I was?
“You went to the Underworld recently. Pray tell, what for?”
My throat felt like it was closing up. “Well, I guess you don’t have comrades everywhere if you don’t know.”
Ares smirked. “Charming. You will tell me what you were doing there, or this will end with you not being able to talk. It’s your choice.”
I refused to back up even though every instinct screamed that I do so. “I thought I was going to end this begging for death. How can I do that when I can’t talk?”
He laughed again. “You are so simple, little girl. There are other ways to beg for death than with words.”
“Are there?” My voice cracked a little and I winced.
His all-white eyes gleamed. “I’ve seen it all in battle. There is the way the body curls into itself when it wants death. There is the silent scream for release. There are the eyes, and they speak even when the tongue no longer works. And then there is the soul that rots so poorly when death is wanted but withheld that it carries a certain stench.”
Ice shot through my veins, turning my blood to slush. At that moment I knew, no matter how much I fought, this… this was going to suck.
“So unless you want to experience these things firsthand, you will tell me why you were in the Underworld, and then you will submit.”
I swallowed, wincing as fists hit the door behind me again. “I’m not big on the whole submission thing.”
“You may want to rethink that.” He sounded civil as he suggested it. “Look at this rationally, little girl. All that I ask is that you connect with Seth. Allow him to do what he was made to. That is all. He will take care of you. You know that. How is that so bad?”
“He will strip me of who I am.”
“So what? You’ll be happy and alive. You will want for nothing.” He tipped his chin down almost playfully. “I’ll even let the ones you love live. It’s a win/win situation.”
“Except for the gods you want taken out, and the thousands, if not millions, of people who will die.”
He shrugged. “Consequences of war.”
“Sickening,” I said.
“It is the truth.”
My stomach churned. “Why… why are you doing this?”
“Why not?” He tapped a long finger off my chin. “For too long the Olympians have sat on their thrones doing nothing. Letting the entire world be overrun with the children of demigods and mortals while we are sequestered on Mount Olympus. The world should be ours.”
I shook my head. “The world belongs to humankind.”
“The world belongs to the gods!” he roared, eyes crackling. “To me and any other god who sees the truth. That is who the world belongs to.”
My fingers curled helplessly. “Why don’t you just take me to Seth? Why try to convince me?”
“Well, I can’t really just pop you there, now can I?”
“You didn’t think this through, did you?” I forced out a laugh. “You could just knock me out and stuff me in a car. Why go through this?”
His brows slammed down and a muscle ticked in his jaw.
“There’s something. You can’t force me to go with you.” My pulse sped up. “Can you?”
The god was seething. “You are the Apollyon. Therefore I cannot force you, but keep in mind, little girl, I can and will hurt you.”
“This ‘little girl’ is having a hard time believing that.” Courage fed my bravado, which usually was never a good combination. “Unless you’re like every villain who wants to give a long, unnecessarily boring speech, I’d figured you were a more-action-and-less-words kind of god.”
Ares’ lips parted. “You have no idea. The rules that protect the Apollyon are like all things in nature—balanced. While you cannot be forced with compulsion or by hand, you can be persuaded by certain other means.”
“You suck as a salesman, so you aren’t persuading crap.”
He let out a low, deep growl. “Submit, or so be it.”
I met the eerie all-white eyes. “Go to hell.”
For a moment, he almost looked disappointed, like the kind of disapproval parents feel when their kid is too stupid to figure something out, but then he smiled broadly. “I don’t think Seth will like this, but oh, well.”
“What do—?”
Ares shot forth, in my face in half a second. All thoughts of Seth fled, and instinct kicked in. I summoned forth akasha, knowing it wouldn’t kill but hoping it would send him back to Olympus with his tail between his legs, but that wasn’t what happened.
He caught my arm by the wrist and squeezed with what was probably the slightest pressure, but the spike of pain caused me to lose my concentration. “You will not like my persuasion, little girl.”
Then he pushed, and I hit the door with enough force to knock the air out of me. Unfortunately, his Dr. Evil speech hadn’t been all pomp. But if he could hurt me, I could take it. I wasn’t submitting. Too much was at stake. Too many lives. I could deal with this, and all I could hope was that he forgot about Aiden and Marcus when he was through, or they got with the program and got the hell out of Dodge.
I can deal with this.
Pushing off the wall, I spun to the right and extended my arm, but where his chest had been was empty space, and I stumbled into it.
“Missed me.”
I whirled around, finding him behind me. Dropping down, I swept my leg at his… but hit nothing but air.
“You can keep this up if you want.”
Looking up, he was leaning against the door, arms crossed. Now I was starting to get pissed off. Launching to my feet, I gained momentum and pushed into the air, twisting into the perfect butterfly kick that—
Arms snagged me out of the air from behind and I let out a surprised gasp.
