Page 78 of Of Monsters and Mazes

“In the Yellow Sector—”

“Yes.” He interrupted before I could finish that thought. “Yes to all of it. Including the drug.” His Adam’s apple bobbed, and he kept his gaze downturned. “Maybe that was why I was so… frustrated when I finally found you.”

“And in the Blue Sector?”

Rai placed his hand on mine, and he gently raked his fingers up the marks on my forearm, skating over Theron’s dots. “I could feel both of you.” He admitted. “This whole debacle has been forcing me to feel things I didn’t think I was capable of feeling, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it all.” With that, somehow, the Minotaur had lost all of his bite. He seemed as lost as I was. As hurt as I was.

As human as I was.

I slid my hand back into his, and I squeezed his knuckles. A spike of relief, calm, and happiness sparked in my chest, and I was content with that notion belonging to either one of us.

“I’ll help you get to the castle. I’ll even get you your cat back.” He said with uncharacteristic trepidation. “But maybe after that, you should stay. In Tartarus, I mean.”

Stay? “Why would you want me to?”

“Because I’ve never felt anything like that, and I’m not prepared for it to be the last time.” He squeezed me back. “But also because your cat’s been really nice to me, and I like having him around.”

Goddamn it. If I’d ever experienced true emotional whiplash, it came in the form of a man who was planning to cut my head off confessing that he loved my fluff pumpkin.

“I don’t know if I can survive the kinks of Tartarus men.” I said it with the vague tone of a joke, but seriously, keeping up with devils would be a daily trip to a hardware store and a blood bank.

Rai sighed then stroked his horn. He drifted his fingertips to the top, then he skewered his thumb on the tip. Without explanation, he took hold of my chin and pressed his punctured thumb to my lips. He forced his way inside my mouth, and he pressed down on my tongue.

“Suck.” He commanded, and I obeyed. “You hold the blood of three species, and I’ll assure you do for the rest of time. I’m the only one who can kill you, and anyone else who tries will answer to my horns.”

Was that sweet? My heartbeat and stomach were both fluttering like it was, but the way it made my pussy wet could only mean it was the reddest of flags. I guess that’s what worked for me though, so who was I to complain. We all had our own fucked up cocktails we liked to order, no matter how many regrettable decisions they led to. It was going to take a lot of therapy to convince me to put down this Bloody Mary for a Shirley Temple.

“It’s a nice sentiment, but I have a job and responsibilities back in my world. And… and I don’t live forever like you guys do.” I recalled Theron’s speech about the brevity of my existence, that somehow justified him renaming me to Butterfly, and what was once comical and mildly annoying now left a deep pit in my stomach. “Humans barely live as long as a single blink on the cosmic scale. Cats live even shorter. I don’t think that plan is going to work out how you think it will. “

He stifled a smile like I was the one being ridiculous. “All souls are immortal. If you were to pass of some human deficiency, your soul would just ascend or descend to another realm where you would be prepared for rebirth. If that happens, I’ll just find you and bring you back before they’re able to perform the reset.”

I blinked, as there was a tremendous amount to process there, not the least of which in how casual and normal he made that sound. Why was it that these realms of gods got to know everything about the universe, while the realm of humans was full of blind guess work? I was a bit envious of how oddly simple that made life. To have confirmation and perfect knowledge of everything that happens in birth and death had to be freeing in a way. Maybe it was even more terrifying in others, since you had to go through life wondering how many things your soul has forgotten. Theron said he and Jericho had existed since the dawn of time, but Rai, who was born of Jericho’s ex-wife, must have existed as something else at least once before.

“Have you ever wondered what happened to your parents’ souls after they were murdered?” I don’t know how I’d come to be so comfortable and candid with Rai, but he easily facilitated it. Something snapped into place when we’d been together, and I didn’t mind it.

Rai laughed, and his smile was genuine in its amusement. “Their souls are imprisoned in their graves. The king made sure of it.”

“Does that bother you?”

“No.” He shook his head. “Both of my parents were alive for long enough for me to know them. Too long for me to think they’re worth missing.” He tugged idly at his collar. “Not everyone deserves a place in your existence.”

What was the collar about?

I wanted to ask, but before I managed to get out the words, every tree and every bush that surrounded us went up in flames.

Chapter 43

The orange ferns collapsed around me as their trunks burned beyond the point of structural integrity. On the other side of the ashes, I was faced with two deep crimson eyes. Butterfly sat on the rock behind him, her knees pulled to her chest, and dressed in black leather. Rai was shirtless, with his tattoos, piercings, and lean muscles on full display.

I didn’t even try to process what the fuck I was looking at before I had the Minotaur’s throat in a vice grip, and his back against an unburned tree. “You have five seconds to explain before I rip your fucking horn off and give you a new kind of dermal piercing.” I added a few extra pascals of pressure, but his collar protected him from me as much as it limited him for Jericho.

I’d already happened upon the Cronus camp, so I wasn’t completely oblivious to what had gone on. The fact that I’d woken up to the zing of a mate call from her touching the marks, only to find myself bound in vines that Alessi had to cut me out of, told me it wasn’t the simpleminded goblins who had kidnapped her in the first place. Only Rai had that kind of control over the environment of the Labyrinth.

But if Rai had taken her, then why was the whole village dead? And I mean dead dead, and the whole village. There wasn’t a single one of those things left to rebuild the population. There was no doubt that Butterfly wasn’t the one who managed to gore them, break trees in half, and physically rip their horns from their skulls and stab them through their chests.

So… why? The Cronus have lived in the Orange Sector for ages, and only now Rai felt inspired to remove them from existence? What new found humanitarianism made him want to send their souls into the eighth circle of hell?

If Jericho’s fuck toy was suddenly warming up to a tribute, I was going to give myself a nightmare.