“The board of healers believes?—”
I didn’t let her finish. I shoved her out of the room none too gently, and shut the door, using a little too much force in my annoyance. The walls quaked.
Oops.
Tuning out the screams of protests and various threats coming from the healer on the other side of the door, I grabbed my phone, praying that my best friend had a signal as I pressed my shoulders on the door.
“Help! Help! We have a hostile in room 704,” Faust screeched.
I placed myself against the door, not leaning on it as I didn’t want it crushed by my considerable weight. “Come on, Kley,” I muttered at my phone.
Thankfully, she was married to a bloody billionaire who owned the satellite that provided our phone network, so Kleos’s phone was rarely out of signal these days. The problem was, she was technically on her honeymoon. I wasn’t sure she’d made it back into town yet. She was coming back today in order to witness my ceremony, but she could still be in Italy for all I knew.
“Hey!” she answered on the sixth ring. “I amsoexcited about your ceremony. Are you wearing the Chanel piano dress? Lucian wants to get something shiny for you out of his vault, and I wasn’t sure about what color to match it with.”
“Yeah—erm, the Chanel,” I said.
I had an unhealthy obsession with pretty dresses that I could only finance thanks to secondhand stores, and Kleos had always given me jewels that she infused with her magic to protect me. As she was now married to the wealthiest man in an entire city full of rich bastards, instead of sea glass and crystal, she’d handed me avintagesapphire parurefor her wedding. Without question the most expensive thing I owned, and I was including my ground-floor apartment in that assessment.
I secretly preferred the pieces she made herself, but I’d never say that to Lucian. For a big, bad dark sorcerer, the guy had a serious pout when he wanted to.
I cut to the chase, hearing more healers rush in. “Listen, I need a favor.”
I tried not to involve Kleos in my obsession with Cas. For one, she left shortly after his arrival for her weeklong honeymoon. I wasn’t about to interrupt that vacation with my musings about a stationary god. And secondly, I knew without a doubt that when I confessed I had misgivings about him, she’d just roll her eyes. I had misgivings abouteveryunknown entity until I’d assessed its threat level, and she knew it.
I intended to ask Kleos to pop by when the healers were away, to see if she could feel what was wrong with Cas—or even wake him up—but all subtleties had just gone out the window. I was not letting the dumb healers doom us all by royally pissing off another bloody god. We’d blown past our quota for the year.
I was about to explain my predicament as succinctly as I could, but Kleos didn’t need details.
“On my way.” I could hear her move, her heels hitting the fancy marble of The Royal Manor. “Where are you?”
She didn’t even pause to ask what I needed her for.
Smiling, I told her, “Healer’s ward, Hall of Truce, seventh floor. I’ll be in the room a handful of healers are trying to break into.”
By the sound of it, I’d say there were two or three by now, shooting spells at the door, pushing against it.
Too bad for them I was wearing a sea glass pendant designed and spelled by Kleos to deflect magic, and at last count, I weighed one-point-three tons. This door wasn’t going to budge for a while.
“Of course you are.” Kleos snorted. “We still have the carriage, I think; we only just arrived. The ride to the town circle takes a good fifteen minutes, so I’ll be there in twenty, give or take. Call Gideon if you need help any faster.”
I grimaced. I could and would call Gideon if I had to, but the git would never let me live it down. Asking Kleos for help was one thing. Her cousin, though? We had a strange rivalry going on. He’d forever say, “remember that day when your helpless ass couldn’t get out of a pickle without me?” and I’d have to murder him in his sleep.
Twenty minutes. I could do this.
3
SILVER
My attention was divided between the chaos of the various healers throwing spells at the doors and yelling threats or cries for help and the green shard of polished glass pulsing at my throat.
Kleos recharged it a week ago, right before her wedding. I’d used up most of her reserve of power during my twenty second confrontation with Zeus. His lightning bolt never even got close to me, but deflecting its residual power still completely depleted the crystal I was wearing at the time.
The horde of healers behind the door were no Zeus, but the consistent attack by half a dozen sources were taxing my defenses. Shit. I didn’t want it to come to a face-to-face confrontation. Not because I couldn’t win. I’d have to evade their spells but I was fast and strong enough to take a bunch of old, undertrained, mostly sedentary scientists, magic or no. I’d wrestled a bloody dragon a couple of weeks back. But fighting against city officials wasn’t in my best interest. I was already registered as dangerous. Any strike against me might get me right back where I started: a lab rat for those assholes.
Focused on two places already, I didn’t sense him until he was right in front of me. Fuck. The ruckus must have woken him up.
Aphrodite’s tits, he washuge.
