Page 27 of Shadowed Bond

“I am not breathing loudly.”

“You’re thinking loudly then.”

I roll onto my back and glare at the ceiling, even though he cannot see me. “That is not a real thing.”

“With you, it is.”

The mature thing would be to ignore him. Instead, I turn my head towards him. He’s staring at the ceiling, all shadowed jaw, dark lashes and tousled hair pushed back from his forehead. He is lying on his back, too, one arm folded beneath his head, the other resting over his stomach.

He looks too large for the single bed; it would be amusing if it were not so distracting.

“I can’t seem to sleep,” I admit quietly.

For a moment, he says nothing. Then, softer than before, he murmurs, “Me neither.”

The honesty of it settles between us. Far more intimate than anything either of us has said tonight.

We fall silent again, but it is not the same silence as before. This one is tense in a different way, in a way I refuse to acknowledge.

It feels absurd.

I’m tired; I should be asleep. Instead, I’m lying awake in this cheap hotel room, listening to the rain and pretending I am not aware of every breath he takes.

I turn onto my side, facing him properly. After a second, he turns his head towards me.

“What?” he asks.

I study his face for a moment, wanting to distract myself from the fact that I am sleeping in a room with an annoyingly, infuriatingly handsome male.

“How was it? Fighting a god.”

His expression shifts slightly, leaving something heavier in its place.

He looks away, and for a heartbeat, I don’t think he is going to answer, but then Ares exhales, his eyes fixed on the ceiling again.

“It wasn’t like fighting a man,” he says quietly. “Or a beast, or anything with a body that is breakable… We only survived because another infuriating blond made a deal with Hades.”

I smile; Heaven’s the dark horse of that story, and that credit will also go down in the history books. I wait quietly for him to continue, refusing to disturb his train of thought until he is ready.

“Helios fought as if the world belonged to him because, in his head, it did. The light, the heat, the air, the ground beneath us. Everything obeyed him. Every time he moved, it felt like the sun itself had decided we weren’t worth existing. And the worst part, he didn’t even look afraid, like he knew he was untouchable, and he was.”

I remain still; this is the first time I’m hearing it firsthand.

“Theo was laughing with blood in his mouth. Carter went down hard and still refused to give up. Renji was burning and still kept at it. Jayce…” He pauses, and something unreadable passes over his face. “Jayce kept getting up when he shouldn’t have even been able to stand. Because for him it wasn’t just a duel… It was… her.”

He swallows. “So yeah… That’s what it was like. Watching my brothers get torn apart and knowing none of us could stop because if one of us stayed down, the rest would follow, and he would win, and that wasn’t an option.”

His voice is rougher now, stripped of the usual bite.

“And you?” I ask softly.

“I used everything I had. Water from the cracks, from the air, from wherever the fuck I could pull it. A disadvantage in Helios’ land. But I kept trying. Jayce and I fought well together. His lightning hit my water, and for a moment, it wasn’t his power or mine. It was just this... storm, unleashing the full extent of our power. It was... something else. As if on earth we were restricted to what our bodies could endure, but there it was different...”

I can almost see it.

The arena. The gold. The burning. The brothers standing together against a god who believed himself untouchable.

Ares swallows, but his gaze does not soften.