He was too.
And he wasn’t sure whether she liked it or not.
Her jade eyes warmed as she held his.
Maybe she did like him showing the world that he could be a jealous, possessive bastard just like his father, but he doubted she would like it if the tethers of his control snapped and he let that side of him rip through the males.
“They were blonde.” The second male sounded more confident now. His certainty faltered as he looked at the other three guards. “Weren’t they?”
And something dawned on Keras.
Meadow had used Lisabeta’s blood to cast an illusion, but it had been weak enough that it hadn’t worked properly on all the guards.
“We need to speak with Zeus.” He grabbed Enyo’s hand and turned with her, towards the road that led up to the temples clustered on the steep side of Mount Olympus.
His gaze fixed on the largest of the white columned temples, one that occupied the top of the mountain and looked down on all the others and the city.
Only he didn’t need to go there.
Zeus appeared before him.
It had been a long time since he had seen his uncle, but he still wore the same crisp white thigh-length robe beneath his fine golden armour, and white leather boots that bore matching gold plates that covered the length of his shins. The delicate band of twisted gold that circled his head matched his eyes, glittered just like them as Zeus looked at him, a faint smile curling his lips and causing lines to bracket them and his eyes.
“Keras. It has been too long.” His deep voice rolled over him, as warm as Keras remembered, heavy with a note of authority that had the four guards behind him and everyone else in the vicinity dropping to one knee.
Including Enyo.
Zeus turned warm golden eyes on her and leaned to one side, causing the soft waves of his thick brown hair to fall down over his crown as he peered past Keras. “Rise, Enyo. You do not need to bow to me.”
His uncle was in a suspiciously good mood.
Normally, Zeus demanded all bowed to him.
Keras took a closer look at him, noticed the worry lines on his worn face and that shimmer of uncertainty in his eyes as they shifted back to meet his.
“I tried speaking with Hades, but your father is being his usual stubborn self.” Zeus straightened as Enyo came to stand behind Keras.
Now Zeus’s mood made a little more sense. He hadn’t wanted to deliver bad news to Keras and thought Keras had come here to speak with him about his father, maybe even pick Zeus up on the fact he hadn’t been able to convince his brother to do his bidding.
“It is not why we came.” Keras stepped forwards and held his right arm out. Zeus gripped it near his elbow and he did the same. “But thank you for speaking with him.”
Zeus nodded, a curious edge to his eyes as he looked from Keras, to Enyo and then his guards and the gate. “Why did you come if not to speak with me about your father?”
Keras relayed what the guards had told him and his theory about how the furie had used the blood of Lisabeta, a daemon with the ability to cast powerful illusions, to cloak her and Marinda, and most likely a witch and Meadow’s daemon bodyguards. Keras doubted that the enemy had managed to find more valkyries to serve them. It was more likely that Meadow had brought her daemon entourage with her.
Zeus’s face darkened throughout Keras’s report, a troubled edge entering his golden eyes as he frowned.
That troubled look soon became one of anger.
Keras knew why.
It was easy for Meadow to get from here to the Underworld through the gate that linked Olympus to his father’s realm.
Zeus had allowed the enemy to slip unnoticed into Hades’s realm, and his father was going to be furious.
He needed to warn his father, although he doubted that Meadow would be foolish enough to mount a direct attack on Hades with only a few daemons and possibly a witch as her allies. Even with the spells protecting the daemon brutes, the furie wouldn’t win.
There had to be another reason she had risked everything to get to the Underworld in this way.
“Something is troubling you.” Enyo’s soft voice invaded his thoughts and he blinked and looked at her. “What is it?”
Keras dropped his gaze to his feet, his eyebrows meeting hard. “Meadow, the furie, risked a lot to use this method of entering the Underworld. A direct attack on my father with such a small force will only end in failure. It would have been better for her side if she had opened the Tokyo gate and forced it to remain open. It would have weakened my father.”
“Perhaps they seek to meet with Nemesis and her forces?” Enyo’s gaze drilled into him, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at her, couldn’t tear his eyes away from the pale flagstones as he mulled that over.
“That’s logical, and makes the most sense.” He pressed his hand to his stomach. “But it doesn’t feel right.”
“If the reports Enyo filed are correct, Nemesis does have a strong force behind her. Teaming up with them is the only logical reason the furie would endanger herself by using these gates.” Zeus’s deep voice rolled over him, a confident note in it that backed up what Enyo had said and made Keras want to believe they were right.
But his gut said they were wrong.
Why would Meadow enter the Underworld this way if not to meet with Nemesis and attack his father though?
He frowned harder as he reached for a reason, as he pieced everything together and looked at it from all angles.
It didn’t make sense, because it went against what the Moirai had foreseen. The future was changeable, but an event of this magnitude wasn’t something the three fates were likely to get wrong, and if he and his brothers had altered the course of the future to a new one, then the Moirai would have foreseen that and warned his father by now.
