Enraptured

Chapter 17

Orpheus didn’t dare move.

His heart beat like wildfire against his ribs as Skyla lay draped over him, her face pressed into his shoulder, her warm breath fanning his neck while she worked to slow her pulse.

Somehow they’d made it to the floor. One of them—he wasn’t sure who—had had the good sense to throw cushions down so they weren’t sprawled on the hardwood. But another round of mind-blowing sex and his third—fourth?—screaming orgasm weren’t what kept him still. No, what kept him from moving a single muscle were the images flickering through his mind like some old-time movie set on fast-forward, with Skyla’s face as the constant. The ones that had started just as he’d climaxed the last time and were still flashing for his eyes only in both black-and-white and color like a collage set to silence.

Her, smiling. Dressed in a white gown, her hair piled in braids on the top of her head. Standing on a balcony with a blue-green sea behind her. Wearing her Siren fighting gear. In a courtyard, talking with people he didn’t recognize dressed in what looked like sheets. With the other Sirens in a field of green. Lying naked on a bed of blue silk. Looking sated and sexy and completely worn-out.

Holy skata. He was seriously losing it. Like certifiable, strap-me-in-a-padded-cell, fast-track-to-the-loony-bin losing it. He shut his eyes, gave his head a swift shake, opened them again. The images were still there, though if anything playing faster now.

Skyla drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly, relaxed everywhere against him. “I hope that was enough follow-through for you, because I’m officially beat. I think you broke me.”

He’d have laughed if he wasn’t already freaking the hell out. And shit, she was making herself comfortable, which meant she wanted to snuggle. When all he wanted to do was beat feet for the door and get away from her. Panic clawed its way up his chest, but he worked to keep from hyperventilating so she wouldn’t know he was wigging out. “Good to know.”

She chuckled, burrowed in deeper. Gods, she had to feel his racing pulse. She probably thought he was still jacked up from the sex, which he was, but shit…what the hell was with the images? Now she was naked, swimming in the ocean? Okay, this twisted fantasy shit had to end here.

He squeezed his eyes together tight, willed his brain to stop dicking around. “Why wouldn’t Athena answer you?”

“What?” The surprise in her voice wasn’t the least bit sexy, and that’s what he needed. To get the topic away from earth-shattering orgasms so he could get his mind off naked skin browning in the sun.

“Athena. You said the goddess wouldn’t answer you. Why not?”

“Oh.” She shifted off him, just enough so her hip was against the cushion but her arms and legs were still draped across him. He’d never been claustrophobic before, but right now he felt like he couldn’t breathe. There was so much pressure in his chest. Fresh air would be good. A lot of it.

“I suppose it’s because she doesn’t expect me to complete this mission.”

“And why not?”

She pushed up on her elbow. “Are you okay? You seem, I don’t know, tense. I thought sex was supposed to relax a man.”

“I’m not a man, Siren.” But because he caught the slightest bit of hurt in her eyes at his terse voice, he worked to keep the bite from his words when he added, “I don’t ever really relax. Curse of the daemon inside me and all that. Answer the question. Why wouldn’t she think you’d complete this mission?”

She blew out a long breath, played with the thin patch of hair on his chest. “A few weeks ago I was injured in a fight. With a daemon hybrid. He got the jump on me. I was careless. If it hadn’t been for my sisters, I probably wouldn’t have survived.”

The images came to a stop, the last one fading in a poof of smoke. “Where?”

“Where what?”

“Where were you injured?”

“Italy.”

“Not where, idiot. Where?”

“Oh, here.” She smiled as she turned so he could see the long scar that ran from just under her right breast, diagonally across her ribs, and around her hip to the small of her back.

“Holy shit.” He’d felt the puckered skin when he’d been exploring her body, but in the shadows, with her twisting all different ways, it had been hard to see. Carefully, he ran his fingers over the scar and examined it in the moonlight. “This was only a few weeks ago?”

“Yeah. Luckily, we Sirens heal fast too. It’ll be just a thin white line soon.” She eased back down next to him, grazed her fingers over his chest hair again. Sent shards of heat through his torso. “Anyway, I convinced Athena to let me come on this mission. She wanted me to stay behind. Didn’t think I was ready.”

He thought back to that first night. In the trees behind the amphitheater. The quick flash of fear in her eyes when she’d seen those hybrids change. The one she’d masked quickly and probably wouldn’t ever cop to. “And that’s why she won’t answer you? Because she thinks you’re weak?”

