The four gods watching her shimmered with different colours. Red. Brown. Purple. Black.
Cass pressed her hand to her heart and sought white.
Her eyes scanned the darkness, seeking that absence of colour.
Seeking ice.
She walked forwards with her eyes closed, the spell revealing everything to her in flickers and bolts of light.
“We following her?” Valen’s voice warbled in her ears, a distant watery sound.
Cass sensed the power of the four gods buffeting her as they tracked her, keeping a few steps behind her. Their impatience washed over her, mingling with her own to keep her moving forwards.
Seeking the white.
The sensation that something was wrong grew stronger, beating within her, and then weaker again. She backtracked, almost bumping into Ares. His heat washed over her as she moved around him, studying the feeling. It grew stronger again.
Cass tracked it through glittering green fields and around shimmering blue water.
When she neared the other side of the park, she slowed her steps, her eyes lifting to scan the sky beyond the ancient trees.
“He somewhere up there?” Ares’s deep voice echoed in her ears.
She nodded. Whispered, “Somewhere.”
But all she could see were humans, floating in the air. No shape of buildings.
She moved beyond the park.
Someone grabbed her arm and pulled her back as a car horn blasted.
“You crazy?” Valen barked at her.
Cass opened her eyes and they widened as she saw the steady stream of vehicles darting across the route ahead of her.
“They don’t show up,” she bit out defensively. “I can see natural things. Nothing more.”
Valen dragged her to the nearest crossing. “Now I know that, I’ll keep a better bloody eye on you. Daimon would kill us if anything happened to you.”
“He’s probably going to kill us for letting her come with us anyway,” Ares muttered.
She frowned at him. “No one let me come.”
He just shrugged at that.
She crossed the road and shirked free of Valen’s grip, and closed her eyes again. The spell burst back to life, outlining everything for her. She focused on Daimon again, following that feeling in her heart down a side street.
She lifted her head and scanned the buildings around her.
Desperately hoping to see white.
But all she saw was pink humans.
“This place looks familiar,” Keras muttered.
“Whole damned world looks familiar these days,” Valen grumbled back at him. “Been here way too long.”
She frowned and stopped, backtracked a few steps and looked up at the building to her right.
“That’s strange.” She canted her head at the shimmering forms.
“What’s strange?” Keras asked.
“Nothing. Just… those people have two colours.” She pointed at them where they hovered high in the air, the only two people in the building.
“Two colours.” Ares’s gruff voice and the heat of him close to her had her looking at him. “Fucking tell me they’re not green and blue.”
A shiver chased down her spine and arms.
She nodded.
Ares growled, flashing short fangs, his eyes rapidly darkening. “Bastards.”
She wasn’t following. She looked at the others.
Shock danced in Valen’s golden eyes. “You can’t be serious.”
Marek and Keras didn’t look at all happy.
When she looked back at Ares for an explanation, he bit out, “Messengers.”
“Maybe Dad found Daimon before us and sent them to save him?” Valen didn’t sound like he believed that.
“Fucking traitors,” Ares barked and turned fiery eyes on her. “Is Daimon there?”
Cass shook her head. “I only saw…”
Cold washed through her.
She closed her eyes and looked through the spell again.
Looked more closely this time.
Her heart hitched.
Blood turned to sludge in her veins.
There just beyond the two shimmering blue-green forms was the faintest hint of white, a towering rectangular block of it.
Ice.
“No.”
She flicked her eyes open and summoned the spell.
Transported herself before the brothers could stop her.
Chapter 34
Rage poured through Cass as she landed in a musty empty loft apartment, fed by despair as her gaze landed on the block of pale blue ice before her.
Daimon knelt in the middle of it, his arms bound behind his back.
“What the—”
The male didn’t get a chance to finish that question.
Cass turned on him and screamed as her entire body tensed up, magic sweeping through her in a black blaze. She splayed her fingers into talons and launched them forwards, kept on screaming out her fury as twin twisting orbs of darkness shot from her palms.
Struck the two males.
Crimson rained down on her as they exploded, drenching the peeling white walls of the cavernous room with blood.
Cass kept on screaming, couldn’t stop herself as pain burned a path through her, felt as if it was destroying all of her. She leaned forwards, tears streaming down her face, agony ripping her to pieces inside as she broke down. The floor bucked beneath her, the entire building trembling.
“Holy hell,” Valen muttered, sounding out of breath. “So much for questioning them.”
“Ah, shit.” Ares’s grave voice pulled a hard sob from her as she stumbled to the block of ice and sank to her knees before Daimon.
Everyone fell silent.
Ares crouched beside her, but she couldn’t bring herself to look at him. He growled as he scrubbed at something on the floor and she looked down at it.
At the circle drawn on the wooden boards.
Pain and sorrow twisted inside her as she pieced together what had happened. The enemy had trapped Daimon here. Unable to attack them because of the ward, he had turned his power on himself.
He had sacrificed himself to save the gates, to protect his world and this one.
She cursed him for that.
Pressed her hands to the slick ice and stared at him.
Her beautiful god.
She closed her eyes.
Tensed.
Her breath rushed from her.
She lunged for Ares’s hands, muttering a protection spell at the same time. He tried to break free
