I stared into his endless eyes and knew that he was telling the truth. Beyond the energy controlling me and him, beyond our Greek natures and his centuries of life and destruction, he was being as honest with me as he had ever been.
This was what he wanted.
I was what he wanted.
I couldn’t listen to it for another second. “Hold still,” I commanded him.
Fear flickered in his eyes as I raised my arms and plunged the sword straight through his heart. His face contorted with pain as it slowly drained of life.
Suddenly he was too heavy to hold. I released the hilt and let his body drop to the bottom of the expansive abyss where he would never be heard from again.
I floated there for long minutes, watching him disappear into a blackness so thick and dark, not even I could see through it.
I kicked off and shot toward the surface with new urgency. The power that consumed me soured in my system and I fought desperately to tame it.
It consumed me, turning my thoughts wild and sickening. It wanted ultimate control. The power had killed a god and now it wanted the world.
My mind became a tangle of sanity versus madness, a twisted dichotomy of morality versus wickedness.
I wanted blood and death and utter annihilation at the same time I wanted nothing but peace and normal.
My head broke the surface and I sucked in lungs full of air, hoping to clear my mind and think lucidly. I didn’t find anything but more confusion. The sky flashed with lightning and boomed with thunder. The turmoil in the clouds mirrored the battle I’d fought below the surface.
I continued fighting my way to the shore. I swam and swam and swam until every muscle was exhausted and my body threatened to give up.
But I still couldn’t shake the darkness. I had given myself up to a power that shouldn’t exist… to something so malicious that it would make every nation bleed until there was nothing living left.
I stumbled over a shifting bottom when the shore finally came into sight. The violent waves tossed and turned me until I was choking on the very water that had saved me.
The ocean spit me onto shore with no ceremony, as if it were as thankful to be rid of me as I was to reach dry land.
My head hurt as I warred with the power that was taking me in savoring degrees.
I couldn’t fight this.
I couldn’t win against this.
This was too much… too consuming.
I wasn’t enslaved to this, Iwasthis.
But then he was there.
He was at my side. My head was in his lap.
“Ivy,” he whispered and it was balm to my broken soul. “Breathe, Red. I’m here. I’m with you.”
And so I did.
I took a breath.
Chapter Thirty-One
Warm sun on my face and the tickle of an ocean breeze brought me back to life. Calloused hands wrapped around mine, the faint scent of coconut oil shampoo and my name whispered like a prayer in a gravelly, smoky voice brought me back to myself.
I blinked up at Ryder’s concerned face and smiled weakly.
“He’s dead?” he asked immediately.
