Page 22 of Deadly Games
“The spell must have broken when we went to the Ether,” she murmured. “Or when…”
I waited for her to finish that thought, but when her cheeks blushed a bright pink, I had an idea. “When you what?” I asked, even though I wasn’t sure I wanted to confirm my suspicion. Why the hell it bothered me was another matter entirely.
“We slept together,” she answered, her voice stiff with awkwardness. “I think that might have broken the spell. It’s the only thing I can think of. I felt something shift, but I wasn’t sure what.”
“Shift?”
“The bond between us,” she answered. “The Triad are already bound to each other, and when Hades brought me back from the dead, it bound me to all of them. And according to Ares, the whole consort thing is another tie.”
“That’s…complicated.”
“Tell me about it. All I know is that I felt closer to Hades, and Loki when it happened.”
The latter name was no sooner out of her mouth than she turned pale. I took a second to check my response, but it was hard to untangle the instinctive jealousy when I didn’t know who I was jealous of—her or them.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “It wasn’t… it just kind of happened. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“No,” I murmured. “I’m glad you told me. Loki and I haven’t been a thing for a long time, and it’s not like it was serious.”
She didn’t seem convinced, but I wasn’t eager to dig into the past. Especially not when it was so intimately entwined with the present. “What about Fenrir? I take it he wasn’t involved in the dream menage?”
“He was kind of stuck as a wolf at the time,” she answered. When she saw the look on my face, she added, “It’s a long story, but no, he wasn’t involved.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” I snorted. “I always figured you were a freak, but that’s a bit much.”
“Dionysus!”
I smirked. “That’s what you get for keeping secrets. I knew something was up, but I definitely didn’t think it was necromancy.”
“I’m sorry. I wish I could have told you.” She paused. “Actually, no. I really don’t.”
“Ouch.”
“It’s not that,” she said, giving me a look. “I just don’t want to get you involved in all this bullshit. Especially now that it involves CronusandAres.”
“If what he told you is true, we’re all going to be involved before long,” I reasoned. She didn’t seem to have an argument for that, so I carried on. “What are you going to do about all this now that you know?”
“I don’t know. Ares wasn’t specific about how we’d stop Cronus, just that we had to,” she answered.
“That’s a lot of pressure. What about the ceremony tomorrow?” I asked. “Are you still going to make that speech?”
She hesitated before shaking her head. “I can’t. It would get me kicked out of the Academy at the very least, and this is bigger than Odin and the Wild Hunt.”
“Yeah…sounds like it. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit relieved.”
She cocked her head. “What do you mean?”
“You’re my best friend,” I answered, shrugging. “This school would suck without you.”
For a few seconds, she didn’t respond. The way her faint smile strummed my heartstrings made my tangled emotions even more perplexing. “Even though everything’s been chaos since I got here?”
“Chaos is kind of your signature move,” I mused. “But it beats being bored.”
She gave me a slight nudge and I pulled an arm around her shoulder. She leaned in close and I tried not to think about the way my Euphoria surged without my bidding. “You sure there’s nothing else? While we’re getting all the dirty little secrets out of the way?”
“Nothing,” she said with a weary laugh, her violet eyes meeting mine. “What about you?”
My throat tightened as the secret I’d been pushing down longer than I cared to admit tried to work its way out. I swallowed it hard like I always did. “Nope,” I lied. “Not a thing.”
