South of Surrender (Hearts of the Anemoi) (15 page)

Chapter Fifteen

Zephyros jumped to his feet. “What did you say?” Save Megan, everyone else joined him. Five pair of eyes cast their critical judgment upon him. The air in the room took on an electrical quality.

“You heard me. Eurus has the firestone ring.” Every muscle in Chrys’s body went rigid, bracing for whatever they threw at him. He’d deserve every bit of it.

“What in the seventh circle of hell are you talking about?” Zeph growled.

“Wait. That gaudy thing with the wings?”

All eyes whipped to Ella. “How do you know that?” Boreas asked.

She paled. “That night. On the bridge. He wore it then.” She didn’t need to explain further. Everyone understood implicitly that she referred to the night Eurus had killed her human form by throwing her off the tallest tower of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Chrys hated that he’d made her relive even a moment of that night.

Zeph materialized right in front of him. “By Zeus and all the gods,” he hissed. “Why have you withheld this from us? That was the end of March!” For a long moment, lightning illuminated the world outside the windows as if it were day.

Behind Zeph, Ella gasped. “I didn’t know it was significant. I’m sorry.”

He returned to her side and took her face in her hands. “You have no cause to apologize, love. You had no reason to know. Unlike
him
.” Fierce blue light slashed from Z’s eyes. Thunder clapped and rolled, the loud rumble going on so long it seemed it might never stop.

“He’s right,” Chrys said. Their disapproval sat like a jagged block of ice in his gut.

Teddy whined and fussed in Megan’s arms. “I think I’ll take him upstairs,” Megan said in a small voice. Owen helped her up and kissed her cheek, his intense, strange eyes following her like he was torn between joining her and remaining. Dark light flared from his gaze when it cut back to Chrys. “Go on,” he said.

Chrys blew out a breath. “I didn’t know right away. That night, I went after Eurus. For a long stretch of days, I could not find him.” Chyrs had assumed he’d holed up at his ancient citadel in the eastern extreme of the Realm of the Gods—it was a place the brothers had always avoided because Eurus’s ability to bestow misfortune and unluckiness was strongest there. “In the meantime, things were touch and go with Ella. So I hung at your place and decided that, if all else failed, I’d resolve it once and for all when I came into my season upon the summer solstice.”

“I’m still waiting to hear something that justifies sitting on this revelation, little brother,” Zeph said.

“At first I went after him with both barrels blazing. Unsuccessfully. I figured his besting me stemmed from desperation, that he knew he was fighting for his godhood. And then I switched tactics and tried to reason with him.” Zeph bit out a curse in the ancient language. Undeterred, Chrys pushed on. “The first time we conversed, I saw the ring.”

“That was still nearly three months ago. Damn it all to Hades!” Wind pounded against the side of the house, a preternatural freight train of sound.

“Look,
now
it’s crystal fucking clear I made the wrong decision. But at the time, I thought I could handle it. It was my season. I was by far the strongest of any of us. If not me, then who? One of the Olympians? I feared going to them might’ve put Father’s head on the chopping block, too, for not confessing the loss of the ring.” He’d tried to protect everyone’s interests, and ended up failing right down the line.

“Zephyros, the bandages Father wore that night at the Acheron. You asked him what happened and he brushed it off,” Boreas said.

“Good gods, you’re right. How in the hell could Eurus have bested Aeolus? When would he have ever had the chance?”

“Eurus was hurt, too,” Ella said, as if thinking out loud. Zephyros turned to her. She drew a line down her face with her finger. “That night, he had some sort of a mark or cut. Even in the dark, I could make it out.”

Chrys had become well familiar with Eurus’s disfigurement, but, for the longest time, not with how he’d come by it. Not until the night he’d crashed through Laney’s roof, that is. “Yes. She’s right. And I think I have a good idea how it happened.” Debating only a moment, he pulled off his shirt.

Gasps sounded out around the room. Fuck, did he really look that bad?

He gave himself a quick onceover. Enormous, uneven twisting scars above his right pec, a slashing whip mark on his left arm, a minefield of bruises and assorted smaller scars. His back wasn’t much better. Okay, so he wasn’t doing any underwear modeling or winning any beauty pageants, that was for damn sure. What would Laney make of his scars?

