Page 40 of Until the End of Ever (To the Cruel Gods #2)

LUCIAN

A fter filling the tub with hot water, I uncapped the lime green potion I’d concocted and poured four drops out.

It was experimental enough for me to hesitate over adding a fifth. I’d tried five on myself, but Kleos was around sixty pounds lighter than me. An extra drop could strengthen her defenses, but it also could react negatively. I stuck to four.

“You’ll need to bathe for fifteen minutes, and stay completely immersed underwater as long as you can,” I said, choosing to play it safe.

“It’ll protect my mind?” she asked with that cute little frown she always wore when she was trying to work out the kinks of something she wasn’t familiar with.

“Theoretically.” I wished I had more time to test it out. “One of the major dangers of projecting our consciousness elsewhere is wounding it—shattering it. This should ensure it remains in one piece.”

“Thanks for that brand-new fear.” She shivered. “I dread to imagine what a shattered soul would be like.”

I winced. “It could lead to deep psychosis, schizophrenia, insanity, death…” Quickly, I added, “But from what I understand, it’s a rare side effect of the ritual. I’m simply taking precautions.”

“How do you even go about testing things like that?”

“Eighty percent of my work is theoretical. The last stage for this potion was creating something a little like a soul, and trying to break it. Once that worked out, I tried it on myself.”

I decided against telling her I’d then attempted to split my soul to check if it worked. I knew how to put it back together, but I doubted Kleos would be particularly impressed with me for that.

“Is there anything you can’t do?” she asked with a grin, removing the last of her clothing.

Damn her. Our friends were in my summoning room waiting for us. I didn’t have time to sink into the delicious body on display.

“Resist you?” I replied, my thumb circling her nipple. I shook my head. “In the bath, you little minx. I don’t want to use too much of that potion, which means it will only work for a few hours. Rush back soon as you’re done.”

I turned to go, but Kleos grabbed my wrist. The moment I faced her again, she pressed herself against me, bringing her mouth to mine.

Forget everything I just said, and bend over, I wanted to demand. But the damn witch moved her perky little butt to the tub and sank into the bath.

“Later,” I promised darkly, to her and myself.

Leaving her in our en suite, I retreated towards her old guest room to reapply the spell to myself, Phobos on my heels.

In the corridor between the rooms however, I came to a halt. One tiny, irritating, pink-and-silver-haired nuisance leaned back against the wall, an eyebrow raised.

“Smol.”

“Daddy,” she countered.

I wrinkled my nose. “What do you want?”

“To help you, believe it or not.” She tilted her head towards the room I’d just left.“You’re going to have to use your mouth with her, you know.”

“What makes you think I don’t?”

“Not like that, you heathen.” She made a face, then seemed to think better of it. “Or yes, like that. But also to form words. Has it crossed your brilliant brain that she might like to hear that you like her too?”

I rolled my eyes. “Kleos knows how I feel about her.”

“Does she? Look, I do. But that’s because I look at actions.

I have foster parents who say ‘love you’ before they wave and leave for six to eighteen months.

They care about me, just…you know. Not that much.

” Silver shrugged, like it wasn’t a big deal.

“So I don’t give a damn about what people say; I look at what they do.

Kleos? Her family never talks about feelings.

They rarely talk about anything at all. It’s all superficial pretense for the public, evasion. She needs words like we need action.”

The unsolicited advice gave me pause. It sounded a lot more astute and wiser than what I had thought Silver capable of. As I’d rather eat my shoe than admitting it, I teased her instead. “Are you suggesting you and I are similar?”

“Wouldn’t go that far, Daddy. But let’s just say that my best friend talks to me, so maybe I know what I’m saying.”

Another pertinent point. What had Kleos told her to make her think this conversation was necessary? I could imagine it. “You know, it’s not that serious. We only started dating this week. We’ll see how it goes.” And other logical words I didn’t want to hear.

I was not logical about Kleos Valesco.

I’d asked her how she felt about me. She hadn’t truly returned the question, and I assumed it was because she wasn’t ready for my answer. Silver made me doubt that.

I decided we didn’t have time for any of that today. It could wait until we’d identified our divine friend and foe.

I hadn’t used my summoning room in weeks.

