“Hades, please. Please. I didn’t mean to. Please.”
With a ripple in the air, the earth swallows Ares whole—him and the shadows and his screams of terror.
Silence returns.
Hades stands where he is, his expression carefully blank, his gaze trained on where Ares disappeared.
He’s…gone.
Ares is gone.
I collapse to my knees as relief fills me. The dagger falls from my hand and disappears from sight once more—no doubt becoming a tattoo on my skin yet again.
“Thank you,” I whisper to Hades through numb lips, knowing he just saved my life.
Because if he hadn’t imprisoned Ares, I would’ve killed him. I know I would have.
Hades turns his piercing silver gaze in my direction. “You’re…welcome.”
“Why did you come? Why did you help us?” I ask, tears staining my cheeks.
Hades hesitates and then says simply, “Because I created you, which makes you my responsibility.”
And then in a blink of darkness and ash, he’s gone.
The five of us are left alone beside the shattered wall of the compound. Panting. Bloody. Bruised.
But alive.
Krystian slings his bow back over his shoulder, and it instantly dematerializes.
“Let’s go home,” he says, sounding exhausted.
“Yes,” Rafe agrees.
Everett holds me tighter, his arms the only thing keeping me from falling to the ground.
I can’t peel my gaze away from the scorched earth where Ares disappeared.
He’s gone. He’s really, truly gone.
Does that mean this is over?
Or has it only just begun?
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
THEA
“Ares has to have been the one behind all of this,” Krystian insists as we sit around the dining room table hours later.
Everett has prepared a feast of filet mignon, mashed potatoes, green beans, and a chocolate lava cake for dessert.
It looks delicious, but…
But I can’t even think about eating.
“Ares didn’t attack us as if he had the power of millions of souls at his beck and call,” Zaid points out, moving the contents of his plate around without eating a single bite.
