Keras let them reach him, let them land a blow.
Because it was nice to let them feel they stood a chance against the darkness.
Against him.
The last of the four reached him and he began to fight back, raked claws over the thigh of one as he dropped and spun his leg out, catching the ankles of another. The two collided and grappled with each other as they went down. He spun up onto his heels and grinned as he backhanded the only female, sent her flying across the grass to slam into a tree. Wood cracked. Black blood gushed from the point where a branch impaled her.
Five more daemons charged him.
Keras ducked beneath the blow of a large male and twisted, slammed his fist into the daemon’s gut and lifted him off his feet with the force of his blow. He pulled back and before the wretch’s feet could touch the earth again, he smashed his other fist into the fiend’s face in an arcing blow that drove him into the dirt on his back.
He kicked his right foot forward, the heel of his black leather shoe hitting its target—the wretch’s cheek. A wet crunch broke the silence and the male went limp.
Keras’s green eyes flicked to his next victim.
The one he had clawed, who was spilling foul smelling blood all over the place as he tried to limp away, heading for the treeline.
Keras tilted his head back. Looked down his nose at the thing. Grinned.
Shadows shot up around the male, twisted and branched into a hundred vicious barbs that pierced the male all at once.
He didn’t even get the chance to scream.
The hideous mash of feelings inside Keras still refused to dissipate.
He glared at the five daemons and took them all down in one exhilarating blast of shadows.
He needed stronger opponents.
Worthy opponents.
He needed this tangled, twisted web of feelings out of him.
Needed to purge.
A thousand thoughts raced through his mind, too many to handle. A hundred unwanted emotions followed them.
Calistos. Valen. Marek.
All harmed because of his decision to seal the gates.
Esher.
Missing because he had failed to close the gate here in this very city—a gate he was meant to be in total control of and should have been able to shut down before his brother had recklessly chased a daemon into it.
Eli.
A bastard daemon now roaming the Underworld because of that failure to control the gate.
Keras sucked down a breath, and then another, but the weight remained pressing heavily upon his shoulders. A weight that refused to lift. A weight he knew he should bear.
The welfare of his brothers rested on his shoulders.
What happened to the gates was his sole responsibility.
His father had made that painfully clear.
Together with something else.
Failure was not an option.
And he was failing.
A grin stretched his lips as he punched a hole through the chest of a daemon, as he pulled his fist free and the male fell.
But he felt nothing.
So he did it again. Cutting down another daemon. And again. Devouring one with his shadows.
And again.
And again.
And again.
Until twenty dead daemons formed a circle around him, another dozen scattered across the grass at a distance.
And it still wasn’t enough.
It was never enough to purge the pain.
The one that festered deep inside him.
Eternal.
More daemons broke from the shadows.
Keras didn’t pay them any heed as he looked down at his bloodstained hands, as the plain silver band on his thumb caught the slender light and glinted at him. He rubbed his other thumb over it, clearing the blood away, feeling the warmth of the metal.
Metal of the gods.
Forged on Olympus.
Where she was.
Images flashed across his eyes. Images that had haunted him for weeks now, a constant presence whether he was asleep or awake. They tormented him.
He saw her.
Sleek black hair twisted in braids knotted at the back of her head. Curves clad in black and silver armour. Pale green eyes soft and warm, and rose lips curling with a smile.
As she looked at another male.
As she took his hand and clutched it to her.
As she drove a blade through Keras’s heart over and over again.
Just as she had that day.
He jerked to his left, and then his right, pain stinging his body as the daemons tore at him. He kept his eyes on the ring she had given him. A token of their friendship. She had called it that, and he had foolishly believed it to be so much more.
He growled when something obscured his view of it, ripped them away and shoved them. As soon as he could see it again, he continued to stare at it, aware of the daemons tearing at him but uncaring.
If they tore him apart and he died here, would she mourn him?
He stroked the ring he couldn’t bring himself to discard. The warmth of it was comforting, easing some of the noise in his head, the feelings tangled inside him.
A tie to Enyo that he couldn’t bear to sever.
Did she ever think of him?
She had never shared the feelings he had for her. He was certain of that.
She couldn’t even bring herself to look at him.
Couldn’t bring herself to speak with him.
She always chose Marek when she had information to relay.
Never him.
She would never choose him.
Because she belonged to another.
She belonged to that man he kept seeing her with, the one the daemon Lisabeta had revealed to him in one of her illusions.
Her husband.
The darkest part of him snarled at that and shadows exploded around him, instantly killing the daemons nearest him. He felt nothing as he slaughtered those who remained, ripping through them with his claws and his shadows, drenching his hands in their black blood.
Until only silence remained.
No daemons on his senses.
No matter how fiercely he wished there were.
He spun the ring around his thumb with his index finger, staring at it as he reached into his pocket with his other hand.
As he withdrew the small black stone box.
He slid the lid open with his thumb
