The nice guy routine, the one with tentative steps and a gentle tone, was gone. He couldn’t keep up the ruse for long.
“What are you doing?” Larkin stormed into the room. The shattered lamp had clearly alerted her to trouble.
“Making my point.”
“Get out!”
Hunter’s icy blue eyes shifted from Larkin before they fixed on me, and I tipped my chin up, blinking against the pain.
“Think about it, Scott,” he told me. “I’ve told you before that this needs to be a mutually beneficial partnership. You can have what you want if you give me what I’m asking for. I’ll give you a chance to think about it.” With his final words delivered, Hunter disappeared in a swathe of blue.
Erik rushed into the room, catching his darling big brother leave. He and Larkin both took one of my arms and hauled me back to my feet.
“Quentin,” he whispered, pity written all over his face. Humiliation burned so deeply that I couldn’t bear to look at him. “Are you okay? We shouldn’t have left you alone with him. What did Hunter want? Is Gray okay?”
“I…”
My head spun from the pain, and the weight of Hunter’s offer settled on my soul. He wasn’t joking. If I wanted to save Gray, there was one feasible route.
When I looked up, Erik was staring at me with glassy eyes. I swallowed back my own tears that threatened to spill. Emotions had been leading me from the moment Gray was ripped from myside and if I continued to allow that, then I would be of no use to him. I needed to clear my head and think rationally.
“He said I can save Gray.” I addressed the only question I cared about in the barrage Erik had thrown at me.
“How?”
I dropped my gaze to the floor, uncomfortable with delivering the news to Erik and Larkin. Knowing that they would see it as wild as I did. The fact I was willing to repeat it made me question my sanity.
“I have to marry him.”
Vulnerability remained a stranger that was most unwelcome in my bleak existence. And yet, powerlessness brought nothing but vulnerability. Without my aura, I was acutely aware of everything around me in a way that I was unaccustomed. Before, I relied on it to survey potential dangers. To overpower whatever obstacles were in my path. It was an extension of me that did my bidding in the most destructive sense. Now, I was reduced to the same basic five senses as mortals. The thought was enough to have acid roil in my stomach and climb up my throat.
I was rendered useless.
The scream ripped through my chest before slamming my fists against the ground. The cuffs took away my aura and all the protection that came with it. Pain coursed through my palms and wrists, travelling up my arms, but I revelled in it. Revelled at the outlet for all that riddled my insides.
“You always were a sullen child.”
My head snapped up to watch as Hunter stepped out of the shadows. There was no warning of his arrival. No sixth sense that would alert me to another presence. I clenched my teeth together and felt the muscle in my jaw pulse from the irritation of not realising he had returned from his trip. How easy it was for him to catch me off guard. The fact only further made me seethe at my situation and the one who had put me in it.
“Always prone to fits of rage even if we were in public,” he continued, watching me with little interest. “I’m not sure how Mum and Dad put up with you as long as they did.”
“I preferred to show people my bite than to be a snake in the grass.”
“And look at where that got you, dearest brother. Sometimes it pays to play nice.”
“Does it?” I noted he had come alone. “Did you get what you wanted from Quentin?” His lip curled in response, and I pushed myself up from the ground as I continued. A spark of hope pushed my mood into something close to delirious. “What happened, Hunter? She didn’t buy the nice guy routine? Or couldn’t you keep it up for long enough? That would be the story of your life.”
He approached the cells, meeting me at the bars. “She’s been a thorn in my side since the moment we started the project. Unable to handle you and forcing me to step in. Getting distracted by you and failing to finish the project. A demigoddess.”
The last point was said with so much disgust that his features twisted into something unpleasant. Even now, after years of anguish and protest, Hunter couldn’t come to terms with the fact that it had been our behaviour that forced the hand of the demigods. They had reacted and, to teach them a lesson, we validated their point by erasing them from existence. To askHunter to reflect and show remorse was futile. He remained steadfast in his justification for the bloodbath.
Deciding it was best not to bring up the past, I hummed thoughtfully. “She’s a tiresome woman, that’s for sure.”
“There’s a streak of stubbornness in her that needs to be broken.”
How often had I thought the same thing when we first started the project? That Quentin never knew when to let things go and leave well enough alone. It irked me, but she wouldn’t be the woman I loved without that little facet.
“Did a little demigoddess get the better of you?” I taunted, unable to help myself. “She barely knows how to control her powers.”
