“Ares,” his name comes across my lips in an emotional, disbelieving tremble. I throw myself into his arms, and this time, I can’t stop the sob that works its way out of my body.
He’s alive.
Ares is alive.
“What thehelljust happened?” Sysco asks from the other side of Ares. His voice is high, shocked. It echoes in the bloody silence that fills the massacre site.
“Lana,” Ares says again as he splays a hand against the side of my face. He’s looking around at the mess that’s around us. He lets out a groan again, rubbing at the place in his chest where the stake was just moments ago. The gaping hole is already knitting itself closed. “What…?” But he trails off, at a loss for words.
More tears cascade down my face, another sob heaving my chest. My brain and heart can’t catch up with the whiplash that’s just happened. I can’t make sense of any of it.
I cradle him in my arms, rocking slightly in the aftermath of everything, blood soaking into my jeans, my hands sticky with it—but I don’t care. He’s warm again. Breathing. His heartbeat thrums against my chest like a war drum, and I can’t stop the tears that fall.
I’m shaking. I can’t stop touching him—his face, his chest, his shoulders. He looks dazed, like he’s still trying to piece together where he is. I press a kiss to his jaw, another to his temple, and whisper against his skin.
“I thought I lost you,” I breathe. “I thought?—”
“I was dead!” Ares suddenly realizes, the shock taking over. He searches my eyes frantically. “How?”
“Seriously, what the fuck just happened?” Sysco barks again, looking around with wild eyes. “Juliet, is she… Is she really dead? How the hell did she do that? Did she bring Ares back?”
The room goes still again as reality crashes back in.
Juliet is lying right beside me. She definitely looks dead.
And just ten feet away, her husband stands with his back deliberately turned to her.
“Roman,” I say his name, a terrified question.
He doesn’t turn around immediately. His shoulders are slumped, his head hanging slightly. And as I study his form, I realize he’s shaking.
Whatever the hell just happened, he knew it was coming, and he looked away so he didn’t have to see it.
“Roman,” Ares says his name, more persistent than I inquired.
I see Roman take a deep, steadying breath. He lifts his face to the ceiling for a moment, his eyes closed. And finally, I see resolve in his shoulders as he turns and walks across the stage.Without a word, he walks past Sysco and me. His eyes lock on Juliet’s body.
She’s crumpled on the floor. Still and pale.
Roman drops to his knees beside her, not with a crash but with a quiet reverence. Like she’s sacred. He gathers her up carefully, as if she’s made of porcelain, and tucks her against his chest.
“She died for him,” he says quietly. “It’s her gift. And her curse.”
Ares stiffens in my arms. “What do you mean?”
Roman brushes Juliet’s hair back from her face with a trembling hand. “Juliet’s mother cursed her when she was a baby. She can’t really die.”
“But she is,” Sysco says, voice tight. “She looks pretty fucking dead to me.”
“She’s died dozens of times,” Roman says, his voice hollow. “But she always comes back.”
Ares sits up straighter, still rubbing the place on his chest where he was staked. “What do you mean? She died for me?”
Roman just nods, his jaw tight. There’s pain in his eyes. Old pain. Deep. I wonder just how many times he’s had to watch his wife die. “It’s an exchange. Her life for yours. Only there’s a loophole, because she can’tstaydead. Her curse is that she cannot die. Her gift, just like how Markus can raise the dead and Ophelia can influence people, is that Juliet can die for other people.”
My head is spinning with all that information.
Juliet is like Markus. Like Ophelia. Like that damn therapist.
