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“I assume you want me to come to Olympus?” I asked, the words barely above a whisper.

Adrian nodded silently, just one firm dip of his chin.

“Will you—“ I began, then cut myself off. I was going to askwill you come get me, but instead, changed to “Who should I expect to grab me?”

“I’d like it to be me.” Adrian closed his eyes on an exhale, timed with a low rumble of thunder from outside. “But maybe Persy or Emre, my head guard.”

I nodded my agreement, the corners of my lips turning up the barest inch into a smile.

Adrian looked at me with such an intense expression, I was convinced he could see the outline of my soul. There was a raging storm in his eyes, one that if it was real, would take out anything in its path.

The hand on my back pressed in harder, pulling me to his solid, hard chest. I fought the urge to tip my chin down, to let my forehead rest against his chest.

But keeping my neck straight only subjected me to another form of torture. In the heels I was wearing, my forehead reached the perfect height for his lips to descend, pressing a warm, soft kiss there.

My skin erupted with goosebumps, spreading violently into the corners of my body and making my heart pound.

Adrian pulled away a moment later. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Reyna.”

The words were quiet enough that I thought I made them up, almost doubly sure when I opened my eyes to find Adrian gone.

Chapter 8

Adrian

I barely slept. I’d spent the entire night on a distant peak of the mountain range that was Olympus, one that I’d grown quite familiar with since my power started railing against my skin like it was begging to be let free.

The peak was barren, save for a small cabin that only had the barest of accommodations. A bed, that served for a place to stare at the ceiling and listen to the lightning slam against the ground outside.

A small kitchen that had seen enough coffee to drain the stores of plants that supplied the beans before Mia Ceres’s power could step in.

A porch with old wooden chairs that were an ideal place to sit in a storm of my own creation, sipping on whiskey until I felt my skin cool, to feel my grasp on my power strengthen and secure.

I’d sat on that very porch until the early hours of the night, then eventually moved to the bed, where I did nothing but stare at the ceiling and try to push dangerous, dangerous thoughts from my mind.

It wasn’t stress or fear or anxiety bearing down on my chest, pressing a deep, heavy weight into my soul.

The feeling that I was nothing but a fraud, that someone would eventually come to collect on the years I’d stolen as a god and enact revenge for the lives I’d ruined or ended because of the merge was an old friend. Hell, it had sat on that porch or in this cabin for years with me, finding a sick comfort in the storms I wielded.

No, no, that wasn’t the reason that my control felt like it was slipping through my fingers like sand. Why the storm was still raging. Even now, as I sat in my office, nursing my second cup of coffee.

It was Reyna.

I thought I could handle this, that this arrangement would provide the balm I needed to finally put an end to this conspiracy without losing the support I’d fought for nearly three decades to cement.

But instead it was churning out to be a practice in control. More times than I could count last night, I felt like I was seconds away from snapping. From acting from pure instinct instead of logic.

It was foreign, pressing against my chest and stomach with a hot, urgent pounding. And I had a feeling the more time I spent around Reyna, the uglier it would get.

The worst part was that it worked.

I thumbed the edge of the paper Emre had dropped on my desk this morning, only making one snide comment about how disheveled I looked.

Everyone always made comments about my control, but Emre was the most carefully poised person I’d ever met. Part of the reason I trusted him as much as I did.

I expected to see my face blown up on the cover, witha headline cursing my name and my line for all the problems I’d caused.

And yes, my face was still on the cover. It was on many pages of the paper, in fact.