He held me like I was nothing more than a sack of rice. “I am the god of war, little girl. There is no move that you know, no method of battle or maneuver that I do not.”
Crap.
“I will always be one step ahead. I will always outthink you. You cannot fight me.”
Throwing my head back, I hit his broad, hard shoulder. Then I swung my legs, but Ares dropped me. Stumbling to my feet, I saw he wasn’t in front of me.
Double crap.
Whirling around, I kicked out into nothing. I spun back and suddenly—dear gods—his hand was on my throat, lifting me off the ground as I kicked and clawed at his hand, too panicked and distracted to try to summon akasha again.
“You will wish for death by the time I am through.” His fingers dug in deep, cutting off my air supply. “You will beg for it in all the ways I listed. You had your choice. You had your fun. Game over.”
For a terrifying second, I thought he’d crush my windpipe, and I told myself again that I could deal with this. But then I was suddenly flying backward through the air. I crashed through the aquarium. Sharp glass sliced through my back as water and fish poured out around me.
I hit the floor on my side. Vibrantly striped pink-and-blue fish flopped on the marble floors. Sucking in a sharp inhale against the pain, I put my hand down and pushed up. I grunted as glass sliced open my palm. Blood mixed with water.
I can deal with this.
I stood up, breathing raggedly as I lifted my head.
Ares stood in front of me. Without a single word, his backhand hit the side of my face. Starbursts flooded my vision like a dozen firecrackers going off at once. I smacked into the leather chair behind the desk. Blood pooled in my mouth as I caught myself on the edge of the desk. Something had split. My cheek? Entire face? I had no idea. And over the pounding pain, I could hear them at the door.
I can deal with this.
Grabbing the keyboard, I ripped it free and swung around, aiming for his head. Ares caught the keyboard, yanked it free and then snapped it in two like it was a twig.
I stumbled back, reaching blindly for something. Daggers and swords hung from the wall, but he was on me before I could go for them.
Ares picked me up like I was nothing more than a helpless kitten. Before I could wiggle free, before I could taste the raw fear building in the back of my throat, he flipped me over, slamming my back into the corner of the upturned desk.
There was a crack I heard and felt. Sharp pain came in a flash of light, and then every nerve ending fired at once. My senses overloaded as I slipped to the ground, eyes fixed on the ceiling.
Something had come unhinged inside me. I could feel it. A searing hurt roared through me like a gunshot blast. I was wet and warm on the inside and if I hadn’t been the Apollyon—if I had been only a half-blood or a mortal—I knew whatever Ares had done would’ve been fatal.
But I wouldn’t die and I couldn’t move. Something bad was broken. The tips of my fingers were numb, and I couldn’t feel my toes, but I felt everything else. And I figured that, if anyone knew the right place to snap the spine to immobilize someone but ensure they could still feel everything, it would be Ares.
I can deal with this—oh gods, I can deal with this.
He loomed over me, smiling, eyes all-white. “This can all end now, little one. Just say the words.”
My throat worked, and my tongue felt way too heavy. It took everything to get the words out. “Fuck… you…”
The smile slipped from his face and then he moved lightning fast. Pain… it was everywhere. Another bone cracked—maybe my leg, or a kneecap, but I couldn’t be sure. My mouth opened to scream, but a wet, warm whimper came out instead.
I…I can deal with this. I had to… I had to.
When he snapped my other leg and then each rib, one at a time, the pain became my world. There was no escaping it—no breathing around it or hiding. Consciousness was slipping away from me and I fought the fog, because when he was done with me, if he’d ever be done with me, he would move on to Aiden and Marcus, to the whole University. He was the god of war and he would lay waste to everything.
But that pain… it rotted me from the inside. It reached down into the tiny part where I was still a person, where I was still Alex, and the pain took over. I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t deal with it. My shields crashed down and the cord roared, but the growing hum was overshadowed by the terrible pain, and the growing hopelessness dug in deep with razor-sharp claws and pulled away my entire sense of being.
I wasn’t as strong as I thought I was, or maybe I’d just hit my limit, because I wanted out—I wanted to die. There was no pride in this. There was no purpose. My soul fragmented and I broke wide open.
Ares grabbed hold of my broken arm, dragging me to the center of the room, over broken glass and dead fish and the blood of those who’d already died in here. That fresh burst of pain seemed like nothing in comparison to everything else, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ares pick up a dagger.
He knelt over me, lips curled back. There was a blade in his hand, and this was about to get much, much worse. “Say the words.”
I was shattered and I was weak. He had won, and I wanted to die, but I couldn’t, and there was no way—I screamed as the first strike of the blade sank deep.
With another sharp slice, my vision flashed amber momentarily and then reverted, but something…something was different. A foreign sensation wiggled around the broken bones and severed muscles. It wasn’t from me, but it was a part of me. It was cold and it felt like steel and it was fury, dark and endless.