Page 13

“This one here”—I pointed to Walter—“even tried to convince me to tie her up and choke her.” I was so irritated that the stunning woman had pretended to be interested in me only to try and steal my necklace.

“Oh…my…” Walter turned and smooshed his face against the doorframe.

“She milked me good and clean before she tried to steal my?—”

“Not you,” Kaohs barked in my direction, silencing me .

“You. Did you do as I asked?” He looked at Anna where she stood and crossed his arms.

“I was about to when you two barged in,” she growled at him. Kaohs. The lord of the Underworld. She growled at him.

What. The. Fuck. Was going on?

“How do you expect me to leave you to run this place if you can’t manage to get a trinket from a man’s neck? Eletha, I thought you were going to help your sister.”

If my eyes were capable of it, they would have punched Walter in the face with how quickly they snapped to him.

I didn’t know, he mouthed as he raised his hands in surrender. Then, aloud, to Eletha, he said, “How could you do this to me? I told you he was my friend.”

“So what? She’s my sister,” she snapped back.

I took in Eletha’s dark skin and hair before turning to Anna’s fair—now flushed pink—complexion.

“That pendant belongs to me,” Anna declared sternly. “I’m Adrianna, Calypso’s sister.”

“What?” I looked at Walter feeling complete betrayal.

What was happening?

“We call her Anna—always have,” Eletha said dismissively. “I don’t understand,” I mumbled. Eletha and Anna exchanged sly, guilty looks.

“I didn’t know, I swear,” Walter said, his eyes panicked. “Anna is Eletha’s sister. I’ve only ever known her as Anna. And you told me Adrianna was a child.”

“I thought she was!” I shouted back. “She came here when she was six years old!”

The pink-haired heathen cackled. “You thought we didn’t age here? Why?”

“I don’t know, because you’re dead!” I shouted at a volume far exceeding everyone else’s. I was so frazzled, there was an astounding chance my brain matter had poofed up into cotton balls. Confused, I looked to Kaohs for answers.

“Anna, let him be. You’ve had your chance, though you seem to have been quite distracted; that’s unlike you, my dear .

Put your pants back on, Aurelius,” he commanded. “Let’s chat.”

“Ohmystars, I’m tied to you!” I screamed as the intense and, dare I say, unwavering attraction to her suddenly made perfect sense.

“You are only tied to the single drop of her power in the necklace,” Kaohs corrected.

So he knew. My head snapped to Anna only to see her shrug dramatically.

I realized I had been standing with my hands on my hips, my pants around my ankles, somehow, for the second time today, standing in a room full of people with my twig and berries on full display.

I shot Anna a glare as I pulled my pants back up.

Had my attraction to her only been so strong because of the tie to her magic?

Was that all this had been? Why in the realms would she not just tell me who she was?

I wanted to give it to her—or at least I had thought I did until she tried to steal it from me.

Now I wasn’t so sure what was going on and I couldn’t help but feel an overwhelming need to keep ahold of the pendant.

Why had she kept her identity a secret from me?

My sole purpose here was to get this pendant to Cal’s sister and if that was her, then this just made my job as a hero ten times easier than I thought it would be—and I got to make out with probably the prettiest person in the world.

I shook off any apprehension about the situation.

At this point, I just wanted to be rid of the necklace and begin my journey to get out of this place—preferably before I had to play in the red keys tomorrow.

I stomped down the niggling feeling that I shouldn’t and reached behind my neck to unhook the clasp, prepared to finally hand over the pendant.

“Zef is going to be so freaking happy to see you, you have no idea.”

At the mention of the Titan Artemi, both girls and Kaohs visibly stiffened.

“I’ve allowed you to burden my air with his name twice already.

Beware of how many times you speak his name in my presence, or I shall think there’s a fondness between the two of you, and anyone that is a friend of his is a foe of mine. ”

A chill crawled up my arms as I removed my hands from the necklace’s stubborn clasp.

I swear the temperature was dropping in the room with every icy syllable the god spoke.

Both the girls now sat on the bed. Kaohs nodded for Walter and me to sit next to him in the small seating area in the corner.

