“I’ll sit,” I countered, tugging Maria behind me as I got closer before pushing her away and toward the door, “but you won’t touch her. She leaves here unharmed.”
His eyes settled on Maria for a brief moment as she shook, barely able to pull the key for the door from wherever she kept it in her dress.
“She is of no use to me. She lacks all of the traits I seek out. She may go,” he agreed, dismissing her easily.
If he was the opposite of Kylo, he fed upon greed, envy and pride. If I had to place a bet on it, I’d wager my life he out-powered the other two curses by a substantial amount.
I felt Maria’s gaze on me as I sat, lingering heavily on me as she pulled the door open. There was no sense in me making a run for it with her. It would only get us in a fight and draw attention from the gods, putting all of our lives in further jeopardy.
I refused to meet her heavy stare as I said, “Goodnight, Maria. I’ll see you bright and early in the morning.”
Casus’ eyes met mine as she shut the door behind her, turning the lock into place.
There went my idea of trying to get out of here and searching for an escape route tonight. Just fucking great.
“I’ve come here to offer you a solution to your problems,” he began, crossing one leg over the other before continuing. “It seems the idiot Zeus has finally deduced after twenty-one years that we have no desire to spread the ideology of Hellenism through Ordinarius. The power in this system is waning to dangerously low levels, and soon enough, we won’t have to fear them at all.”
I already knew all of this, so I kept my mouth shut, wanting to see what else he had to say. I didn’t want him to have even an iota of an idea of just how much I knew.
“Smart girl,” he praised my silence, coldly chuckling in a way that made my skin crawl. “Never let your enemy know your cards.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him to get fucked and never call me a girl again. I was a woman, and I was the one thing in our world that could take him down. But to show him that he angered me would show him exactly what buttons to press moving forward, so I kept my lips shut. I leaned back in my chair, like I wasn’t concerned by him in the slightest.
“Tomorrow, Zeus has called for our appearance in front of him, to let us know the new terms of our agreement since we haven’t exactly followed through on our end of the deal. We knew you fled to this realm, making it easy to deduce that he’d finally gotten you in his grasp.”
My eyes narrowed as Casus smirked. “We also know he’s going to use you, likely threatening to keep you as a weapon against us unless we truly begin to serve their needs. We just arrived tonight, and I cannot shroud my presence from anyone watching this room for much longer, so we need to make this quick. I know he has guards and underlings watching us all like hawks.”
Well that was an interesting take. Did I pop his bubble and let him know Zeus actually planned to kill me according to Helen? Or did I keep that tidbit to myself?
Deciding to test the waters, I asked, “And what is the solution to that problem for me?”
He uncrossed his legs then, leaning forward with his hands clasped between them. “Tomorrow, we will invoke an ancient spell that will bind the four of our powers together. You should be able to use our power of transporting through the shadows in all of the different realms then. Zeus would never be able to hold you hostage again. The four of us could rise in power, wealth, and status back in Ordinarius, bending the humans to our will.”
I was under no misguided notion that his words actually held any truth to them. He was only presenting this to me with the guise that it all worked out in my favor alone. There was something in it for him. With the power disparity I sensed between the three of them and Pandora’s words about the curses consuming each other in the box the first time she entered it, I had a feeling such a binding would allow him the opportunity to consume all of us.
Feigning slight interest, but not enough to appear desperate, I countered with a question, “Would I be able to bring my mates with me? They would not be allowed to be harmed.”
His eyes sparked at my question, and I immediately knew he would promise me the moon from the night sky itself to get me to agree with his plan.
“Of course. You’d be allowed to live and create a life wherever you wanted in Ordinarius. None of us need to intervene in each other’s lives once we’re back.”
He’d literally just offered for us to subjugate the humans together, so how exactly would we not need to intervene in each other’s lives? He really must have thought I wasn’t very bright.
I pinched my brow together as I gave a false performance of mulling it over.
“Well, I was already considering joining you all after I graduated from Dark Imaginarium Academy and went back to Ordinarius, but Zora and Elias pissed me the hell off with our encounters. Would they really leave me and mine be?”
Gods, he was eating the shit up that I was delivering to him on a silver platter. He was truly blinded by his own curse of greed and power.
He eagerly nodded his head. “Yes, they obey me, and I will keep them in line for you.”
My lips pinched into a tight line as I nodded. “Okay, let’s do it, but let’s make Zeus pay for thinking that he could control any of us to begin with.”
Casus gasped sharply at the bloodlust I was allowing myself to display, and I knew I had him.
My skin pebbled in response to the laugh tore from him then.
“You know, I think I might like you after all, hope,” he announced as he pushed from the chair and ambled to his feet. “Zora is finishing the preparations now, but a key factor of the spell is the blood of a sacrifice. I suppose we can use Zeus, then?”
