them all, and it struck him that he liked it though.

  It was reassuring to see that his brothers had all found love.

  He looked back at Enyo as she smiled and spoke with his brothers, keenly feeling that he had found love a long time ago and it hadn’t let go of him, had lasted the two centuries he had been without the source of it—the light to his darkness.

  That light she had awoken inside him faded back to shadows as he reminded himself that she was wed now.

  He had let her slip through his grasp.

  He had lost her.

  And it hurt.

  She looked at him, and froze, her laughter dying as her face fell, expression turning serious. “Is something wrong?”

  He shook his head, even though it was.

  “I was just thinking how it might be some time before the meal is ready and I thought perhaps we might walk awhile?” Did he sound as nervous as he felt?

  “Walk has to be the most boring euphemism for sneaking off to make out that I have ever heard.” Valen nudged Marek, who looked as if he wanted nothing to do with him as he edged away.

  Eva cuffed Valen around the head before Keras could do it, so he settled for glaring at his brother and making it painfully clear without words that if he ever dared to speak about Enyo in such a way again, he would destroy him.

  He cast a look at Enyo, sure she would look horrified to be spoken about in such a manner, offended by the fact his brother had suggested she would do such a thing when she was a married woman.

  Crimson stained her cheeks and she was staring out into the garden, a distant look in her eyes.

  He wanted to know what she was thinking when she looked like that, beautifully awkward, not a goddess of war who had slaughtered thousands but a delicate feminine beauty who needed to be kissed.

  He wanted to be the one to kiss her, just as Valen had suggested.

  But he couldn’t.

  And it killed him.

  When she finally looked at him, he held his arm out, gesturing to the garden. She stepped out onto the covered wooden walkway that ran around the inside of the house, enclosing the courtyard garden. He followed her, trailing a step behind her as he gathered his thoughts and fought a war against his feelings.

  Against the urge to reach for another pill in the hope this one would work and free him of his emotions. What if it didn’t? What if the increasing number he had been taking recently was having a negative effect, his body growing accustomed and resistant to them?

  Panic swamped him, had his pulse shooting off the scale. He couldn’t be growing immune to them. He needed them.

  She paused at the end of the walkway and looked back at him, sunlight casting strands of gold in her dark hair and reflecting off the silver detailing of her black armour.

  Calm instantly washed over him as his gaze collided with hers.

  Her beauty struck him hard, stole his voice and had him staring at her.

  “Can I use these?” She stooped and picked up a pair of slippers from the wooden boards.

  Keras shook himself back to his senses and nodded, waited for her to slip her feet into the pair of shoes and step down into the garden before he did the same with another pair.

  He tried not to overthink things as he came up beside her, as he led her along the path that cut across the end of the courtyard garden, separating the gravel to his right from the grass that formed the bank of the large koi pond to his left.

  It was hard.

  His thoughts weighed him down, growing heavier by the second, pulling him deeper into them the longer they both remained silent.

  He had so many things he wanted to say to her. Why couldn’t he just say them?

  His inability to find his voice and speak to her had feelings twisting inside him, twining together into a tight knot in his chest. Self-hatred was at the fore of them, shame at his own weakness backing it up. She had come to see him, and he couldn’t bring himself to speak to her, found it increasingly impossible to break the silence as it stretched between them.

  It hit him that he didn’t know where to begin because he had convinced himself that he would never see her again, that she always visited Marek to relay her information because she didn’t want to see him.

  But she had come to see him in the end.

  “The infamous fish, I presume?” Her voice was light, driving back the dark again.

  He glanced at the carp in the pond. The colourful fish were following them, no doubt expecting either him or Enyo to feed them.

  “The very same.” He pushed the words out and felt lighter for breaking his silence. The tangled knot of emotions was quick to unravel, the tension melting from his muscles as his voice echoed in his ears and Enyo looked at him.

  “What happened with them?” She stopped at the bottom of the arched vermillion wooden bridge that spanned the pond and led to the main garden.

  “Daimon was… frustrated… by the sorceress because she had placed his boots into the bath, so he teleported her to this bridge and dropped her into the pond.” It hadn’t been his brother’s finest hour.

  Enyo covered her mouth with her hand, blatantly hiding a smile.

  “Apparently it was not the first time someone had attempted to drown her.”

  Enyo’s smile faded as he added that, her hand lowering from her mouth. “That is not so amusing. No wonder he is still apologising.”

  Gods, this felt too comfortable.

  Too much like old times.

  But it wasn’t.