“Not just that.” He could sense from her words and what she wasn’t saying that there was more. He waited, though he wanted to shake the answers out of her more than he liked. “I’ve been with the Sirens a long time. And when I took my vows, I thought I was doing something good, you know? Helping Zeus keep balance and order in the universe. Over the years, though…well, let’s just say that recently I’ve seen the world from a different perspective. And I’m realizing that what Zeus and Athena have led me and the other Sirens to believe all these years isn’t the entire truth.”

Orpheus could have told her that. His first reaction was to ask why she hadn’t figured it out sooner, but then he thought about what her life as a Siren must be like. Living on Olympus, surrounded by gods, separated from the living realm, and only going there to do Zeus’s bidding. If you’re taught one thing and are never shown anything different, it would make sense you’d see that as truth, wouldn’t it?

“How long have you been with the Sirens?”

She didn’t answer.

“Skyla?”

“A long time,” she finally answered. “A lot longer than the rest. I, uh, met your forefather.”

“Perseus?” He stared at her for confirmation, barely believed what she’d just said could be true. She continued to play with the hair on his chest and wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Are you telling me you’re over two thousand years old?”

She cringed. “Two thousand six hundred and four, actually.”

No way.

Her eyes slowly shifted to his. “Surprised?”

Floored. And he’d thought he was old. Shit, he was a baby compared to her. “Are all the Sirens—?”

“No. Most serve only a few hundred years. That’s the goal, anyway. My mother was a Siren. Zeus tends to recruit from past Sirens he deems worthy. Good genes, you know.” She smiled, but he was still too shocked to smile back. “I was two when I started my home training. At the age of twenty I took my vows, was inducted into the order. I moved to Olympus, spent the next few decades mastering my skills, but didn’t begin formally serving with the Sirens until I was about forty. It’s common for a Siren to give three, four hundred years to the order, then leave to marry and raise a family. From that point they’re usually granted a blessed life, much like the Argoleans, if they so choose.”

“But you never left. Why?” He couldn’t imagine dedicating his life to anyone. Hell, he’d spent his three hundred years being pissed the gods had overlooked him to serve with the Argonauts even though he was the eldest from Perseus’s line, but now that he had the markings, he didn’t want to be tied to them. Certainly couldn’t see giving twenty-five hundred years to them, even if he could.

She shrugged. Slid her fingers down to his sternum. “Just never had a reason to.”

Again, he sensed there was more she wasn’t saying. And the hurt he saw flash over her features before she masked the emotion told him loud and clear something dark in her past was the reason she’d stayed hidden behind the order and hadn’t ventured out to truly live.

Who was he to judge her, though? Wasn’t he doing the same thing? Using his daemon as a reason to remain closed off from others, to keep from finding some sort of happiness in this life? He knew it existed. Hell, if someone could love Demetrius, then anything was possible.

His pulse picked up speed and his skin grew hot again. Only this time it wasn’t panic or even desire warming him from the inside out. It was something else. Something that filled the empty place in his chest he’d lived with since the day Gryphon was lost. Something he wasn’t sure he was ready to face.

“I wasn’t going to tell Athena where we are or where we’re heading next,” she said, her sexy voice cutting through his thoughts. “I was just trying to check in so she doesn’t send more Sirens after us.”

“Why?”

This time, she met his stare head-on. No fear, no worry, only determination shone in her amethyst eyes. “Because she sent me to do a job, and I’m doing it.”

He knew that answer could be taken in a variety of ways. She hadn’t said she was going to turn him in, but she hadn’t said she wouldn’t either. Or that she wouldn’t eventually kill him if she decided that’s what needed to be done.

She yawned, snuggled back into him. “Give Maelea an hour or two to sleep, then we’ll go ask her where it is. She looked exhausted when I left her. She’s growing on me, daemon. In a petulant, irritating, teenager sort of way. The more I’m around her, the more I sort of like her.”

Her eyes slid closed, her face relaxed. Maelea wasn’t the only one who was exhausted, he realized. His Siren looked as though she could sleep for a week.

His. It was the first time he’d thought of her as his. She wasn’t, though. Never would be. They were on opposite sides of a war that was only just beginning. And this moment of truce didn’t do anything but reinforce that fact.

