Page 80 of Love and Death
Which, of course, he does.
“You’re back,” I whisper, rising from the uncomfortable stone I’d returned to sit on as I waited.
“Yes, but we have a problem.” His gaze shifts to Eros and Death, and he corrects himself. “We havethreeproblems.”
“What’s wrong?”
“The city is crawling with Deimos’ men. It would be impossible to sneak anywhere now with a cart in tow … and I cannot simply drag their bodies through the streets, like I did the palace halls.”
“Then what are we going to do? We cannot leave either one behind.”
“I know,” he sighs. “I may have a solution for the first problem, but it is going to involve descending into the catacombs beneath the city. Most of the exits that lead out of the city are blocked or caved in, but I know a way.”
“Why won’t there be guards down there then?”
“They are left over from before Aglaia became the city of the gods, little more than crumbling ruins from a time most do not know,” he answers. “And, I may have convinced everyone long ago that there were no viable paths left down there that lead out of the city. I thought it might be a good idea to have a few secret exits of my own, I see now that I was right.”
“Okay, so what about them?”
“I think I can sneak us there successfully, but I can only carry one of them at a time. I will have to come backfor the other. So, would you rather wait here with one of them or in the catacombs?”
I shudder at the thought.
“Here. Definitely here.”
“I suspected as much,” he says with a wry smile as he reaches for Eros’ body.
“Wait, I think you should move Death’s first,” I say.
“Why?” he asks, his eyebrow arching as he straightens to look at me.
“He is harder to move, for one, and his skin can still kill. He will be safer left alone down there.”
“Are you afraid of what is down there?”
“Should I be?”
“I do not know,” he answers vaguely. “I suppose you will have to be the judge of that.”
He then hauls Death into his arms and disappears through the bramble without elaborating any further. Sighing, I plop back down on the uncomfortable rock to wait.
Not more than five minutes must pass before the brush rustles once again.
“Good, you are still here,” Rhyzihr says, forcing his way through the thorns to lean against the wall beside me.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I was not sure you would care to listen, after our last encounter.” Heat reddens my cheeks as I struggle not to recall what I’d witnessed in the baths.
“Why did you want me to wait?” I ask, hoping to change the topic.
“I will tell you, once the hellhound returns.”
Several more minutes pass as Rhyzihr makes pleasant small talk, requiring little effort from me, and it is obvious in more ways than one why he was chosen as part of the royal harem.
“What are you doing here?”
I look up, surprised not to have heard Cerberus’ return.