  He couldn’t pretend things were the same as they had been then, not when they were vastly different. He couldn’t let himself get swept up in a fantasy. Things had fundamentally changed between them and he needed to acknowledge that, to put it out there and get it off his chest before he did something foolish.

  Like believing his love for Enyo was going to have a happy ending.

  Enyo crossed the bridge, her gaze drifting over the mossy boulders and trees, and the fading blooms as she followed the winding path that trailed over the gentle hills and around stone lanterns. Keras followed her, battling his rising nerves, fighting to find his voice again.

  “Esher is right, the garden is beautiful.” She turned to him with a smile that lit up her whole face.

  Keras couldn’t hold the words back any longer.

  “How is your husband?”

  The light in her eyes faded, her smile dying once again. His fault this time. He
r expression shifted, growing sombre, or perhaps awkward.

  He curled his fingers into fists and clenched them hard, until his bones burned and the pain comforted him, giving him something else to focus on as he warred with himself, torn between taking back that question and pressing her to answer.

  A soft light entered her pale green eyes as she stared into his, cut into his heart and felt as if it was cleaving it in two, because he couldn’t bear her looking at him like that, not when she could never be his.

  “I am not married,” she whispered, her voice so low that he barely heard her, was sure he had imagined those words leaving her lips.

  They hit him hard, unleashing unruly emotions that again defied the lingering effect of his pills. The backs of his eyes stung as he stared into hers and sought the truth there, confirmation that he hadn’t just imagined she had announced she was not married.

  The gentle warmth and light that had been filling him faded to icy cold as another possible reason for her saying such a thing entered his mind.

  “You are not?” he said, ignoring the trembling in his limbs, how his knees felt dreadfully weak beneath him. “I thought you would have wed your betrothed by now.”

  He clung to tattered shreds of hope, trying to keep himself steady as he waited for her answer, every second stretching into a painful infinity.

  She slowly shook her head. “I called it off.”

  Keras’s knees almost gave out.

  He casually leaned against the end post of the bridge, praying to every god imaginable that she wouldn’t notice his sudden weakness, because he wanted to appear strong in her eyes.

  As strong as she had once called him, saying it with a light in her eyes that had let him know she admired that quality in him. He wanted her to admire it now, not see how easily she had defeated him with a handful of words and had him on the verge of collapsing.

  Or perhaps something even worse.

  Like crying.

  He couldn’t remember the last time he had cried. No. He could.

  He had wept that first night he had come to the mortal world, his heart in tatters, the pain so fierce he hadn’t been able to hold it back. He had made his excuses to his brothers, some lie about scouting Tokyo to ensure it was safe for them, and had ended up on his knees in the middle of a lush field, crying so hard he had caused a thunderstorm to lash at the world, one that had saturated him in under a second.

  Not his finest hour.

  He stared at Enyo, finding it hard to believe she was speaking the truth, even when it was right there in her eyes.

  He needed to be sure. “You called it off?”

  She gave a slight chuckle and shook her head. “Is that so hard to believe?”

  “I’ve met your brother.” He frowned at her.

  She blinked and her eyes widened.

  He felt the shock that rippled through her and wanted to smile, because he knew it stemmed from the fact he had known all along that her brother had been behind her engagement.

  She twisted away from him and leaned her elbows on the curved railing of the bridge, her gaze downcast, eyes fixed on the fish that milled around below her. Her voice was soft, slightly distant as she said, “I decided long ago that my brother should not dictate my entire life… although I cannot seem to stop him from dictating some of it.”

  Keras eased a step closer, his heart drumming hard against his ribs. “How long ago?”

  She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, a brief glance that told him she wouldn’t be answering that question.

  She didn’t need to.

  Her awkwardness confirmed it for him, had him risking a step closer to her, needing to be near her now that he knew she had broken off her engagement when he had left the Underworld.

  The thought that she had been available these last two hundred years, that things might have been different between them if he had found the courage to visit her and put his feelings out there, scoured his insides, hollowing him out.

  But he hadn’t been the only one who could have taken the leap.

  She could have come to him.

  He leaned beside her, keeping a few inches between them, and watched the fish as he battled another surge of darkness. He couldn’t blame her. They hadn’t parted on the best of terms. He had been cold towards her after her announcement and had left without saying goodbye to her. He had given her no reason to believe he had feelings for her beyond friendship.

  Did she have feelings for him in that way?

  He looked at her out of the corner of his eye, tracing her profile, absorbing this moment and how beautiful she was, and how comfortable it was to be with her like this.

  Like old times.

  And nothing had changed.

  Relief washed through him, carried away every shred of pain he had been feeling and left him light inside, floating as he stood beside her.

