Page 52 of Scion of Chaos

He releases my head and hooks his arm beneath my legs, standing with me cradled against his chest. When he strides down the aisle between the books, I look up at him.

“Where are you taking me?”

He meets my gaze before tilting his chin toward the door. “You still need a bath.”

My entire body warms at the suggestion, but I laugh. “I didn’t realize I was that offensive.”

He chuckles. “You smell delicious, but as nice as it would be to have you all to myself, I won’t hog you. I want you to meet Typhon before the others return and make demands on your attention.”

25

Vesh

“There’s no counteracting their magic?” asks the pretty blonde woman Erika introduced as Camille. She’s standing within the fenced enclosure, both hands resting on the silver egg, her expression anxious. Half a dozen thick-necked Guardians stand sentinel around the exterior of the enclosure, and still more circle overhead in their dragon forms.

When we descended to the dig site, a dark-haired dragon in black joined us: Kol, the Queen’s Shadow, head of security and spymaster for the dragon race. He doesn’t bother introducing himself because we are already well-acquainted. Anytime a dragon acts up within the walls of Pandemonium, he’s the one we call to retrieve the offending party.

He stands at Erika’s elbow, watching us warily.

“We could speed up the gestation process,” Pan says. “But once they hatch, it’s too late to reverse, and there’s no way to instantly return them to the exact age they were in before they regressed. They would need to be raised from hatchlings, and dragons take centuries to fully mature and come into their power. They wouldn’t be the same as you remember by the end of it.“

“Only Iapetus can completely undo what he’s done,” I say. “But under no circumstances should you give them the key.”

“We can’t leave them like this!” Erika argues. “They’re ourmates.”

Her daughter is inside the enclosure, kneeling on the ground and talking to the big copper egg that contains her father. It sounds like she’s telling him a bedtime story.

Alcides clears his throat. “There may be a way, but only if we get the key.”

I clench my jaw and shoot him a warning look. He mentally apologizes just as Erika jumps on the offer of hope.

“Tell me.”

“When we captured and imprisoned the Titans, we drained their essence into vessels and locked them away inside the temple. All we need to release the curse on these dragons is to retrieve the vessel containing Iapetus’ essence.”

“Those fuckers didn’tlooklike they’d been drained,” Eben says.

Alcides frowns and shakes his head. “They’ve been imprisoned for thousands of years. Even in the darkness of the lowest reaches of Tartarus, we can’t prevent them from regenerating. But they are still not at full strength; if they were, they would not need the key to enter the temple. They could merely break down the doors.”

I wince, because theydidmanage to break down my doors, which shouldnothave happened. I’m only grateful that the temple has no living residents, so Fate’s threads can’t penetrate.

“If they can do this with what they have, what are they like at full power?” Erika asks.

“Strong enough to challenge the gods,” I say. “Which we don’t want to risk because there’s no guarantee any of them will be around to fight back. We don’t know what the Titans’ endgame is beyond reclaiming their full power, but it won’t be pretty.”

I don’t disguise the bitterness in my tone, and Erika lifts an eyebrow. Kol finally makes a noise, if only to scoff, but it’s evident he agrees with me.

“Noted. But you guys thinkyoucan take them down?” Erika challenges.

“At their current strength, yes. This is why we must not open that temple and risk them acquiring what’s inside.”

Erika’s nostrils flare and she turns to face me fully, arms crossed. She gives me an intense, calculating look, and my stomach clenches.

“I don’t like that look, boss,”Chrysaor says.

“Neither do I, especially because she’s desperate.”

“Not any more desperate than we are,”Campe says.

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