Chrys traced the deep scar on his forearm. “This is what appears on Eurus’s face.”

“You were
whipped
,” Zeph said, voice full of outrage. The lights flickered once, twice, but held. “And…stabbed? Is this from the night you crashed through Laney’s barn roof?” Chrys nodded. “Fucking hell, you are lucky to have survived.” After a moment, Z pointed at Chrys’s arm. “I wear those marks on my back, as you well know. How would Eurus have gotten whipped in the face? Father has his faults, but he would never have done that.”

Chrysander had asked himself that question before. His mind conjured the image of Zephyros kneeling in the Hall of the Gods last spring, his naked back bared and waiting. He’d endured seven lashes at their father’s hand for infractions involving the use of divine power in the human realm. Chrys had thought the charges were a whole lot of bullshit. Eurus’s crimes had been far greater. So Chrys had asked their father why he wasn’t going after—

“Shit, that’s it,” he said. “He planned to punish Eurus after you. Somehow, Eurus got that ring off of Father, but not without a fight—one that resulted in the injury on his face.”

“Aeolus must answer for this,” Zeph said, shaking his head. “We should find him, now—”

“Good luck with that,” Chrys said.

“What do you mean?” Boreas asked.

“In between getting my ass kicked for three months, I’ve been searching for Aeolus. Unsuccessfully.”

Boreas frowned, silver light flashing from his eyes. “Do you think Eurus has him?”

“I don’t think so,” Chrys said. “He’d be crowing that shit to the heavens if so.”

“We’ll find him. And he
will
answer for his role in this.” Zeph glared. “But that doesn’t explain why
you
didn’t say something before the situation went critical.”

Chrys tugged his shirt back on. “I didn’t want any of the rest of you getting your asses kicked—or worse. Not with new families counting on you. Me? I have a whole lotta nothing to lose.”

The words were out of his mouth before he’d thought to say them, and he immediately wanted to reel them back in. He didn’t need to be baring his pathetic sob story on top of everything else.

A long pause left the declaration hanging there, one the thunderous cacophony all around them did little to fill. Boreas tilted his head. “
Chrysander
.”

The reproach in the way he’d said his name made it damn difficult to hold his brother’s sad silver gaze.

Tentative fingers landed on his back and arm. He flinched, but calm followed as Laney slipped her fingers into his, then just stood there. Silently. Her forehead leaning slightly against his bicep.

She was standing by his side.

Awe settled into every cell in his body. That she’d taken a stand with him, for him. That she cared enough to…what? To show that she cared? Yes, at least that. And that her touch, far from eliciting the usual anxiety-filled downward spiral, released some of the tension in his muscles, some of the ache crushing his heart.

When had
that
ever before happened? Foreign emotion swelled uncomfortably in his chest.

He gave her hand a squeeze and swallowed hard. “I thought I could handle it,” he said in a low voice. “I should have been able to handle him. He should’ve let me make this right so he didn’t have to die.” Voicing the word lodged a knot in his throat. His brother was going to die. Almost unavoidable now. And he was going to own a part of that, any way you sliced it.

“Jesus Christ, Chrysander. Eurus lost the capacity to know what was right a long time ago. Maybe eons ago. You cannot do that which is impossible,” Zeph said, his tone more restrained now, his words echoing what Laney had said earlier in the evening.

“It is admirable that you have not wanted to give up on him,” Boreas said. “I am the oldest of the four of us and have always felt responsible on some level for not doing better by him. I should’ve done more to intervene in Father’s treatment of Eurus. It was never the boy’s fault that our mother died in childbirth. But Aeolus was blinded by his grief, and Eurus was a convenient target. He didn’t deserve it. Any of it. But, more and more, I find myself agreeing with Zephyros.”

Chrys cut his gaze to B. “It wasn’t your fault—”

“Nor was it
yours
,” Boreas said, nailing him with a stern, unrelenting stare, one that communicated that his older brother intuited some shit Chrys would just as soon keep private.

…

Laney didn’t know what the hell was going on. Truly, her head was spinning so fast it might fly right off her shoulders. Between the argument, the raging storm, and the power flickering, she had one nerve left. Maybe. If she was lucky. Pair that with the strange sense of foreboding she’d been feeling as she listened to their conversation, and she was damn near adrift in confusion.