“Have you heard about my favorites, Aurelius?”

What kind of a question was that? “Umm…no.”

“Ages ago, when I wasn’t so old and I wasn’t so tired, I was feared and admired beyond anything you could imagine.

The souls of every man and woman that came here were mine alone for the taking.

The Unseelie viewed no one higher than myself and the Seelie feared no one more.

Everything I wanted, I had.” He chuckled softly.

“But as I said, I was young and foolish. Back then, the laws of the realms were lighter and were still being constructed by the Fates. Rival realms would steal human babies and switch them out for the future heirs, ensuring that their own heir would remain undefeated when their time to rule came. Human babies, though they look like fae, do not age like fae, and were discovered in adolescence quite easily. Once the changelings were discovered to be human, no one wanted them. Only a handful ever survived long enough to reign over their kingdom, and when they did, they died of old age before it even mattered. As for the ones who were discovered early, they had seen far too much to be allowed to return to the human realm, so they were sent to me, generally as a trade or payment of sorts.”

Anna and Eletha exchanged glances. Obviously it wasn’t their first time hearing this story.

“I know about changelings, but what does that have to do with your favorites or Ze—Calypso and Adrianna’s father?” I asked. Anna straightened her back like she’d been electrocuted.

Kaohs gave me a heavy stare. “I’m trying to tell you.”

Shivers erupted over my skin at the feeling of his power bubbling up. I rubbed my arms and gave a respectful nod, taking it as my cue to shut up.

“For centuries the human changelings did the work in Tartarus that no one else wanted, including bearing the brunt of a fair bit of torture, as this is the place all Unseelie strive to come to.”

I cringed at the thought of so many humans being tortured down here.

Every minute I stayed here, I grew more and more appalled at how horrible a place this was, even though it looked luxurious and different than I had expected.

All everyone did was party and destroy things. How could I possibly stay here forever?

“As you know, humans provide a certain”—he waved his hand, searching for the right words—“aphrodisiac to us. Their short and fragile life and delicate bodies become so fascinating and tempting to fae.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but the truth was, he was right. Humans just had something special and peculiar about them, something so different and yet ordinary, like little bursts of light that you had to watch before they went out.

“I chose my favorites of the humans that came to me, a select and prestigious few who were my closest companions. No one could touch them but me—my favorites. Each bore the mark of Kaohs proudly, a distinct skeleton-key-and-skull tattoo worn by my women.”

All the chambers and bolts clicked into place as I remembered things Calypso had told me. “Cal’s mother,” I said. “She was a favorite.”

The room went silent as I waited for confirmation from Kaohs.

Before I even looked at him, I tensed, feeling the waves of absolute rage that poured off him.

What had I done? How had I offended him this time?

I glanced at the faces of the others, gauging their reactions.

I had no powers, so fighting Kaohs, a god of all things, was pretty much a joke.

I’d already felt Eletha’s powers and I most definitely felt Anna’s powers, hers being the stronger of the two.

When both girls began to fidget nervously, eyeing each other, I feared I had truly fucked things up this time.

The wildest part was if he killed me now—or destroyed my soul or whatever it was—I wouldn’t even know if I’d completed my task for Cal or not.

I tracked Anna’s gaze, her big blue eyes locking with mine, and I knew without a doubt she was Cal’s sister. How had I missed that?

“You have the same eyes,” I rasped. “Yours are a little less rounded at the corners. But the blue…it’s the same shade of deep blue as hers.”

Her eyes flickered with emotion before she quickly looked away, as though she were attempting to ignore my statement entirely.

After a few minutes, Kaohs broke his irritated silence. “Yes.

Calypso’s mother was a favorite—she was the favorite.”

I struggled to remember what Zef had told us about Cal’s mom.

Something about how he had met her in Tartarus at a meeting or something, and they fell in love and he helped her escape, taking her to the human realm to hide her from Kaohs.

He had sounded like a real hero for saving her.

What had she said about the deal her mother had made with Kaohs?

The one that made sure she would go to the Elysian Fields with Adrianna?