Page 26 of Taming Winter

"Hades was far more creative than you." I let out a raucous laugh that turned into violent coughing.

His lip curled. He scanned me with the disgust of someone looking at a pile of shit. As we stared each other down, the blisters that coated me dissipated as though they had never been, taking any residual festering fluid from my skin and my surroundings with them. "Well, I guess I will just have to get more creative, won't I?"

"I am bursting with anticipation," I retorted in a flat tone. I shouldn't have said anything, but his antics exhausted me. Not for the first time, I wondered what Hades was doing. If she hated me for abandoning her. Fuck, I missed her. I'd rather be tormented by my beautiful, fiery redhead than this self-absorbed jackass.

Apollo shuffled around the counters, then turned to me. In his hand was a thick piercing needle the length of my forearm, filled with an amber-colored liquid. I forced back my grimace, determined to remain impassive. Revealing what frightened me would mean he won.

He prowled forward on shuffling feet, the sound grating to my ears in a way that made me want to scream. There was no pause before he buried that needle into my forehead. A shriek erupted from my lips despite my best efforts as a scorching fire spread through my brain. Once he injected that nefarious liquid into my brain, he pushed the needle deeper until the handle hit my forehead. He left it there, cackling at his handiwork.

Excruciating was an understatement. My brain was being eaten alive. Respite came when my mind went blank, and my consciousness retreated to the deepest crevices of my soul to hide from the horrific pain. My own slipping sanity explained the flash of fiery red I saw before agony consumed me.

CHAPTER 25

HADES

Icy fury consumed my mind at the sight of Thane. Blood poured in two thin rivers over his forehead, collecting at his jawline before dripping onto the floor beneath him. The scent of disease tainted the room. His head was slouched forward with a needle protruding out of his skull like a fucking unicorn. It wouldn't kill him, but that was almost worse. It left him to bask in unimaginable agony for who knew how long.

I dipped out of the room and stood against the wall to come up with a plan. Rage and guilt twisted into knots within me. I should have trusted him. Apollo had days to torment him because I was off sulking. All the while, he had been loyal to me. It was despicable. Flames still flickered over my skin, but I wasn't sure who I hated more right now—Zeus and Apollo, or myself.

I ground my teeth together and steeled my nerves to return my attention to the room. Finally able to look past Thane's wretched state to the chains holding him, my eyes finally caught on it. Apollo was smarter than I gave him credit for. Stygian iron also snuffed powers given by an immortal, which rendered my pet's ice useless under the very chains I had armed him with. I grimaced. That meant I must free Thane before restraining Apollo, and that would be an impossible task.

Near impossible, but not impossible. I slipped my phone from my pocket and placed it against the doorframe, praying that Apollo wouldn't notice the red recording light. Then I straightened from my hiding spot and strode into the hospital room with my head held high. The click of my heels caught Apollo's attention. The immortal turned on me, hand already reaching for the gilded sword at his waist. In response, I tore my scythe from its sheath and swept it toward his neck. The air froze down the stretch of my handle to the blade inches from his Adam's apple. He gulped and raised his arms.

"This fight is fruitless,” he said in a tone intended to be soothing, though it was anything but.

The comment made me want to hack through his head until the room was painted with his golden ichor, but I refrained. There were better ways to get what I wanted, and I was nothing if not strategically minded. I let my weapon go slack in my hands.

"You're right. Let's talk this out like adults, Apollo."

A feral smile twisted his lips, and he straightened. Arrogant, as I'd guessed. A man who thought he was safe simply because the beast had yet to attack. He waved a casual hand to the broken and bleeding Thane. "I'm guessing you came for your pet?"

"You would be correct. But it's more than that, Apollo." I said his name again intentionally. I carefully stepped out of my phone’s line of sight. "You started a plague and blamed me for it. I deserve—no, I demand to know why."

His eyebrows furrowed and his jaw tightened. He spoke through stiff words and clenched teeth. "Not even I am privy to all of Zeus’s plans, little fury. I simply do as I am told and reap the benefits of being loyal."

I snorted at that. "Oh darling, look at me and see where the road of loyalty leads."

He raised an eyebrow. "To ruling your own kingdom, with your own castle, worshipped by the entirety of Olympiara."

"Trapped in a castle and feared by the entirety of Olympiara," I retorted. A ripple of flames ran across my flesh as anger threatened to consume me. Apollo made it sound as though I was the goal, that my life was one to aspire to. Little did he know that I was cursed.

"Fear is a powerful tool, Hades. Entire countries have been leveled and rebuilt on fear."

On this, he and I agreed. We had overthrown the last regime under the guise of saving the country from the monsters that plagued this world. We succeeded but rewrote the stars at the same time. What he didn’t know was that fear could level a person, too. It could corrupt them until nothing but rot and decay remained. I was about to tell him as much when I realized I was rapidly steering us off-topic. I had a purpose here.

"So, you're telling me you sentenced hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent citizens to death, and you don't even know why?"

His gaze lanced with anger, and shimmering gold rippled through his irises. "Yes. Because that is what it means to have faith. I believe in Zeus, as you should."

"Zeus is not a god," I snarled. "You have put your faith in the wrong place."

He gestured around him with a savage smirk. " I have everything, thanks to my faith. Perhaps your lack of faith has doomed you."

I considered that. It was possible that my soul was stained past the point of repair. Maybe I had cursed myself with anger and hatred. I tapped the foot of my scythe against the floor and used my free hand to tap my chin. In truth, I didn't care if it was true.

"It is possible," I said thoughtfully. Then I waved to the doorframe. "Unfortunately for you, you have doomed yourself. I just recorded everything you said and will share it to everyone in Olympiara the second I leave this place."

Confusion, anger, then fear flashed across Apollo's face like the slides of a View-Master. He shoved me out of the way without care to lurch for the phone. I used the distraction to close the space between Thane and me. With one smooth yank, I removed the syringe from his head and threw it to the side. Regardless of the wretched burning, I reached up and wriggled the chain free from its hook in the ceiling. It clattered to the floor along with his wrists.