Page 67 of The Gods Forbid

“I could double down on the thank yous. I don’t think I was nearly as appreciative as I should have been about Penn,” I returned, feeling myself smile. My heart was still kicking off like a race horse, but there wasn’t that same flash of nerves as the early days. This felt … heady.

“Give me a few days,” Sebastian said. “Still gives me time to mess it up, love.”

I shook my head, scrunching up my nose. “I don’t think so.”

Sebastian covered his chest with one of his hands dramatically. “Such faith in me.”

My lips parted, preparing to respond, but any sound building was killed when Sebastian leaned in and my entire body locked up in anticipation.

What was he…

Sebastian’s lips descended to the space next to my ear, leaning so close I could feel the heat rolling off him in waves. “Careful not to touch the painting.”

I straightened, the move pushing our chests so close they almost touched. I spun around, realizing that at some point in our conversation, he’d all but backed me into one of the most priceless paintings in the Mediterranean.

All because I’d lost my mind and asked him if he thought I was pretty. That was going to haunt me.

Before I could even consider how to move on from that conversation, the sound of a portal cracking stole my chance to.

“Ah! I told you they’d be here.” A familiar, melodic voice, though dark around the edges, called from behind us. Sebastian groaned, the sound quiet like he couldn’t help but do it but didn’t want anyone else to hear it.

I might not have, if we weren’t standing so close. Peeling myself away from him, I turned, ready to greet my friend and goddess of the Underworld.

Chapter 14

Sebastian

Of fucking course, the one chance I had to tease a blush out of Persy was interrupted by the harbingers of Death themselves.

At first, I thought it was just Rose coming to ruin my day, but apparently she had her husband in tow.

Those two were far too cheery to be the god and goddess of the Underworld. They were so … smiley. Particularly around each other.

Dominic’s face wasn’t built to smile. He’d spent the better part of his life scowling at everything that crossed him—which was essentially everything that came within his line of sight.

Until he lost his mind, married Rose, and decided that smiling seemed alright.

“Hello, Sebastian,” Rose said, looking at me with a passive, if not kind, expression like I hadn’t set her up to be the scapegoat for any fallout from my overthrow attempt. There were a lot of unsettled feelings I had towards that fact.

If I was admitting it to anyone, even myself, I was admitting it to Persy first.

The thought of that menacing ball of sunshine sent another wave of heat through my blood. I’d failed miserably in my attempt to keep the obvious appreciation I had of her beauty apart from any attraction.

That plan had gone up in a spectacular number of flames. I was lost to it the second she stepped in front of a piece of art. It was then that I realized anything I could use my power to create paled in comparison to her.

It was a wildfire burning through me, so intense I forgot that I was supposed to be keeping myself in check. Instead, I’d all but backed her into a wall, telling her how insanely beautiful she was.

There was something about seeing her lock-up around that woman who had given us the tour that made me feel deeply unsettled. I could tell that she was uncomfortable, even a little snippy, and my fucked-up brain wanted to assume it was because she was jealous.

I wasn’t ignorant. I knew when people were flirting with me, and there was no mistaking the suggestive tone in that woman’s voice.

It was that thought that had be abandoning my conviction to keep myself far, far away from her. I just hadn’t accounted for the fact that I would feel horrifyingly settled around my own work, a reminder of a time where I would have admitted I was happy.

Even looking at Afterlife, a tribute to Penelope and a silly hope that I’d experience a place like that one day, didn’t make me viscerally angry. It just made my focus zero in on Persy, bathed in the bright sun she deserved to be around, and lose my fucking mind.

At least I had my answer about Niky. I knew my old friend well enough to know that he wasn’t that much of an idiot. If Persy wasn’t used to men telling her she was beautiful, there was no way she was in a relationship with him.

There was no small part of me that was disturbingly happy about that.