His chest ached at that realization, and as she drifted off to sleep in his arms that place inside that had seemed so full only moments before deflated, leaking out all the warmth right along with it. He lay still, tried to regulate his pulse so it would drop out of the stratosphere and he could think straight. Tried to figure out what the hell he needed to do next.

And knew only one thing for sure.

Skyla was not his goal. The Orb was. Everything hinged on that. And it was time he remembered that fact.

Orpheus’s boots echoed through the dark corridor as he moved down the hallway toward the room Maelea had been given. He hoped like hell Ghoul Girl was in there and that the Siren had been lying when she’d said she’d hidden her away. He didn’t have time to play hide-and-seek, and he definitely wasn’t in the mood.

Thoughts of Skyla lying naked in the moonlight, hair fanned out around her, eyes closed in sleep, filtered through his mind, but he pushed them to the side. Walking away from her tonight was the first smart thing he’d done since he’d met her. He was done being a schmuck. No matter how great sex was with her, no matter how much he wanted to go back to her and do it all again, it wasn’t worth compromising his goals. Those images of her that had been rolling through his head when he’d climaxed? Those thoughts of her being his? Those were prime examples of how twisted his brain was becoming with every minute they spent together.

He sensed Maelea from the hallway outside her room even before he came to her door. The same light and dark warred inside her that he’d noticed the first night, but the light didn’t repel his daemon now as it had then. He felt the daemon move inside him, but the beast didn’t come screaming to the forefront like usual. Didn’t make any attempt to do anything but lie down and sleep, which was just plain weird.

He didn’t have a clue what was happening to him, but he knew Skyla was right. His eyes hadn’t once shifted green since they’d taken down those hellhounds after the train wreck. And though he knew his daemon was still in there somewhere, calling on its strength was becoming harder and harder to do.

He glanced at his watch. Two thirty-two a.m. Ghoul Girl was probably asleep, but he needed what was in her brain. And if he didn’t get it now, he’d have to deal with the Siren.

And he was done dealing with the Siren. Way done.

He lifted his fist, knocked. Seconds passed in silence, then a small voice said, “Come in.”

The room was dark, but through the moonlight shining in from the tall windows he could see Maelea sitting cross-legged on the bed, a white billowy nightgown fanning out around her, her long black hair falling past her shoulders like ribbons of silk. No surprise registered on her ashen face when he stepped into the room, and he figured that made sense. She was the daughter of Zeus and Persephone. If he could sense her, she could probably sense him as well.

He closed the door at his back. “Not tired?”

“I don’t sleep much.”

That made two of them.

He scrubbed a hand over his head. Tried to forget Skyla’s fingers skimming through the hair at his nape when he’d kissed her after the train derailment and the electrical charge that had sent through his body. “I came to talk to you about—”

“Is it true?”

“What?”

“About your brother? Is it true he was sent to the Underworld and that you seek the Orb to save him?”

Isadora, damn it. He loathed the way the queen kept sticking her nose where it didn’t belong.

“It is, isn’t it?” Maelea persisted when he didn’t respond. “You need the Orb to rescue him.”

He hated the fact that everyone seemed to know his plans before he’d even solidified them. Why did they think he was anything but the seething daemon inside him? Isadora, Skyla, now Maelea. They all thought he was some kind of heroic Argonaut when the truth was, inside he was the same as he’d always been.

He perched his hands on his hips, shot her his most wicked glare. But he could tell from the expectant look on her face that she wasn’t the least bit intimidated by him anymore. Which only pissed him off more.

“Where is it?” He locked his jaw. His fists itched to hit something. But for Ghoul Girl, because he needed her help, he killed the urge so as not to scare her.

She looked down at her dainty hands, resting in her lap. “The darkness is leaving you. At first I thought you were the one I was supposed to…” Her voice trailed off and she swallowed. “But I realized pretty quickly that you weren’t him. It’ll be gone soon. Does it leave you feeling empty?”

He had no idea what she was talking about, but the lack of animosity in her voice was new. And unsettling. “How do you—?”

“I sense darkness. I’m attracted to it. Something I can thank my mother and her wretched husband for, I guess.” She twisted her hands in her lap. “I wish mine would go away. I’d relish the emptiness.”

The anger left him as swiftly as it had hit. And in the silence he realized, yeah, they were more alike than she knew.

