She didn’t have time to respond. Before she could look his way, he was over the edge, sliding down the snow, yelling Ari’s name and swinging his blade as he sliced through Zeus’s assassins like paper dolls.
Skyla and Sappheire quickly followed him down into the ravine and joined the fight. She was trained for this very thing, and Daphne knew she should join them, but all she could focus on was getting to Ari. On grounding him before he turned his blade on the wrong person and did something he couldn’t undo.
Dagger gripped tightly in her hand, Daphne slid down the hillside. The sounds of blades slicing through flesh and bone echoed in the small valley, but she shut them out and focused on her target. Twenty yards ahead, Ari arced out with his blade and caught the Siren he’d been fighting across the jugular.
The female hit the rocks with a crack. Blood gurgled from the wound, choking her to death.
“Ari.” Daphne raced up on Ari’s right and gripped his forearm with her free hand as tight as she could. “I’m here, Ari.”
His eyes were a sea of black, as possessed as she’d ever seen them. As if she hadn’t spoken, he jerked his forearm free so he could move on to his next kill, but she knew if that happened, he might attack the wrong person. Frantic to get through to him, she dropped her blade on the rocks at her feet and grabbed on to his arm with both hands.
“Ari, dammit. Look at me.”
Using every bit of strength she had, she jerked him around to face her. His crazed eyes couldn’t seem to focus, skipped everywhere as if looking for the threat. But she held on, not letting go, and said his name over and over again. Until those black pools landed on her eyes. Until the glossiness started to fade. Until his eyes flickered from black to blue and green and back again, telling her he was still in there. That if she didn’t give up, he could come back to her.
“That’s it,” she said softly while the battle continued to rage behind him. “I’m right here. Focus on me, Ari.”
“D-Daphne?”
“Yes, it’s me.” Relief swept through her, stealing her breath, making the muscles in her legs grow weak. “I’m here.”
His familiar, beautiful mismatched eyes skipped over her features. “What the hell are you doing here? I sent you to Olympus where you’d be safe.”
Oh, she’d been so right.
“I’ll never be safe on Olympus. Not when anyone who looks at me can see I’m in love with you. Did you really think I was going to let you do this alone?”
“Do what alo—” He turned to look over the ravine, then froze. “Holy skata.“
Daphne glanced past him, toward Skyla, pulling her arrow out of a dead Sirenum Scorpoli, then to Sappheire, shaking her head at a body on the ground at her feet. Each and every one of Zeus’s assassins who’d come over the side of that ravine was now dead. But Ari’s shock had nothing to do with their victory.
His reaction had only to do with the fact his estranged son was striding right for him with a bloody blade held tightly in his hand.
*
Ari tensed. Cerek was exactly as he remembered. Fifty years hadn’t changed the color of his eyes, or the slope of his nose that was so much like his mother’s, or the square cut of his jaw that came directly from Ari. He was just as big as he’d been before, the same height and size as Ari, and his sandy brown hair was just as rumpled as it had always been when he was a kid. Even the small scar on his upper lip, the one he’d gotten when he’d fallen out of that tree, was exactly the same.
But he wasn’t the same. Fifty years had aged him in a way that didn’t show on his face, but reflected deeply in his light-brown eyes. Eyes that were now guarded and filled with disbelief.
Cerek stopped two feet away, his wide-eyed gaze skipping over Ari as if he’d seen a ghost. A splatter of blood was smeared across his cheek. His jacket was torn at the shoulder, and the blade in his hand dripped crimson red droplets onto the dirty snow. But Ari didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Didn’t know what the hell he could say to make up for fifty empty years.
“I didn’t think it was true,” Cerek muttered. “I can’t believe it’s you. All these years...”
Ari’s pulse whirred in his ears, and his hands grew damp against his side. He wanted to turn, to run, to disappear, but he couldn’t. Not this time.
Say something, shithead. Do something. He’s your son.
He swallowed hard. “Cerek, I—”
The blade in Cerek’s hand clanged against the snowy rocks at their feet. Then he moved so fast, Ari barely had time to brace himself. But instead of the right hook to the jaw Ari deserved, Cerek closed his arms around Ari’s shoulders, pulled him in, and held on tight.
The snow, the ravine, everything seemed to swirl around Ari as he stood still, embraced by his son. He heard Cerek’s voice. Knew the boy was talking to him, but couldn’t make out the words. Except for one. One got through and wedged its way solidly inside that heart he thought he didn’t have.
Pateras.