The Darkest Seduction

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

PARIS JOLTED UPRIGHT. Fog enveloped his mind, and a great sense of doom had taken up residence in his chest. He patted the spot beside him. Cold, empty.

“Sienna,” he called, thinking she might be in the bathroom. He needed to hold her, to know she was okay. A sense of foreboding was overtaking him.

Silence.

“Sienna.” He shouted her name this time, and with the reverberation of his voice, the fog thinned and memories flooded him.

Sienna had left him. Left him to go to Galen. He threw his legs over the side of the bed, ignoring a wave of dizziness.

Need her, Sex said.

I know. I’ll find her.

“Don’t get up,” a familiar voice intoned. Lucien had just flashed inside the room.

Paris tensed, did his best to focus. His friend had pulled a chair beside the bed, stretched out his long legs and locked his fingers over his stomach. Though the position was relaxed, his dark hair shagged and tangled around strained features and grave eyes.

“Have to.” Paris performed a quick scan of the room, checking off things he’d need. Clothes. Boots. Weapons. His gaze landed on the nightstand where both of his crystal blades rested. He gritted his teeth. She was out there, unprotected.

Fear momentarily overwhelmed him, and he dropped his head in his hands.

Need her!

I know, damn it! You think I don’t know?

“She came to me, you know,” Lucien said. “Asked me to keep you here.”

He lifted his head and met his friend’s multihued stare, his fury rising on a swift tide. “Did you hurt her?”

Lucien blanched, the scars on the side of his face seeming to rise up. “No.”

Okay, then. Okay. “What did you say to her?”

“We’ll get to that. Apparently she also went to Viola and asked the goddess to make sure your demon was properly fed.”

He popped his jaw. Sienna wanted him to have sex with another woman. The knowledge might have undone a lesser man, and yeah, it angered and upset him, but he understood her motive. His well-being above hers. It was the same for him, which was exactly why he was going after her. Then he would find a way to bind her to him permanently, through fair means or foul.

She’s ours. Sex might have been reluctant at first, but he was totally on board now.

No argument from me.

Once Paris had thought he would be able to let her go. He’d thought he could never ask anyone to spend 24/7 with him. Had thought the complications would be too great to overcome. Well, he’d thought wrong. When it came to Sienna, there was nothing he wouldn’t do, nothing he wouldn’t endure—or demand she endure.

Paris stood, swayed.

Lucien followed him up.

He rolled his shoulders, gearing for battle. “You gonna try to keep me from her?” Nothing and no one keeps me from her.

“Hell, no.” The warrior whipped out his Glock and checked the clip. “I’m going with you to get your girl.”

SIENNA CRAWLED toward the doorway. She left a trail of blood behind her, but finally reached her destination. She expected to ghost through. Instead, she met resistance. A solid wall. Damn it! Lifting up to curl her fingers around the knob was a production. Already she was light-headed and weak, but with every second that passed she grew more so.

Two things drove her. Hatred for Cronus, Rhea and Galen, and love for Paris. She could do this. She would do this. She’d come so far, wouldn’t stop now. Fat white stars winked through the spiderwebs. Breathing proved difficult, the air seeming to thicken each time she inhaled.

Knob, twisted. Door, butted with her shoulder. Hinges squeaked. Yes! Success.

One hand in front of the other, knees dragging in behind her. Past the threshold. One hand in front of the other, knees still dragging. Stars, stars, so many stars, outshining the webs completely.

Rustling a few feet away. A female’s whimper.

A male’s curse.

Galen? “Help…me…” Sienna managed.

Feet hit the floor. Footsteps echoed. The slide of feathers over wood planks. Then a handsome blond male was crouching in front of her. Hello, Galen, the man from the portrait. He was bare-chested and covered in bloodstained bandages. He had a blade poised overhead, as if he meant to strike at her, but then he hesitated, his nostrils flaring, his eyes instantly glazing over.

“Who are you?” he croaked.

Her heartbeat sped up, which in turn caused her to bleed out faster. Her thoughts were like mist, impossible to grasp. “I’m…Wrath. Hunter.” And why wasn’t her demon flashing images of Galen’s crimes through her head? Was he as weak as she was? His strength reliant on hers, as hers was sometimes reliant on his?

Across the way, she saw a pale-haired female peek from the shadows of a corner. Her features were tight with strain, her skin colorless. Was this Legion, the girl the Lords were searching for? The girl who had traded herself to save Ashlyn?

The girl Galen had risked his life to obtain?

Hell, Wrath said with a whimper.

“Why are you here?” Galen demanded. “How did you get here?”

Sienna wished she’d come up with a story beforehand, wished Cronus had given her one. Now she had nothing. No words to soothe him and convince Galen of her trustworthiness. At least until she could defend herself.

“Help,” was all she said.

Legion crawled forward. “Wr-Wrath? I can’t see you, but I feel you.”

My hell.

“Stay back, Legion,” Galen barked, and the girl instantly scampered back to her post. He never removed his attention from Sienna.

What had he done to Legion to create so much fear in her? What did he plan to do to her? No matter what, Sienna couldn’t let him hurt the girl. Had to find a way to get her to safety.

As if he read her mind, he said savagely, “She’s mine. You touch her, and you die—after I play with you a bit.”

Sienna glared at him. So many threats had been tossed her way lately, his was just white noise.

He licked his lips, bent down and sniffed. “You smell so good.” His words were beginning to slur. “So good.”

She remained motionless, part of her wanting him to taste her blood, the rest of her repulsed by the idea. But this was it, the way she would control him, and as much as she despised Cronus for it, she was suddenly a little grateful. When Galen was under the ambrosia’s spell, Paris would be safe.

