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29. Nat

29

Nat

a cliff. Jagged rocks at the bottom

Dull, silty soil pushes under my fingernails as I follow a trail of tourmaline. The moon hangs low in the sky, casting an eerie glow over the budding trees. I delve further into the damp earth, the rhythmic scratching of my nails drowned out by the cacophony of cicadas.

“Won’t allow it,” I mock under my breath.

Sin’s command burns like wildfire through my veins.

Last night was … a moment of weakness, a desperate attempt to escape the crushing truth of my reality.

Right?

Despite my efforts to forget his scent, a heady mixture of clove and wine still haunts my flesh, the feel of him gripping me, the moan he gave when I gripped him back.

A shiver runs down my spine and I shake my head, willing myself to focus on the task at hand.

I’m not here to wallow in self-pity or regret. I have a mission to complete.

With each inch deeper into the ground, I uncover more chunks of precious gems—sapphires, emeralds, and quartz—each jewel inscribed with a note for me.

Zilya wonders where I put my breastplate and if she should polish it—i.e., steal it. Aunt Tisiphone tells me to try tempura shrimp. A mortal specialty. Danny demands that I cast a spear from the summit of the St Louis Arch because she’s convinced her tent is just below it.

The rest are boasts and threats to topple my spot on the killing tree—our leader board for bad soul tagging.

It’s Fury speak for we miss you . Despite being scratched up with carvings, each gem is enough to live off for a lifetime up here, so I shove the jagged beauties inside my pockets.

“Megaera?” I ask, probing for her answer.

Dirt reaches up to my knees. I’m covered and sweating and if I twist my hips, I feel Sin pushing me to my limits.

A geode pops through the earth like a worm, plopping at my bare feet. I crack it, and from the banded amethyst, pry out the parchment. I am without my heart, do not also take my reason for breathing.

“Drama King,” I call into the hole, wearing a half smile.

Hades gets especially morose when Persephone leaves for spring. He spends more time on the river bank with us, drinking and hollering and fighting.

Hard to believe I’ve been away for years. Hades didn’t understand my desire to leave. but he also never understood that sometimes the shouts grinded my ears and the wine tasted off.

It wasn’t until I was on patrol on the riverbank and a Cyclopes with a murky soul snuck by me that Hades showed me the way to the surface. He’d seen the truth. I hadn’t missed the Cyclopes, hadn’t forgotten them, they hadn’t bested me. I’d just … let them go. Something in my soul told me it was right.

Persephone cried when I left. Hades hadn’t been able to make it, tied up in the work of the Gods, something about a favor.

Sin would love the Underworld. The purple flames of the bonfires, the rowdy, always lewd songs we sing, waking up in the middle of the night to spill blood and sleeping through half a day. They’d love him there, shirtless, saying darling .

Discarding the parchment, I pluck a iridescent sheet of mica from the hole and flip it over. My stomach sinks.

We voted. It ’s Atlas .

Aunt Megaera’s scrawl.

The leader first. She probably thinks it’ll send a strong message.

I roll my eyes. “This isn’t a cut off the head of a snake thing. They’re still be cursed, even without him.”

A second smaller geode surfaces. What does the witch killer do?

I huff a laugh, taking my black knife—stolen from Sin’s belt before I ran—and pry the mud off my boots with the tip. “Zeke doesn’t do anything. He cooks at a turtle’s pace. He’s skittish, worthless. I’ll take him out when I’m bored and full. Atlas, however … he’s a Chire. Could have something up his pocket. I sense some sort of protection on him. Could be another God in play, or worse, a Titan.”

The next stone says, Or worse, a Titaness.

When Megaera’s right, she’s right.

A rod of quartz asks, And what about the hot one?

No question who they’re referring to. “He’s not for you,” I snarl to the ground, stomp my foot. “Hades only.”

Instantly, a dozen stones pop up around me and I know without reading what they say: no and fuck Hades and Hades is depressed and sad and we’re tough as fuck .

“He’s a Demigod,” I snap at them. “Inform Hades. We’ll have to establish bloodline before he descends.”

Hopefully they’ll do better than me. Because I can’t find one that fits.