Unlike the rest of my wing of the manor, this room hadn’t changed at all. I supposed the house saw it as mine, and didn’t attempt to make it Kleos’s. I made a mental note to ensure she’d also have her space. A proper room for her jewelry-making, and anything else she might enjoy doing.

“Or maybe, just maybe, you should talk to her instead of planning your entire life in your head,” Silver seemed to say, with a silent, judgmental look paired with a knowing smirk.

So that was why some people found my smirks annoying.

Like many of the things I ended up specializing in, calling beings from other world grew out of boredom and curiosity. Cassius taught me how to visit the various underworlds, the rules of engagement with its many guardians, who to bribe or flatter into compliance.

Visiting the dark worlds inhabited by demons and souls was our birthrights as Nyx-spawns, and he knew people who eventually asked me to contact their loved ones.

I was fifteen the first time I attempted a summoning.

And I ended up being very, very lucky. Instead of the fiend I was targeting, I manifested part of a demon prince who could likely have annihilated me in instants.

But it happened to be a distant cousin, so instead, Taranis shouted at me, giving me a long lecture about the dos and don’ts, and promised to pulverize me if I dared call to him again.

I only bothered him twice afterwards.

I loved world surfing. Portals from one place to another on Earth lasted mere seconds, but the speed and adrenaline hit had always been fun. Moving worlds was my version of a rollercoaster. Faster, infinitely more dangerous, but just as fun.

So I tried other worlds. Any I could read about where I had reason to believe I could breathe and communicate with the various life forms.

Traveling out of this world was one of the secrets behind my many successes. Yes, I was creative and inventive, but my first move whenever I tried to come up with something new was to check whether my goal already existed elsewhere.

What we were up to today wasn’t in my wheelhouse. In fact, I was used to the opposite: calling other entities here, or perhaps traveling to them. Sending only my mind elsewhere? I hated the concept.

Not that it mattered. There was nothing I wouldn’t do for the woman walking into the room, wrapped in a long white Grecian gown under the shawl she seldom forwent these days.

“I didn’t ask if I should wear something specific,” Kleos said, nervously fiddling with her shawl. “Is the dress a bit much? Something a bit more traditional just made sense, you know, for a proper ritual.”

“You’re perfect,” I immediately replied.

Kleos found that amusing. “Well, you’d think so. You’re always dressed like you’re attending a wedding.”

“A man ought to be prepared. You never know.” I winked. “Lucky? The floor’s yours. Literally,” I added, gesturing to the pentagram permanently etched on the wooden floor. “Will this do?”

She tore herself from the shelves of various knickknacks I brought back from my travels. “Yeah, I usually draw it just like that. All right, usually, we sit for this. Kleos, take the center point. The caster should be on the north point.”

I moved to the right spot, and the others chose their points. Silver, as earth, sat cross-legged to my right, Ronan, representing air, at my left. Gideon, fire, was next to Ronan and Lucky, water, next to Silver.

The moment she stepped on her place, the energy around the pentagram started to hum, balanced and charged by our presence.

“Lucian, none of us can speak once you start. Any last-second questions before I pour the Liquid Dream?”

I shook my head, feeling my jaw tic.

Calm down. Lucky’s chill. She’s done this many times. It’s not just dangerous. It’ll be fine.

“Well, I do hope everyone’s gone to the loo, then.”

Gideon started to say, “Well, actually—” but Lucky waved, and the potion inside the amphora shot up in the air, falling perfectly over the circle—splashing us all.

The sensation was overall pleasant, though almost instantly, my eyes grew heavy, unfocused, only moments away from sleep.

“Let’s go!”

I levitated the parchment with the spell, written in Runic, and translated underneath.

“Mother, Maiden, Crone. Father, Mentor, King. By the law of the ancients, I call to blood.” The floor underneath us started to quake.

I glanced at Lucky, watching for any clue this was unusual, but like almost everyone else, her eyes were closed.

They seemed completely relaxed—perhaps even already asleep.

The only conscious person was Kleos, sea-blue eyes set on mine.

“I call to flesh,” I continued. “I call to inheritance.”

My hand moved in the air to draw the shape of the rune perthro , followed by ansuz for magic insight, and thurisaz for power.

And then everything went dark.

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