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“Your confidence will be your downfall.”
I wink. “Only if I let you get close enough.”
He vanishes.
Chapter 8
“When’s the last time you all had a family dinner?”
NYXION
“Distraction” by Sleep Token
Ileave Morpheus standing alone in the clearing.
But we’re not done yet. The residual energy of our battle still buzzes through us. More tension ready to find an outlet. One part of my power is depleting. Over the past few days, I’ve discovered the more I spend between a pair of pretty tattooed legs, the more I can spend in my god form and not my skeletal one.
My thoughts linger on Zenya, knowing this is only the beginning of a much larger conflict. Morpheus wants her, but he knows I’m not about to give up my vessel—not even if it leads to her doom.
Surging my power, coursing it through my blood, I call upon the ancient magic of all nightmares. My bones crack and reform, elongating and twisting into a grotesque beast made of skeletalremains. My wings break through the canopy, and I take bits and pieces of bone and hide, fusing it with the membrane.
Alerted to the change, Morpheus turns as I shake my head, eye gleaming upon him. With his eye gone, the core of his power, my little brother falls back on his shadows. He can’t manifest. He can’t create. But we are still gods. We can’t be killed.
With a roar, I lunge at Morpheus, slicing my bone claws through the air. He dodges swiftly, but my sheer strength catches him off guard, knocking him to the ground.
Not one to be easily bested, Morpheus retaliates. Shadows erupt from his body, lashing out and wrapping around my bone form. He hates to fucking lose. We both do.
The shadows constrict and pull, dismantling my bone creature piece by piece until I form another and another, commanding the whole of my organic forest.
I don’t know how long the battle goes on, but with every blow I strike, Morpheus refuses to leave. I may have spent my life in his damn shadow, but I’m a dog with a bone this time. He has no right to take what I have justifiably stolen.
Eventually, we end up flat on our backs, both huffing and puffing from the exertion. Too long without my cock inside Zenya.
“What do you think?” Phantasos chuckles, and I swing my eyes up to find my younger brother lounging high above the canopy clearing on a floating velvet brocade chaise. “Solid eight?”
More additions have been made to the gown, including an impressive cape with gold spikes all around the sides and back. I roll my eyes as she sucks the juice from a cherry before tossing the pit at me.
But it’s Zenya who irks me most.
Chucking a femur bone at Morpheus, smirking at his ‘ow!’, I charge into the air.
Zenya smiles as I advance toward them since she sits at the end of the chaise—with my goddamned brother’s head in her lap. Relaxed, he’s not performing—at least not as a Queen. Fuck, he’s already got her eating out of the palm of his hand. Or perhaps both with how enthralled he is with her.
She doesn’t so much as flinch, though the tattoos on the right side of her body pulse and shift more upon my approach. The skulls bounce, the fractured black wings flutter, and the spiders skitter along her arms—bare thanks to the sleeveless corset she wears, royal purple to match her hair bound in a thick braid. Her tulle skirts are a contrast between pink on the right side and black on her devil side. I’ll say the lace choker woven with teeth is a nice touch.
I stare her down, daring her to toy with me. Without faltering, she glances down at my brother while sifting her fingers into Phantasos’s hair, stroking the long, dark curls.
“I’d give Nyxion a ten for his ingenuity because the golems and rib cage rattlers were pretty amazing. But Morpheus also gets a ten…for style.”
“Tsk, tsk, darling,” Phantasos scolds her and twists his chin to kiss her palm. “We all knowIhave the most style.”
I growl at my brother. “I’ll change this to ‘execution-style’ if you don’t get the fuck out, Phantasos.”
Zenya’s fingers pause. Then, she stabs her chin at me. When Phantasos begins to make a show of crying, outright blubbering, I set my jaw and seethe through gritted teeth. Because Zenya’s eating it up. She leans down, cooing to him with ‘shh’ statements while kissing his brow.
Good gods, I’m going to be sick.
By now, Morpheus has arrived, hovering nearby, surrounded by his shadows. Our wings border on brushing one another. Other than that, he gives me a wide berth. But he rolls his eyesand shakes his head with an airy laugh at our familiar trickster brother.