Sin commanding Zeus’s thunderbolt is perfect. Him with Athena’s owl perched on his shoulder, curls spraying through a helm makes sense. I can picture him wielding Poseidon’s trident, or Hermes’s caduceus. Fuck, even Hades bident. He could be a child of any of the Gods.

Or maybe a child of all, like Pandora.

She’s still alive and kicking.

And a mega bitch.

“I require my whip,” I declare.

Come home. Now. A sapphire. Hades.

Eavesdropper.

“Is he of Zeus?” I ask Hades, worry knotting in my chest. Zeus. The God who didn’t just want us gone, he wanted us extinct. “Is he—”

Hades’s response is typical. The tip of a blade emerges beside my hand, breaking soil apart, pure gold the length of my palm. I don’t think. I throw it behind me.

A muffled grunt slicks satisfaction into my blood. From the edge of the porch, Drake withdraws the knife from his biceps.

I frown. Bad aim.

“Nice to see you, too.” He offers me the knife back but I gesture for him to keep it, not liking the balance, preferring Sin’s.

“You were eavesdropping.”

He doesn’t deny it. The executioner lowers to a crouch next to me, red racing out down the tendons in his arm, pooling in the fingers of his glove. He smells like leather and eucalyptus, and under the moon with a complexion so pale, hair so thick and dark, he could pass for a true immortal, born and raised.

“Sin’s blades are from Ares.” His voice scrapes like it’s gone bad from disuse. No questions. No surprise I’m yelling at a dirt pit in the backyard.

I really do like him. Another black soul I’m finding doesn’t rub so raw.

“Sin is the son of Ares?”

Gods, Aunt Megaera is probably cackling herself silly.

To slay a son of Ares? Straight to the top of the killing tree.

“Or so the rumor goes.” Drake shrugs. “Sin has a habit of impressing females when he’s had too much wine. I think he’s claimed every God as his parent. Ares, Hephaestus, Aphrodite.”

“Not Hades?” I check, just to be sure.

“He’d never dare. No one would believe it.”

I set my teeth. “Right. Because Hades is everything they say. The devil. The villain.”

Hazel irises sink to me, the faintest furrow etches into Drake’s forehead. “Because Hades and Persephone are the greatest surviving love story in the history of our realms. And Sin has been evading love his entire life.”

My jaw drops. “What? Why?”

Drake looks at his gloves, then the house, the windows all dark, the rooms calm. “Why don’t you ever sleep?”

I don’t react. Letting his question battle mine.

A black gem appears, Drake written across it.

“You’re getting fans,” I say, turning the rock over to show him. “If you value your life, you’ll leave.”

“It’s like you’re begging for my company.” He sits down beside me then, butt balanced precariously on the rim of the crater I’ve created, the jewels at his feet glinting and glowing.

He picks through a few, reading in the dim light, mouth curled up on one side. “Luke keeps a teddy bear under his pillow and Zeke nursed a baby bird to health when it fell from it’s nest. Does that mean they get killed last?”

“I’m not touching Luke,” I reply coolly. “His aura is canary yellow.”

“That—” Drake shakes his head. Nods. “Is surprisingly unsurprising.”

I laugh, an uneven catch of breath.

He’d fit in with my sisters too. Cool, mysterious energy, dry wit. Accustomed to pain. He hasn’t even looked at the open wound on his arm.

We lapse into relative silence, the moon’s radiance fading as a car’s engine sounds down the block. Exhaustion tugs at me like the tide, wishing to drag me into darkness.

I don’t blink, afraid I’ll doze off.

I can’t sleep. Not here. Drake’s an enemy. Black aura.

I pop my jaw, rub my eyes.

“So Sin …”

I immediately press my face into my hands. “Don’t.”

“You’re quite beautiful when you blush.”

“I know what I am.” The usual dismissal tastes like sand on my tongue. Sin’s burning gaze, dilated pupils catch in my memory. The long dip of his Adam’s apple when he saw me naked, standing before him. “Didn’t Sin shoot you once already for talking with me?”

Drake smiles, small, hidden. “Yes.”

“So you do have a death wish.”

