How long was I dancing?
“I warned you what would happen, but you didn’t listen,” said a modified voice. “Now—you’re going to pay. And so is your idiotic friend.”
My captor took off his jaguar mask.
I stared up in shock.
“You?”
Chapter 28
The Slayer
Alexis
Sitting in dirt, wrists bound before me, I peered up at my kidnapper through the heavy lion’s head.
“I warned you, multiple times—I told you to leave Sparta if you wanted to live,” my captor said bitterly. “But you didn’t listen... you had to try and usurp me.”
I blinked again.
Unable to process what was happening.
“Now you’ll die, just like the rest of them.” He gestured at the piles of debris along the walls of the small space. “And so will she. Your idiot mutt friend tried to save you by grabbing me as I leaped. Well, now you’re both dead.”
My eyes widened at a skull leaning against the wall.
It wasn’t junk piled around us; it was bones. Frayed, rotting ropes were tethered to the walls next to them.
He murdered them.
He’s going to kill us.
“But w-why?” I croaked on dry lips, brain frozen in shock.
None of it made any sense.
Storm-gray eyes narrowed, deep-golden skin was drenched in shadows, and a laurel crown gleamed atop blond hair.
Theros smiled cruelly.
“Because Iam the heir to the House of Zeus.” His expression was sick. “Only I will wear a crown. I’m the one who inherits our House’s legacy and brings our family honor... no abandoned,mangymutt is going to take my birthright.”
Months ago, when the doctor had said the House of Zeus’s mutts “struggled,” I’d thought it was a strange choice of words.
These bones are the mutts.
The House of Zeus didn’t have a fertility issue—it had a murder issue.
I struggled to put all the pieces together.
It still wasn’t adding up.
“But why the siren? Why did you kill Maximum?”
The boxes of body parts didn’t make any sense.
“What are you talking about?” Theros asked. “I didn’t kill them. I know you read my note—a muse told me—so don’t pretend you weren’t warned.”