Meadow must have come directly to the gate to Olympus in Greece as soon as she had managed to capture Marinda. Marinda had to be the reason Meadow had made this move. Together, they were stronger, formed a cycle of power that increased whatever abilities they had at their disposal as they passed them between each other. Marinda didn’t have to be compliant in order for Meadow to use that cycle of power to her advantage, or take whatever powers Marinda might have gained by being in contact with Keras and his brothers.
Including the power to open a gate.
The only logical move that made sense to Keras would have been Meadow taking Marinda to Tokyo to breach the only gate between the mortal realm and the Underworld, just as the Moirai had foreseen.
His eyes widened.
“What is it?” Enyo moved a step closer.
“If the future had changed then the Moirai would have seen it.” He looked at his uncle, and Zeus nodded. “They would have told you or my father immediately. So the future has remained unchanged. The enemy will breach a gate between the mortal world and the Underworld.”
Enyo looked from Zeus to him. “But the Erinyes have the power to open the gate, and they are both in the Underworld. Do you think there is another enemy in the mortal world who could open a gate for them? Do you think Meadow plans to convince Calistos to open a gate for her?”
Keras shook his head. They were both solid theories, but they were both wrong.
He looked her in the eye. “I think the future the Moirai saw is different to how we’ve interpreted it. We thought the enemy would breach the gates from the mortal side… but there are two sides to a gate. What if the enemy isn’t going to open and damage the remaining gate from the mortal side, but from the Underworld side?”
Enyo’s jade eyes slowly widened. “It makes sense. You and your brothers have closed all but one gate in the mortal world and the enemy must know you will protect that fiercely. They know there is little hope of them being able to breach it from the mortal side where you all are. They know you are exiled to that realm too, so unlikely to interfere with them if they are in the Underworld.”
He nodded, a sense of urgency building inside him,
laced with excitement and anticipation that roused his darker side, filling him with a need to get moving. “The Tokyo gate is still active, meaning somewhere in the Underworld, there is a gate still linked to it. What if Nemesis never planned to go through the gate? What if she pulled together a large force of allies not because she intended to fight but because she needed them to find the gate? The gate moves constantly and only my father knows where it will appear next, but when the gate is in a location, it is always visible.”
“If Nemesis has a large enough number of allies helping her, she will find the gate quickly. She might already know where it is.” Enyo glanced at Zeus before settling her gaze back on Keras. “The beast that protects the gate—”
“It would be no match for a large force, especially if they had the furie and a witch, and those daemons we fought in the mortal realm.” Keras worried his lower lip with his thumb, his mind speeding through every scenario. “I have to tell my father. The enemy have a head start on us and might have already found the gate. I would feel it opening, so if they have found it, they must be fighting to reach it. Father might be able to move the gate while they’re occupied or before they find it. It would buy us some time.”
“Enyo, you have my leave to fight on Keras’s side as a representative of Olympus. Relay to your brother that he will be expected to participate in the coming war.” A golden bolt of lightning crackled in Zeus’s clenched fist as his eyes brightened and his features hardened. “I will give my brother no choice in this matter.”
Those were fighting words if ever Keras had heard them.
His father didn’t like being ordered around by his brothers, especially Zeus.
Normally, Keras would have spoken out against such a plan, would have stood on his father’s side and done something to make it clear he wouldn’t allow anyone to interfere in this matter and go against Hades’s wishes.
But Zeus was right about Hades. He was being stubborn. His father needed allies in this war, and Keras would welcome anyone who chose to fight on his side. Protecting his family was more important to him than defending his father’s right to rule as he saw fit in his own realm. His father might be angry with him for siding against him for once, but his mother would back him up.
That would be Hades’s downfall.
He never had been able to withstand the force that was Persephone.
Keras glanced at Enyo, recalling how his shadows had calmed when she had touched him, settling against his will. It seemed he had inherited more of his father’s traits than he had thought.
“I will speak with my father about this.” Keras reached for her hand and stroked his fingers across her palm, gaining her attention, and a look from Zeus.
One that warmed his golden eyes and told Keras his uncle was glad that he and Enyo had finally stopped dancing around their feelings.
“I will speak with my brother.” She shifted her hand in his, curled her fingers around to grip him briefly before she released him.
Her jade eyes softened, made him feel she didn’t want to part from him, and gods that made him want to wrap his arms around her and pull her close, and never let her go. There was fear in the depths of her eyes, nerves he felt in their bond, feelings that flooded him with a need to stay by her side because she was afraid of talking to her brother.
And he knew he was the reason for that fear.
She hadn’t spoken with her brother since returning to the mortal realm to help Keras.
Her brother Ares could be a callous and cold bastard. There was a chance he would attempt to punish her for leaving his side, for not being at his beck and call, if she went to see him alone.
She smiled tightly. “I will join you in the Underworld as soon as I am done.”
Keras stepped up to her, lifted his left hand and slid it along her jaw. He tilted her head up and stared down into her eyes, aware all the fires of the Underworld raged in his as he thought about her brother trying to keep her from him, trying to part them once again.
