Persephone looked pleased to hear that, smiled up at her husband with relief and love glittering in her green eyes. When she turned that same look on Cass, Cass had the feeling it was partly because she had just said without so many words that she was in love with Daimon.
She waited for the restriction on her magic to lift.
When it didn’t, she looked at Hades. How was he intending to send her back to Daimon?
He lifted a gauntleted hand above his head.
Between them, a violet pinprick of light sparked to life, and she couldn’t believe her eyes as it rapidly expanded into a disc that faced her. It pulsed and a ring appeared around it, growing in size as glyphs shimmered and chased along the curve of it. It rotated swiftly and another ring appeared inside it, this one spinning counter-clockwise, glowing with rainbow colours.
A gate.
This was dangerous.
She felt that in her bones.
The enemy wanted a gate open and Hades was doing it for them.
She looked at him through the shimmering form of the gate. There was a gleam in his eyes as he watched it, fire that shone so brightly that she couldn’t miss it. He wanted this opportunity to draw the enemy to him.
He wanted to fight too.
Beside him, Persephone cast him a worried look. Cass was inclined to agree with the goddess. Hades’s hunger for battle was not a good thing. It was better that the enemy was kept away from this world and from him, and that he let his sons do their duties and complete the mission he had given to them.
A scream rolled up her throat and she stumbled backwards as the ground shook beneath her and a huge bipedal beast appeared out of the gloom, thundering towards the gate. Mottled stony grey skin stretched tight over the powerful muscles of the five-storey tall monstrosity. It shook its head and roared, the grey-blue horns that covered the top of its head seeming to grow before her eyes as its silver irises glowed brighter.
“Go now,” Hades barked and turned towards the beast, grinning at it.
Cass realised that the hunger for violence that shone in his eyes hadn’t been about drawing the enemy to him—it had been about preparing to face this beast.
A gatekeeper.
Cass’s pulse pounded as she ran for the gate, determined to make it there before the monster could reach Hades.
Daimon needed her.
She leaped into the sparkling violet disc of the gate, screamed as colours twisted around her and she felt as if someone had thrown her into a psychedelic blender. Up and down blurred as she spun. Bile rose up her throat.
Her feet suddenly hit solid ground and she jerked forwards as they stuck to it like glue, flailed her arms to stop herself from falling flat on her face and breathed a sigh of relief when she straightened.
That relief was short-lived as she was lifted upwards.
It turned to horror as the colourful light receded.
Revealing Daimon where he knelt at the edge of the horizontal rings of the gate.
About to have his throat slit.
Cass launched her hands forwards, relief blasting through her when twin orbs of magic shot from her palms.
“Get your damned hands off my man!” she snarled as the spell struck the furie who had been holding him and sent her flying through the air.
Daimon’s ice-blue eyes widened, shock dancing in them as he stared at her.
His white eyebrows lifted slightly.
She knew what he was thinking.
He was her man.
And she was damned if she was going to let someone take him from her.
His eyes sparkled with warmth as she finished rising out of the gate, as she walked on unsteady legs towards him, trying to ignore the fact she was levitating a good two feet above the rings of the gate.
“How the hell…” He took her hand when she was close enough, helped her down but swept her up into his arms before she could touch the ground. “What happened?”
“I could ask you the same thing.” She hugged him and then made him release her, because she hadn’t missed the fact he was bleeding everywhere and that he looked tired, on the verge of collapse.
When he loosened his hold on her, she placed her hand over his stomach and funnelled a healing spell into him, stopping the bleeding and destroying the toxin that tainted his blood. She looked into his eyes, caught the fatigue that still laced them, and decided she could spare a little more of her strength to give him a boost. She quickly pieced together another spell, one that would share some of her energy with him, and funnelled that into him too. His eyes instantly brightened, the dark circles beneath them fading, and she felt his strength returning.
“You opened the gate?” He looked at it, confusion shimmering in his eyes, and then at her.
She shook her head. “Not me. Your father.”
His face fell, the colour draining from it as he pushed her back and looked her over. “Did he hurt you?”
“No.” She kept the fact he had tried to hurt her to herself. “I landed in the Underworld and we had a talk, and then he opened this gate and here I am. I told him about you, and about Nemesis.”
Daimon caught her jaw and tilted it upwards as he glared at her throat.
As he brushed thumbs over two sore spots on it.
“Just talked, eh?” He frowned at her.
“There might have been a little growling, some poking, and a few misunderstandings. But I’m safe, unharmed, and this really isn’t the place for long conversations.” She hurled a spell to her right without looking and the three daemons who had been charging towards them screamed as it struck them.
Tore them to pieces.
“We need to close this gate,” Daimon said, a note of worry in his voice that relayed his feelings to her.
She was here with him. Together they could do this.
She pressed a