  His gaze drifted down the delicate slope of her nose to her lips and lingered, heat suffusing him as the urge to reach out, slide his hand along her jaw and tilt her head towards him so he could kiss her filled him.

  Her eyes collided with his as she turned her head, as if she had felt his need and was obeying it.

  He tried to think of something to say as nerves rose inside him, worse than ever as his thoughts spun and blurred, the urge to kiss her running around his mind at high speed.

  Keras flexed the fingers of his left hand, began to lift it.

  All hell broke loose behind him.

  Chapter 6

  Enyo started, violently shoved from her reverie about kissing Keras for the first time, from the intense sense of anticipation that had been filling her as she had waited to see what he would do, aware on some primal level that he wanted to do something.

  Hoping that it had been to kiss her.

  The peace of the garden and the pleasure of his company was shattered as a woman called for help.

  Keras was swift to leave her, sprinting across the garden to the wing of the house to her right, where they had stepped down into the garden together. Enyo raced after him, struggling to keep up with him. He hit the wooden floorboards at breakneck speed, and skidded to a halt in front of the second set of white wood-framed panels just as they were pushed open.

  “Keras,” the brunette female breathed, her hands rubbing her swollen belly through an orange woollen sweater. “Something is wrong.”

  “The baby?” He looked down at her stomach.

  When she shook her head, sending tears tumbling down her cheeks, he looked beyond her, into the room.

  Enyo reached him and looked there too.

  Heat shimmered over Ares where he lay on top of the bedding spread across the middle of the floor of the square, sparsely furnished room. As she watched, the haze grew thicker, distorting the room around him.

  Footsteps sounded to Enyo’s left, luring her gaze there. Cassandra hurried along the wooden walkway, holding the long skirt of her dress away from her ankles. Daimon followed close behind her, and beyond him the rest of Keras’s growing family.

  The witch pushed past Keras.

  “Baby—” Daimon lunged for her.

  She stopped him with a hard look, her ice-blue eyes narrowing on him. “He needs help and I’m giving it to him. Just… maybe cool the air a little for me?”

  “Cool it for me,” Esher growled. “I told you all he should have been placed outside.”

  Keras shot Esher a black look, one that had him snapping his mouth closed and guilt flickering in his blue eyes.

  Cassandra sank to her knees beside Ares, her long black dress pooling around her legs to conceal them. Frost shimmered on Daimon’s black gloves as he moved to kneel on the golden mats by Ares’s head and held his hands over it. The heat haze began to dissipate, the air cooling around Enyo.

  Megan rubbed her belly, hands constantly in motion over it as her dark eyes remained locked on Ares. “We have to do something to help him. Please?”

  The sorceress bent her head and her hands li
ghtly danced over Ares’s arm, stroking over a band on his wrist, just above his inhibitor. The delicately braided black one was laced with bright silver-blue thread that glowed as she touched it and matched one that Daimon wore.

  She looked over her shoulder at Keras and then at Megan. “I am not sure the spell will hold.”

  Esher grumbled something, shoved his hands through his wild black hair, pushing the longer lengths back over his head, and started pacing. “If he goes nuclear…”

  “He won’t.” Keras’s tone was hard, commanding. Confident. “If he is in any danger of doing so, you have my permission to douse him.”

  Behind Enyo, rain suddenly poured down, filling the air with the heavy scent of earth. Esher was gearing up to douse Ares right now, was clearly unwilling to risk his brother damaging the mansion.

  “You must be able to do something.” Megan’s brow furrowed as she looked at Cassandra.

  The black-haired female shook her head and then paused, her pale eyes shifting to Keras. “What about your pills?”

  Calistos was quick to speak. “They inhibit your powers, right? They could help.”

  Enyo frowned at Keras. “What pills?”

  He refused to look at her, his green eyes narrowing on the witch kneeling on the floor before him, black ringing his irises.

  “I swear, I’ve done my best to contain his fire, but my spell is going to break at any second.” Cassandra’s Russian accent grew stronger with each word as she kept her gaze locked with Keras’s, met his frown with one of her own.

  “Daimon and Esher can handle it.” Keras’s tone brooked no argument.

  The witch wasn’t deterred. “Using ice to cool him and water to put out any flames is not going to stop him.”

  “She’s right.” Daimon glanced away from Ares, his gaze briefly landing on Esher and then Keras. “We have to do something more permanent.”

  “Another spell then,” Keras bit out.

  Cassandra’s frown hardened. “I need time to make another bracelet.”

  Calistos took a step towards Keras. “Give him one of your pills. It might inhibit his power enough to stop him from going supernova!”