“I’m enjoying Sin’s lapse of rationality.” His smile grows wider. “We always count on him to be the happy one. A complete obnoxious bastard. As likely to have a bubble wand in his pocket as he is a joint.” His words are casual, but tension sticks to his voice, as if he’s not sure he should be admitting this to me. “He likes you, Natasa, and for the first time, he’s experiencing a range of emotions that he’s only ever inflicted on us. It’s fun to watch.”

I shift uncomfortably. “Then make a documentary,”

He changes the subject, gesturing towards my ditch. “What’s Hades make of all this? Must be nice to rely on a God when you have questions.”

I laugh.

Hades giving war advice. Yeah right. He’s no more warrior than tenderhearted Hestia, no more battle hungry than Aphrodite.

All Gods are killers, but Hades makes no game of it. “If he were Artemis, maybe,” I murmur, but then again, she’d give me advice to quit sleeping with males altogether. “Hades treats me like a daughter, not a soldier. He wants me home and safe. Happy. When I want advice, I turn to Theia.”

“And what would she say if she were here?”

“Honestly …” I hurl a stone at the woods. “She’d tell me to stop wallowing and start celebrating that I banged a hot Demigod. Or stuff a burned banana nut muffin in my mouth.” At his shocked look, I smile. “However you’ve pictured Theia. She’s different.”

“Phoenix are …”

“Not that.” I draw in the dirt. “No one thinks we’re friends. Little miss sunshine and the Fury.”

“Right. We ‘re the sensible match. The Butcher and the angel.”

I laugh again. Angel . Yeah. He’d fit right in. “She’s trapped somewhere. I shouldn’t be having sex. I shouldn’t be thinking of anything but her.” My voice grows quieter as my thoughts consume me. “I should just find her and kill all of you. You deserve it.”

Drake’s gaze softens as he watches me struggle over the pronouncement. “Is that why you’re fighting Sin? Because he deserves it? He’s a bad guy?”

“He is,” I say bitterly, my grip on the rock tightening. “I hate him.”

“Do you?”

“Of course I do. He’s a Demigod. He’s a killer. He’s infuriating, and selfish and …” I massage my temples, tired and aching. “I’m supposed to hate him.”

The executioner’s expression turns contemplative as he rubs his cheek. “If you didn’t know about him or his ichor or his past, if you’d met at Oberlin’s, would you still hate him?”

“You don’t get it. It’s not up to me. It’s my blood. It’s predestined.”

“What if it’s not?” My stomach clenches at his question, but before I can respond, he continues, “Take it from me. You can chase destiny as much as you want, but you’ll end up breathless and bloody if the Fates have another plan.

I grit my teeth. Shutting it down with Sin isn’t running from the Fates. “The Fates are not so cruel as to pair me and him.”

“That’s probably what the sinister God of the Underworld said to the Goddess of Spring.”

“Other way.”

“Hmm?”

“That’s what the Goddess of Spring said, not Hades. She cursed the Fates. He thanked them.”

“You’d know better than me,” he admits. “But I always think we’re harder on ourselves than others. And Persephone seems very much the understanding type.”

I glance sideways at the executioner. Midnight hair, intelligent eyes, pale skin. Sadness cloaks him, hollowness. He’s not so different from Hades save for the lack of breathing fire. Perhaps males like him will always crave their opposite. “You sound lovesick.”

“Sin’s not running from you though,” Drake states as if he didn’t hear me, tossing a pebble into the pit alongside mine. “What would Theia say to that?”

I sigh, memories of Theia flooding my mind. “She’d tell me to give up on her, that she’ll be fine. She got a prophecy once that she’d be rescued by the love of her life. She really believes it. She’s a hopeless romantic.”

“A dreamer,” Drake muses, with a hint of sadness.

I lean into him, shoulder to shoulder as the sun emerges and aside from the tension in his shoulders, he stays quiet.

“You’re wrong,” I tell him eventually, tumbling over his words. “Eros and Psyche. They’re the greatest love story. The God of Desire falling desperately in love with the mortal woman, each rumored to be more attractive than Aphrodite. They fell in love the moment they locked eyes. A lion in love with a lamb.”

“Hmm,” Drake’s agreement comes slow. “I never liked that one.”

“And why not?”

Another shrug. “Love seems like something you need to fight for.”

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