“I give you an hour. If you are not back with me, I will return with a legion of my father’s forces to take you back.” He lowered his head and kissed her before she could respond, before she could call him on the fact he was being overbearing now.
When he released her, she didn’t berate him.
She just smiled. A soft, warm one that stole his heart.
He stepped back and forced himself to teleport to the gate to the Underworld on the other side of the city. The only way he could enter his father’s realm without being summoned.
He walked onto the raised circular gate as soon as he appeared, crossing the horizontal shimmering rings to the central violet disc. It flashed brightly and he closed his eyes as he was pulled through it, only opening them again once he was on the other side. He had never liked the way he seemed to spin wildly in all directions when travelling through a gate.
The first time he had passed through one, he had almost vomited.
Since then, he had closed his eyes every time.
He teleported again once he hit solid ground, stepping directly to the main drawing room of his parents’ palatial home.
“Keras!” Megan’s bright voice seemed so out of place in the palace, too filled with light and warmth to be a part of the home he had grown up in.
“Megan.” He dipped his head as she walked to him, her hands skimming over her baby bump, shifting the loose amethyst top she wore.
Even the colours she chose to wear were out of place in this realm.
“Is Ares okay?” Her chocolate eyes leaped between his, a flicker of fear in them.
He touched her shoulder. “Ares is fine. You will see him again sooner than we had anticipated. The enemy has entered the Underworld.”
A chilling darkness washed through the room as Hades pushed to his feet, dropping the book he had been reading onto the seat of the gilt-framed crimson armchair in front of the fireplace.
He turned to his father, moving slightly in front of Megan as she stiffened and the fear he could feel in her rose. “The furie captured Marinda and has brought her through the gate in Olympus. I believe—”
“What?” Hades boomed, his blue eyes blazing scarlet as they narrowed on Keras, as the light in the room dimmed further.
Persephone hurried to him and touched his arm. “Calm yourself, my love. Think of the baby.”
War erupted in his father’s eyes, a battle between the urge to lash out and the desperate need to do as Persephone had asked for Megan’s sake. Megan pressed closer to Keras’s back and the urge to protect her rose fiercely within him, had him staring his father down and watching him closely, so he was ready to make a move if his father did.
“What is done is done,” Keras said, somehow managing to keep his voice calm even as irritation flowed through him too, anger that the enemy had slipped past him and entered this realm. “I believe the calamity the Moirai foresaw was not triggered by the enemy breaching a gate in the mortal world, but by them breaching a gate in this one.”
He locked gazes with his father.
“I request permission for the exile to be lifted. I request permission to come home.”
Hades stared down at him, his red eyes filled with rage and battle hunger that echoed inside Keras.
“Granted.”
Chapter 23
“He said what?” Ares boomed and Enyo stood her ground as her brother turned on her.
He took swift strides towards her across the mosaic floor in the main room of his house, his blue eyes darkening by degrees as he closed the distance between them. The sunlight streaming in through the bank of windows to her right, where her favourite blue chaise longue stood, reflected off his golden armour and warmed his tanned skin, and bounced off the white walls.
“Zeus has ordered you to participate in the coming war in the Underworld.” She braced herself as Ares halted close to her, loomed over her with a spark of anger lighting his irises.
Rage she could feel in him when he was this clo
se to her.
His power, his strength, wrapped around her. Pressed down on her.
She curled her fingers into fists and clenched them, steeled herself and refused to crumble under the pressure.
“And I suppose you convinced him of this?” Ares barked and leaned closer, his golden eyebrows meeting hard as he sneered at her. “Honestly, Enyo, I thought you foolish for chasing the firstborn of Hades before, but this is just pathetic. Have you spread your thighs for him? Surely that honeyed trap would be enough to secure his backing and have him—”
Enyo slapped him.
The urge came out of nowhere, struck her so hard and fast that she didn’t have a chance to consider the consequences of her actions, or stop them from taking place. Her palm stung as she stood there with her hand still in the air, as her brother closed his eyes and clenched his jaw, and tilted his head even further away from her.
His blue eyes flicked open, locked on her.
His voice was low as he stared at her.
“I see how it is now. He has poisoned you against me. He was always trying to do such a thing and now he has succeeded. Tell me, did he fill your head with pretty promises? Sweet lies that tempted you to open your legs to him?” Ares rounded on her, darkness washing across his handsome features as he touched the red stain on his cheek. “Whatever he told you, it was all lies to get between your thighs.”
It wasn’t.
She told herself that as she stared her brother down, fighting the doubts that began to multiply in her mind.
Her brother was just jealous. His possessive side was rearing its ugly head, the side that desperately clung to his position and would do anything to stop her from attaining one that was above him.
He was trying to sabotage what she had with Keras so she would remain with him, under his thumb, his to order around and keep from the spotlight.
She saw another meaning in his words too.
He was painting Keras with the same brush that had created him, trying to push his own personality on Keras.
Keras: Guardians of Hades Series Book 7 Page 26