And then she would rewrite the predicted future, creating a fourth road. As she’d promised herself, she would kill both the king and queen of the Titans. There would be no locking them up, no mercy.

Another sniff, a shudder of pleasure and then Galen jolted back, stumbling to his ass. “Fox,” he shouted, crab-walking the rest of the way from her. “Fox!”

Damn him. Sienna drew on what modest strength she had left and edged toward him. Had to get him to taste. Had to… She reached out a bloody hand.

“Fox!” His eyes widened with horror when he hit the wall, unable to move as she inched…inched…

Footsteps behind her, a hard hand fisting in her hair, jerking her backward. So she was visible to more than just the master of the house, she thought dimly as her strength ebbed. Evidently Cronus had worked his magic on Galen’s henchmen, as well.

“Kill her,” Galen croaked. “Kill her.”

KANE KNEW HE WAS DREAMING. Why else would he see Amun and Haidee facing off with the two horsemen, daggers clanging together, grunts and groans filling the air? Why else would Haidee’s skin be changing to straight-up blue ice, her hair into icicles? Why else would William be buffing his nails as he leaned against a wall?

Why else would a beautiful female with long silver-blond hair cascading over one shoulder and eyes of the purest lavender be looking down at him, frowning, tugging at the shackles on his wrists and ankles?

Hell. Maybe he wasn’t dreaming. Maybe she was an angel. “Dead?” he rasped. After all, he’d willed himself to die, and maybe, finally, blessedly, his soul had left his body. Maybe he was free of his demon. Maybe he was being sent to that secret realm in the heavens where the deceased Baden and Pandora lived. A realm where the demon-possessed were to spend the entirety of their afterlife.

Baden, once his best friend. Once the keeper of Distrust. Aeron had spent a little time in that secret realm, had spoken to Baden, and even to Pandora, who hated them all with a passion that hadn’t dimmed through the centuries.

Aeron had escaped with his Olivia. Kane, however, did not want to escape.

“Dead?” he asked again. Even as he spoke, his brain flashed a neon sign into his awareness. Mine.

The female, surely the loveliest creature he’d ever beheld, said only one word. “No.” But he felt the force of her voice in every single one of his cells. Pure, enchanting, intoxicating.

Mine. A roar now.

Angels couldn’t lie, so he knew she had told the truth. Even though there was no actual layer of truth in her voice. So, if he wasn’t dead, he was alive. The thought didn’t please him. He hated that such a beauty was seeing him like this. At his worst, violated, injured, weak.

“Kill me, then,” he commanded.

Mine. Louder than before. He didn’t understand the possessive instinct, and didn’t want to understand it. He might veer from his current path.

Silence, such heavy silence. The calm before the storm. Because, in the next heartbeat, Disaster protested. Loudly. Screaming and screaming and screaming inside of Kane’s head.

No, he wasn’t dead.

Kane reached up to cover his ears, and succeeded. His arms had been freed from the chains, he realized distantly. That’s what the woman had done. Unchained him.

“No,” she repeated. “I won’t be killing you.”

Mine.

Shut up. He returned to his dream theory. This was a dream, only a dream, which meant she had to do whatever he wanted her to do. Right? “Kill. Me.”

Her hands slid underneath his shoulders and pushed him up, up. He felt her heat, the smoothness of her palms. Smelled the fragrance of patchouli, deep, rich and musky, erotic and earthy. Deep in his nose, clinging to his sinuses, spreading into his stomach, his bloodstream.

MINE.

A growl was rising up his throat, threatening to spill out of his mouth. His arms went limp and fell uselessly to his sides, and yet he still had to fight the urge to reach up and grab on to her. He wanted his mouth on her, wanted his body in hers.

He wanted…and so he would have.

MINE, SHE IS MINE.

The blonde—who was suddenly no longer a blonde, but a lovely black woman—no, a sultry Latina—got all up in his face, dark eyes piercing him. “I am not here to end your life, but to save it,” she said. “I will take you to the human world—and in return, you will kill me. I’ll have your vow first.”

Disaster stopped screaming and started laughing again.

CRONUS WALKED THE CHAMBER of Futures alone, his emotions balanced on the razor’s edge of destruction. He’d searched everywhere, yet he hadn’t found Rhea. The Hunters he’d captured and locked away were now missing. Rhea had somehow freed them, he knew. And Sienna had not yet done her job with Galen.

If he had to raze the entire world to save himself, he would.

One way or another, he would obtain what he wanted. Dominion over the human world. Control of his wife. And life. Eternal life. He was an immortal, a king, the most powerful of his people—even if a few out there left him trembling.

He stopped in front of a vase one of his Eyes had sculpted and painted so long ago. In it, Rhea’s hated daughter Scarlet, the keeper of Nightmares, was in the process of removing his head. So, yes, there were two predictions about his death. Two supposed murderers. Two different places, in two different times.

Why?

He had never been able to figure out this particular mystery. Only one person could kill him, true? Unless Galen and Scarlet worked together? But the pair despised each other, fought for opposite sides. Proof: Scarlet had recently invaded Galen’s dreams and convinced the man of his own impending downfall. Those dreams had driven the keeper of Hope to attack her man, Gideon, which had enraged her further.

Cronus blinked as an idea took root. Could the answer be that simple? Had Scarlet somehow invaded his Eye’s dreams? Had she shown her a false reality? He and Scarlet had been enemies since her birth, and hurting each other had become something of a game.

Perhaps, he thought. Yes, perhaps. Which meant he was most likely on the right path. Galen was the biggest threat, and so Galen had to be corralled.

Sienna now knew exactly how ruthless Cronus could be to ensure his goals were met, and she would come through for him. If she failed, he would make good on his threat. Paris would die. And he would make her watch.