Page 72 of Curse the Flame

She knows. There isn’t anything that my blossom doesn’t know about me. And while I know that Kronos is trying to cause even more chaos by trying to turn my wife against me, he can’t.

He can’t.

I search for Willow again, stunned to see that she’s nibbling on her bottom lip. There’s that little line between her eyes again.

My heart stops. “Willow?”

She gives her head a clearing shake, and then she breathes out a word I’ve never heard before: “Turducken.”

“What was that, Blossom?”

“A turducken,” she echoes boldly, and despite how much I hate Teddy for what he did to me… hate Kronos for tricking me… at that moment, I’m full to bursting with love for my blossom. “It’s a chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a turkey. Only he’s Kronos inside of Theseus inside of whoever that guy was on the other side of the mirror. I get it now. He’s a Greek turduckens, and he’s a fucking asshole.”

Willow doesn’t cuss. I do, and she always teases me when the words slip out. Now? Her eyes go wide, and she covers her mouth with her hands, but I’m so proud of her.

Because Kronos? He is a fucking asshole.

Even more annoying is how Willow continues to amuse him.

“How clever,” laughs Kronos. “Pity that she’ll have to die. I might’ve had more fun with her than I ever did Aria.” He turns Theseus’s smile on my wife. “Would you have nagged me, goddess? Would have you figured out that each of my heroic quests were really when I returned mirrorside to cause chaos for the mortals and throw the balance off even more?”

That’s it. That’s it.

Hades starts to rise up inside of me, taking Kronos’s latest comments as another threat against his wife. And, yes, that’s exactly what they are. But I refuse to give control over to Hades, shoving him down myself as, with the same gesture as I use to conjure shadows and hellfire, I’m suddenly holding the exact Colt revolver that killed all of those would-be reincarnates on Teddy Thanos’s orders.

Kronos looks at it, recognizing it instantly. The smug asshole laughs one last time as all I can think is: he’s living. Mortal or immortal, it doesn’t matter. He’s not a shade, not since he kicked out Theseus’s soul to satisfy the Underworld, leaving him alive… and that means I can hurt him.

Thinking along the same lines as me, he boasts, “You can’t kill me. All those Greeks you killed for me… I won’t be one of them.”

“No,” I agree. “Maybe not. But you know what?” I lift the gun and aim at his chest, opening up a path through the shadows to reach him. “I think it’ll still make me feel better.”

I pull the trigger.

CHAPTER 20

NOT QUITE DONE

WILLOW

For one glorious second, I think it’s over.

The chair crafted from shadows that Aiden created disappeared in an instant. Now Kronos lies sprawled across the stone floor of the megaron, one hand pressed against the smoking hole in his chest. The bullet didn’t kill him—apparently even an ancient gun carried for eighty years has its limits when it’s aimed at an immortal titan pretending to be an ancient hero—but it’s done something almost as satisfying.

It’s wiped the smile off of his face.

I watch Aiden lower the revolver with a steadiness that doesn’t match the white-knuckled grip he has on the handle. Smoke curls from the barrel, sharp and acrid in the chilly air, while Kronos stares up at him in genuine disbelief.

I can’t blame him. In the games of gods and war, here in the Other, they use weapons like swords and bows and arrows. There are hunters and archers, but as Aiden has always quietly confessed, he was a killer, and though he hasn’t taken a life in eighty years—and even Daphne doubted it was possible to kill Kronos with any weapon at all, though she hoped we could contain him—it’s only fitting that Aiden used that particular one on him.

I knew about the gun. I knew about the last bullet, too. Aiden has carried both since his human life, saving that single shot after the discovery that all of the “bad guys” he was killing for an even worse boss were reincarnates meant for the Other and not the ruthless targets he was manipulated into believing they were.

He also had no idea that that boss was Kronos in disguise until right before he pulled the trigger.

Whoever the titan was to Aiden during his mortal life, despite the fact that he appeared to me as Theseus… this soul is Kronos, and though he’s not dead, the shock of a mortal bullet did something to the embodiment of chaos that I would’ve never thought possible.

Though I’m sure it won’t last, the oppressive power that poured off of him when he dropped his shield and revealed his true identity is currently banked.

Recognizing that, Aiden’s eyes flood completely white as he cedes control over to Hades.