“Good,” he snarled viciously, his voice unrecognizable from the man I loved.
Instead of stopping, he shoved one hand down the back of my pants, and with the other, he grabbed my jaw, holding me in place on the wall with a painful grip. His nails grew into razor-sharp talons, pricking into my neck, and I felt rivulets of blood trickle down my neck, warm, the copper scent sharp in my nostrils. His eyes had darkened, green irises turned black spilling over into the whites, and his lip pulled back in an ugly snarl, until there was no doubt that it wasn’t my mate staring back at me—it was Apate. “Let’s get this over with. The deal was to get you back,” he hissed, “but he never specified you had to be willing.” And then he slammed his lips onto mine in a savage kiss.
Just like we planned…
One Week Ago
Unable to mask my emotions, I rolled away from him and pulled the blanket up to my nose. “You know what? I think you’re right. I’m still pretty tired. You go ahead and eat breakfast without me. I’m still full from last night,” I told him, burying my stinging eyes into my pillow.
What had I gotten myself into, mating a man I barely knew?
I should’ve known better, though, because newly mated or not, there was no doubt that Ruadan wasn’t the kind of man to let anything go. Instead of taking the easy route and leaving to eat breakfast, ignoring the problem and letting me pretend to sleep, he wrapped himselfaround me and held me tight. “Please talk to me,” he whispered against my neck, right over the mating mark.
Eyes stinging, I clung to the arm he had wrapped around my waist. “You’re lying to me, and I’m scared to ask why.”
He could’ve denied it—most alphas would’ve—but instead, he sighed, tightening his hold on me. “You’re right, and I’m sorry.” I could sense his conflicted thoughts swirling around inside him. “Mal wants me to figure out how to draw Apate out of hiding, and I don’t have the first clue how to do that. All I know is she’s escalating, and if I keep coming after her, it’ll only be a matter of time before she comes for you. You are my only weakness, after all.”
Blinking, my tears scrolled down my cheeks, and I rolled over to look at him. His eyes were glassy too. He shook his head, smiling sadly. “I didn’t tell you because… Uly, I don’t want you involved in this, and I don’t know if I can keep you safe. If something happened to you… to our child… I couldn’t bear it. If you left this earth, I would do everything in my power to join you in the underworld. Where you go, I go.”
“Then why are you trying to leave me behind?” I sobbed, slapping my hand on his chest in frustration. “‘Where you go, I go’ works both ways! If we’re in this together, then it starts now, not just when things are easy. Tell me everything he said.”
And as Rue outlined the horrifying details of the attack, I felt myself grow sick and cold, my skin growing clammy. So much careless death and destruction. I’d spent my whole life purging everyday sins like snacks, lies and jealousy and laziness, but never once had I allowed myself to become hardened to them. And these atrocities this goddess was committing…
“She’s declaring war,” I whispered as the truth sank into my bones.
Rue went rigid, his eyes glittering in the dawn light seeping into the room around the curtain. “What didyou say?”
“Remember how Cameron said that Apate was afraid of Loki, that she was operating her little black-market dealings right under his nose from inside her pocket dimension. And with Loki’s power gone, it’s a safe guess that she’s going to make a play against him. She’s looking to boost her power, and you know what would give her that?”
“What?” he asked.
“You.” I was starting to get excited now as a plan began to take form in my mind. “All these humans she’s been possessing, they’re small fries compared to the big fish,” I said, mixing metaphors, but he had to see what I was saying. “She’ll want you, access to a god’s power, but she’s not stupid. She knows she can’t take it from you by force—not without making a deal.”
He rolled onto his back, frowning up at the ceiling. “But there’s no way she’d believe I was coming to her to make a deal. There’s nothing I can’t get for myself, nothing I want enough to…” He drifted off, and when he looked back at me, I saw we’d both reached the same conclusion. “You, sin-eater. You’re the only thing I would ever want enough to be willing to make a deal with the devil himself.”
“And if you didn’t have me...” I began, and he was nodding. “If I left you…”
“We would have to make it believable. Something public, above debate, with lots of witnesses, and we would need to stay away from each other, no hint that we’re setting her up. And once we catch her, we would still need to figure out how to trap her.”
“I have a plan for that part, but you’re not going to like it.” Were we really going to do this? “Together?” I asked.
Ruadan’s eyes were filled with regret and fear, but there was also limitless love. “Together.”
Now
There was no tenderness to Rue’s lips as he pried my mouth open, his tongue spearing inside. Every instinct I had was to fight back, to bite down hard until I tasted blood, but I fought the urge. I had to remind myself that my mate was still in there somewhere. Just like Becky KcKay, the woman wearing her kids’ school sweatshirt, waking up in the hospital after robbing a bank with no memory of what she’d done. Rue had no control over his body—this wasn’t him! But he needed me right now.Together, we’d said, and he’d done his part. Now it was my turn.
I felt so small and weak with Rue’s claws in my neck, but he had faith in me, in what I could do. Not just a party trick, but enough power to fight the gods. Eyes clenched shut, tears pouring down my cheeks, I searched for that tiny kernel of fire in my veins.
I settled my palm over his chest, seemingly to push him away, but instead—I sent my power deep inside and unlocked that tether that held his soul in place, and piggybacking right alongside it, Apate’s soul as well, like a parasite squatting in a body that did not belong to her.
Apate, goddess of mischief, I offer you no forgiveness and no peace in the next life.
Looming over me, I felt the exact moment that Apate realized what I’d done, Rue’s body going rigid, but by then, it was too late. I held her soul in my grasp. She couldn’t pull away.
Once, long ago, Prometheus stole fire from heaven and gifted it to humans. In revenge, Zeus plotted, giving Pandora to Prometheus’sbrother as his wife, knowing her curiosity would be humanity’s downfall. She opened a vessel containing sickness and death, war and crime—and Apate. She truly was sin incarnate, her entire being black with it. She was the worst of what humans were capable of. And it was this very thing that made her weak. She fed on the lust that existed between me and Rue, except it had always been more than that. It waslove, something the trickster goddess knew nothing about. And it was that love that I now cradled tenderly in my hands, guarding it with my life.
I snipped those tethers that anchored her soul, black and withered though it was, around Rue’s beautiful spirit. Just a few threads, that was all that held her there, and one tiny tug was all it took for a thick, viscous tar to spill from Rue’s mouth in an overflowing flood of evil. Instead of taking her into my body, though, I expelled her out into the air around us and simply… let go.