That emptiness in his chest that had consumed him the instant Gryphon’s soul was lost opened up like a chasm between worlds, the pain as stark and fresh as the minute it had hit. Before he thought better of it, he crossed to the bed. She looked up in surprise when he reached for her hand, pushed the sleeve of her gown up, and turned her wrist over, revealing the thin white scars all over her inner forearms. “Something tells me you can’t handle any more emptiness.”

She jerked her arm back, cradled it against her body, and glared at him. “What do you know?”

A lot, female. More than I should.

He sank onto the side of the bed, leaned forward to brace his arms on his knees. Three hundred years wandering this world and the next alone, and the one person he understood more than any other was the forgotten ghoul-like soul who’d been trapped between worlds. Trapped just like him, only in a different way.

Gods, life was one big fucking ironic twist of fate, wasn’t it?

“I know pain reminds you that you’re alive,” he said, surprised his voice didn’t catch in his throat. “Trust me, I’m not judging you. I’ve caused enough pain—mostly to others—for the very same reason. But scars aren’t always on the outside.”

She was silent beside him. He turned to look at her. Saw the way she was watching him with wary eyes. Recognized it was the same way he regarded others. Yeah, they were the same. And because of that, she of all people would be the one to understand. If he was going to find the Orb, he had to take a chance.

“Being alone isn’t the worst thing that can happen to a person, Maelea. Yeah, loneliness sucks, but it won’t kill you. But being forgotten…” He looked down at his forearms and the Argonaut markings that should be on his brother’s arms, not his. “That’s the death sentence, isn’t it? My brother’s soul was sent to Tartarus because of me. I’m not going to let him be forgotten. Not when I can do something to save him.”

They stared at each other long seconds, and that emptiness in his chest grew because he sensed even though he’d gone out on a limb here, she wasn’t going to help him. If she didn’t tell him where to find the Orb, he didn’t know where he’d go next.

“I didn’t intend to bring you here,” he said, hoping to make her understand. “I just needed to know where the Orb is. When those hellhounds showed up at your house, I knew you wouldn’t be safe there anymore. That’s why I brought you here. Not because I wanted to hurt you. No one can find you unless you let them. Not Hades, not Zeus, not any of the gods.”

“Do you think his soul can really be saved?” she asked in a quiet voice. “You and I both know what the darkness can do. What if you find him, only he’s not the brother you remember?”

That emptiness opened so wide that for a second Orpheus feared it would swallow him whole. He’d already thought of that but dismissed it. His brother was the real hero, not him. It had only been three months. Gryphon was strong enough to survive in the Underworld for three months. He had to be.

“True heroism can’t be turned. Not by any darkness.”

“I hope you remember that.”

His brow lowered. She looked back down at her hands and took a deep breath before he could ask what that meant. “The warlock is in Greece. Gathering witches to bring into his fold. He channeled the power of the Orb in an induction ceremony. I felt it as late as yesterday. I’m not sure what he has planned, but from what I know about warlocks, they draw strength from—”

“From the witches they suck into their coven.” Orpheus pushed off the bed. Of course, it made sense. Apophis needed new witches to regain his strength. Which meant right now he would be at his weakest, before he’d had time to train and mold and draw from their growing powers. “Where in Greece?”

“In the hills outside the city of Corinth.” She rattled off coordinates.

Excitement and the first inkling of hope filtered through his chest. “Corinth was where Medea fled after she killed Jason’s children. It makes sense the warlock would go there in the hopes of harnessing that evil energy. Thank you.”

“Orpheus. Wait.”

With one hand on the doorknob, he paused. She climbed off the massive bed, a slight, frail creature who seemed nothing like her mother or father. But he sensed there was strength in her yet untapped. And he wondered when she’d see it for herself.

She crossed to the bureau, pulled open the top drawer. She extracted the skirt she’d worn earlier and reached into the pocket. Then she crossed to stand in front of him and held out her open palm. “You might need these.”

Two golden coins lay cradled in her palm. “Oboloi. How do you—?”

“My mother. Just in case Hades ever tried to pull me down to Tartarus. Take them. You’ll need them to get past Charon.”

The ferryman who carried souls across the River Styx to the Fields of Asphodel, where they would await judgment. Yeah, he would need them if he had any chance of getting past the first obstacle in the Underworld. Surprise mixed with gratitude. He took the coins, slid them into his pocket. “I can’t thank you enough.”

“Prove me wrong. Knowing a soul can survive the darkness of the Underworld will be thanks enough.”

“I won’t forget you,” he said as he left the room.

“Then you’d be the first,” she whispered.