But there was one thing she did know—Chrys needed her support.

In her mind’s eye, she pictured him as a lone island stranded in the midst of vast wastes of unfriendly sea, and she hated the analogy. Hated all the anger and aggression the others were throwing at him. Honestly, she didn’t understand the situation enough to know if he was in the right or the wrong, but she did understand the separating feeling of standing out from the rest. She did understand loneliness. And she sure understood loyalty, too.

Trembling with equal parts uncertainty and sympathy, she’d debated going to him. She didn’t want to intrude, or embarrass herself by tripping or stumbling. And then something Chrys had said had stolen her breath:
I have a whole lotta nothing to lose
.

She was out of her seat without making a conscious decision to do so, her hands reaching out toward the unusual heat that always seemed to surround him until they found his hard body. The thought that he’d been sacrificing himself for the others and that he believed no one would miss him if he’d died, that he was expendable… Her very soul revolted against those ideas until emotion strangled her throat and pressed against her chest.

When she’d curled her hand into his, for a moment, he’d tensed. But then his arm had relaxed and he’d pulled her in more tightly against him. Deep satisfaction had roared through her alongside white hot fear at the idea of him being killed.
I’m here for you, Chrys. Do you hear me? I’m here.

If she hadn’t already suspected it before, the thought of losing him, the thought that he might’ve died before he ever fell into her life, brought into stark relief that she was developing feelings for the god she held in her hands. Not just lust. Not just curiosity. But scary, messy, probably-a-bad-idea
feelings
.

Thunder detonated above the house, like bombs were going off all around them. Reeling from the emotional revelation, Laney flinched into Chrys’s side.

“You okay?” he whispered.

She nodded against his arm, not wanting to burden him with worrying about her.

“We’re almost out of time,” Owen said. “The storm rages too fiercely.”

“Yes,” Boreas said. “We need a plan.” As Laney looked toward Boreas, his aura suddenly warped and flashed. For a moment, it disappeared completely. Laney blinked and the effect went away. What the hell was that? Had she really seen it, or were her eyes playing tricks on her?

“Find and confront Aeolus,” Owen offered.

Everyone agreed. She continued to study Boreas, but whatever had happened didn’t occur again. She’d been straining to see everything she could since they’d arrived. Her eye was just fatigued. In truth, she had the beginnings of a headache.

“There is something else,” Chrys said, his voice sounding uncomfortable, regretful. “We need to find out who was behind Tisiphone’s visit to Laney’s house this morning. I was thinking that, well…that maybe Ella could talk to Mars and see if the Olympians—”

“I’ll do it,” Ella said.

“I do not want Ella in the middle of this,” Zeph said at the same time, his aura flashing purple. Thunder and lightning blasted the world and blackness swallowed them. The power had been knocked out. Only the fact that Laney could make out the gods’ lighted auras kept her from flipping out.

For a moment afterward, it was silent except for the baby’s cries upstairs. Owen excused himself to go help Megan, and then there were a series of small sounds Laney couldn’t interpret. Finally, Ella said, “I’m already in the middle of it, Zeph. And you’re not the one who put me there. Nor Chrys. Eurus has dragged me into this time and time again. I
need
to play a role in solving this problem, once and for all.”

“But, Ella—”

“I
need
to, Zeph.”

Admiration rolled through Laney at Ella’s courage and determination.

“Damnit,” Zeph bit out. “I understand. I do.” He sighed. “So be it.”

“Thank you, Ella.” Chrys’s respect for her was clear in his tone. “I’ve also learned from Apheliotes that Eurus keeps his son Alastor imprisoned.”

“What?” Zeph asked. “What in the hell is wrong with our brother’s head?”

“I don’t know the why of it,” Chrys said. “But if such treatment is common, it strikes me we might have allies in at least one of his sons. Apheliotes has agreed to find out what he can.” As he laid out the skeleton of a plan, pride warmed Laney’s heart and helped beat back her fear. Competent, smart, strategic—it was an incredibly sexy combination. Paired with his physical beauty, it was downright lethal.

“Given this news, with Alastor, maybe. With Devlin? Not damn likely. That apple didn’t fall nearly far enough away from the tree,” Zeph muttered.