Page 11 of A Spell of Bones and Madness (Nostos #2)
“We need to focus our energy—our hate, our screams—on the men who are truly our enemy. Khalid, Edmund…Hades. You want to join us, Chloe? Fine. But it is under the orders of Leighton. He was Ander’s second, and will remain in charge until the captain has returned to his ship—because he will return, I will make sure of it.
” Ember’s sister began to glow, radiating off the alabaster and marble around them.
“Well, there is the spark I expected from the daughter of the God of Death.” Nikolaos clapped.
He actually clapped at the sight of Katrin glowing in the middle of their great hall.
But it was not a cheerful clap, more haunting and mocking.
“Now go, before I tire of you all and you need my wife to sway me to help you miscreants once more.” His voice was silencing and not one of them dared to say another word.
Katrin picked up her things off the table and stormed out of the room, muttering something to herself as Leighton chased after her.
Nikolaos waved off his daughter and Farah to follow them and Ember was grateful to be rid of the Morentian princess, although that left Ember alone with the daunting God of the Seas and his overly flirtatious son.
If Ander was anything like Dimitris, she wasn’t surprised Katrin had been enthralled by him, even when she was betrothed.
Sharp features, devilish smile, voice as smooth as olive oil.
He was strangely intoxicating, even with the limited interactions they’d had.
The scent of pine and a crackling fire swept around her as the prince moved chairs to sit closer to her.
King Nikolaos stood, his palms gripping firm on the table’s edge, and looked down at a map of the continents. “Well, Ember, it looks like that leaves you to journey to your father’s kingdom. Since Chloe insisted on sailing to Alentus, you may take Dimitris as an advisor.”
Advisor? Wonderful. She’d be stuck in the underworld with a man that looked like he took absolutely nothing in life seriously.
“Fine, but I should be allowed to take members of my own crew as well.” Alexander’s crew, that was—Ember had no one left that truly followed her rule, not after the Spartanis turned.
“You may take that seer of yours, she could be of help in the realm of the dead. Ajax may go as well. I am sure Dimitris is eager to spend more time with his favorite spy after all these years,” King Nikoloas declared, a vicious gleam to his gaze and his son smiled back.
Thalia and Ajax appeared out of nowhere just as Nikolaos spoke of them, unless that was the king’s intentions all along—keep them outside of discussions until they were needed.
As the lithe, moon-haired woman sat, Dimitris's brows furrowed and he cocked his head to the side. His chest rose in a deep breath then slowly let back out. Ember thought it was curious how the prince stared at Thalia, even more curious when a sheen of darkened silver coated his pale gray eyes for a moment as he blinked. Thalia didn’t care to glance back at him, her eyes glued wholly on the map in front of the king, her hand stroking Mykonos in her lap.
“Since we have little time to spare, and considering we are not able to contact Aidoneus to give us passage, especially when you travel with mortals, I will need to guide you to the gates on the isle of Avernia myself. It is a treacherous journey through the caves there to Aidesian, but I cannot see another way.”
Ember shifted in her seat. She had read about Avernia, the small rocky isle in the Saron Sea. Read about the monsters that crept along the walls of the cave until you met the Stygian River that flowed to the heart of Aidesian, to a place her father could meet them.
Blackness began to creep into the room, tendrils of shadows wrapping around Ember’s arms and legs.
She shot her gaze over to Thalia who now clutched Mykonos tightly to her chest, the same shadows covering her body.
Dimitris sat still beside her, a wicked and feral darkness in his gray eyes.
Even Ajax who had stood next to the table could not reach for his sword as the shadows bound his arms. A trap. It had all been a trap. Had her sister—
Ember crashed against hard packed sand and rock, Ajax and Thalia landing next to her both face planting into the beach where they’d suddenly appeared.
Mykonos let out a growl, shifting into her more frightful form of a mountain lion.
King Nikolaos was nowhere to be seen, but Dimitris stood there, seemingly unfazed by being dropped from the sky .
“Put that thing away, Seer. You are all safe,” Dimitris purred as he waltzed over to the three of them lying in the sand.
Mykonos growled at him, but promptly shifted back to her cat form.
Thalia fluttered her eyes, cocking her head to the side.
Ember had learned aboard the ship that no one told the little psychí what to do and Mykonos never listened even if they tried.
Maybe she was seeing things, maybe it was just the world still spinning around her.
“Can your whole family do that?” Ember panted through rolls of nausea. She didn’t know how everyone else looked fine when her skin was about as green as the eagle tattooed on Ajax’s bicep.
Dimitris slipped an arm around her waist to try to keep her from spiraling into the ground. “Do what, blondie?”
“That whole”—Ember swirled her finger around in the air—“shadow bending, we were in the castle now we are on a beach thing.”
“Aervading? No. That was a gift my father kept for him and his namesake alone.” Dimitris's eyes turned a darkened silver. “My gifts come from my mother.”
His lip curved up, revealing elongated canines, the same ones that Chloe and Giselle bore.
Alpha . She had thought Chloe was just making fun of her older brother, but it seemed he might actually bear the title.
If that were true, Dimitris was far more dangerous than she thought the flirtatious prince to be.
The Nexian wolves—they were ones of lore.
Fiercely loyal to their own, ferocious to any who stood in their way.
“Afraid of me now, blondie?” Dimitris chuckled.
“Stop calling her that,” Ajax growled from behind both of them. “She ranks higher than us both and deserves respect.” He stepped closer to the prince, who had a smug look about him .
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you two”—he flipped his finger between Ajax and Ember—“were together.”
“We’re not.” Ember huffed a breath, brushing off the sand still left on her leathers.
She needed to change the subject, she couldn’t let one more look of broken longing slip when someone mentioned her and the commander.
“We need to focus, it’s a long journey through the caves.
There are creatures there even my father cannot protect us from. ”
A broody commander, a smug prince, and monsters of the underworld—what could possibly go wrong?