So it was weird seeing his brother looking at someone with genuine warmth in his eyes.
With love.
The blood Valen was spilling onto the gate seeped across the surface, muting the colours.
“I think it’s working,” Valen slurred.
Eva struggled to keep him on his feet.
Daimon wasn’t sure how their youngest brother, Calistos, was going to be able to handle closing the main gate in Seville if closing London was draining Valen this much. Cal had been out of sorts since they had lost the chance to discover the location of his twin sister, Calindria’s, soul and Esher had disappeared. Cal was blaming himself for both of those things. Daimon doubted he was strong enough to handle closing Seville on top of all that.
“Think I’m—” Valen cut off as he suddenly dropped, his knees hitting the bottom of the shallow pond, and Eva yelped as she was dragged down with him.
Daimon looked at the gate as he called on his power, summoning one last wave of ice. It rose up around the inside of the wall, the shards only seven feet tall but enough to keep the daemons at bay while Ares checked on Valen and the gate.
A gate which Daimon could no longer feel, not as he could before. The power that flowed from it now was muted, barely there. Had Valen done it?
The rings slowly began to shrink, the innermost one winking out of existence as it touched the central violet disc.
It was closing.
“Is he good?” Daimon hollered, keeping his focus on the wall of ice, aware the daemons were still there and still trying to get to them.
Ares looked up from his position crouched next to Valen and nodded. “Think so. He’s out cold though.”
Daimon didn’t like the sound of that.
Closing the twin gate had been taxing on Cal, but he hadn’t passed out.
Ares pulled a phone from his pocket, the screen casting white highlights in his overlong tawny hair and across his face as his thumb danced over the device. “Calling in a retrieval.”
Because neither he nor Daimon could teleport with Valen without harming him.
Eva tore the hem of her T-shirt and bound Valen’s wrist, muttering obscenities in Italian under her breath the whole time.
Beyond Ares, Valen and Eva, the last ring of the gate shrank into the central disc. It shrank too and then disappeared with a violent flash.
Gone.
For now.
Once the enemy was dead and the threat over, Hades would want the gates opened again. Their father had sent a Messenger to Keras to say he had stopped all traffic through the gates, but had made it clear he couldn’t keep the Underworld closed for long.
Gods, goddesses and Hellspawn didn’t appreciate being caged in that realm, having their freedom taken from them. Hades’s staff were already dealing with hundreds of complaints.
Considering the alternative was them all losing their home and being ruled by whoever was behind this uprising, Daimon figured they could put up with their freedom being impacted a little.
Daimon kept an eye on Valen as Eva tended to him, worry a constant weight in his heart as his senses remained locked on the daemons. They retreated into the night, but he kept his boots firmly planted where they were, resisting the urge to follow them and eradicate them all.
Valen needed him here.
The ice walls surrounding them were beginning to crack as Marek appeared, black ribbons of smoke curling from the shoulders of his torn charcoal linen shirt and onyx daemon blood streaked across his face and darkening his wavy brown hair.
His earthy eyes shimmered with green and gold flakes as he looked down at Valen where he lay in Eva’s arms. “Cal suffered the same fate.”
Daimon cast a glance at Ares. Concern etched hard lines on his older brother’s face, unease that ran through Daimon too as he thought about not one but two of their brothers out cold with no sign of coming around.
If he had known closing a gate would cause this to happen, he would have spoken out against it rather than going along with it. The look on Ares’s face said he wasn’t sure what he would have said, and Daimon didn’t envy him.
Marek looked just as conflicted as he stooped and lifted Valen into a fireman’s carry over his shoulder.
Daimon was glad he wasn’t one of the oldest of their group. He felt the weight of responsibility enough as it was. He couldn’t imagine how heavily it weighed upon Keras, Ares and Marek’s shoulders.
Keras was under enough pressure as it was, without having to order them to close the gates knowing full well they would end up like Valen and Cal.
Closing the gates was something they needed to do, but Daimon feared the cost of shutting them down was dangerously high.
He only hoped he was wrong about that.
Marek held his hand out to Eva. Her blue eyes reluctantly shifted away from Valen and landed on it. She placed hers into it and they both disappeared.
Ares was quick to follow them.
Daimon lingered, waiting for the ice walls to break because he wanted to be sure all evidence of their existence would be gone by morning, when mortals would enter Hyde Park. He didn’t want them seeing anything out of place.
That was the only reason he hadn’t teleported.
It had nothing to do with the sorceress who was probably waiting in Tokyo to give him hell.
He scrubbed a hand over the spikes of his white hair, watching the ice begin to crumble.
The ancient Edo period mansion felt far too small with her staying in it, but when he had suggested she bunk elsewhere, Cass had been quick to launch into an argument with him. Her ward, Marinda, was
