“I did know. I knew I was leaving them to this nightmare. And I did it anyway.”
She swallowed hard. Knew he was in a bad place. Knew the smartest thing for her right now was to walk away. He didn’t trust her. He still had no reason to trust her. But something deep inside wouldn’t let her leave. She’d had no one after her village had been destroyed. No one to lean on. No one to turn to for comfort. No one to help her pick up the broken pieces of a life in ruins. And that solitude had bred a hatred that had eventually pushed her toward Zagreus. She didn’t want Nick to take that same dark path. Didn’t want to look back on her life and regret one more thing she might have had the power to change. Didn’t want to know that a warrior like him had finally reached his breaking point.
She lifted her hand to his cheek.
He closed his big hand around her wrist in a tight grip before she could touch him, his inflamed amber eyes growing wide with disbelief. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
He was closer to the edge than she’d thought, but she wasn’t backing down. “Helping you. The way I did before. Only…more.”
His gaze raked her features, so intense, so calculating, she felt as if he were seeing past every barrier, deep into her soul. But she didn’t recoil as she once had with Zagreus. Didn’t try to hide what he was seeing. Because she needed him to know he wasn’t alone.
“You never helped me,” he sneered. “You’re as responsible for all this as your master. Had it not been for you, I might have been able to break free of that hell and come back to stop this.” He lifted his chin, indicating the destruction. “I might have been able to save them.”
He was blaming her because she was an easy target. She recognized that, but his words still stung because a place inside knew he was right.
Her heart beat fast against her ribs. “If I’d known—”
“Don’t even say it.” He flung her arm away in disgust, and his eyes grew dark. As dark as her heart. “Get as far from me as possible, because right now I want you as dead as the Prince of Fucking Darkness you chose to serve.”
He turned for the crumbling archway that led back into the castle. “Run hard, female. Run fast. This is the only chance I’m going to give you.”
Energy tingled in the tips of Nick’s fingers, fed by a darkness he only just held back. Skipping steps, he quickly dropped to the lowest level of the colony and headed for the tunnels that fanned out beneath the massive structure.
The twisting maze was a point of entry, designed to disorient and confuse any enemies who managed to get close, but Nick knew every turn, every corner, and today he needed the solace the tunnels had always given him. Needed the break from responsibility. Needed the freedom.
Only there was no freedom to be found here. Not when visions of what his people had endured played behind his eyelids like a movie set on repeat, every agonizing scream for help booming like cannon fire in his ears.
He bypassed bent, broken lockers with doors hanging askew in the anteroom, didn’t even stop to see if any weaponry had been left behind, and stepped over the mangled steel door that had once formed a barrier between the castle and the cavern beneath. Moving on memory, he walked deeper into the tunnels and didn’t stop until he reached the wide room where a myriad of corridors opened in all different directions.
The cries grew louder. The visions spun faster. He pressed his hands against his ears, hoping to drown out the sounds, slammed his eyes shut, and ground his teeth against the darkness.
He was breaking. He could feel Krónos’s energy inside feeding off his anger and hatred and pain. Churning in his chest. Rushing through his limbs with an all-encompassing power. A power just waiting to command and destroy and annihilate.
He fought the pull. Pressed harder against his ears. Opened his mouth. And roared.
His body trembled. The sound of his scream echoed in the caverns.
“Nick.” Cynna’s soft, warm fingers brushed his shoulder.
He dropped his hands and whipped around. This deep in the tunnels, there was no light, but his senses were so heightened right now from Krónos’s energy churning inside that he didn’t need any illumination to see her standing a foot from him, her silky hair falling to her shoulders, her wide chocolate eyes alight with sadness and…pity.
The pity pushed him right to the edge. Who was she to pity him? Who the fuck was she to care?
“Don’t let them win.” She moved closer. “Fight it. The way you fought it these last few months.”