A guy could dream.
He didn’t have such luck though. He knew that. If he slept for a few days like he wanted, he would probably never see Cass again.
And gods that would kill him.
He tilted his head back and looked at the stars that covered the heavens, at the spine of the Milky Way that arched overhead, and sighed.
He couldn’t go on like this.
He was drowning.
Darkness surged through him.
He let the wave roll over him and pull him under.
Chapter 18
Cass tried to listen to what Mari was saying as she talked to Caterina and Eva, but it was hard to focus when her mind was filled with Daimon. Anger clashed with worry, the spark he had ignited in her when he had benched her, as Valen had called it, still going strong despite the thousand troubling scenarios that were running through her head.
She nibbled the corner of a second brownie square and glanced at Ares. He was coddling Megan again, sitting with her on the cream couch to Cass’s left, his arm slung around Megan’s slight shoulders. His smile didn’t hide the concern that shone in his dark eyes, flickering in the embers that lit them.
Those eyes slid to her and narrowed in the way they had done every time he had looked at her over the past hour.
When Daimon, Calistos and Valen had left to go to the Hong Kong gate, she might have taken out her frustration and anger on Ares. Just a little.
Mari had talked her down, convincing her to remain in the mansion when all she wanted to do was transport herself to the gate. She knew staying tucked within the wards was the safe thing to do to when the enemy was targeting her, but the thought of Daimon out there, fighting those goddesses and the gods only knew how many daemons, turned her stomach.
Had her burning with a need to go and help him.
Mari patted her knee. Cass looked down at her hand as it came to rest on her black leather trousers and then up into her friend’s blue eyes, catching the worry she tried to hide with a soft smile. Calistos was out there too, and Mari had suffered the same benching as Cass had.
Only Mari hadn’t taken out her frustration on the sole brother left in the mansion.
Tremendous power suddenly pressed down on her and she stiffened and twisted at the waist to look over the back of the couch, her eyes locking on the door.
It opened and Keras strode in, darkness rolling off him, fiercer than she had ever felt it. Had something happened? Calistos followed hot on his heels. Mari was on her feet in a heartbeat and rushing to him.
Cass rose more slowly, her heart fluttering in her throat, blood thundering in her ears. “Where are the others?”
Because she couldn’t sense Marek and Valen.
Or Daimon.
Keras’s green eyes fixed on Ares rather than her. “Marek is going to seal the Rome gate.”
The anger that had been burning at a low simmer in her blood flared into an inferno.
Keras had sent Marek, Valen and Daimon to close a gate straight after they had defended one? She levelled a glare on him and then looked at Calistos, worry tangling inside her as she spotted all the bruises and cuts on him, and how tired he looked.
Was Keras trying to get three of his brothers killed?
She glanced over her shoulder at Ares, silently demanding he say something.
He glared at Keras too, the fires of the Underworld burning in his eyes. “It couldn’t have waited?”
Keras shook his head. “We need another gate closed. Daimon offered to close New York too, but one gate at a time now. We shouldn’t rush this.”
Shouldn’t rush it? He had rushed it by sending three of his brothers straight to a gate fresh from a battle, when they were probably tired and in need of rest.
Keras’s cold green eyes slid to meet hers. “I would like a word with you.”
Cass tipped her chin up and stared right back at him, not hiding any of the anger she felt as his words ran around her head, and as she thought about Daimon. Why had he offered to close a gate? Doing so would render him unconscious for days, if not weeks.
She recalled what he had said to Calistos about being unable to sleep. Was he so desperate to escape reality and snatch the sleep that eluded him that he would endanger himself to achieve it? She knew the disappearance of Esher weighed heavily upon him, but placing himself at risk to escape that was foolish. Reckless.
The anger that burned inside her only blazed hotter. She was going to be having words with him when he returned.
Just as she was going to have words with his brother.
She followed Keras out through the white wood-framed panels that had been pushed back to reveal the garden. He banked left, following the wooden walkway that ran around the courtyard. He moved like a shadow in the darkness, his steps unnervingly silent. The boards creaked beneath her weight from time to time, cutting through the tense silence, but he never made a sound.
When he reached the end of the walkway near her temporary quarters, he stopped and stepped down onto the wide stone slab that had been placed there. He slipped his feet into a pair of slippers and she did the same, and followed him into the garden, her anger giving way to nerves as the darkness encompassed them and the voices of the others drifted into the distance.
The moonlight cast faint silver highlights in Keras’s black hair and over his shoulders.
When he reached the bridge that spanned the koi pond, he stopped and pivoted
